I’ve already told you about my trip from Hell to get to Dulles Airport last Thursday morning, and where I stopped In Austin on the way to the World Horror Con hotel that afternoon. But what about the rest of Thursday?

Well, the first thing I did was take a long, hot shower to make up for the icy sponge bath I’d had to suffer that morning due to our thunderstorm-induced power outage. Then I headed down to the lobby in search of trouble, which I found in the form of dastardly duo Eunice Magill and Scott Browne, who kidnapped me for a massive dinner at The Cedar Door with Weston Ochse, Yvonne Navarro, Rain Graves, John Tomaszewski, Bradley and Sue Sinor, Chris Marrs and others, after which we headed to the Congress Avenue Bridge to wait for nightfall.

To wait for bats!

The wait was fun (see how Yvonne and I are smiling?), but unfortunately, the bats only come out at night, which means … the bats only come out in the dark. I couldn’t see them very well, so they didn’t look like much more than a swarm of gnats to me. Then it was back to the hotel, just in time to catch Norman Prentiss reading his short story “The Man Who Could Not Be Bothered To Die” from Blood Lite 3.

And now you can see it, too. It’s a fun one!

Then it was party time, where I chatted with Joe Lansdale (whose short story “Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches,” I published in Last Wave 25 years ago way back in 1986) and Steve Niles (whom I’d never met before, but whose Guest of Honor interview I’d be conducting two days later). I only partied for an hour or two, because the lack of sleep the night before and the tense trip getting to Austin had left me exhausted, so I headed off to crash at around 12:30 a.m.

But as you’ll see when I fill you in on Friday, I wouldn’t end up sleeping for long …