Birthday Round-up

Posted on March 2, 2007

Sorry it took me a week to post a run down of the birthday party.  I’ve been busy getting ready for STAPLE! and going to the airport only find nobody’s flying in (fun story, we’ll get to it later.

The party, in short, was a blast.  It’s not every day you get to watch you dad-in-law squirm as a maid gives him a lap dance.  Then again, it’s not every day you get to watch your mom-in-law have a blast while receiving a lap dance from a nun.  The Carousel Cabaret puts on one helluva show!

And now, a selection of photos…

Shawna and I, early in the night.

With the ladies and fella of Carousel Cabaret

Blowing out candles. Holding beer.

Much later.  I have now decided to wear an air freshener.

Shawna.  Proud.

Very late.

Action shot!

Hold me closer, Fire Dancer.

How to destroy something perfect in only 1.5 hours

Posted on February 15, 2007

Author’s Note: Shawna normally hates it when I mention her here, but I have a feeling she’ll appreciate this one.  In fact, I have a feeling I’ll have to sleep on the couch for the next month if I don’t tell this story.

I’m a lucky guy.  I know this.  I have the perfect girlfriend in Shawna.  She hates the idea of Valentine’s Day, Sweetest Day, marriage, and she enjoys a lap dance from semi-nude women every now and then.  Every year, I look forward to treating Valentine’s Day like any other day.  Last night should have involved crashing and watching some TV after a few hours of writing.

But I screwed that up.

Well, maybe it wasn’t just me.  After all, the older sister of one of my best friends (yes, YOU) sent me a myspace message a few weeks ago asking what I was doing for Shawna on Valentine’s Day, with the addendum that “‘Nothing’ is not an acceptable answer.”  Everybody loves Valentine’s Day, and I should at least put forth an effort and blah, blah, blah.  Okay, she probably didn’t go on that long, but I’m trying to defend myself here!

So yesterday morning I really start to doubt myself.  I should make an effort, right?  Sure, I’m the perfect boyfriend who sleeps in the spare bedroom everytime I get a cough, but maybe that’s not enough.  So, I ask Shawna if she wants to go out for Italian food.  She loves the idea, since we haven’t gone out for Italian in quite a while.  We decide to go to the little place around the corner.  Can’t be too crowded, right?  We’ve only known one other person who’s ever eaten there.

See?  That’s a dumb idea!

So we show up and the place is packed like a cat house on dollar handjob night.  After a few moments, I manage to squeeze my way up to the hostess and request a table for two.

“45 minutes.”

I turn to Shawna, she says, “Sure.”

“Okay.  Put us on the list.”

I sit next to Shawna in the last pair of seats in the waiting area, right next to the door.  Everytime somebody enters, we get a blast of arctic air.  When special folks like Old Man with Walker and Excitable Nine-Year-Old Who Outran Her Parents show up, we get a prolonged wind that damn-near freezes us solid.  Eventually, we move into the bar area, where we order hot tea before standing underneath the television that’s blaring Fox News.

Around this time I look at my receipt for the tea and realize we’ve already been waiting our 45 minutes.  I head to the front to check on the list, but it’s too crowded to reach the hostess.  I report back to Shawna (who’s sharpening a knife for some reason), then try to check again.  There’s one party of two left to go before it’s our turn.  I report back to Shawna, and she puts the knife away for the time being.

She’s eyeing the knife again when we finally leave 45 minutes later, our name still uncalled.  We go to the grocery store, and I pay for Shawna’s Hot Pockets, which she will eat instead of fine Italian Food for her Valentine’s Day.  I apologize for the fortieth time and wonder if the frozen pizza I’m buying myself will kill me if I try to eat it in one bite.

So remember, guys.  If you have the perfect girlfriend, don’t fuck it up.  Take her to a strip club for a lapdance or cook her a nice dinner at home.  Leave Valentine’s Day to the deluded and silly.  They started it anyway.

Sorry, Shawna!  Italian tonight?

