My Panel Can Kick Your Panel

Well, it's official.

After being left standing at the altar at BLOODY WORDS, I'm back in the game at this year's BOUCHERCON in Madison, Wisconsin. Yep, I'll be moderating a panel with the promising title of I COULD KICK YOUR...

Yeah, they purposely left out the final word, but you can guess, I'm sure, what it'll be. Unless, of course, the good folks in the Great Midwest don't use those kind of words (beats me, I've never been).

My unwary victims are all manly men, not one of whom has ever been accused of writing cozies.

BRETT BATTLES' first book is coming out this spring from Bantam/Dell, it's called THE CLEANER and it sounds like a real rip-snorter, all about a shady character called Quinn who "cleans" things up. Things like, oh, crime scenes. You know-- blood splatters, fingerprints, incriminating evidence in briefcases. Stuff like that.

MICHAEL BLACK, meanwhile, is a 27-year Chicago cop turned crime author, whose most recent book is a bit of a change of pace. It's called FREEZE ME TENDER (What if they froze the King? What if he defrosted and started whacking folks? What if a snoopy newshawk was on his trail?). Meanwhile, Mike's new one, A FINAL JUDGEMENT, will be out in October (more about that soon). BTW, Michael looks like he could kick all our asses. His biceps -- judging from his photo -- look bigger than my entire head. I think we've crossed paths before, at least by e-mail -- surprise, surprise, he didn't agree with my opinion on the musical/social/cultural worth of Ice-T's COP KILLER in one of my CRIMES ON .45 columns in CRIME SPREE. Even though there are rumours that he has five cats (FIVE!!!) I'm still going to try to be extra nice to him.

In the "It's a small world after all" category, there's JOHN McFETRIDGE from Toronto, whom I just met a few months ago at BLOODY WORDS and whom I recently re-hooked up with a week or so ago, just by coincidence. John's a misplaced Montrealer himself, and studied film at Concordia before "going down the road" to T.O. to work in the film industry. His new book, DIRTY SWEET, rips a hole in the whole Toronto-the-Good myth, filling up that burg with Elmoreesque Russian mafia, bikers and web pornography. I think I owe him a beer.

Nope, come to think of it, I definitely owe him a beer... in fact, by the end of this panel, I'll probably owe them all a beer.

And finally, sneaking in under the wire is North Carolina's own JD RHOADES, another of our pals, whose latest is GOOD DAY IN HELL, the second in the Jack Keller series. Keller is, of course, the kick-ass good ol' boy bounty hunter who's got more than a few, well, personal issues he's working on, in between bouts of kicking down doors and taking names. JD will be in charge of fresh hell.

Right now the topic isn't quite set in stone, but my guess is that the topics of testosterone and manliness will come up, given the panel's title and the evident lack of any female panelists to make us behave ourselves.

See you there. Sit in the front row at your own risk.