Allons-y, Bouchercon!

This more or less dormant* blog will be even more dormant this week thanks to the chock-full-of-wonder that is Bouchercon. It officially starts on Thursday and runs through Sunday at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, but based on Twitter reports, the party’s already begun and should be in full swing by Wednesday for sure. And having glanced at both the program schedule and Dan Wagner’s highlights, holy crap, this is a convention worth getting to, stat.

From the Anthony Awards to GOH interviews with Denise Mina, Lee Child, Eddie Muller and Maddy van Hertbruggen, a read-through of Declan Hughes’ play about Dashiell Hammett & Lillian Hellman, the world premiere of Lee Goldberg’s film Remaindered, an open-to-all Reacher Creature party, banquets for the Shamus and Nero Wolfe Awards and tributes to Robert B. Parker and David Thompson, schedule planning should drive people crazy in the best possible way in trying to decide what to see and how much to pack in.

And then there are the publisher parties: HarperCollins is hosting the opening ceremonies Thursday night, while Minotaur, Mulholland, Ballantine Bantam Dell, and Touchstone are having offsite bashes that are invitation-only, and possibly Berkley Prime Crime, too. There will be lots of other offsite events as well, such as Writers with Drinks on Saturday the 16th, Stephen Jay Schwartz’s BEAT launch party at the Beat Museum in North Beach on the 13th, and a Nancy Drew 80th Anniversary shindig.

As for me, I’ll be interviewing Kate Atkinson on Saturday at 3 PM, talking partly about her new novel STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG – published in August in the UK, and out next March in the US – but also about the Jackson Brodie novels as a whole. And this time, I promise to keep any and all hot liquids away from her.

*Of course, the moment I acknowledge this alleged dormancy, I’m destined to post like a prolific savant for the forseeable future, if past precedent is any indication. But the whole “making a living” as an excuse is kind of getting old, I know. Or perhaps it’s a seven-year-itch thing? In any case, blah blah due warning blah blah and all that.