Last night at the Gory Ghoul Ball, F. Paul Wilson sang the Tom Snider song “All Right Guy.” What’s that, you say? You missed it? Too bad. If only there was a way for you to have been there.

Wait! There is. Unfortunately for Paul, I happened to be there.

The room was dark, so the footage isn’t as clear as I’d wish, and the camera gets a little shaky near the beginning, when I’m moving to avoid letting the dancers drift into the frame. But hey, it’s better than not getting to hear Paul sing and play the guitar at all.

For those wishing to follow along, here are the lyrics (the official ones, anyway):

Well just the other day, I was sitting around in my house.
I had that new book with pictures of Madonna naked.
I was checking it out.
Well, just then a friend of mine came through the door,
She said she’d never pegged me for a scumbag before.
She said she didn’t ever want to see me any more,
And I still don’t know why!
I think I’m an all right guy.
I think I’m an all right guy.
I just want to live until I’ve got to die.
I know I ain’t perfect, but God knows I try.
I think I’m an all right guy.
I think I’m all right.
Well maybe I’m dirty and maybe I smoke a little dope.
But it ain’t like I’m going on TV
tearing up pictures of the Pope.
And I know I get wild and I know I get drunk,
But it ain’t like I’ve got a bunch of bodies in my trunk.
My old man used to call me a no-good punk,
And I still don’t know why!
I think I’m an all right guy.
I think I’m an all right guy.
I just want to live until I’ve got to die.
I know I ain’t perfect, but God knows I try.
I think I’m an all right guy.
I think I’m all right.
Well, the other night, The cops pulled me over outside a bar.
They turned on the lights,and ordered me out of my car.
Well, I was only kidding when I
called them a couple of dicks,
But still they made me do the Stupid Human Tricks.
Now I’m stuck in this jail with a bunch of dumb hicks,
And I still don’t know why!
I think I’m an all right guy.
I think I’m an all right guy.
I just want to live until I’ve got to die.
I know I ain’t perfect, but God knows I try.
I think I’m an all right guy.
I think I’m all right.

Oh, go ahead, sing along. You know you want to. Besides, Repairman Jack would.

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. (more…)

I’m much too fried to offer a full report on the rest of the day, since my body insists on remaining on West Virginia time rather than switching over to Burbank’s. But here’s at least a taste …

I came down to meet my dinner companions only to find one of them, Gene O’Neill, autographing signature sheets for the upcoming lettered edition of The Hunger of Empty Vessels, which meant that I was waylaid to sign them as well. I didn’t have time to finish the batch, because the rest of the motley crew had assembled, and we needed to head out early to make sure we got back in time to take part in the evening’s activities.

Here we are in front of the Marriott, ready to set out in two cabs for a restaurant that isn’t immediately across the street:

For those of you unfamiliar with these faces because you have better things to do than eyeball Post Office wanted posters, that’s Scott Browne, Gene O’Neill, me, Gord Rollo, Eunice Magill, and Derek Clendening. To find out where we ended up and how the rest of my evening went, you’d better check back later … because I heard the pillow call my name.

Once I picked up my badge and bag of goodies at registration, I wandered the restaurant looking for friendly faces and found David Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer and their kids about to dive in for breakfast. They invited me to join them, and though I wasn’t hungry, I sat for chatted with them as they ate. We talked about the plight of Paul Williams (go donate now), plagiarism in the romance, horror, and SF fields, and the subtle differences between the crowd at a World Horror Convention and those who show up at the Stokers.

Out in the lobby, I ran into Roy Robbins, publisher of my chapbook The Hunger of Empty Vessels:

If you’re reading this post at the Stokers, head to the dealers room and go buy a copy from him. If not, why not hurry over to the Bad Moon Books site and order one? (more…)

Around 6:10 p.m. last night, I stepped from the shower, towel wrapped around my waist, and heard a violent banging at the door. It was Gene and Gord coming to get me to head over to the Dark Delicacies signing. I stepped into the hallway, joking, as I held tightly to the towel, that I was all set to go—and the door almost shut behind me, keys still inside!

Wouldn’t that have allowed me to make a grand entrance!

