Anthony Award Nominations Announced

We will be presenting Anthony Awards in eight categories at the 45th annual Bouchercon World Mystery Convention this year in November.  We are delighted to announce the nominees for 2013 publications:

Best Novel:

·         Robert Crais, Suspect (Putnam)

·         Sara J. Henry, A Cold and Lonely Place (Crown Publishing)

·         William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace (Atria Books)

·         Hank Phillippi Ryan, The Wrong Girl (Forge Books)

·         Julia Spencer-Fleming, Through the Evil Days (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel:

·         Matt Coyle, Yesterday’s Echo (Oceanview Publishing)

·         Roger Hobbs, Ghostman (Knopf)

·         Becky Masterman, Rage Against the Dying (Minotaur Books)

·         Kimberly McCreight, Reconstructing Amelia (HarperCollins)

·         Todd Robinson, The Hard Bounce (Tyrus Books)

Best Paperback Original Novel:

·         Chris F. Holm, The Big Reap (Angry Robot)

·         Darrell James, Purgatory Key (Midnight Ink)

·         Stephen King, Joyland (Hard Case Crime)

·         Alex Marwood, The Wicked Girls (Penguin)

·         Catriona McPherson, As She Left It (Midnight Ink)

Best Short Story: 

·         Craig Faustus Buck, “Dead Ends” (Untreed Reads)

·         John Connolly, “The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository” (Bibliomysteries, Mysterious Press)

·         Denise Dietz, “Annie and the Grateful Dead” (The Sound and the Furry, Amazon Digital Services)

·         Travis Richardson, “Incident on the 405” (Criminal Element, The Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble)

·         Art Taylor, “The Care and Feeding of Houseplants” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March-April 2013)

Best Critical or Non-Fiction Work:

·         Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking Adult)

·         Cate Lineberry, The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics  Behind Nazi Lines (Little, Brown and Company)

·         Josh Stallings, All the Wild Children (Snubnose Press)

·         Daniel Stashower, The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the  Civil War (Minotaur Books)

·         Sarah Weinman (ed.), Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin)

Best Children’s or Young Adult Novel:

·         Joelle Charbonneau, The Testing (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

·         Margaux Froley, Escape Theory (Soho Teen)

·         Chris Grabenstein, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library (Random House Children’s Books)

·         Elizabeth Kiem, Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy (Soho Teen)

·         Penny Warner, The Code Busters Club: Mystery of the Pirate’s Treasure (Egmont USA)

Best Television Episode Teleplay First Aired in 2013:

·         “Pilot” – The Blacklist Teleplay by Jon Bokenkamp (Davis Entertainment, NBC, Sept. 2013)

·         “Felina” – Breaking Bad  Teleplay by Vince Gilligan (AMC, Sept. 2013)

·         “Dark Descent” – The Fall Teleplay by Allan Cubitt (Netflix, May 2013)

·         “Pilot” – The Following  Teleplay by Kevin Williamson, (Fox Network, Warner Bros. Television, Jan. 2013)

·         “Hole in the Wall” – Justified  Teleplay by Graham Yost (Fox Network, Warner Bros. Television, Jan. 2013)

Best Audio Book:

·         Crescendo by Deborah J Ledford, read by Christina Cox (Audible Studios)

·         The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, read by Robert Glenister, (Hachette Audio)

·         Death and the Lit Chick by G.M. Malliet, read by Davina Porter (Dreamscape Media)

·         Hour of the Rat by Lisa Brackmann, read by Tracy Sallows (Audible Studios)

·         Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell, read by Mauro Hantman (AudioGO)

The Anthony Award nominees have been selected by vote of the Bouchercon membership. The awards will be voted on at the convention and presented on Saturday evening, November 15.

I Love Bouchercon!

I love getting a book bag filled with free books. I love going to panels and discovering authors I‘ve never heard of, but can’t wait to read. I love the free book giveaways and author signings. I love exploring a new city or town that I most likely would have never visited had there not been a conference there.  I love getting advanced reader copies of books months before they are available to the public.  I love meeting new friends each and every time I attend, as well as reconnecting with old ones. And did I mention the free books?

The Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Conference, affectionately known as Bouchercon, is more than just a mystery fan convention.  It’s a community of readers, writers, publishers, librarians, bloggers, editors, you-name-its from all walks of life and from across the globe who come together once a year to celebrate their love of crime fiction.  And it’s a blast!

I attended my first Bouchercon in 2002 in Austin, Texas. I didn’t know any one when I arrived, but that didn’t last long.  By night fall I had been invited to play poker, met dozens of authors, had more books than I could carry, and had created more than one friendship for life.  The Bouchercon community had welcomed me with open arms and I was hooked.

I believe in the concept of paying forward or in this case paying back, which is why I decided to chair this year’s Bouchercon in Long Beach – the 45^th annual, by the way.  If you haven’t yet registered I hope you do because we have lots of great things planned, as well as a few new tricks up our sleeves.  (Check out our website at http://bouchercon2014.com.)  With Bouchercon now less than six months away, we’ll begin posting regular updates so be sure to check back and over the next month or so many of the authors and bloggers attending Bouchercon are going to tell you about their experiences, on our blog and around the web. .  

I want attendees to get as much joy and laughter, camaraderie and friendship, discovery and adventure, and free books at Bouchercon 2014 – Murder at The Beach, as I have had at other Bouchercons over the years.  This November, Long Beach and Bouchercon will be ready and waiting with open arms to make you feel welcome and we know you’ll be hooked too.