Post-Signing

Posted on January 5, 2007

Well, my third signing was by far the best.  The two hour sprint at Austin Books and Comics was a blast, with more than a hadnful of folks showing up to say hello and buy books.  Austin Books still has signed copies of all of my books, so you know where to go if you’re looking for one all local-like.  Thanks to Brad and the Austin Books staff, and thanks to everybody who came out.  It was a great thing to be a part of.

Signing this Thursday

Posted on December 31, 2006

This Thursday, January 4,  I’ll be signing copies of FEAR at Austin Books from 5PM-7PM.  The store’s address is 5002 N. Lamar in Austin  Austin Book is really one of the best stores on the planet, so you should come check it out.

Horrorfind 2006, Sunday

Posted on August 21, 2006

Sunday was a whirlwind of activity and memories, and not just because I was about to pass out from exhaustion all day.

We began with Shrews’s reading, which was well-attended despite it’s squeezed in nature.  Shrews read from Black Ribbon of Josephine and King of the Bastards.  The Bastards reading was entertaining for Shrews almost busting a table with his fists (forcing me to scrap a planned table-climb from my reading).  I never get tired of listening to Shrews read. 

I spent some time wandering the dealer and celeb rooms, and both were more than a little depressing, with the crowd dwindling and the various vendors and celebs packing up.  I witnessed the bizarre spectacle of a woman in zombie make-up dancing around with a skull and singing Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” at the top of her lungs.  Yup, long weekend.

From their I went to see Marcy Italiano and Tom Monteleone read.  Marcy was great, reading a very touching journal entry from when she was stuck in New Orleans post-Katrina.  There were few dry eyes in the room.

And then Monteleone stepped up to the plate.

I’d heard that Monteleone’s readings were can’t miss functions, but man!  Tom read his story “How Sweet it Was,” a story that blends a love for old Saturday morning television shows with the Cthulhu Mythos.  He kept that room spellbound for forty minutes, prowling the aisles, stopping to read only to this person or that.

Wow!

A few hours later, it was time for my reading.

Jim Chambers had more people turn out than I did, so he was kind enough to let me read first.  I read the first chapter of Run Like Hell and “An Absurd Story About Demon Summoning,” and the reaction was soooo much better than I had hoped it would be.  People were immediately asking what they had to do to get ahold of Run Like Hell, and I happily told them who they had to get in touch with and beg to publish it.  I also sold out of the last of my graphic novels, after giving some copies to Jim and Nikki.  Jim read a story from the Hardboiled Cthulhu anthology, and it was incredibly entertaining.  Jim gave me a copy of his recent collection, and I can’t wait to devour that sucker.

At this point, it was time for dinner (the one I forgot to take Wenchie to) and then back to the bar to drink the end of the con down.

Our evening of drinking was a blast.  We listened to a reading of Snow White that had been rewritten as Snow White and the Seven Well-Endowed Dwarves.  Shrews did his King of the Bastards reading again.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t paying attention to the glasses on the table this time, and one exploded, peppering his hand with shards.  It took about ten second for the entire area to be coated with blood, and only two additional seconds for Shrews to proclaim his hand “fine,” all while blood dripped from it like water from a tap.

Chad Savage summed up the event best when he said “It only took Shrews a few second to go from entertainer to social catastrophe.”

And really, is there anything better to end on than that?

Ah, my first Horrorfind.  An incredible con, one I’ll go to year after year, although next time I’ll clear the table of all glassware first.

Horrorfind 2006 Report, Saturday

Posted on August 18, 2006

Shrews and I crawled out of bed at about 10:30 and rushed downstairs for what we thought was a complimentary breakfast, but was actually a ten dollar breakfast.  Oops!  Pretty good meal, though, with Shrews getting a great story idea and immediately writing close to 30,000 words in his head while my brain kept saying  Bacon, bacon, bacon!

