Okay, so a couple weeks ago, I made fun of a security guard at the Indianapolis Speedway. I wrote about how he was unable to think outside the box (read: letting Jim Born and I bend the rules a tiny bit) and how his single tooth was a monster that scared me and maybe chased me in a dream or two.
Well…now I have proof:
Yeah, he took that picture. It was a digital, point-and-shoot.
It was automatic focus.
How in the hell….
That’s all I have to say.
Just back – okay, a week ago – from Bouchercon and it was fabulous.
Bouchercon, the largest mystery/crime convention in the world, is always a great time. It’s a chance to catch up with old friends, some of whom I only get to see once a year. But also, there are always new people to meet.
This year was no exception. I renewed my friendship with Neil Smith and Sean Doolittle, with Craig and Judy Johnson, Alison Gaylin and Karn Olson, the Jordons, with William Kent Krueger, with Jared Case and Dan ‘Tim’ Wagoner, with Sergeant Michael Black and Lt. Dave Case and Investigator Jim O. Born, with Keiren Shea, John Purcell, Sandy Loper-Herzog (who’s day gig is dealing with juveniles in the kind of job I simply could never do…my hat’s off to her in a huge way). I’m sure I’m forgetting someone and they’ll beat my ass next year but when you get old, the memory is the first thing…okay, second thing…to go.
But this convention, more than any other I’d been to, was to make a decision; to hit the re-set button or not. I took a lot of time and listened to some very wise counsel. These people, who were all supportive and who wanted to see a broader horizon, all confirmed what my gut had been saying for a few months. I could not have slept as well as night without them so to all of them, thanks.
Okay, now the fun stuff. This weekend was also about security guards. I’m not sure why it happened that way, but sometimes the planets line up and there ain’t dick you can do about it.
Friday afternoon, Jim Born and I decided to make a run to the Indianapolis Speedway. Jim’s more into races than I am, but hey, American Institution and all that, right? So we head out and we are just about the biggest cop geeks on the planet. All the way there, it was sort of like the scene in Lethal Weapon with Gibson and Rene Russo (ooooo she’s so purty) compare scars.
Jim: I had a case once where….
Trey: Yeah? That’s nothing, I once had….
Jim: Minor league, pal. Listen to this….
Trey: Hah, my dead grandmother could’a done better, but I once had….
So we get to the track and there’s a giant sign that says “NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE” or the like. So naturally Jim and I take a step past that sign to get a better picture. The security guard absolutely jumps, all frothy and frenzied, from his patrol vehicle (read: personal truck used on the job) and comes to us.
“We’re just wondering if we could get a good picture?”
“No.”
“Yeah, but – ”
“No.”
But we manage to convince him to take a picture of us. While we doing that, Jim leans over and says, “How come I hear the ‘Deliverance’ music?”
See, the guy only had one tooth.
He might have been a great guy, but he had a vibe, baby, and I wasn’t completely sure we weren’t going to disappear, get turned into Soylent Green (I know, mixing my movies up, what can I say) and get served as crackers at the convention dinner.
Ultimately, somehow – I’m sure due to our incredible wits and survival skills and physical prowess – we managed to survive. We got back to the hotel, Jim promised me copies of the pictures (which he still hasn’t provided) and we promptly drank.
Next day, I’m out doing some photography. I find a factory, the kind of fetching, grimy, dirt-covered, ‘built America’ kind of factory that I’d never seen where I grew up. I snapped some pix, lined up a few ‘arty’ shots, and then discovered what would make a beautiful commentary on the state of American manufacturing today. But the shot was fucked by a slow-moving train.
No problem, I’ll wait. I’ve got some time. So I waited and waited and at least a good thirty minutes later was still waiting. Long and slow, this train.
Now, while I’m waiting, I pace back and forth on the sidewalk.
And I talk to myself.
I told you, I had some decisions to make and in that time and place was the perfect opportunity to debate myself about what I was contemplating.
But the convention center right behind me was none too comfortable with a man talking to himself, pacing the same twenty feet, and carrying a camera.
A security guard comes out, stands defensively on the other side of the chain link fence, and says, “Wha’choo doing?”
I held up the camera, figuring that was answer enough.
“Wha’choo doing?”
“Taking pictures.”
He stared at me and my coat. I was wearing a winter coat that said ‘Sheriff’s Office.’ Not my duty coat, but a cool jacket the sheriff gave everyone a few years ago for Christmas. After a few truly uncomfortable seconds, he frowns.
“You da poh-poh?”
“Yeah.”
A few more REALLY uncomfortable seconds pass. Then he shrugs.
“A’ight. I don’t care.”
And leaves.
No funny upshot to that story. It was just odd.
