Thursday, October 9, 2008

Bouchercon Day 1

Up early after a late night to start the day with a panel called We Didn’t Start the Fire. They discussed the balance of writing about social issues in fiction without being preachy. It made me want to take another look at my novel. I met Karen Olson and Neil Plakcy, and Karen may guest blog here soon.

Second panel of the day was Does Sex Sell? The discussion was more about whether sex scenes were necessary in mystery/crime fiction. No consensus was reached, except that romance outsells mystery 10 to 1.

I introduced myself to dozens of writers, gave away about 25 copies of The Sex Club, and handed out bags of books as a volunteer. No one is going home empty handed from this conference. I also had dinner with Karen Syed of Echelon Press, a funny high-energy dynamo. I think we could be an ass-kicking combo.

Took exactly one bad picture today. I'll do better tomorrow with visuals.

4 comments:

Dani said...

Who else is there from Blog Book Tours? Roberta Isleib? Hank Phillip Ryan? Have a BBT drink for the rest of us! And thanks for blogging.... we know it's tough to squeeze in the time with everything that's going on.

Dani
http://twitter.com/blogbooktours

Helen Ginger said...

Thanks for blogging about Bouchercon. I haven't been in years and it's fun to "ride along" with you this year. I want to hear about everything.

L.J. Sellers said...

I met Hank yesterday and she gave me a hug. Gorgeous, lovely woman.

Anonymous said...

Interesting topics to discuss/debate. I write in the spiritual/inspirational genre with Christian worldviews and themes and have been happy to receive feedback and reviews from people who are not "religious" (neither am I, I'm a spiritualist, non-religious dogma-free Christian) that my books are to them favorably not "preachy."

My new novel, Owen Fiddler, has sex scenes in it. Hey, he's a sexual whore before his enlightenment experience, so I wrote it the way it is. Some of the pious consider that flagrant and unnecessary sensationalism. I call it real world.

Enjoy the rest of your time there. Love these updates.