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By Rebecca Cantrell
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Everyone is going to Bouchercon this week but me. Not strictly speaking true, because there are a billion people in China who never even heard of Boucheron, plus nearly everyone I know who isn’t a writer or a mystery fan. But in spite of that, it feels like everyone is going but me.
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So, I decided to talk about the things I’m missing in a non-sulky kind of way.
The stock characters I will miss at Bouchercon?
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Readers! Those wonderful people who buy my books (hardcovers, even) and then spend hours of their lives reading them and then actually want to talk to me about them. I am humbled every single time. I will miss you most of all.
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Writers! I love to get together with writers and talk about research and plot and the publishing industry and can you believe what they did with that cover and that panel will be terrific and I love your books and did you read that awful review of your book and do you think the publishing industry will collapse entirely before I finish the next book and the next round is on me. Writers, you are my tribe.
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Friends! There is much overlap here, as most of the friends are writers and readers too. These are the people I often only get to see at conferences or when I’m on tour because most of my life I’m sitting in a lava tube on one of the most remote islands on Earth. But I miss them and I want to know about their children’s accomplishments and why they ever bought that hat and does this dress my make my butt look you know and congratulations on being nominated and the shrimp looks dodgy and yes, that new guy over there is kinda hot and you should go talk to him.
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OK, I feel marginally better. All of you at Bouchercon, you know which categories you fit into, so just email me your responses to all those questions and I’ll feel caught up and reasonably happy as I teetotal and sit in my cave.
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But I’ll still miss you.
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I have to tell you that I stumbled upon your books quite by accident and in a short time I have all three. I really like Hannah Vogel and I like the fact that she is strong, wise, and very determined to bring down the Nazi’s. I have come to really enjoy the relationship she has with Lar’s. At first I thought it to be some weird thing (when she found her picture in his underwear drawer) and the secret files he had on her, Boris, and Anton but as I neared the end of the book I realized that he was very much in love with her. Her picture would comfort him at night because he could not have her in the way that he wanted. I hope in your next book that this relationship continues and it is cultivated. They share the same ideals and they help each other even when they don’t realize it. There is a lot of Lar’s life that we, the readers, and Hannah do not know and that could be a book until itself. Maybe he needs to resolve the murder of his parents (were they against the Nazi’s)? I can’t wait for the next read. Thank you for such a wondersul series.
Thank you for your kind words! Hannah and Lars’s relationship does continue in the next book, A CITY OF BROKEN GLASS. It’s complicated and difficult, as the situation demands. He is an interesting foil for Hannah, and I agree that they help each other more than they know.