Adieu, St. Louis. Helloooo, John and Nigel!

Are you feeling ready to choke every time you see the word Bouchercon? Were you starting to think that the hubbub surrounding the most recent event was finally dying out, and the online world of crime fic was returning to what passes for normal?

Don't worry, I don't plan to rehash the event in detail. Suffice it to say that the gathering more than met my expectations, and I'm very happy I went. The best part turned out not to be mingling with the famous authors -- though the famous folk certainly held up their end of this pact with the devil. No, it was the Internet acquaintances, the not-yet-famous and the never-will-be famous writers, the bloggers, the small-timers, and the nobody-in-particulars who made the event so special for me. Made it feel like a homecoming. And made the parting such sweet sorrow.

One writer not present at Bouchercon, though I was pleased to have met him here in Columbus recently, was John Hornor Jacobs, co-founder of Needle: A Magazine of Noir. I recently finished Jacobs' debut novel, SOUTHERN GODS, which made it clear to me why his next novel is being pubbed by Simon & Schuster (2013). In general, I gave up on the horror genre some twenty years ago, when it ceased to hold my interest. Even favorite writers of mine (naming no names) fail to hold my interest when their work slips into the horror genre. No one was more surprised than I to find myself entertained right through to the end of SOUTHERN GODS. I credit that to the author's development of interesting and sympathetic characters with whom I did not lose patience, as well as a taut pace. The tale speeds through the Delta blues and the days of payola, mashes it with Lovecraftian horror and a traditional PI, and overlays it all with a Southern Gothic ambiance. The story has two threads, one about a 1951 PI in search of a missing record salesman in Arkansas, the other about a woman who, with her young daughter, has fled an abusive husband for the dubious sanctuary of her mother's rambling old mansion. Weaving the threads together is the dark force the PI encounters in his search for the missing salesman, the same dark force that inhabits the woods near the old mansion. Good stuff, and if you're a horror fan, it's sheer bliss.

Another writerly friend not present at Bouchercon this year is Nigel Bird. Nigel recently shared a slender volume of his poetry with me, work which, to the best of my knowledge, he has not published. I was expecting grim verse of grit and horror, so you may imagine my delight at discovering some of Nigel's poems have the quirkiness of Shel Silverstein's poems, the ones that seem so very childlike but have that unexpected edge which make them so enjoyable to adults. And if those Silversteinesque poems weren't enough of a surprise, there were others, so sweetly romantic so that I found myself gasping a little that the man who could write a short story like Taking a Line for a Walk could also write the following:

                 The Dress

It should be framed by waterfalls that dress
a gentle flow from hair to salmon pink
the cooling flutter of a Summer’s afternoon
of eating strawberries in long grass, no shoes,
no socks, sharing each sip and each juicy drip,
savouring the moment.

That hem was born to twist
side to side in Roaring Twenties bars, a tall
dark stranger, spats, combs,
and something  for the weekend,
admiring from the shadows
at the wall.

It is the Riviera, Camelot, Cotton Club,
a hotel room at lunchtime
dropping to the floor to form
a crumpled lipstick ‘O’ to step from.

It is the queen of dresses, the most divine
brings out the devils and the angels
for a look, and may I say,
it barely does you justice.