For the fifth and final episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded in Las Vegas during StokerCon, I headed out to Hash House A Go Go, one of my favorite restaurants—at least in its San Diego incarnation. My breakfast there is always one of my favorite Comic-Con meals. But alas, there turned out to be more than a 90-minute wait that Sunday morning in Vegas, so I moved on to Yard House at the recommendation of my guest, Gene O’Neill, who’d eaten there earlier that weekend.

Gene, with whom I attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, has been nominated 11 times for the Bram Stoker Award, and has won twice, in the categories of Long Fiction and Fiction Collection.

We reminisced about our shared Clarion experience way back in 1979, our reaction upon seeing a stack of Jack London’s rejection slips, the personality trait he shares with Harlan Ellison, what he learned from Carol Emshwiller, what he and Kim Stanley Robinson taught each other during their eight-hour drives to Eugene, Oregon for workshops with Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, and much more.

Here’s how you can get a seat at the table— (more…)

I’ve been too busy this week to share how my Nebula Awards weekend went—I’d barely recovered from the redeye home when Geoff Landis and Mary Turzillo dropped by to spend the night on their way to Balticon—so these seven pics will have to stand in for a full report.

At the San Jose Airport Thursday with Cynthia Felice, who sat immediately in front of me on the flight from Denver. And as it turned out, Robin Wayne Baily sat in front of her! (more…)

And here I had such good intentions!

On Friday morning, I posted what happened on Thursday, my first day at the 2012 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, but then I got too busy at the con to report on the rest of the con during the con, which violates Edelman’s Schadenfreude Rule of Convention Reporting.

And now that I’m home, I see I don’t have the time (and am unlikely to find the time) to tell you the details of my further schmoozing, my trip to a cemetery with Wasatch Paranormal Investigators, and all the rest of my misadventures. So here are six videos that’ll have to stand in lieu of a blow-by-blow description of my weekend, because life intervenes.

First, take a tour of Friday’s night’s mass signing, at which you’ll spot every author, editor, artist, etc., in attendance at the con. (Except me, of course, since I’m wielding the camera.)

Then check out Saturday’s interview of Guest of Honor and HWA Lifetime Achievement Award winner Joe Lansdale by the effervescent Del Howison. Lots of wisdom here!

Next, a few snippets from the Bram Stoker Awards banquet, held Saturday night, starting with Toastmaster Jeff Strand’s always entertaining opening monologue. (more…)

I woke up far too early last Friday morning while in Austin for the World Horror Convention. I have no idea why I was unable to get back to sleep at 5:15 a.m., but for whatever reason, I was suddenly wide awake. Since I knew my first stop was going to be Round Rock Donuts (part of my Man v. Food triathlon), which opens at 4 a.m. each day, I figured, why not just get going? So I showered, shaved, cruised the lobby for any other bleary attendees who might want to board the crazy bus, and then hopped in the car and pointed it toward the city of Round Rock, TX.

By the time I got there, not that much past six, the sun was barely up, but the parking lot was packed, as were the nearby streets, the line for the drive-through went around the block, and people had to step aside so I could get in the lobby. I bought six dozen donuts, plus that one monster donut I showed you here, and headed back to the con hotel where, since the con suite was not yet open, I set up in the lobby and made sure people started the day out right by handing out free donuts as they woke.

Luckily, that con suite eventually did open, so I was able to dump the remaining donuts there and head off in time to see the Yvonne Navarro/Weston Ochse reading which started at 10:00 a.m.

Yvonne went first, reading Chapter 13 of her novel Concrete Savior, and if you click below, it’ll be just as if you were there.

Wes went next, reading the short story “Fugue on the Sea of Cortez” from his collection Multiplex Fandango.

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The Horror Writers Association today announced the nominees for the 2009 Stoker Awards, and I’m extremely happy to say that my novella, The Hunger of Empty Vessels, has made the final ballot in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.

Since so many people have already posted the entire ballot, I’ll save pixels by sending you elsewhere for the complete list of categories.

But here are the four finalists in mine:

Dreaming Robot Monster by Mort Castle (MIGHTY UNCLEAN)
The Hunger of Empty Vessels by Scott Edelman (Bad Moon Books)
The Lucid Dreaming by Lisa Morton (Bad Moon Books)
Doc Good’s Traveling Show by Gene O’Neill (Bad Moon Books)

Note that whatever happens, there’s already a clear winner here—Bad Moon Books, which published three of the four finalists.

As much as I’m pleased to be on a ballot with three very worthy writers, I must admit that there’s one who pleases me more than the rest—Gene O’Neill, with whom I attended Clarion in 1979. If you’d told us back then that this would happen down the road someday, I don’t think either one of us would have believed you. (more…)

I pulled out of my driveway at around 4:00 a.m. EST this morning and didn’t arrive at the Marriott Airport Burbank Hotel until around 2:00 p.m. PST this afternoon, with my connecting flight through San Francisco so delayed that Gene O’Neill and Gord Rollo, with whom I’d planned to have lunch, gave up and went off without me. But kind and generous souls that they were, once I arrived they accompanied me and watched as I ate a falafel at George’s Greek Cuisine across the way. We caught up on the year since we’d last seen each other, which was at the Salt Lake City Stoker World Horror Convention.

