Why is it called Bouchercon?

Who's asking: Various friends and family

Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, is named after the novelist and critic Anthony Boucher, who wrote for the New York Times (among other places) and was the first mainstream critic to insist that crime fiction be taken seriously as literature. Marv Lachman won yesterday's Anthony Award for non-fiction for his book The Heirs of Anthony Boucher, a history of mystery fandom.

The other Anthony winners were Barbara Seranella, for Best Short Story -- Linda Brown and I nearly wept, as Barbara has been such a good friend to the store and survived so much in the last year -- Crimespree Magazine for Best Fan Publication; Chris Grabenstein for Best First Novel; Reed Farrel Coleman (yay Reed!) for Best Paperback Original; William Kent Krueger for Best Novel; and Janet Rudolph of Mystery Readers International, for Special Service to the Genre.

It was a good weekend for my clients. Not only did Reed win the Anthony, he also won the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award for the same book, The James Deans. Joe Finder won Deadly Pleasures' Barry Award for Company Man, and Theresa Schwegel, who was nominated for the Anthony, wore fabulous shoes and still has her Edgar. (I should probably state here for the record that none of these wins has anything to do with me -- Reed and Joe wrote their books before I started working with them, and anyway I have nothing to do with their writing.)

My panel on Friday went well, thanks to four great panelists: Bob Dugoni, Mike Harrison, Lise McClendon and the incomparable Linda Barnes. All of them are thoughtful, insightful people whose books deserve the widest possible audience.

I'm so tired -- even after a full night's sleep -- that my vision is blurring, but I felt bad about not posting for a few days. I'll be home again tomorrow with a longer post, if I can find a working computer (mine suffered its final blow on this trip, and I'm writing this post on Linda's laptop). In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz, smell ya later.