Friday was a late night for many attendees, I understand, and things lasted until the wee hours. I was not part of those shenanigans, I am old and boring. And I don’t know anyone nor do that kind of thing anyway. I digress. If you want to read about my non-conference aspects of the day, check out my personal blog at https://www.thepolyblog.ca/day-4-of-bouchercon2025-in-new-orleans/.

There was an early morning “Debut Mystery Author Breakfast” where a number of attending debut authors would get a chance to speak about themselves for a minute and introduce their books to the audience (if they haven’t been on panels already, for instance). The list included Brian Tracey (aka J.B. Abbott), Tom Andes, Faye Arcand, Valerie Biel, Andrew Bridgeman, Elise Burke Brown, Hunter Burke, Chelsea Conradt, John Dingle, Laurie L. Dove, Leigh Dunlap, Wendy Gee, Amran Gowani, Walter Horsting, R.L. Carpentier, III, Elle Jauffret, Georgia Jeffries, Christy J. Kendall, N.L. Lavin, Andrew Ludington, Josh Mendoza, Jennifer K. Morita, Mark Nutter, Mark O’Neill, Joe Pan, Ryan Pote, Jenny Ramaley, R. C. Reid, Michael Rigg, Jennifer Sadera, Diane Schaffer, Amie Schaumberg, Rob D. Smith, Suja Sukumar, and Mark Thielman. Tracey, Walter Horsting, Ryan Pote, and R.C. Reid were on panels I attended, and I’ll get around to checking out all of the new authors’ offerings, in lieu of actually getting up early enough to attend breakfast.… Read the rest

I had a slow start to my morning. I had missed Tai Chi (yay), some sponsorship rooms, morning speed dating sessions to link people in Column A of the industry with people in Column B of the industry, and alas, half of the fourth set of big panels. I had hoped to catch “Hooking the Reader” with great first lines, but I needed breakfast first. You can see the non-conference portion of my day on my ThePolyBlog site at https://www.thepolyblog.ca/day-2-of-bouchercon2025-in-new-orleans/

I made it to the fifth set of panels at 10:30, and went to Panel 5-4: Kickass Female Protagonists: Prince Charming Is Out of a Job. The panelists were Steph Cha, Tori Eldridge, J.T. Ellison, Taylor Stevens, and Nina Wachsman. I knew of J.T. Ellison’s work in advance, and my brain is mush as I didn’t realize Tori Eldridge writes the Lily Wong Ninja series (I’ve only read two of them). Steph Cha was new to me but she’s written the new series called Butterfly (Amazon Prime). I’ve heard of the show as it has Daniel Dae Kim in it, but I haven’t checked it out yet.

So, I’ve been thinking about something over the last two days of being here.… Read the rest

In previous posts, I talked about various book and writers’ conferences that interest me. I had it relatively narrowed down to ThrillerFest (in NYC every year) or BoucherCon (in New Orleans this year).

I really wanted to go to Thrillerfest because I love David Morrel and he was going to be there again this year (he goes every year). I looked at flights, had it worked out for some good options, and then went to book the hotel. Except I ran into a glitch. The main parts of Thrillerfest that interest me are Friday and Saturday. So I tried to book in Thursday and out on Sunday — four days, three nights. Except the main hotel is/was sold out. Well, dang it. Okay, it’s Manhattan, there are lots of choices. Except when I went to look for similar bookings, I was getting prices in the $1800 US range. Wait, it was only $300 a night at the conference. I started playing with options to maybe only go for one night (Friday), nd maybe fly down Friday morning, leave Saturday night. Quick down and back. I went back and was fiddling around with the main site and saw that you could see other room options even if sold out.… Read the rest