Sincerely,

Ingrid Willis, Chair

Bouchercon 2014 – Long Beach

We're going to have a Murder at The Beach: Bouchercon 2014 short story anthology!

What could be more fun than a little Murder at The Beach?

I am excited to announce we are now accepting submissions for the first ever Bouchercon short story anthology to be published for Bouchercon 2014 – Long Beach.  Editing the anthology is Dana Cameron, winner of multiple Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards, and it will include short stories from all of our Bouchercon 2014 Guests of Honor; Jeffery Deaver, J.A. Jance, Edward Marston, Eoin Colfer, and Simon Wood.

If you’d like to submit your Murder at the Beach themed story for consideration, it should be between 3,500 and 5,500 words, must be original and not previously published anywhere else.  Be sure to carefully follow the manuscript guidelines, which will be adhered to without exception.  Deadline for submissions is March 31, 2014.

All proceeds from the sale of the Murder at The Beach Bouchercon 2014 Anthology will go to the Long Beach Public Library Foundation.

For more information check out our Bouchercon 2014 - Long Beach website.

Now get writing!

Ingrid

In about a week I’ll be traveling to Albany for this year’s Bouchercon.  It seems like just yesterday that we were submitting our bid to host the conference in Long Beach.  I can’t believe how fast the time has gone.  I get asked all the time how cities are selected to host a Bouchercon.

As you may or may not know, National Bouchercon is a non-profit corporation, run by volunteers, whose purpose is to support the mystery writing community. Their main activity is the Annual Bouchercon event.  All full-registrants attending this conference are “members,” and have member rights.  The primary right, of course, is to attend the event, but you also can and should be involved in “business” decisions. The most exciting, of which, is helping to select the locations where the conference will be held.  This happens at the General Members Meeting each year.  In Albany, the General Members Meeting will be Friday, September 20^th, at 11:30am and members will have the opportunity to select (or not) two future Bouchercon locations.

  

This year, both New Orleans (2016) and St. Petersburg, FL (2018), will present bids at the General Members Meeting.  I know exactly what those Local Organizing Committees (or LOCs) are going through right now as they prepare to attend Albany.  When Long Beach presented our bid in San Francisco in 2010, it was exciting, but it was a little terrifying as well.  What were we thinking?  Putting on a Bouchercon is a big task.  Just like the two cities submitting bids this year we were running unopposed, meaning no one else was proposing to host the same year, but that didn't automatically mean the membership would approve our bid.  No, they could have chosen to “not choose” and see if a different bid would be submitted in a following year.  Or they could have asked us to go back and work out some details and resubmit the following year. I’m glad they didn't, but they could have.

If you are attending Bouchercon this year, you can check out the bids being submitted for consideration at www.bouchercon.info.   Here’s a basic guideline for what to look for.  Every bidder is required to supply these four basic things in their bid:

     1)    Location and Date.

This seems pretty obvious.  Where are they proposing the conference take place and when?  They should give you a little background about the place and an explanation as to why they think it will be a great location for the conference.  How hard is it to travel to the destination?  What’s the weather like?  Is it a big city or a smaller more intimate place?  The dates must be Thursday through Sunday, in the months of either September, October, or November, but there are lots of considerations.  Do the dates coincide with any holidays? Or are there local events that might interfere?  Some cities have college or National football teams which could have home games that may cause issues.  Has the LOC taken this sort of thing into account?  In Long Beach, the Queen Mary has an annual haunted house that opens the beginning of September and runs through the beginning of November.  It draws about 18-20,000 people weekly, so we chose dates in November when we knew the town would be free of goblins, ghouls, and such.

     2)    Meeting Room Space

Where will the conference take place? In a convention center?  A hotel?  Or maybe a combination of both?  How much space is there?  Is it close together or will shuttles be required? Have they thought about how the space will be used? Is there adequate space for the book dealers? Are there restaurants or food in the facility or nearby, so people can grab lunch quickly and easily?

     3)    Hotel Room Block

How many rooms do they have reserved for us?  The average Bouchercon has 1,500+ attendees, so having enough hotel space is important.  The minimum room block should be around 700-800 rooms, with an availability of additional rooms close by in the area.  If they are planning on having multiple hotels in the room block, how close are the hotels together? Is it easy to walk or will shuttles be required?  How expensive are the rooms?  Did they negotiate a good rate? What about parking? In Long Beach, none of the hotels have over 400 rooms, however three five-star hotels are less than a block apart from each other and the convention center.

     4)    Who is the Local Organizing Committee?

There should be a short bio for the basic committee members.  Have they done this before?  If not, do they have experience with this sort of thing?  How long have they been coming to Bouchercon?  Why do they want to put on a Bouchercon?  Are they crazy? What are they planning?

And that’s it.  Remember, if you are attending Bouchercon in Albany, come to the General Members Meeting on Friday and help decide the future of Bouchercon.  It’s your right.

 

I also hope you’ll stop by and say hello.  Murder at The Beach: Bouchercon 2014 – Long Beach will have a table in the dealer/book room.

Almost two years ago I was talked into putting in a bid to host a Bouchercon.  Since the acceptance of the bid there have been two things that come up almost every time I tell people I'm chairing a Bouchercon: Are you crazy? and Why Long Beach?

Over the next two years, I will endeavor to explain both. Along the way, I'll show you my favorite things about Long Beach, introduce you to the great team of people helping me, include you in the process of putting on a Bouchercon, and I'll even have a few guest bloggers.  Blogging is a new adventure for me and I hope you'll join me.

Ingrid Willis
Chair, Bouchercon2014