Every Bouchercon committee has the right to create up to three "wild card" categories for the Anthony Awards, the awards given annually at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. I've been involved in the Anthony "process" if you will, for several years, in various ways: I served on the Bouchercon committee for the '94 Bcon and last year, I administered the awards, dealing with the nominations and getting (oh. wow. I mean, it was so cool) to help hand them out. (Assisted by an invisible woman who doesn't want her name mentioned....)

This year, Bouchercon will be in St. Louis in September and the nomination ballots have gone out. And the committee this year has chosen to include two "wild card" Anthony Awards. They are graphic novel and website. now this is the sort of thing that Had I But Known, i would have kept track of what i read but since the announcement and ballot just went out, I have no memory of mystery graphic novels that I might have read in 2010.

i'm not even sure about the "website" category as there are so many and so many of them, as i opined elsewhere (Facebook?) are so so soso damn different. There are some excellent mystery information websites. There are some fantastic websites that offer essays by authors on whatever topic they want to talk about. There are websites for groups of authors and local groups and groups who are together just because. My favorite - and I admit it up front - mystery website was Cluelass. I worked for Kate Derie on this website for a while but that's not why. Why is because when it was up, there was not a week that went by that I didn't refer to it for some reason. It was a humongously great source of information. But it's not out there any longer. Bookstores and characters, gift shops, magazines and every author's website we could find and confirm (I think we had over 900 before the site went under.)

But comparing Author X's great website to Magazine Y's website, comparing M's blog to N's group blog is well, damn hard. I don't think they're comparable. I keep using the image from an old car ad on television where the host would compared a Volkswagen to...well, a chair. Or an apple (the VW seats four adults; the apple? Two, maybe three worms at most).

So there I am thinking something like "Ack! I try to keep lists of books because i know the Anthony is coming an because sometimes someone asks what my favorite mysteries of the year were. The "best novel" and "best first novel" categories - the ones I would pay the most attention to, are givens for the Anthony and for a website or even here on my blog. But I didn't keep a list of graphic novels which, yes, I do read. Partly because Stu brings them home and partly because i know that Folks like Gary Philips and Greg Rucka are published in this subgenre and they're some of my favorite authors.I
So, here's the deal. I'm going to try and get a list going for these two categories of Anthony. Maybe no one will respond or care. Maybe they will but I have a list started right ere on my computer and will post on Facebook and here and invite anyone/i> who can suggest good mystery graphic novels (or even not good mystery graphic novels - let's make it an open field not limit it to the good stuff ( to post it here, to post it on Facebook where I'll post a noteor to email me with names. As it is this blog post will be sent to my Facebook page as well.

The same goes for websites - send me the url and I'll compile a list to be made available to anyone eligible to vote for the Anthony Award.

And for the nervous, know that I've spoken about this with Bouchercon's Jon Jacobs. We agreed that Bouchercon itself cannot offer lists for any nomination category, as it will hint at bias if anyone is left out. But Jon heard my suggestion and he's okay with it. this will NOT be any sort of recommendation list. This will be at best an incomplete list of possibles in the categories that snuck up on us. And yes, you may nominate your own work; why not? I won't be saying who nominated what, and I won't even ask "was it good" but let's try and get some help to people. Hell, to me! I need lists to work off of. And i believe the deadline for nominations is April 30 (I don't actually know but I think I heard it mentioned) so we have time but let's try and create lists so that people who nominate for the Anthonys (and let me tell you many people take this very seriously, rereading books, finding lists of "what was published in 2010" and reading and nomination. i will not be checking the pedigree of any graphic novel title; that is, if it's a 2010 publication. Please check that before sending in the information. I will try to check the website's URL but it would be good if your message to me confirmed that you'd cut and pasted a good URL.

If we can come up with useful lists, I'll broadcast and ask others to broadcast that we have these lists and will try to make them available on as many fronts as we can. Does that sound like a plan?