Next up was a trip across the street to the con, loaded down with books we hoped to sell.  First stop was JF Gonzalez and Brian Keene’s reading, where they unveiled the opening for the upcoming Clickers II.  Great reading, with JF saying “Fuck” more than most would think humanly possible.

Afterward, we ran into Nikki again, who was happy to report she had managed to squeeze in a reading for Shrews on Sunday morning.  She also told us how John Urbancik managed to get drunk enough to read the tribal tattoo that covered the length of her left arm.  I made an attempt, but made it as far as one letter before I was told I was waaaay off.  Oh, well.

Ran through the dealers’ room to find a present for Shawna, and quickly realized I was gonna have a hard time finding one.  Decided to come back later.

At 3PM, I went up with Shrews and we sandwiched Brian in as we tried to sell books.  I smiled from ear to ear as Brian started selling my books for me, suggesting a copy of A Trip to Rundberg to anybody buying The Rising or City of the Dead.  “It’s better than Walking Dead,” he would say, and I would try not to laugh.  Finally, with two books left, Dan and Susan showed up, and I conned them into helping me accomplish my first sell out.  I now had a few books left back at the hotel for my reading.  Plus, I could afford to eat dinner, which was a plus.

After a wonderful dinner that Paul bought for a bunch of us, Shrews and I collapsed for a bit back at the hotel.  He talked to his wife, and I talked to Shawna.  I’m pretty useless without Shawna when one of us is away.  It’s either cute or disgusting.  I’m really not sure which.

After hiking back down to the con, Shrews and I had a run-in with a convention staffer because he wouldn’t let us in. About four seconds later, we realized it was because we’d forgotten our guest badges back at the hotel.  Sadly, we were already late for a reading, and the hotel trip would take another twenty minutes or so…

…so we snuck in through the back.

The Drew and Lu show was incredible, a spectacle that can only be called a reading in the most basic of terms.  Drew Williams and Stephen Lukac (pronounce Lou Kotch) wove a tale of demonic possession, jazz hands, the word “fuck,” free beer, and mad libs.  Bonus points for dropping in a reference to The Shield and calling the Kraken a “Giant Sea-Pussy.”

Later, the parties would begin.

After a brief time in front of the hotel, I followed Keene, his wonderful wife Cassi, Wenchie, and John Urbancik up to JF Gonzalez’s room, where I met his wonderful wife.  Much talking and drinking commenced, with me handling two beers, a margarita, and more straight Maker’s Mark and Patron than should be considered legal.  There was a discussion of a writer who once took four hits of acid and proceeded to type four hours worth of complete gibberish.  Strangely, Keene repeated this story immediately after it was told, which led to a few hours of repeating the story whenever there was a lull in the conversation.  Slowly, more people trickled in: Mary SanGiovanni, Marcy Italiano and her husband G, and Matt Schwartz, the genious behind Shocklines.com (where you can buy all of my books).

After much merriment, we decided to leave JF and his wife alone.  Mary, John, and I (along with some others), shuffled down to the first floor and the release party for Matthew Warner’s Eyes Everywhere.  Somehow, we were able to tear the party down to a bunch of writers trading punches (I’m told I started this, but I suspect it’s bullshit).  If nothing else, it led to such great statements as “Mary, punch Shrews in the stomach!” and “Pretend I called your mother a whore!”  At one point, while Mary was punching back and forth with a wonderful woman named Kelly (She’d come with her parents, how cute?), I leaned over to Shrews and said “Y’know, you can’t buy entertainment like this.”

And on that note, I shuffled across the highway and back to bed.  It was 4AM.

Coming Monday… The Exciting Conclusion!

Horrorfind 2006 Report, Friday

Posted on August 16, 2006

(Disclaimer 1: I’ll be breezing over a lot of last names.  That’s just because I wanna, and because I failed to ask a lot of people what their last names were.)

(Disclaimer 2: I’m not paying an editor to look through this sucker for typos, so read at your own risk.)

(Disclaimer 3: I can’t remember what this one was gonna be, but it was important.)

