Gearing up for Malice

I'm finding myself getting quite excited about Malice Domestic con, even though I won't be fully participating until this afternoon. I've taken the day off work so I can spend this morning doing all the weekend things - laundry, cleaning, generally being an adult, but I spent last night schlepping to Bethesda to do early registration and look at the tote bag (nice, but not extraordinarily so) and the books in it (TBH, none of them have particularly caught my attention either, although there is a book in a series I panned pretty hard in the Reviewing the Evidence days.) I also took myself out to dinner at the Mongolian Barbeque down the street and note to self: your new favorite is duck, shrimp, mushrooms, corn, and bean sprouts with a sauce of 2 dips of lemon, 1 of sweet orange peel, and 1/4 of ginger. Nick an extra sauce bowl for 3-4 spoonfuls of chopped peanut and scatter that over the top of the result. BD's is probably going to be hopping for the rest of the weekend, but maybe I can go get another bowl of that for lunch today.

I notice that one of the listed author guests is Joan Hess. I haven't particularly forgiven La Hess for Damsels in Distress - and I note that Reviewing the Evidence still has my review of it up - the one where I called it "mean spirited" and told the putative readership "there is no reason for you to buy this book; you're only spending your money to be insulted" and suggested they go read Donna Andrews.

Wow. I can really be a bitch when I want to be. I'm still a bit surprised I was allowed to turn one author's review into an ad for another.

(Not that I'm still not telling people to avoid Hess altogether, because if you want a good re-enactment mystery, Donna Andrews' Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos is totally the way to go. And if you want a good SF con mystery, check out her We'll Always Have Parrots.)

But anyway - Malice, not me being malicious. We have to sign permits to be recorded when we register, and I'm glad that so many of the panels are recorded, because there's a lot of tempting stuff going on. My tentative schedule is:

Friday: You've Got Fan Mail (Honored Guests Discuss Mail from Fascinating Fans) I may or may not stick around for the official opening ceremonies. This may depend on the speed of the service at BD's.

Saturday: Choice of Capitol Crimes (All Politics is Deadly) vs Lights, Camera, Murder (Mysteries that Translate to Stage and Screen). Later I'll check out the paranormal mystery panel Witches and Zombies and Ghosts, Oh My, and I'll be attending the lunchtime presentation with the Poison Lady (!). That afternoon, I'm thinking What Authors Endure in the Name of Research and round out the day deciding between the Agatha Best Nonfiction Nominees and Living With the Seven Deadly Sins (Mysteries as Modern Morality Plays). That last is a particularly tough choice!

Saturday signings include Claudia Bishop (aka Mary Stanton; I'm going to get the latest two Beaufort & Co mysteries signed) and Laurie King. I've never forgiven King for marrying Holmes off and besides, she signed my first edition of The Beekeeper's Apprentice 15 years ago but my housemate is a huge fan and I've said I'll get signatures for her. M, in return, is urging me hard to pick up my own copy of the King with Sherlock Holmes doing Gilbert and Sullivan.

Sunday has a signing with Chris Freeburn, who I think is the same C.A. Freeburn who wrote Dying for Redemption. It's always broken my heart that didn't turn into a series; I'm going to tell her that.

Sunday's events include the Agatha tea and panels on The Intersection of Religion and Murder (a pity Julia Spencer-Fleming isn't a guest), Mysteries with a Kick-Ass Heroine, and the very tough choice between the simultaneous panels of: Murder by the Book (No One's Safe in the Book Industry); Guilty Pleasures, Innocent Sleuths; Modern Gothic Mysteries; and Murder Comes to England. I have a feeling that it's going to come down to a coin flip between the last two.

How much fun I have this weekend is going to have a direct correspondence to the likelihood that I'll drive to Cleveland for Bouchercon in the fall. It's up against the 25th anniversary of an entirely different kind of a con here.

And now I have to catch up from being offline for a day and then be an adult and mop the floors. :P

Malice Domestic, Day 1

Well, I apparently stepped in this year's controversy the moment I walked in the door.

As you know, I'm all about the circulating of books. I've donated dozens of boxes to the library where I grew up, dozens more to the Book Thing, and encouraged plenty of people to do the same. I want to set up a Little Free Library in my front yard. I want to participate in next year's World Book Night.

When I wrote for Reviewing the Evidence, I saved up my unwanted, gently read review books all year and brought them to the swap table at Malice. I still have a few, so I dropped them in my bag and toddled off to the con. Unable to find the usually obvious swap table, I finally asked.

And was told that there wasn't one this year. (Supposedly. The topic came up no less than three times at the welcome-to-the-con panel, apparently.) They were "too much trouble."

Shocked, I asked the obvious question: how could they possibly be trouble?

Now, if the answer had been "Well, every year there's that one author whose books pile up into mountains and it leads to hurt feelings, so we stopped" I would have said "Bummer, I'll miss them" but I would have understood.

