Bouchercon, the biggest mystery/scifi writers conference in the galaxy (by humans, anyway) began yesterday in Albany, New York. The conference got off to a rocky start for some (one prominent crime writer discovered to her horror that her train had no bar cart...friends rushed to her aid and we can only hope she arrived in Albany unscathed by the traumatic event). Louise Penny won the Macavity for best mystery novel with The Beautiful Mystery and Daniel Friedman won for best first mystery novel with Don't Ever Get Old.
A complete list of winners is available at Janet Rudolph's blog.
Barry Award winners were also announced. Peter May won best novel for The Black House and Julia Keller took best first novel for A Killing In The Hills.
The first Barry Award went to Ali Karim, in recognition of his strong support for the mystery community.
The number of news events are too frequent to list here, but J. Kingston Pierce, editor of The Rap Sheet will be posting updates all weekend. Also, Mark Coggins is posting photos from the conference on his facebook page, and he is an outstanding photographer as well as a fine writer, so be sure to check out his pics.
One curious report has already filtered in. A large shark fin was seen cutting through the waters of the Hudson River near Albany on Thursday evening. It's unusual to see sharks so far upriver, and startled boaters called the Coast Guard. Despite a massive sweep, nothing more was found. It should be noted, however, that Janet Reid is in attendance. We'll keep you posted if any swimmers (or writers) disappear.
