Book conventions are fun. Most of the mystery ones I know about are organized by volunteers, all the heavy work, fun work, scut work, is done by volunteers. The overwhelming number of attendees are fans of fiction. Of course, authors, agents, publishers, critics, and others who earn $$ from their involvement in the industry attend, too, but for the most part, it's the fans and volunteers who make the whole thing work.

Bouchercon is the largest of the mystery conventions. It's usually held in the fall, with a loosely established rotation of east coast, central US, west coast, and then back to the east. One or two B'cons have been held in the UK. Organized nearly 40 years ago by friends of Anthony Boucher, the gathering has grown from a few hundred to several thousand attending in the last few years.

Anthony Boucher (rhymes with voucher) was a literary critic for the New York Times, who thought that crime fiction was unjustly ignored by literary publications, and began to publish reviews of books published in that genre. More or less singlehandedly, he raised public awareness and appreciation of mysteries to the level we enjoy today.

Left Coast Crime is held annually in the early spring, in the western part of the US. This year, I snuck away from my seasonal job as a tax accountant and dropped in on the goings on for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. I had lunch with a good friend who I met online because of our shared interest in the genre. And I went to a few discussion panels. The most fun was on Friday afternoon when Don Bruns picked up his guitar and invited us all to join him in a song titled "Get Your Tongue out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Good-by."

This gives you a general flavor of the type of moment book convention attendees have learned to look forward to.

It's not all levity, panelists discuss the agonies of getting published, the striving to keep series fresh, the pleasures of learning that readers enjoy their books, and lots of other topics loosely related to the publishing industry.

You can read what one author experienced at the convention here.

Stephen White is a well known author who sets his books in the Denver metro area. He and one of the convention organizers sat down together late Sunday morning for an hour's discussion. It was fascinating and well worth a trip downtown on a Sunday morning. Among other things - the only characters in his books modeled after real personalities are the dogs, and he's confident that if he invented a community like Boulder, Colorado, no one would believe it. But since his character lives and works there, and Boulder's eccentrities are well known more or less nationwide, all the oddities he accurately described are accepted by readers.

There are many smaller conventions in other parts of the country. If you're a voracious reader like I am, it's worth at least one trip to check them out. And you might get hooked, like I did!