Bouchercon is up and running!

Bouchercon well and truly starts this morning (Thursday) here in St Louis. However, Tuesday at St Louis was spent doing last minute things, which included unloading two u-haul’s full of boxes and over 1500 book bags. It took us over 16 hours to fill all the book bags and load the trucks but luckily due to the large number of volunteers which also included some panel members it only took us 1 ½ hours. Rather sadly since it started raining the movement of all the boxes and other related matters took place in the rain.

The booksellers also started to arrive and set up in the book room, which is massive. As indicated in yesterday’s blog post there were a number of pre-Bouchercon events taking place last night. By all accounts they went very well indeed. I spent the day helping the organisers with various things whilst meeting and saying hello to various people which included Sara Paretsky, Reed Farrell Coleman, Daniel Woodrell, Matt and Denise Hamilton, Jason Pinter, Jason Starr, Adrian Muller, Steve Hamilton, Pete Rozovsky, Martyn Waites, Robert Crais, Colin Cotterill, Catriona McPherson, Jan Burke, Charlaine Harris, Christa Faust and Yrsa Sigurdardottir and CWA short story winner Sean Chercover to name a few.

Jeremy Lynch has put together a wonderful and huge amount of gifts for the silent auction. If you are around you must go up and have a look at the stuff and be prepared to bid! Some of the stuff is amazing especially the items donated by Sara Paretsky and Robert Crais.

To say thank you to all the volunteers who have given up their time and have been helping with the event they arranged a dinner at the famous “Pappy’s Smokehouse”. It was an incredibly fun evening and the food was fantastic. I got to spend sometime catching up with two of the guests of honour Sara Paretsky and Val McDermid and also spend time with the extremely lovely Jen Forbus.

As one can be expected everybody congregated in the bar after and it heaving! I am not sure that they had seen so many people in the place.

The panels well and truly start today at 8:30am and it is going to be very interesting and difficult trying to sort out which of them to attend. The programme organisers have done a fantastic job. A number of them have already wetted my appetite. The only one that I know that I am going to certainly make sure that I have a front row seat for is Passengers – Fasten your Seat Belts….. I mean it is not often that you have all your guests of honour on one panel. It is in my opinion inspired programming.

The opening ceremony and reception takes place this evening as well and I am sure that it will be a lovely event. PS – For those of you that are here and reading this blog don’t forget to complete your Anthony Ballot! The box to submit your ballot can be found at the registration desk! The closing time for submitting your ballot is 5pm on Saturday evening!

Bouchercon here we come!!

This is the first of what will hopefully be my blog about Bouchercon. How frequent it is going to be I do not know.

Bouchercon does not exactly start until tomorrow but pre-Bouchercon stuff has been fun already. Thanks to Jon Jordan so far I have managed to go to a baseball game and saw the St Louis Cardinals beat the Atlanta Braves along with the ever delightful Ruth Jordan (Mrs Crimespree), Kirstie Long and Paul Jordan. At the same time the St Louis Rams were playing the Philadelphia Eagles and I have to say that despite the fact that I was at the baseball game I was also keeping my eye on the football results. Why you may ask? That is because I support Philadelphia Eagles so it was nice to see the results and realised that they beat the Rams! I have had a trip round the City Garden and have seen the wonderful sculptures and the pink flamingos! If you have chance to go to the City Garden then one should do so as it is a delight.

Since mid-morning Monday people have already started to turn up. I finally got to meet the wonderfully delightful Jen Forbus. Hi Jen! Adrian Magson and his wife Ann were amongst the first Brits to arrive (aside from myself and Kirstie long) who have been in St Louis since Saturday. Also renewed my acquaintance with Ann McNulty whom I last saw at Baltimore and also B G Ritts. Also met Kat Tromp again, John Purcell and Emily Bronstein (whom I last saw at Crimefest last year!). It was also lovely to see again after such a long time McKenna Jordan who owns Murder by the Book in Houston and Crimespree’s comic and film extraordinaire Jeremy Lynch along with his lovely wife Jill and his mother. Of course the place to be is the bar!

Pictures © Ayo Onatade

Yesterday evening (Tuesday) a lot more Brits started to arrive. My fellow Shotsmag colleagues Mike Stotter and Ali Karim flew in with Roger Ellory, Lauren Henderson, CWA Chairman Peter James, and Guest of Honour Val McDermid and rather later on Tuesday night (sans luggage) Russel McLean. Even though things have not really started today (Wednesday) is going to be rather busy. Trucks to unload with all the book bags and the stuff for registration, which should start @3pm this afternoon. The book bags are stuffed full of wonderful books and I dare anyone to complain! There will also be a swap table set up so if people want to leave books and or swap them there. It will be interesting to see how the hotel manage to cope with the large influx of people that are no doubt due to turn up today. I am sure that they will be fine as they have been excellent so far. So, if you see me wandering around the hotel at some stage during Bouchercon please do come up and say hello, give me a hug as I am sure that I may not remember to do so or I might be distracted and I would not want anyone to think that I was ignoring them on purpose.

There are also a lot of pre-Bouchercon activities taking place as well today. Noir at the Bar will be starting at eight PM, will be held at Meshuggah Café 6269 Delmar Boulevard Saint Louis, MO 63130 (314) 726-56626269. Admission is free, but bring money for drinks and books. Food is also available. Subterranean Books and Bouchercon present Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton in an intimate Q&A to benefit the St. Louis Public Library, at Christ Church Cathedral, 1210 Locust Street (across from Central Library, two blocks from convention hotel), Wednesday, Sept 14 6pm (Doors at 5pm). This is a ticketed event and your ticket price gains you admittance to the one-hour event and gets you a signed copy of Harris' SOOKIE STACKHOUSE COMPANION or Hamilton's HIT LIST.

Tickets available here

St Louis County Library presents “Suspense Night 2011” on Wednesday, September 14, at 7 p.m. at Library Headquarters, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd. The free event brings together seven suspense authors from across the country. The authors are Megan Abbott, Reed Farrell Coleman, S J Rozan, Peter Spiegleman, Steve Hamilton, Lisa Lutz and Christa Faust.