My writing friend Kate Michaelson described Bouchercon as a terrarium of introverts pretending they're extroverts. That about covers it. Bouchercon, pronounced Bowch-er-con, is a mystery and crime writers and readers conference. It attracts between 1,500-2,000 people. This year it was held at the Gaylord Resort in Nashville, a sprawling complex that includes shops, restaurants, canals with boat rides at night, impeccable landscaping, and all that is covered in a glass enclosed atrium. No bugs, no heat, but boy did I get lost. "It's not so far to the convention center," they told me at the front desk when they assigned a room. Ha! I clocked it at .44 of a mile. I logged 5.5 miles one day. Those who know me understand that I am directionally challenged, so navigating this site often left me standing under a palm tree next to a canal, wondering where the hell I was. The catered food was fabulous, but the 8 o'clock panels left me searching for toothpicks to hold my eyes open. I haven't seen 8 AM on a Saturday morning since college when I had a biology lab. Imagine a group of college freshmen stumbling into class, hungover. Then there was that one girl with big boobs who wore a cow bell. Funny the things you remember.
For those who've never attended a writing conference, the workshops are presented by panels of authors. According to the Southern Gothic panel, writers need to make sure their characters cuss a lot and fight. The cussing part is easy. The fighting part? Not so much. I sweated moderating a panel, something I'd never done before, and the authors presenting were no rookies. David Morrell whose book Rambo was based on sat next to me. Of course, the first thing I did was spill water on their bios and the questions we'd agreed upon. "You should take a picture of that," Clay Stafford of Killer Nashville told me as I tried to avoid hyperventilating. "Good thing the ink didn't bleed." (Because of Clay's conference, I found a publisher.) Long story short, seasoned writers John DeDakis, Andrew DeYoung, Clay Stafford and Zoe Quinton carried the panel while I pretended to know what I was doing. CamCat writers, soon to be authors in a new unknown company, hung out for dinners. I admired my fellow CamCat author who downed two Margaritas one night and was still sober. She was a Russian expat who works for the Dept. of Energy. Not a mole, she kept insisting. So to summarize what a writing conference is: writers attending informational sessions and then partying the night away. Conferences always reassure me that there are other strange people who live in an imaginary world, and there's always someone whose brain I can pick about a research issue. Yes, we all hear voices in our heads, but we're not crazy. Well, maybe not.
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