On the road again: Bouchercon, day 6

Much of my time today went to the boring process of moving a body and its traveling possessions from point A to point B in a car, so I’ll skip all that except to say that I am at home once again and will remain here until it’s time to head to the World Fantasy Con in Calgary.

One of the nicest moments of yesterday’s Anthony Awards brunch was when Toastmaster Mark Billingham asked everyone to raise a glass to the memory of James Crumley, the fine mystery writer who died on September 17. While the screen showed a photo of Crumley, the speaker system played George Pelecanos reading the first line of The Last Good Kiss:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

Many call this the finest opening line in crime fiction. I've always shied from making such superlative proclamations, but this is definitely one hell of an opener.

I loved Crumley's work. I wouldn't want to have written it, nor to have lived the life of someone who could write it, but it always amazed me. I had the privilege of listening to Crumley on two panels at the Bouchercon in Chicago in 2005, and he was as smart, charming, and annoying as I'd expected. Among my favorite of his lines was this response to someone who asked if he showed his fiction in pre-publication form to other writers for critique: "Nobody sees my work unless they can write me a check."

I was too shy at that con to go up to him and thank him for his body of work and all it had meant to be. I'd probably be too shy today to do it. I regret now, though, that I never did.

On the road again: Bouchercon, day 4

I actually got a bit of sleep last night, having abandoned some interesting panels in the name of health. I awoke tired, as I always do these past many days, but at least it was only tired, not exhausted.

That said, I've reached the point of being disgusted with my own whining about sleep, so I'm going to stop writing about it here.

I was lucky enough today to get to see the interview of Lawrence Block, a huge presence on the mystery scene and a working writer for decades, by Charles Ardai, the publisher of the fine Hard Case Crime line and a fine writer in his own right. Ardai has reprinted some of Block's earlier works, and I've quite enjoyed them all. Listening to Block talk, I was struck by exactly the traits that come through in his work: intelligence, passion, creativity, crankiness, and a certain contrarian nature.

What has impressed me repeatedly about this convention is how much more the fans and the writers seem to care about their genre of literature than the SF fans. SF fans are equally passionate, but the passion is diffuse, with movies, TV, gaming, and books sharing their attention. At a typical SF con, the dealers' room is maybe 20% books; here, it's more like 95%. At a typical SF con panel, the writers seem to jockey for position; here, they are gracious and incredibly mutual supportive, even when they're meeting for the first time. In another panel today, John Connolly was interviewing the toastmaster, Mark Billingham. Scattered all through the audience were other writers, many of them more famous, all just enjoying the interview; the guest of honor of the convention, Laura Lippman, was one of them. I can't recall ever seeing anything like that at an SF convention.

As a writer of mystery-shaped SF novels, I feel often that I don't belong in either world. I'd certainly like to belong here. Maybe one day, perhaps with the thriller, I will. Time will tell.