The show of shows

Back to the bulletpoints again, and the award winners can all be found here.

• Like last year, emcee Jane Dentinger ran an extremely tight ship in getting the ceremony over by just about 10 PM.
• The best moment, bar none, was Bonnie & Joe’s speech in accepting the Raven Award. If you weren’t crying, or holding back a tear, you weren’t there.
• Yes, the big awards yielded some surprises (a very audible gasp went up in the room when Jess Walter’s name was called for best novel) but when the books in question: CITIZEN VINCE, OFFICER DOWN & THE GIRL IN THE GLASS – are all very good to excellent, it’s really impossible to argue seriously.
• I didn’t wear black. And interestingly enough, many other folks opted for color, too.
• Text messages can really mess with your head.
• Jeff Deaver had a great piece of advice for Robert L. Fish winner Eddie Newton (whom I’d met earlier on in the day at the EQMM/AHMM party) on what to do with the prize money: “buy paper, some cartridges and give us more.”
• Reed Coleman will forever be remembered as the “studmuffin sleuth.”
• Stephen Gaghan talked quite at length about nickels.
• I’d been told earlier that 595 people were expected at the dinner, and it certainly seemed to hold the entire night.
• It was extremely cool to finally meet Jeffrey Ford and be effusive in person about THE GIRL IN THE GLASS.
• Crashing the afterparty at Elaine’s turned out to have some unexpected, but extremely worthwhile, side effects.
• And I went to bed far, far too late, considering what needs to get done today.

But that was me. How about the rest of you?