I thought about going for the trifecta later with a security guard who was watching over the Catholic flock at some sort of one day Catholic fest in the same hotel. I thought it might be cool to get molested by one of God’s own security guards but ultimately I thought better of it.
It would have been bad indeed if I had had to call the Sheriff’s Office for bail money.
“I grew [my hair] out because I’m married and I’m successful and I don’t have to impress anyone anymore.”
A writer on his newly long hair.
“The .357 is like a kiss…the .45 is like getting ass-fucked.”
A writer on the difference in recoil between two of the guns we were shooting.
“What Louisiana beer do you have?”
“Well, we have St. Paulie Girl.”
An exchange between a writer and a waitress at a Cajun restaurant.
“You didn’t get invited because you have a pussy, now shut up and go away.”
A writer on why a female writer he was talking to didn’t get invited to what the commenting writer thought was a male-only writing convention.
Okay, truth in advertising. I didn’t actually shoot up Mayhem In The Midlands, but we did do some serious shooting.
At an indoor range, rather than the indoor writers’ convention…though there were at least three moments when, if I’d been strapped, I’d have shot the crap out of a particular writer…not three writers during three moments, but the same writer over and over and over again.
Mayhem is a delightful little convention in Omaha I’ve been attending the last few years. Sean Doolittle, one of the two or three most underrated writers in America today, lives there and I head over to hang with him for a few days.
Sean is, in fact, the shooting buddy. There are always some other people along, but it’s got a core of me and Sean, blasting away for an hour or so, burning through ammo and targets like we’re made of freakin’ money. And in and around the shooting sessions, we have conversations about things like point of view narrative and the big reveal versus the little reveal and realistic violence versus stylized violence. So yeah, we’re writer geeks, but we’re writer geeks with guns.
I usually participate in a couple of discussion panels and I did this year. Some are always good and some always blow industrial chunk, and mine this year were about evenly split between good and total bullshit. The crap panel was supposed to be – we were told – on short stories. Instead, the moderator decided it was better to offer the attendees ‘entertainment’ rather than answer their questions on the topic. Who gives a crap what my favorite short story of my own is? And I would bet most people couldn’t give two hoots what my favorite food is.
Honestly, I don’t go much for the panels. I’ve been going to conventions long enough that mostly I’ve seen all of them and all their recycled cousins too many times to count. So I go for the comeraderie (is that even spelled right? What’choo want, I’m'a writer…spelling is for the editors). What that actually means is drinking too much, eating too much, bitching too much, gossiping entirely too much, but doing it with other writers so it can be written off on my taxes.
And, in this moment of truth between just you and I, I can admit that I love being there for the trainwrecks. Hehehehe…that’s sometimes better than everything else. Though the trainwrecks were minor this year, they did include watching a writer introduce himself to a writer he’d never met before by throwing himself to the floor when invited to have a seat, then stroking his newly longish hair and saying, “I grew it out because I’m married and I’m successful, I don’t have to impress anyone anymore.”
Bite my ass, moron.
The other of note was watching a writer who claimed to have once been a hugely successful trial attorney go completely blank when another writer and I (him a former NYPD copper) talked about ‘making a case.’ The former attorney had no clue what that meant.
Uh…what?
I met some interesting new people, including JT Ellison, author of “All The Pretty Girls,” and Twist Phelan. Saw some regular compatriots, too: Libby Fischer Hellmann and Sue (who in my memory never has a last name) and Lance Who Knows Lori (and who, again, never seems to have an actual last name).
But the over-arcing highlight was Craig Johnson. I’ve been a fan of his Walt Longmire series for a while (set in rural Wyoming with the county sheriff) and being able to spend some time with him and his wife was nothing short of a gas. Craig is, like me, a fan of writing (it sounds goofy, I know, but there are lots of writers who aren’t actually fans of good writing…they’re fans of good contracts and lots of press coverage, but not the actual writing), and to have a lunchtime conversation with him (also Sean, Anthony Neil Smith, Judy Johnson, and Twist Phelan) about good writing was possibly the most relaxing hour of the entire weekend.
For me, conventions are usually 50/50 – that is, 50% inspirational and 50% toxic. I love how talking to writers and reading pieces of current projects and buying newly published projects so completely inspires me to reach higher and harder on my own work, but they are also toxic in that I hate seeing how absolute fucking idiots who have no clue about good writing and who, in fact, couldn’t write their way out of a bad episode of ‘Blossom,’ or who have not a single human social skill end up with big, fat contracts which they then tell me all about while blowing stale beer breath in my face.
Mmmmm…delicious.
Those people are the ones, in fact, I usually shoot while at the range. I don’t see a silhouette, I see -
hehehehe, no names today.
So that was Mayhem for this year. And like either Ah-nold or Herpes, I’ll be back.
My favorite food, by the by, is hot links from Johnny’s Barbeque in Midland, Texas.
