BOUCHERCON 2014

Hi folks,

Well, I just got back from Bouchercon in Long Beach, CA and am decompressing. This is what I looked like just before I left and was looking at the bottom of a Jack Daniels' bottle (courtesy of Jack Getze--no relation to the other Jack...).

 I had a magical time. One of my best friends ever, author Jack Getze, picked me up at LAX and we drove to his condo in West Hollywood where we stayed the first night. The next day, we spent nineteen hours on the freeway driving to the convention in what in Ft. Wayne would be a twenty-minute drive. Well, maybe it didn't take nineteen hours but it mostly felt like it...

Once at the Hyatt, we checked into the room Jack provided and let me stay in. If not for Jack, there's no way I could have afforded the convention. Not to mention, I wouldn't have had a tenth the fun!

And then... first things first... to find the bar. Which didn't open until 2 pm. Two pm! For a writer's convention! Who plans these things??!!

Just a few minutes ago I tried to download my camera and found out I couldn't. I'll get my son Mike to figure it out and then post those photos. But, until then, here's a shot of my panel. From L-R, Tim O'Mara, Sara J. Henry, Bill Loehfelm, Hilary Davidson, yrs truly, and Joe Clifford.

And, here's a shot of me reading some stuff at Eric Beetner's Noir at the Bar event. Will try to see if I can find a shot of me reading at Dana King's event. Wait! The shot of me in the mask was during Dana's Noir at Breakfast readings!

And here I am with the infamous Anonymous 9...

And, a shot of one of my publishers, Jon Bassoff of New Pulp Press...

And, one of my biggest literary heroes, Duane Swierczynski...

Got to meet Duane and act like a fanfool, and was able to give him a copy of The Rapist to get on his radar a bit and to suggest that he let his grandma read it...

Saw Katee Sackoff... yeah...

And, then... on Sunday, Jack and I spent half the day on the set of Girl Flu, starring Katee Sackoff (above), courtesy of Jill Flanders and her mom, my buddy Carson Flanders and Jill's boyfriend, Jay, the producer. Met a cool guy there, the assistant to the director, Orson Ossman, who was named after Orson Welles. With a background like that, a guy has no choice but to become a filmmaker...

 Above shot of cast and part of the crew of Girl Flu...

 And got to talk a lot with the mom (above) of the co-star, Jade Pettyjohn.

Met just lots and lots of old friends and made cool new friends. Watched part of the Notre Dame game with Craig Fenech, a baseball agent and ND grad. Had to leave when the Irish were still up to attend the panel of my former writing student and now super literary star Meagan Sampson, only to return and find out they blew the game... That's when the bottle of Jack really got hit...

Met just all kinds of folks. Robert Gussin, the publisher of Oceanview who invited me to send him my next thriller (yes!), Elizabeth Kracht, uber-agent, Dave Zeltzerman (in person--we already knew each other online), and a bunch of others. I'm going to try to write more about B-Con tomorrow when my head has cleared a bit more and hope I can remember to mention everyone then.

Had a really fun experience the first night. Met Bob Truluck and his lovely wife, Cornflake. We had dinner in the hotel with Jack and Carson and her hubby Paul. When we sat down, Cornflake fell onto the floor. Hard. Broke her pelvis and three ribs and punctured a lung. Well, not really, but she should have as hard as she fell.  Turns out she'd had three beers and said she never drank. Plus, her shoes were tied together. Some fun! And, I couldn't remember her given name--which was Leslie, a hard name to remember--but she really goes by Cornflake. And her husband Bob goes by Crazy Bob. Well, not really... but he should... They were truly a fun couple and I'm not being sarcastic at all. They really were!

My Down&Out Publisher, Eric Campbell, went balls-out in doing stuff for his writers. He took a bunch of us out to eat at a barbecue place that was awesome and mostly ran and ran and ran--delivering books for us to sign at various places, manning the Down&Out booth and showing everyone what a whirling dervish in human form looks like.

Among others, I met and gabbed with writers and other industry figures: Greg Randall, Janie Ghodosh, Charles O'Brien, Lindsay Faye, David Stout, Jacques Filippi, Mike Befeler, Sinclair O'Malley, Brian Sweany, Sunny Frazier, Shannon Baker, Reavis Wortham, Terry Irving, Robert K. Lewis, Dana and Corky King, Russell Lester, Rob Pierce, Gerard Brennan, George Mathews, Sandy Harding, and my new best friend, Lisa Fernow. Saw old buds, Todd Robinson, Joe Clifford, Tom Pitts, Rob Brunet, Tom Pluck, Charles Salzberg, Mike Monson, Sabrina Ogden (with lopsided hair...)Ed Kurtz, Michelle Turlock, Bob Rotstein, Scott Adlerberg and a bunch of others. I'm forgetting so many and I apologize! I'll try to remember the ones I forgot for tomorrow's entry.

Missed seeing Jenny Milchman and Holly West among others and that sucks! I did get to hang out with my ol' pal Tanis Mallow and try to explain to her why hockey sucks... I think she won the argument. Tanis wins everything she sets her mind to...

And, when I got home, I found an email from a writer I've admired forever, Brian Evenson, who reached out to me after reading an interview I did with Richard Godwin in Grift Magazine and my week is complete!

Tomorrow, I'll try to add the folks who slipped my Halfzeimer's mind today and talk about what I actually got to do. Including both my Airline Trips to Hell and Back...

Blue skies,
Les