On the road again: Bouchercon, Indianapolis, day 6

Today was one of those travel days, albeit a friendlier one than most. The rhythm of these days is all the same: get up, work, shower, work, head to airport, work, fly and work (unless the plane seats make that impossible, as they did today on the commuter jet), repeat if multiple legs (today had only one; hurrah!), and ultimately end up at home, where I am now. The flight wasn't full, it arrived early, the flight attendant was pleasant and even gave us peanuts, and my luggage arrived. I have no complaints.

So, now it's late, and I'm alone in my office, as a writer should be. Blue Rodeo is singing from speakers behind me that we are all lost together; amen to that.

My book proceeds, slower than I'd like but every day.

I have no clue if it will be any good at all, but like Greg Keelor on this song, I'm pouring my heart into it.

The book deserves no less.

On the road again: Bouchercon, Indianapolis, day 5

I'm writing this part of the blog at 10:45 a.m. and wondering what in the hell I'm doing awake. A Sunday morning, and I'm already up! This is wrong. What could cause such torture?

The Bouchercon book bazaar, that's what. In an exercise in marketing and masochism, I signed up to participate in this event, one that as a fan I would love but as an author dreaded. Picture four long rows of tables, and I do mean long, easily sixty feet or more. Behind each half table sits or stands an author, a hand-scrawled name placard in front of him or her. Each author has 50 books--the minimum their publisher (or they) had to pony up--and some have more. Publisher Toni was mucho generous, so I had 100. Yes, 100 SF mysteries at a mystery convention. Each convention attendee received five tickets, each one good for one book. Additional tickets were available for a buck each. Your mission as writer: move your books.

Ninety asshole-clenching, humiliation-drenched, tense minutes later, and all my books were gone. My hand hurt from signing them. I suck at this. When someone genuinely wanted the books, as many did, it was fun; we'd chat, I'd sign, and off they'd go. Much of the time, however, I looked around forlornly, like a dog willing to take a beating just for the attention. I wasn't the last author standing, but I was in the last twenty for sure, maybe the last dozen.

These feelings no doubt represent my own insecurities more than the reality, because all 100 books went, and the people were unfailingly nice. I just found it difficult.

One woman stood out. She had bought a ton of tickets and was using them to purchase books for troops at medevac stations in the Middle East. She was hoping writers would sign something encouraging for the troops. Good on her. I refused to take her tickets, wrote stupidly encouraging words--what could really help someone there?--and offered her four books. She would take only two. I was proud to shake her hand.

To my great surprise, half a dozen or so folks already knew my work, had read all the books, and were picking up extras for friends. Talking to them was fun, of course.

I suppose if you're one of the writers everyone knows and whose books they all want, then this event is easy and fun. Maybe that'll be the case for me one day; I like to think so. Until then, however, I'll keep doing it--because this sort of marketing is part of the job--but I'll continue to be that perpetually awkward and embarrassed guy behind the table.

Lunch was at a nearby Steak 'n Shake, which was in most respects the same as the one in which I ate once as a teenager. So, it was completely adequate, but no more.

For dinner, we decided to take a chance and try the hotel's revolving rooftop restaurant, the Eagle's Nest. The dinner menu hinted at modern preparations, such as in its foie gras ravioli, the OpenTable reviews were solid, and it's always nice to take in a city from on high. So, off we went.

Mistake. Big mistake.

The chef had probably held the foie gras ravioli near a picture of foie gras, but that was as close as it had come to a goose's liver. The ravioli were lukewarm and paper thin. Sitting atop each of them was a dollop of cold apple butter. Amazing.

The lobster bisque was a burning orange generic seafood soup so thick with pepper that my tongue couldn't shake the taste for several minutes. The wine-poached pear and duck confit salad featured bitter pear slices, so-so duck strips, and greens we could not identify and which frightened us.

The main courses were no more successful, with the chicken tart more a leaky chicken pot pie than a proper tart, and the reasonably tasty duck among the chewiest pieces of meat I've ever experienced. Pepper abounded again.

The highlight of the feature dessert, our waiter told us with great pride, was "in-house made whipped cream." We passed on it. We ordered traditional desserts to go and fled, afraid to open them in the restaurant lest their appearances provoke hoots of laughter. We were right to leave, because both were floating in pure white heavy cream in their little cardboard boxes.

Next time, we go somewhere reliable.

On the road again: Bouchercon, Indianapolis, day 4

One of the mysteries of mystery conventions is why they schedule the way they do. At every Bouchercon I've attended, the hotel bar roars with activity until the hotel forces out the last writers and fans and locks the doors. Also at every one of these events, the panels kick off at 9:00 a.m.--and usually with the very best presentations of the day. Perhaps the fans doing the scheduling don't care about the writers, or maybe it's all a diabolical plot to get a famous author to break in the face of sleep deprivation and reveal some major secret; I can only speculate. In any case, one of today's best panels began at the ungodly hour of 9:00 a.m., so I got up early enough to shower and be in my chair just as the moderator grabbed the microphone.

The stated topic was must-read thrillers, but the real discussion point was the book of essays about one hundred must-read thrillers that the International Thriller Writers association will be putting out next summer. David Morrell acted as moderator, with ITW co-founder Gayle Lynds and Lee Child the other people I'd come to hear. As it turns out, Child's essay on Theseus and the Minotaur will kick off the book. At about age eleven, Child was reading the story of Theseus in Latin for school, then on his own time was reading Fleming's Doctor No. Child said he was struck that the plots were essentially the same and that later he came to see Theseus and the Minotaur as the first thriller story. The other panelists were fine, but this tidbit alone made the early awakening worthwhile.

We ate lunch with Karen, who picked us up at the hotel and took us to the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, which is, oddly enough, here in Indianapolis. We had time only to eat in the cafe there and tour the lovely grounds a bit, but it was a nice time and good to catch up with Karen. I had no clue that Indianapolis had canals, much less a canal walk.

The highlight of the afternoon was a panel on the rules of paranormal mysteries, which proved to be quite funny. As is usually the case, Charlaine Harris stole the show.

I'm happy to report that the three signed, first-edition hardcovers I donated to the charity auction prompted some bidding. When last I looked, five different folks had bid on them, which, given their SF covers, bordered on miraculous. I didn't get to see the winning bid, because when I wandered by the dealers' room in the late afternoon, the books were already gone, but I did see one bid of $60, so at least they went for more than the sum of their Amazon list prices.

Dinner was back at 14 West, both because we knew it would be reliably good (t was) and because it was across the street from the movie theater near the hotel. At said theater we watched Law Abiding Citizen, which I liked more than the vast majority of critics. Other than failing hard with the mechanism by which the cops learned about the protagonist's operational secrets, a narrative gadet that was as close to a true deus ex machina as I've seen in a while, the film ran its course as one might expect from the premise.

Ah, well, enough blather. A book beckons me, and write it, I must.