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.

Saturday morning, I heard Gord Rollo and Gene O’Neill read, after which I read my Stoker-nominated story, or as much of it as I could fit into half an hour. Ham that I am, I always enjoy reading aloud. But the reading I enjoyed most turned out to be Gary Braunbeck’s. His story was titled “Everything of Beauty Taken from You in This Life Remains Forever,” which will be published next year in a Richard Matheson tribute anthology. What made the story particularly entertaining, aside from Gary’s forceful performance of it, was that it had been inspired by the story “Button, Button,” which you might remember I blogged about last week. Having just read the original tale and watched a TV adaptation of it and cogitated on the upcoming movie version, I was the perfect audience to judge how well Gary had paid tribute to Matheson. And I want you to know that Gary nailed it. I won’t give away the twist ending he provided, which offered yet a third iteration on the premise I discussed earlier, other than to say that he came up with yer another valid and unexpected switcheroo. When the book is finally published, I recommend that you rush to check it out.

I also enjoyed getting to see Dennis Etchison again. He’s a brilliant guy, and not just because he bought my short story “Are You Now?” for his 1992 Dell Abyss paperback anthology MetaHorror, which was my most important fiction sale up until that time. I treasure all my time spent with him, whether it was discussing pro wrestling in the halls, the McCarthy period at a party, bantering with him at his kaffeeklatsch, sitting in the audience for his reading, or listening to him pontificate on a panel about how to write. The guy is a talented writer and a class act.

And then there was …

… catching up over lunch with Gerard Houarner and Linda Addison, talking with Adam Niswander and Ed Bryant about our experiences at SF cons of the late ’60s and early ’70s, meeting folks like Roy Robbins and Rocky Wood for the first time, learning more about people I already know, such as Beth Gwinn and Wilum Pugmire, kibitzing with my fellow nominees, of course …

… and so much more than I have time to write or you’d ever have the impetus to read.

So I’ll just end it there and put in a plug for conventions. I’ve been going to them for (gulp!) 38 years, and plan on going to them for at least 38 more. I hope to see you at one of them down the road someday.