FRIDAY or Damn, Shrews.  It really sucks to be you.

The alarm goes off at 2:45AM, and I pop out of bed like a man who had been lying awake since two o’clock.  That’s because I am a man who’d been laying awake since that time.  I throw on my clothes, brush my teeth, and haul my luggage out to the living room where I plan to wait for my 3AM shuttle.  It’s about this time that the shuttle service calls to say they won’t be there until 3:30.

Yippee.

So, I wait, reading, until about 3:25, when I go back to kiss Shawna goodbye.  The driver knocks on the front door as I return.

I never catch the driver’s name, but I soon decide to call him Cheech Trejo, as he sounds like the perfect cross between Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo.  CT also has a rather annoying habit of repeating everything I say as a question.  Example:

“So, where you goin’ today, man?”

“Baltimore.”

“Baltimore?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s in Baltimore?”

“A horror convention.”

“A horror convention?”

“Yeah.”

“Why you goin’ there, man?”

“Well, I’m a horror writer.”

“You’re a–”

“Yeah.”

And so it goes…

I get to the airport and get in line for the ticket counter.  I rapidly decide I didn’t need to get to the airport at four, when the ticket counter doesn’t open until close to five.  I’ll remember that for next year.  I might not take a 6AM flight either.  In retrospect, that was a crap move.

Sooner or later, I land in Atlanta and make my way to gate B30.  My next flight is supposed shag off at 10:30, so I start reading a book: Rickard Laymon’s Blood Games.  I must have liked it, too, because I never heard them announce the gate change for my flight.  After sprinting down the flight deck at 10:32, I take off for Baltimore.

And our story goes off the rails.

The first thing that greets me in Baltimore is a voicemail from my roommate for the weekend, Steven Shrewsbury, AKA Shrews.  His flight was delayed by an hour, and I’m supposed to go on to the hotel alone.  That’s great, but since Shrews was supposed to be here before, I never wrote any of our hotel info down.  In retrospect, that was a crap move.

About this time, Shrews calls again to say his flight has now been cancelled, and he is being rerouted through Atlanta (Hey, I was just there!).  He should be in sometime after midnight.  That’s a bad thing, because Shrews has a reading at 5:15 and is participating in the James Sneddon Memorial Reading at nine.  He said he’ll try to think of something.  He then tells me we’re at the Courtyard Marriott.

So, I head to the Super Shuttle counter and buy a ticket to the Courtyard Marriott.  Once I arrive, however, I’ll learn that the con is actually 30 minutes away in Hunt Valley, so I have to hire a freakin’ luxury sedan to drive the thirty miles.  My driver’s name is Anthony, he’s a DJ, and he likes zooming through the streets of Baltimore honking angrily at any pedpestrians stupid enough to get in his way.

I kinda liked Anthony.

So, I finally show up at the right hotel and walk in.  Whoops!  Big problem; Shrews ain’t here yet and the room is in his name.  I decide to attempt a gambit that will never ever work.

“Hi.  I’m staying with Steven Shrewsbury, but his flight was delayed.  Can I check in for him?”

“Sure!”

I was just as shcoked as you are, and that’s why I’m now just going to check in by saying I’m staying with Brian Keene at all future conventions.

Now checked in, I give Shrews a call.  He found a flight that will put him in at 4:30… in Washington, DC… almost an hour away… on a Friday… during rush hour.

Oh, and can I find somebody to come pick him up?

Once I stop laughing, I head over to the main hotel for the con, where I quickly find Dan and Susan from message board The Other Dark Place, Paul Puglisi of the Horror News Network, Jim Moore (good hugger) and his lovely wife Bonnie (hope I got that name right), Al, Pete, Ron Dickie, and Tomo (other board people), Horrorfind fiction editor Nikki, and Wenchie from Horror-World.  Wenchie greats me with a hug, then shouts at me “We’re through!”  Apparently I failed to return a few emails (which I don’t remember receiving).  Over the weekend, I would receive several “We’re through!”s for various infractions, as well as one “We’re sooooo through!” for failing to bring her along to dinner Sunday night.

