After a long Friday at the World Horror Convention last week, I went to bed early Saturday morning at the Doubletree Hotel looking forward to some good sleep. But I wasn’t to get it, thanks to the sound of a crying woman and a man’s muffled voice that woke me around 4:00 a.m.

I was suddenly fully awake and at the door of my room, heart pounding, not sure whether or not I was going to have to leap out and interfere in a possible sexual assault. I listened for a brief moment to the voices outside my door. I peered through the peephole, but couldn’t see what was going on. The wailing woman was drunk and incoherent, and the man’s voice, based on what he was saying into a walkie-talkie, seemed to belong to a hotel employee, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was helping (turned out he was, but you can’t be sure about these things), so I leapt out and asked the woman if she needed help, if she felt safe. She was blonde, in her late teens or early twenties, and from what I could gather (and from what I learned the next day from others who were also on the fifth floor) had been going down the hall banging on random doors because she was unable to remember her room number and find her boyfriend.

She cried into her cell phone, telling her boyfriend that she had no idea where she was or where she was supposed to be, and would he please come get her? Eventually, he did, and I went to back to sleep. Or tried to go back to sleep. I don’t know about you, but thinking I might have to get into a physical confrontation kicks in my adrenaline, and it took about an hour before I could wind down enough again to fall back to sleep. And it wasn’t an unbroken sleep, either, because for the rest of the morning, I could hear drunken kids returning from their late nights of partying.

When I went to the front desk the next morning, I was told that a couple of busloads of frat boys had arrived the day before, though the hotel claimed that if they’d known in advance that they were from a fraternity, the reservation wouldn’t have been accepted. I was also told that the group was now on a zero tolerance policy, and any infringement would result in immediate expulsion. (You’ll see below how much good that did.)

When I was done complaining, I cruised the lobby for company for the final stop on my Man v. Food tour of Austin—Juan in a Million, where Adam Richman attempted to eat eight Don Juan breakfast tacos. I wasn’t crazy enough to try any such thing, and so had migas with Claude Lalumière, where there was a lot more talk of Jack Kirby. Most Mexican restaurants I go to—which are watered down, Americanized Mexican restaurants—don’t serve migas, so I was glad to get them. And they were good. As was the company. Even though I don’t think Claude and I will ever agree on ’80s Kirby.

We got back in time for my 10:00 a.m. reading, which I already shared with you, since I’ve been covering the con in an extremely non-chronological manner. When I was done, I wandered the dealers’ room and schmoozed in the lobby until it was time for the Gene O’Neill and Joe McKinney show. The two of them and Roy Robbins of Bad Moon Books took over the con suite, handed out raffle tickets and gave away lots of books (and lots of food) to promote their publications.

Their party was two hours long, but after my lousy night’s sleep, I found myself nodding off half an hour in. And since I needed to have my wits about me to interview Guest of Honor Steve Niles, I realized I needed a nap, or else I’d embarrass myself in public. (Well, more than I usually do.) But before I snuck out, I did catch Gene reading the first chapter of his new novel Not Fade Away. You can check it out right here, though unfortunately, you won’t be able to have any of the cheesecake.

After that nap, I was awake in time for the 4:00 p.m. panel “How To Break In To Comics,” which I figured would be interesting, since I haven’t written any comics in nearly 30 years, and if I ever wanted to do so again it would almost be like breaking in all over again. Which sort of makes me think I’m uniquely qualified to be part of a panel on how to break OUT of comics! I enjoyed hearing what the experts had to say, and especially liked the shout-outs to Steve Gerber (by Brian Keene) and Bill Finger/Julie Schwartz (by Joe Lansdale).

Immediately after that, I got to interview Steve Niles in lieu of any Guest of Honor speech or reading. I navigated him through his career, which touched on comics, music, gaming and more … there was a LOT of territory to cover. And if you really want to see how much, check out Steve’s chops as part of the punk rock group Gray Matter!

There was no time for a dinner break, because the mass signing was set to begin at 7:00, so I made plans with John Picacio to head out after the signing for dinner at his favorite Austin Mexican restaurant, Guero’s. After signing copies of What Will Come After and lots of zombie reprint anthologies, John, John DeNardo, Sanford Allen, Vincent Villafranca, Thomas McAuley and me piled into my Grand Marquis (thank goodness Alamo gave me a free upgrade) and we headed to Guero’s. I was tempted by more migas, but ended up going for the quail. Then it was back to party until I was running on fumes, which was about 1:30 a.m.

You’d think that after a day like that, I’d sleep well, but those damned frat boys—who decided to start moving furniture from room to room at around 3:45 a.m., drunkenly bumping into walls as they carried box springs—made sure I’d spend another wretched night. But more about that when I wrap up World Horror with one final post.