So … about last night. L.A. local Eunice Magill took Scott Browne, Derek Clendening, Gene O’Neill, Gord Rollo, and me under her wing because she was saddened by the fact that all we’d do for meals was walk across the parking lot to the Greek and Chinese restaurants there. So we hopped into cabs for the Universal Studios CityWalk and wandered until we got to the Karl Strauss Brewery, where we tortured poor Gord with foods apparently not found in places where people eat poutine. Foods such as avocado, for instance. He took it well, but I suspect that without the beer (or three) he would have attacked us with his fork.

We talked about the mentors we admired, some still in this world, such as Dennis Etchison, and others not, such as Algis Budrys and Tom Disch. (I dedicated my chapbook The Hunger of Empty Vessels to those last two. We discussed our con-going and geographical histories. We kibitzed with the waitress, who not only took us in stride because, well, she’s forced to endure even louts with a smile, but as we were pleased to see by our bill below, which contained a vampire smiley face in addition to the standard one beloved by waitresses everywhere, Kara seemed to get us.

I couldn’t linger, because I was slated to give a reading at 7:30 p.m., and so Gene and Scott and I headed back.

As we cabbed it to the hotel, Scott told us of his moving experiences at Burning Man, and we discussed growing old (not that any of us intended to do it, no sir, no way), Hemingway, bullfighting, boxing, and more. I used my iPhone to pull up my favorite Hemingway quote, one which seemed to sum up the tenor of the ride, from which I took the title of my story “The World Breaks,” due out in August in Postscripts 19:

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

Back at the hotel, we went our separate ways. I peeked in at the Gory Ghoul Ball which was to begin at 7:00, because I wanted to see F. Paul Wilson on drums with the rest of the Slush Pile Players performing “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Zombie,” and other horror-themed hits. But the band didn’t go on immediately, as people mingled and hit the pasta bar and the dessert bar. If I’d known there was going to be more than pretzels and chips at the bash, I might have skipped dinner! I headed off to the reading hoping that I wouldn’t miss too much of the writers rocking.

I didn’t know, until I got to the reading room, whether I was going to read my nominated story, “Petrified,” or a story which will be coming out next year in my zombie collection from PS Publishing, “What Will Come After.” I decided to go with the new piece, figuring why read a story everybody there might have already read themselves, when I could give them a taste of something new and unusual.

I’d never read “What Will Come After” before, and was unsure not only of how it would go over, but also of how I would react to the reading of it. I wrote it prior to my father’s death in January, and the story references the possible future deaths of both of my parents, as well as my wife’s and my own. I feel that it’s a moving piece, but it was even more so due to recent events, and I can see that I might have a tougher experience getting through it as time goes by, rather than the easier one you might expect. I got a decent crowd, and they seemed to appreciate the piece.

Then it was back to the Gory Ghoul Ball, where I not only heard the Slush Pile Players perform en masse, but also Paul sing Tom Snider’s “All Right Guy” while accompanying himself on guitar. Lots of schmoozing followed, and I partied until I could party no more.

But I was also on a mission. As I mentioned, well, maybe not here, but over on my twitter and facebook accounts, my wife broke her ankle several weeks ago, which prevented her from accompanying me here this weekend. Since the ticket was nonrefundable, I intended to give it away to a person whom I considered worthy. So I let it burn a hole in my pocket until I was speaking to a couple who shall remain nameless and discovered that one half could not attend the banquet with the other because of lack of a ticket for a reason which I felt shouldn’t be allowed to stand. So I pulled out the chit with a picture of a chicken on it and said, here, you’re going. And then, after a little more shmoozing, including a nice chat with Hal Bodner, whom I’d somehow never met before, I went to bed, my karma given a boost.

I hope it will help me at the awards ceremony later tonight, when karma will matter!

And then I woke four hours later, unable to return to sleep. I normally snap from home to local time everywhere from London to Chengdu to Cairo, but there’s something about Burbank …

Is it in the water or the air? Maybe someone slipped an anti-roofie into one of my drinks. You never know with these horror types.

But it allowed me to catch up here. And to look ahead to my next official act—signing for an hour at 9:00 a.m. while sitting next to living legend John Farris, author of The Fury and other bestselling novels. I’ll try not to do too much fanboy squeeing.