After quickly tossing on some clothes, we cabbed it over to the bookstore, where I met an old friend out front:

But more conversational and attractive friends waited inside. Wandering the densely packed aisles, I had a chance to chat with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Ellen Datlow, Maria Alexander, F. Paul Wilson, Tom Monteleone, Stephen Jones, Many Slater, Peter Atkins, Dennis Etchison, Cody Goodfellow, Rain Graves, John Skipp, Matt Schwartz, Sharan Volin, John Everson, owner Del Howison, of course, and on and on and on—so many others I’m sure I’ve left many out. There wasn’t time enough for all that needed to be said, but then, cocktail parties are like that. There’s still an entire weekend to come in which to track them down and trap them. I promise to let them keep their pelts, however. (more…)

Since I am far too fried from a combination of jet lag and partying, any report on my doings of this evening will have to wait until tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, let this photo of Matt Schwartz, Tom Monteleone and me at the Dark Delicacies signing signify what I no longer have the energy today to put into words—that a lot of fun was had.

For additional images, check out my flickr stream.

And now—to bed!

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!

Stephen King’s new story “Morality” was just published in the July issue of Esquire. A few sentences of that story appeared on the front cover in a manner which cannot be matched by a Kindle.

I recommend the piece, which is quite dark, reminding me a bit of the film Crimes and Misdemeanors. Not in any aspect of the plot, but rather in its bleak outlook.

The cover, however, was neither dark nor bleak … nor did its design have anything to do with the story itself.

You can find out more about the creation of the cover here.

Contrary to what the cover blurbs would have you believe, those sentences printed on model Bar Refaeli are not the opening sentences of the story, which confused me a bit when I tried to read them as such and then continue on inside.

I’m not sure why after having gone to all that trouble they let stand what appears to be a crossed-out typo just above her knee. But perhaps you were too distracted to notice.

I had two dreams last night in which Irene was in danger in some way, either hurt or lost. I’m not sure where these dreams, separated by several hours, came from, particularly since she is in better shape this week than last from her broken ankle, so you’d figure my dreams wouldn’t be filled with fear, but they were, several hours apart.

In the first dream, we were walking through the woods nearby our home with another couple I don’t think I was ever able to properly identify, perhaps even my parents (which would be odd, since my my father is no longer with us, having died in January), when a couple of deer ran toward her and crashed into her, staggering her but not knocking her down. As Irene screamed, calling for me to come help her, the two deer kept between us so that I could not reach her.

Only now they were no longer deer, but rather some deer/moose hybrid, with big bulbous snouts melded with their otherwise deerlike bodies. In the dream, I didn’t think there was anything odd about this transformation. I kept running up to them, trying to get past them, punching them in those bulbous snouts, but they would not yield. I kept swinging at them, trying to dance around them, but I was never able to reach her. I woke with her cries still in my ears.

In the next dream, hours later, we were in a completely different environment, a large city, leaning on a railing watching some huge public event. Fireworks, perhaps? I don’t think it was a parade. The specifics are gone now, but as the crowded event, whatever it had been, breaks up, I lose track of Irene. No problem, I figure, I’ll just call her, and we’ll decide where to meet. So I pull out my iPhone, but no matter what I do, I cannot make a call. Either the screen freezes, or skips on the horizontal and/or vertical like an old-fashioned TV, or simply keeps turning itself off. I walk along, cursing at the phone, wondering how I’m going to find her.

Eventually, I do wander across her, with no sense of whether it had been through some deliberate action or accidental, somehow having found her on an upper floor of an apartment building whose hallways were just as crowded as the streets we were in at the beginning of the dream. I’m relieved to have found her, but we’re densely packed together, unable to move, and everyone around us is arguing how to disperse, whether to walk left or right, up the stairs or down. We’re not getting anywhere, and as I wake, we’re still trying to figure out how to get out of there and home.

Both times when I woke, she was right there next to me, which is all that matters.

Whatever it was my subconscious was trying to tell me, I’m not sure I deciphered the message.

Early last year, I shared a photograph of me in front of the White House, a visit which occurred while I was attending the 1974 World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C.

That’s me on the far right, in the company of Carl Gafford, Paul Levitz, and Steve Gilary. When I first posted this image, I bemoaned the fact that no crisp, clear original print existed of this moment, just a fading photocopy I’d made while on staff at Marvel Comics.

I learned today that I was wrong. (more…)