Bouchercon 2008, Saturday Oct 11th, Afternoon
As I said, we missed the first panel this afternoon because we didn’t check the schedule closely enough. So tip to the convention goer, don’t assume anything about a schedule — always check the times.
Dark Side of the Moon panel
3 p.m. Dark Side of the Moon: How crime fiction reveals the darkness of human emotions.
Panelists: Jane Cleland, Bruce Cook, John Billheimer (moderator), Troy Cook, Carolyn Hart, and Sheila York.
The first question was what makes a book dark. The first and best answer that everyone sort of played off of was hopelessness. Hopelessness means there’s no order coming out of the chaos. There’s no redemption. There’s only despair.
There’s darkness and light in everyone. No one is irredeemably evil or totally good. We’re all a mix and the darkness of a book is where we focus. Everyone is shades of grey and while that makes better characters, it also means that each of us has a capability for evil. It’s the temptation and whether we resist or take responsibility for our actions that determine the darkness of the character or of the book. (Also, the darkness of the book is related to just how high the body count is and how much hopelessness or despair is a major theme.)
Murder is often by a family member or friend, so the size of the town or city, or where it is located has little to do with murder. Cozies are supposedly less violent and dark but Carolyn Hart mentioned (and I’m totally paraphrasing here) that in one of Agatha Christie’s book a woman is poisoned while with her family. The woman knows she’s dying from poison and her whole family is there but she doesn’t know who is killing her. When you think about it, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, cozy about that.
A weird fact brought up was that the number one cause of death among pregnant women is murder. So, family, not some stranger, is usually the murderer.
People are not totally good or evil but we are capable of being good or evil.
Blue Turns to Grey panel
4:30 p.m. Blue Turns to Grey: Writing in more than one genre.
Panelists: James O. Born, Oline Cogdill (moderator), John Lutz, John Maddox Roberts, Richard Thompson.
All the panelists agreed that breaking out and writing something different once in a while helps to bring a freshness to your work when you return to the series or genre that you write in.
All books are mysteries in some way. So, it’s the trappings and setting that change when you change genres but not the essential elements of telling a story. As long as the story has human characters you will have mysteries.
That’s pretty much it for today. We’re going to a party and then out to dinner. Tomorrow is the last day of the convention.