THE GOOD:
1. Getting hugged by Louise Penny!
2. Attending some great panels:
THURSDAY: 1:00 P.M. 2:00 P.M. Grand West Best Paperback Original Meet your Best PBO Anthony nominees Patricia Abbott, Eric Beetner, Matt Coyle (M), Jess Lourey, Jay Stringer, Jim Ziskin
2:30 P.M. 3:30 P.M. Sheraton B So Many Books, So Little Time How to determine what to read, what to read next, and shelving tips Robin Agnew (M), Bill Crider, Marvin Lachman, June Lorraine Roberts, Peter Sellers
5:30 P.M. 6:30 P.M Grand Centre Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is Honoured Celebrating 75 years of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, featuring an interview with Janet Hutchings, and vignettes from many contributors. Host – Art Taylor Art Taylor, Janet Hutchings, Laura Benedict, Jill D. Block, Michael Bracken, Dana Cameron, Bill Crider, Brendan DuBois, Lee Goldberg, Richard Helms, Marvin Lachman, Josh Pachter, Twist Phelan, Naben Ruthnum, Jennifer Soosar, Steve Steinbock, Marilyn Todd
FRIDAY: 10:00 A.M. 11:00 A.M. Grand Centre Three Good Friends: Three classy women just having a chat Rhys Bowen, Deborah Crombie, Louise Penny
2:00 P.M. 3:00 P.M. Grand Centre Best Short Story Meet your Short Story Anthony nominees Megan Abbott, Alan Orloff (M), Johnny Shaw, Art Taylor, Holly West
5:00 P.M. 6:00 P.M. Grand Centre Megan Abbott Interview Our American Guest of Honour is interviewed by Laurie King
SATURDAY: 8:30 A.M. 9:30 A.M. Sheraton E The Experienced: Long writing careers make for great stories P.M.Carlson (M), Bill Crider, Howard Engel, Francine Mathews / Stephanie Barron, Sara Paretsky, Kathy Reichs
10:00 A.M. 11:00 A.M. Grand Centre Best Novel Meet your Best Novel Anthony nominees Megan Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Chris Holm, Laura Lippman, Louise Penny, Hank Phillippi Ryan (M)
2:30 P.M. 3:30 P.M. Grand Centre Hidden Past Writing characters with secrets Debra H. Goldstein (M) , Laura McHugh, Louise Penny, Mark Pryor, Michael Stanley (Michael Sears), Heather Young
SUNDAY: 9:30 A.M. 10:30 A.M. Sheraton E Louise Penny Interview Our Canadian Guest of Honour is interviewed by Ann Cleeves
3. Scoring a ton of FREE books!
4. Spending time with Jeff & Jackie Meyerson, Bill & Angela Crider, Patti & Phil Abbott, Maggie Mason, George Easter, and many others. Jeff & Jackie snuck us into the Elite Lounge each night for great conversations.
THE BAD:
1. Driving in Toronto where you can’t make LEFT HAND TURNS and are forced to make U-TURNS on busy streets in dense traffic. Nightmarish!
2. Maggie Mason falling off a hotel treadmill and ending up in the Emergency Room.
3. Skimpy refeshments (a few cookies) and few cans of soda between panels. Lame.
THE UGLY:
1. Jeff & Jackie & I all got our dinners in Shopsy’s restaurant, but Diane didn’t. We spoke to three waiters about the problem and they all went away, but nothing happened. Finally, Jackie told the Manager about the problem and Diane finally got her dinner…an hour after the rest of us finished! The Manager was apologetic and told us our meal was FREE and then gave us FREE desserts. That was nice, but the experience was a bummer.
2. The New Orleans BOUCHERCON innovated the free book process by allowing attendees to choose their own books. Toronto regressed by going back to shoving a bunch of random books in our backpacks.
The BOUCHERCON in Toronto was one of the Top 5 BOUCHERCONs I’ve attended (I’ve been to 20). It was great fun to hang out with friends and great writers!
George, the four-day itinerary sounds good. I’d have loved to sit in on some of those panel discussions.
Prashant, the BOUCHERCON Toronto panels were some of the best I’ve ever attended. Excellent conversations!
Really great to see you and Diane and hang out for a while. Angela and I are heading to our homes today. Angela’s glad she still has one!
Bill, it’s always a pleasure to spend time with you and Angela! Glad her home is still standing! The scenes of the California wildfires are horrific! Patrick says the air around San Jose is full of smoke!
Great analysis! We had a great time seeing all of you, which is after all, the main reason we go. I went to a lot of the same panels – though not as many as George did – and there were no duds.
I didn’t have any trouble finding the hotel or left turn issues.
GOOD:
The PATH system under the streets of central Toronto that enables you to walk for blocks and blocks without having to worry about rain or cold.
The new Ripley’s Aquarium, which was great.
Restaurants everywhere, as the Concierge told Jackie, with plenty of good choices.
The Concierge Lounge was huge and beautiful.
BAD AND/OR UGLY:
Homeless people everywhere, sleeping on the streets and/or begging, worse than in most parts of New York.
The breakfast in the lounge was barely adequate IMHO. And though the evening snacks (5 – 8 pm) were decent, there were NO DESSERTS of any kind. Almost unheard of.
The weather was not as bad there as it was on the road from Syracuse to Buffalo, but it wasn’t great.
Jeff, thanks again for sneaking Diane and me into the Concierge Lounge. Meeting Louise Penny there thrilled Diane! And, thanks again for dinner at the Kit Kat restaurant! Have a safe trip back to Brooklyn!