Back at the hotel we ran into a woman who asked if we were there for “the pitches,” which we took to mean the agent and editor pitches set up by the Horror Writers Association for its members as part of the Stoker Awards weekend. But it turned out that she was in the Marriott for a completely different writerly event taking place this weekend—PitchFest 2009, in which screenwriters speed-date with agents and development execs.

She told us that coincidentally, she had been eating earlier in the same restaurant, and had turned to her husband to say that I (in the middle below) looked like Glenn Frey and Gene (to the right) looked like Malcolm McDowell. (Do we? I tend to think that the woman may have had too much ouzo.)

“So who does Gord looked like?” I asked.

“Oh, we decided he just looked like a regular Joe,” she said.

Sorry, Gordo!

After wishing the woman well with her pitching, we all went to our rooms to nap in preparation for the book signing tonight at Dark Delicacies. But you know me—I had to do my twittering, blogging, flickring, and facebooking first!

Only now I can take a nap!

I had a dream this morning in which I was flying to a football game. And when I say flying, I mean without a plane. I was swooping through the air along city streets, like a superhero, but never more than a couple of dozen feet above the ground. I soon realized that I wasn’t in the air under my own power—the only reason I appeared to be aloft was that I was dangling at the end of a wire attached to a moving crane.

When I got to the stadium, it suddenly came to me that I wasn’t just there to attend a game—I was actually the new owner. And I was the coach as well. I know nothing about football (or any other sport, really; that’s just the way I am), so luckily my pal Gene O’Neill, with whom I attended the Clarion Writing Workshop back in 1979, was there to advise me. Good thing, too, because I desperately needed to pick his brain. For some reason he was dressed quite formally, in a business suit, as if ready for church or a wedding, while I was my usual casual self.

As we spoke, I was sitting at a table and flipping through the sports sections of various newspapers, trying to glean as much information as I could about football, but also trying to figure out the name of the team of which I was now in charge, because I couldn’t seem to access that memory. I woke while doing that, riffling the pages and scanning headlines, just as I realized that the team for which I was now responsible was the Bears.

The Dead Dog party is dead and gone, and all that remains of World Horror 2008 (besides a few hours to squeeze in enough sightseeing to claim that I’ve seen more of Salt Lake City than the inside of the Radisson and then the mad dash for the airport) are the memories. Here are the things I’ll remember most from this year’s WHC:

At the top of the list has to be any time spent with Gene O’Neill, my Clarion classmate from 1979. Looking back at my Stoker loss to that talented rat bastard Gary Braunbeck, it turns out that what I missed most wasn’t the loss of the trophy, but the fact that I could have been handed that trophy by Gene as the presenter in my category. It would have meant a lot to have shared the stage with him for a few moments, and besides, I’d planned to use my time to deliver payback for three decades of friendship. I enjoyed our chances to break bread together and catch up on our lives face to face this weekend, instead of via phone call or e-mail. When I look ahead to next year’s World Horror Convention in Winnipeg, one of the things I’m most looking forward to is more time with Gene. (more…)

I faced some true horror yesterday evening when I arrived at the World Horror Convention—because though I had made it all the way to Salt Lake City, my suit had not. And unfortunately, I couldn’t blame the airline, only myself.

As I emptied my suitcase, I discovered that though I had packed my suit pants, the matching jacket that went with them was still at home. I have no idea how I managed to do that, but that initial discovery upon arrival didn’t seem like a good omen to me for Saturday night’s banquet, at which I’d hoped to look spiffy whether I won a Stoker Award or not.

So my question for the blogosphere this morning is—do I just try to pass in black slacks, my black leather jacket, and my skeletal Nightmare Before Christmas tie? Or do I run out this morning to the local Men’s Warehouse and buy myself a new suit? Suggestions, please! Oh, the horror!

Other than that, I had fun Thursday night. That’s Gene O’Neill, old pal and Clarion comrade from the class of 1979 in the photo above. (I’ve started loading other photos to my Flickr account here.) Since we live on opposite coasts, Gene and I don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like, so we’ll have a lot of catching up to do this weekend. (more…)

In addition to my previously announced panels at this year’s World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, I just learned that I’ll also be doing a reading on Saturday, March 29, at 11:30 a.m.

I’ll probably read my Stoker-nominated story, “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man”—or as much of it as I can squeeze into 30 minutes. I managed to pull off a condensed version back at the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, so I think I’ll try it again.

I see that my old pal Gene O’Neill, with whom I attended Clarion back in 1979, will be reading immediately before me at 11:00 a.m. We just can’t seem to escape each other!