I just registered for Bouchercon 2025--BLOOD ON THE BAYOU: CASE CLOSED--at the Marriott Hotel in New Orleans Sept. 3-7, 2025.
I am extremely excited about this conference. I had originally been scheduled to moderate a panel on writer's block for the New Orleans Bouchercon back in 2022, but a huge spike in COVID cases in New Orleans proper that year canceled the conference only two weeks before the starting date.
I had also been selected as a member of a panel to be moderated by Craig Johnson, the author of the Longmire series of novels, which were the basis of the well-received Netflix series of the same name. The panel, "Crime in the Wide Open Spaces," was one I was looking forward to. Not just because I'm from Texas, but also because I spent 20+ years as a journalist in Texas and Oklahoma, covering crimes in some of the less-than-urban locations.
I kept in touch with the folks at Bouchercon and it sounds like they may be trying to keep the same schedule as the ill-fated 2022 conference. The Bouchercon 2025 website lists Craig Johnson as the Lifetime Achievement Guest of Honor, so I'm hoping they keep that panel together.
I'm not going to make Bouchercon 2024 this year in Nashville. We have another previous engagement. Would have loved to, though. When I was at Rodeo News magazine, we went to Nashville for Longhorn Rodeo Company's premiere. It was Longhorn owner Bruce Lehrke's first rodeo of the season and he always presented all the new acts and performers there for the coming season. Bruce was one of the greatest. His rodeos had a 98% sellout rate. Ask any rodeo committee or stock contractor about their rate. It's usually much lower.
One of the highlights at Nashville was a photo I shot of the late, famous rodeo clown Lecille Harris waiting to go into the arena. For Christmas that year, the magazine blew a copy of that portrait up to 16x20 and gave it to Lecille. Someone said that he had it prominently displayed in his home, but I never got there to see it.
We won't talk about how my boss, the publisher, lost the motor home we drove there, and I was homeless for the night. Or the pickup that rolled down the hill. Or the...well, there were a few stories from that weekend in Nashville that might work their way into some of my short stories on down the road.
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