Time & Perspective Quote by Anne Perry

Gratitude is the currency of the literary circuit, and Anne Perry spends it with the practiced ease of someone who knows how much these gatherings run on invisible labor. The line reads like a simple thank-you, but it’s also a miniature manifesto about what genre communities are for: not glamour, not genius-on-a-podium, but a temporary city built by volunteers, planners, and fans who do the unromantic work of making art feel social.

Perry’s praise is strategically specific. She doesn’t just call the convention “good”; she stresses “prepared and thought out in advance,” a quiet nod to logistics as artistry. Mystery writing, after all, is a form obsessed with structure: clues placed early, motives seeded, surprises engineered. By spotlighting planning, she flatters the organizers in the idiom of the genre itself, implying the event’s success isn’t accidental but plotted.

There’s subtext in “a good deal of wit.” It signals that what’s being celebrated isn’t merely professionalism but tone: a community that values cleverness without self-seriousness. Conventions can be precarious ecosystems of ego, commerce, and fandom; “wit” becomes a social lubricant, a way to acknowledge tensions without naming them.

The final beat, “Anchorage has made us extraordinarily welcome,” does double duty. It thanks a host city while branding it as character, not backdrop. For a writer whose work trades in atmosphere and place, that’s also a compliment with narrative heft: the setting isn’t just accommodating; it’s part of the story.