I’ll be at Capclave two weeks from Friday, where I’ll take part in five programing items and record several episodes of my Eating the Fantastic podcast.

If you’ll be in Rockville weekend, too, here’s where you’ll be able to find me.

Author Reading
Friday 8:00 p.m. (Monroe)
Scott Edelman reads from recent and upcoming works.

Rejections Happen
Saturday 10:00 a.m. (Eisenhower)
The life of a writer involves hearing many variations of the word “no.” Rejection comes with the territory but that does not make it easier to experience. Panelists discuss coping with rejection, how to continue writing through them, and what you can learn from receiving a no.
with A. T. Greenblatt, Ef Deal, Nate Hoffelder, and R. Z. Held

Writing Through Adversity
Sunday 11:30 a.m. (Wilson)
Writing is hard enough but writers are also full human beings dealing with obstacles that can make it difficult to maintain a creative practice. From financial and family responsibilities to chronic pain and other mental and physical challenges, panelists talk openly about coping with daily pressures that often interfere with one’s writing life.
with A. T. Greenblatt, R. Z. Held, and Sarah Avery

Help! I Have to Edit My Draft!
Sunday 1:00 pm: (Wilson)
It’s okay to admit that editing your draft is hard work. The task can feel daunting but is a necessary part of the writing process. Panelists discuss the importance of being your own best editor as well as the tips and tricks for making the editing process not so painful.
with Jo Miles, Ken Altabef, Morgan Hazelwood, Richard Peter, and Haviland Sparks

YouCon 2024
Sunday 2:30 pm (Wilson)
In Sarah Pinsker’s novella, “And Then There Were (N-One)” SarahCon represents a multiverse of Sarahs navigating a murder mystery plot. Our panelists share versions of their own multiverse con, from their personalized programming track to events made just for every version of them.
with Sarah Pinsker and Tom Doyle

I hope to you can join me!

It’s time for you to join me at the table for my final StokerCon conversation, following the ones with my mid-’70s Marvel Comics Bullpen pal Howard Bender and screenwriter, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert Lisa Morton. And this might be my most horrific conversation yet! Not merely because of my guest — but because certain scenes from Night of the Living Dead were shot in the basement of our chosen venue, The Original Oyster House!

Michael Bailey is an award-winning writer and editor, having been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award nine times, winning once for the anthology The Library of the Dead, and a four-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee. His novels include Palindrome Hannah (2005) and Phoenix Rose (2009). His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Birthing Monsters: Frankenstein’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Cruelties, Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road, Canopic Jars: Tales of Mummies and Mummification, and most recently Hybrid: Misfits, Monsters and Other Phenomena.

Many of these stories have been gathered in the collections Scales and Petals (2010), Inkblots and Blood Spots (2014), Oversight (2018), and The Impossible Weight of Life (2020). He’s the owner of the small press Written Backwards, which has published many excellent anthologies, and I’m not calling them excellent simply because my own short stories have appeared in many of them. He’s currently the screenwriter for the documentary series Madness and Writers: The Untold Truth. Maybe?, which all of us in the horror community are looking forward to seeing.

We discussed his Stoker Award-nominated poetry collaboration with Marge Simon (and how they managed not to kill each other during the writing of it), how he knows when a poem is a poem and not a short story, what reading other anthologies taught him that made his own anthologies better, the economics of small press publishing, how to lose awards gracefully, the way getting an early story torn apart by Douglas E. Winter at Borderlands Boot Camp gave him the boost he needed, why his novel Psychotropic Dragon took 16 years to transform from an idea into a book, how one of the joys of writing is never knowing the end until you get there, his new obsession of making chocolate from fruit to bar, our shared love of revising continually, and so much more.

Here’s how you can join us at The Oyster House — (more…)

I was watching the horror movie The Black Phone a few days ago when a scene set in a small-town convenience store had me hitting pause, because a comics rack was clearly visible. And whenever I spot one of those, I always ask … do the comics match the time period?

Some movies and TV shows dress the set with comics from years past which would have long before been pulled by the distributor, others have comics which wouldn’t be published for several years. The Black Phone, set in 1978, presented me with multiple puzzles. (more…)

My second guest from this year’s Pittsburgh StokerCon — following my mid-’70s Marvel Comics Bullpen pal Howard Bender — is Lisa Morton, a screenwriter, award-winning prose writer, author of non-fiction books, and Halloween expert.

She’s written more than 150 short stories, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning “Tested” (from Cemetery Dance magazine) and “What Ever Happened to Lorna Winters?,” chosen for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2020. In 2010, her first novel The Castle of Los Angeles was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. Her other novels include Malediction (nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel), Netherworld, and Zombie Apocalypse: Washington Deceased.

Her work as an editor includes the anthology Midnight Walk, winner of the Black Quill Award and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, Haunted Nights (co-edited with Ellen Datlow), Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense, and Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923, co-edited with Leslie Klinger. As a Halloween expert, Lisa wrote the definitive reference book The Halloween Encyclopedia (now in a second edition), and the multiple award-winning Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. Her screenplay credits include the feature films Tornado Warning, Blood Angels, Blue Demon, and The Glass Trap. She’s is a former President of the Horror Writers Association.

We discussed how seeing The Exorcist at age 15 changed her life, why she sometimes feels guilty about her path to publication, our memories of the late, great Dennis Etchison, the differences between trick or treating in New York vs. L.A., the weirdest thing about working in a bookstore during the pandemic, the differing ways our writing was affected by lockdown, how she myth-busted Halloween, why she doesn’t think of rejection as rejection, what she means when she says horror fiction should be more political, writing for themed anthologies, what it would take for us to turn our hand to novels, and so much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Chengdu Gourmet — (more…)