I con, you con, we all con ...
I left Bouchercon, now Bouchercon is coming to me. Sunday, James R. Benn, Henry Chang and Stuart Neville, all members of my "Flags of Terror" panel at Bouchercon last week, will appear in Philadelphia in support of their new books.
Nov. 4-7 is Noircon 2010, which will bring former Boucherconers including Megan Abbott, Patti Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Christa Faust, Laura Lippman, Duane Swierczynski and many more, to town. (Among the many more is George Pelecanos, so this could be a good con.)
I'm turning into a regular con artist.
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Nov. 4-7 is Noircon 2010, which will bring former Boucherconers including Megan Abbott, Patti Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Christa Faust, Laura Lippman, Duane Swierczynski and many more, to town. (Among the many more is George Pelecanos, so this could be a good con.)
I'm turning into a regular con artist.
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
Labels: Bouchercon 2010, conventions, NoirCon, Noircon 2010
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 8:39 PM
10 Comments:
Guess it's not just the Giants who have to leave San Francisco for Philadelphia these days.
Sounds great. Hope none of you have grown tired of each other yet.
I'm not tired of them; I hope they're not tired of me. I wrote earlier that my panelists were an agreeable lot, and I meant it. I had a post-con dim sum with two of them and lunch the next day with another.
In fact, lots of people at the San Francisco Bouchercon kept missing each other, probably because the hotel bar closed at the unheard-of hour of midnight. That meant I didn't have the occasion to get tired of the people who'll be coming to Philadelphia.
Closed at midnight? In San Francisco? It's not exactly what you'd call a dry town.
It was unbelievable. The hotel was one of those with all the guest rooms fronting on a massive atrium. The apparent excuse for the early bar closing was that noise would drift up and disturb the guests.
One of my panelists called that "bullshit" and said she and her husband heard nothing in their room. But the point is that the midnight bar closing was a mistake on someone's part. Previous Bouchercon organizers have negotiated deals to keep the bar open later than usual. The failure to do so here is a mistake that we are told will not be repeated next year and I hope not ever again.
Wow, that's bad. You always wonder in these kinds of situations how it has never come up before.
At least you east coast types probably felt like it was three in the morning.
Who knows? Maybe the organizers just assumed the bar would be open late and did not think to have it specified in the contract.
I don't think it ruined anybody's convention, but it would have been nice to have a late-night gathering place.
I don't know if the midnight-hour closing was responsible, but an unusual number of people seemed to have missed meeting people they wanted to meet. I myself had the occasion two and three days into Bouchercon to realize that I had not seen people who I knew were supposed to show up and did turn out to have attended. So the midnight closing may have had an atomizing effect. But that's a matter for sociologists of conventions.
Looking forward to seeing you.
I guess a taxi is the best way in from the airport. The airport train lines aren't near the hotel?
The airport train line stops a few blocks from the hotel -- easily walkable, but you might not want to do it with luggage.
If you do take a cab, make sure the driver does not set the meter. There's a flat rate from the airport to Center City. I think the rate is $26. There are also hotel shuttles that could be cheaper. Look into these at an information booth in the baggage-claim area.
Bon voyage and I'll see you soon, however you get here.
Thanks! Be there on Thursday afternoon. I am a completist.
If you're a real completist, you'll be happy to know that all Noircon attendees will be honorary members of the Pen & Pencil Club, Philadelphia's press club, for the duration of the convention. That means a place to hang out and drink until 3 a.m. a short walk from the convention hotel.
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