We had horrendous rain all the way from the Canadian border to Syracuse yesterday, but this morning it is just cold (40) and overcast. The warmup us supposed to start tomorrow, both here and at home. Mid-70s and sunny will be a nice change.
Spending times with friends is my top pick. I did run into one romantic suspense panel where a young author was touting her millenials heroine who just happened to be involved with a magican accused of murder. Her thinking was that anyone older than a millenial is hopeless with tech, leaving it to the young woman to solve the crime.
This was not a great comment to make to an audience of women of a certain age.
Jackie
Jackie, I remember having pizza with you and Jeff at the Chicago BOUCHERCON decades ago! What fun! I always get annoyed with authors on panels who respond to any question with: “In my latest book…”
Glad you had a fantastic time, George!
Jerry, the only thing that would have made BOUCHERCON better would be if you were there!
George, the one and only Bouchercon I attended was way back in 1973 in Boston. It was much smaller back then, about 200 people perhaps. It was a great time with many friendly people. The highlight for me was having drinks with Helen McCoy.
Jerry, perhaps you’ll consider BOUCHERCON 2018 in St. Petersburg. What a thrill it must have been to have drinks with Helen McCoy! Underrated writer!
Jeff, Western NY is under a FROST WARNING tonight! Brrrrr!
Sounds like a pretty good one, George, though perhaps not as good as the great Seattle and Milwaukee ones, my two top picks. I’m a little surprised you went to so many panels; I had it in mind you don’t usually attend many, or any. It is fun to see friends who live far away, and catch up. Sounds like you had a very good time. Thanks for the report.
How was the book room? You make no mention of it.
That non-appearing dinner should have been solved sooner and better. I hope you left no tip. Great that you were able to see so much of Louise Penny. I was surprised her novel won for “Best Novel”, as I thought it was weaker than her previous ones. But then I didn’t read any of the others n the category.
We’ve had our frost, leaves are bright, summer perennials are starting their dieback, it’s gotten into the high 30s by rely am. Sunny today, rain the next several days. Fall is certainly here.
Rick, the Dealers’ Room was so-so. Many new books (mostly by the writers on the panels) mixed with some hideously over-priced older books. I did score a bag of vintage paperbacks (5 books for $20 Canadian). You’ll be seeing some of them as FFBs in the weeks ahead.
Rick, while set up better than Vegas, this book room was not great. There was a huge table in the middle and you had to stand in a long line to buy new books from them. I didn’t.
The book bag was awful – a bowling bag is the only comparison that comes to mind. It had one strap and barely held the 3-4 books we got. I gave all my books to George. The New Orleans method of letting you pick whatever 6 books you wanted was so much better.
Louise Penny is very popular with fans who vote. She almost always wins.
Jeff, I’m hoping future BOUCHERCONs adopt the New Orleans method of distributing books. As you say, the Dealers’ Room layoff was far from optimal.
George Easter was in charge of the NOLA book bazaar. He offered to do it again, but they refused. It appears they only got books from publishers that were going to be pulped or remaindered (at least the ones I saw were all older pbs and the hb’s were authors I’d not heard of, none I saw were books by attending authors).
I’ll have to ask George if the Book Bazaar will be done in Dallas (hoping he’ll offer to do it again!!)
Many people had their book bags handle break off. I spoke to the folks from 2018 and they got lots of complaints for the book bags.
Maggie, the Book Bazaar idea was pure genius. Going back to stuffing backpacks with random books was a step backwards. Bill Crider said he came home without bringing any books back from the Toronto BOUCHERCON.
Please tell me what the panelists said about shelving books. The only Boucheron I have attended was in St. Paul and it was excellent. Being a Canadian maybe I should have tried for Toronto. As for Louise Penny, she seems to win all the awards so I should try her again. I read her first book and was underwhelmed. I always think of her as the host of the CBC Winnipeg afternoon drive show, which she was on before she started writing mysteries. She was a fine host.
Was it on this blog where someone commented about driving on thr wrong side of the road in Canada? It’s amazing to me how little some Americans know about their neighbour.
Kent, I think Dan was just being his usual funny self when he made that “driving on the wrong side of the road” remark. Louise Penny appeared everywhere at the BOUCHERCON in Toronto. Her panels sparkled with her wit and charm. Attendance at the Penny panels was Standing Room Only. You can see why her popularity spills over to a high vote count for her books.
The Buffalo Sabres finally won a game. I predict a difficult year for our NHL team.
There is always the Patrick Kelley method of book shelving: buy color.
Jeff, I got a kick out of Peter Sellers (the book dealer) selling a thousand feet of BLACK books!
The book room had all the books from A + B authors behind the tables. You can imagine how well their books sold! And the selection in the book bags was awful and sparse. Phil and I got the same four books. I remember fondly ten years ago getting double the books and much better ones. But the hotel was nice, the city was great and the company splendid.
Patti, it was great spending time with you and Phil! Megan really shined at the Toronto BOUCHERCON!
Sounds marvellous George – me too, one day …
Sergio, you would have tons of fun at BOUCHERCON!
Thanks everybody for reporting from the Con!
And at least some of you bought even more books!
Sometimes I miss those opportunities – of course as a billionaire I would have just flown over to Toronto …
At least we have a nice “Golden October” right now in Germany – up to 75 Fahrenheit!
Wolf, the weather was cool in Toronto and it rained on Sunday as we were driving out of the city. But the other days were mild and warmer than Normal for Toronto (and Western NY).
Great con report, George.
Beth, we all missed you in Toronto! The panels were the best in a decade!