Bouchercon Day Two: Zines, scenes, and cannoli

Shaky photo by lunatic who claims to believe in
alien landings, or convention headquarters for
Bouchercon 2013? You decide. (Photos by your
humble blog keeper.)

Damn, I enjoy moderating Bouchercon panels. Today's session (noir and hard-boiled, with authors Eric Beetner, Mike Dennis, Dana King, Terrence McCauley, and Jonathan Woods) met all the criteria for a good panel: The laugh lines worked, the panelists were articulate, entertaining, and surprising, I learned things from them, and we ran out of time before I ran out of questions.

This panel was a bit different from previous sessions for which I'd served as moderator, since all five authors have published fiction in the e- and print zines and anthologies that have come to serve as today's Dime Detectives and Black Masks.  That meant that in addition to questions about each author's work, the panel included group discussion of publications such as Thuglit, Atomic Noir, Big Pulp, and Out of the Gutter, what such publications have meant to the authors' careers, and what they can mean to readers who seek crime fiction a bit out of the mainstream. Look for these writers, find out where their work appears, and investigate further.

Shamus Awards dinner: I left the gun,
but I took a picture of the cannoli.

This evening at the Shamus Awards dinner, I met Holly West, whose debut novel is to appear early next year. And that is the occasion for a tip of the hat to Susan Elia MacNeal, a member of my Thursday war panel whom I also met for the first time at this convention. Bouchercon is not all work, you know, and meeting new authors and talking about favorite books is always one of the highlights. West sets her writing in seventeenth-century England, and I was pleased to recommend to her Ronan Bennett's superb Havoc, in its Third Year.

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Detectives Beyond Borders is seven years old today!

© Peter Rozovsky 2013