I break the news about Shrews to everybody, and Nikki offers me the keys to her car.  Realizing this offer as the huge mistake it was, I decline.  Instead, Pete volunteers to drive down.  I gratefully call Shrews with the news, and Pete leaves at 3:45.

I start drinking.  I fuggin’ deserve it.

Later, I go to dinner with most of the folks mentioned above to Carraba’s, where I eat a calimari appetizer in order to save money.  After dinner, we have a long talk about something awful called TubGirl.  I’m still afraid to check it out, and I would not recommend anybody else do it, either.

Back at the main hotel, I run to say “Hi” to Keene and J.F. Gonzalez.  Both are in high spirits, and Brian can barely get three words in before somebody else comes up to buy a book.  They’re set up near John Skipp, so I greet him as well.  Skipp is a strange, mesmerizing ball of energy, one that has to be seen to be believed.

Run downstairs to the dealers room and find Tom Monteleone manning the Borderlands Press table.  Also see Dave Barrett at the Necro Books table.  Run into Norman Prentiss and receive another call from Shrews, who is just crossing the Potomac at 7PM or so.

Receive another call from Shrews at eight.  They are fifteen minutes away.

Another call twenty minutes later.  They are lost.

Finally, Shrews (sans luggage, which went to the Baltimore airport) comes running into the hotel lobby four minutes before the James Sneddon reading. 

The reading itself goes off great, with everybody churning out incredible performances.  I hear a few audible sniffles in spots.  I never met James Sneddon, but hearing the various stories about him, I really get a sense of how much I was missing out.

Okay, time to get drunk.

The night is spent in much revelry.  Brian introduces Shrews and me to his friend Steve, who buys us several whiskeys, and Megan (no idea what that last name was) furnishes some great cigars, which I accidentally ash on the lobby carpet and get escorted to the courtyard by security (Shrews got booted, too).  After talking to Steve for a few hours and having an exhausted Jack Ketchum hug me hello on three different occassions, I stumble across the six lane highway to my hotel at 3AM.  I promptly hit the sheets and fall asleep.

Until Shrews comes back at 3:30…

And his bags arrive at four…

Tomorrow… Saturday!

The Weekend

Posted on August 7, 2006

Finished Tower Four in a burst of early Saturday energy.  It feels good to have that first draft done.  The second draft might be a bit of a daunting prospect, though.  We’ll get started on that early next week.

The rest of the weekend was spent at various functions related to Shawna’s cousin’s wedding.  Normally, I don’t like weddings.  They’re long, boring, and they take place during the summer.  This one, however, involved two days of free food and booze, so I’ll make special concessions/

Friday, I got to use Shawna as a test dummy for my Horrorfind readings.  I’ve got twenty minutes to play around with, and my stuff clocked in at eighteen.  Good to know.  I’m feeling good about my first public reading.  I seem to have my shit together.  Let’s hope that’s not a delusion.

You’re cordially invited…

Posted on August 3, 2006

Closing out Horrorfind in style!

Thanks to Jason Whitley for the flyer!

In ten days… Horrorfind

Posted on August 1, 2006

Next weekend, Friday through Sunday, I’ll be at the Horrorfind Weekend in Baltimore.  I don’t describe myself as “appearing at,” because what I’m doing is more along the lines of “drinking and looking to sell stories.”  Besides I’m not exactly a draw on the signing circuit.

As part of the weekend, though, I’ll be having my first public reading.  That’s right.  Sunday at 3:45PM, after most of the convention-goers have shuffled off to the airport, I’ll be reading the first chapter of Run Like Hell.  If I have time, I might also throw in “An Absurd Story About Demon Summoning.”  We’ll see how it goes.

So, if anybody who reads this might happen to be in Baltimore next weekend, stick around to catch me read, okay?

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