Bouchercon 2018
Heading to Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention!
No autographs please!
Oh, okay. I'll sign your book!
I'm getting ready for my first Bouchercon Conference. This mystery conference is in St. Petersburg, FL this year, right in my backyard. That is, it would be my backyard if I lived on the bay in the Vinoy Hotel.
The Vinoy
What do you think this quiet courtyard will look like on Sept 7 during Bochercon?
I'm especially looking forward to eating lunch with Ian Rankin and Karin Slaughter. And when I say eating lunch with, I mean sitting in a gigantic ballroom watching a video feed of these two superstars while I flip through their books and wonder how long the line will be to have them sign my copy.
So why was I at the Vinoy two weeks early?
It's a long story made short. UPS wanted me to take my boxes of 250 books from Longboat Key, past St. Pete to their loading dock in Tampa. Then they'd drive them back to St. Pete and all for the price of 250 clams. So instead, I called the shipper, printed a lager invoice from the internet and showed up on their loading dock.
I wonder if my books will end up in those conference bags?
While I was acting as my own trucking company, I decided to swing by the hotel and see what was what. Wow, is it beautiful. The hotel was a grand waterfront resort in 1925, just in time for the Great Depression. If you had been here in the 1980's, you cold have had a room for $7 a night as the hotel hit it's all-time low. Now, after a 3.5 million dollar reno, the hotel is a grand pink lady once more.
Hope to see you at St. Pete's Bouchercon Conference.
Welcoming the Rich & Famous
What do Jimmy Steward, Joe DiMaggio, Tom Petty and Brad Pitt have in common?
One thing is that they all were guests at the Vinoy!