But no! Four reasons were given:
1) People don't put a book down every time they pick one up.
2) Sometimes people take more than one of a book.
3) Sometimes people bring books from home to swap.
4) Sometimes those books are obviously old and used.

It took me a while to get over the shock and, frankly, offense, and now I have these points in return.

First, those books are offered by publishers to get readers hooked on series (it's always a second or third book in the bag to encourage you to buy #1) and advertise new authors. By taking away the swap table, they've reduced the exposure to only the books in a random tote bag selection -- which means that books aren't necessarily getting into the hands of people who'd read more books by that author. It's bad advertising.

Second, the only way to be sure about points 1 and 2 is if there is someone staring at the table for the entire damned con, making notes about who takes and leaves what when. (At my last Malice, I did run into someone who somehow didn't notice that I'd dropped a book without picking one up before a panel, but was RIGHT THERE in my face when I picked up a book later without dropping one at the time.)

Third, I fail to see how either of those is actually a *problem,* considering that the table usually has piles and piles on it. When there are 20 copies of a book up for grabs, who precisely is hurt if someone takes 2 instead of 1?

Fourth, am I the only person who sees an inherent disconnect between points 1 and 3?

Fifth, fresh blood on the table usually gets snapped up, so I'm failing to see why bringing in stuff from home is a problem. It's not like it was ever left over. (Although again at my last Malice, a table nanny -- quite possibly the same one -- had a massive bitch over People Not Getting It because someone tossed a romance on the table. I picked it up, read it, & enjoyed it. Books are books. It's not like everyone at the con only reads one genre. Hell, one of my best pickups was The Wedding Officer, which is also a romance, and *it* was a Malice giveaway!)

Sixth, lady, I am so damned sorry that my first edition signed copies of Night Laws and Shadow Laws that I brought to swap are for some reason not good enough because they've been sullied by a stay at my home. How very dare I freely offer them to other mystery readers rather than sell them to a used bookstore for ha'pennies on the dollar or take them to the general audience of the Book Thing?

Seventh, if old used books aren't good enough to give away for free, how come there are two dealers with the damned nerve to sell old, used books for good cash money in the dealer's room? And no, I'm not just talking the rare editions, I'm talking about the battered "three for $10" paperback bin. Seriously, what the fuck kind of Randian logic is it that they're good enough to sell but not good enough to give away? To people who are free to take them - and always did in my experience.

At this point, I don't know what pisses me off more - that something I consider a huge part of my convention experience isn't going to be provided, or that the reasons for not doing so all boil down to "I personally don't approve of the way you played with that toy, so I'm taking it away."

I was told that I could donate books I didn't want to the soldiers, but they didn't want hardbacks. I'm betting that the soldiers also didn't want the inevitable American Girl mystery, there being a distinct dearth of 8-year-old girls in the armed forces. No word on if old, used paperbacks were good enough for combat or not.

When I went back to state my opinion somewhat more diplomatically, the people I had been talking to were gone. In their place was a little old lady who's as wily as Miss Marple, because in short order she encouraged me to fill out the feedback form and talk about it there plus give my name and contact info to be one of the year-long volunteers, with the carrot on the end of that stick being that if a volunteer comes early on the day of pre-registration, they get to pack their own totes first... and they get to choose their books.

While I won't deny that would be a huge attraction, I'm still pissed about the swap thing. And apparently I'm not the only one, because I saw some books tucked away on a shelf down a hallway. I took a look, didn't take any then added the ones that were dragging my shoulder down. When I next checked, all the originals were gone and two more were in their place.

I think the swap table has just gone on the down low. Although because nobody saw me drop 4 tonight, I'm sure some nanny will get pissy if I dare pick up any tomorrow.

So tomorrow, in my tote along with the books to be signed, I'm sneaking in a few paperbacks to swap. Just in case. Yeah, one of 'em is old an obviously used, but to be honest, I'll be shocked to the core if there's a mystery convention and there won't be someone interested in a spare copy of Gaudy Night.

As for the rest of the con, had too-short talks with two friends, and at some point I'll write up the fan mail panel, which is always fun. Lee Goldberg turns out to be fairly entertaining as a speaker, although he's still solidly on my shitlist for his attitudes about fans and fanfiction. Simon Brett is a charmer and a darling and some of my panel decisions just got easier because I want to see more of him.

Because I've been asked about marketing, there isn't much out of the usual right now - lots and lots of postcards and bookmarks. There was some dog-related mystery that tied the card to dog bones, and there's a Cookbook Nook jar opener.

I am also horrified to discover that some author has started writing Dorothy Parker mysteries. The whole coattail-riding genre of "I'm going to pick a better author than I'll ever be and make money off of treating them like characters" disgusts me; that Parker has been used is only proof positive that there are no zombies, because if anything would rip her out of the grave to take revenge, that would.