So I have now attended a Bouchercon.
I’ve attended so many SF conventions that they’ve become, if not normal, at least comfortable.  I pretty much know what to expect. Bouchercon, while in many ways similar to an SF convention, is different enough that I felt like a newbie and a bit like an outsider. I don’t know the players, I don’t know all the rules, and I didn’t know what to expect.
There were no costumes, no gamers, no room parties (at least not open room parties), no art show, and an absence of what I like to think of secondary and tertiary effluvia in the dealers room—that is, tables of jewelry and fake weapons and action figures and the like. …