Readercon—which has been my favorite convention for more than a quarter of a century—is right around the corner, running from July 9 through 12 in Burlington, Massachusetts. Here’s the programming where you’ll be able to find me.

Thursday, July 10, 9:00 p.m.
What Don’t We Read—and Why?
If all of the signals—the reviews, the blurbs, the cover, the author, the publisher—suggest you’d hate a particular book, is that sufficient reason to pass on it? Have you ever tried to read something you thought you’d despise and realized that you loved it? Do you give every book a certain number of pages to win you over, or feel obligated to finish any book you start? If a certain critic praises something, does that make you want to run the other way? We’ll discuss these and many other ways not to read a book.
with Stacey Friedberg, Natalie Luhrs, Sarah Smith (leader), and Patty Templeton.

Friday July 11, 4:00 p.m.
Reading
I’ll be reading my unpublished short story “The Pillow of Disappointment and What Was Found Beneath It.”

Friday July 11, 8:00 p.m.
Dealing with Discouragement
As writers, we learn very early on to handle rejection, but how do you handle it when a story you’re sure is good is rejected by 20 different publications? Or when your carefully crafted novel is shrugged off by five different agents? Or your self-published novella is bought by only 25 people, all of them friends and relatives? Or your fantasy novel disappears from public view after a couple of weeks? We’ll explore personal strategies to deal with disappointments, rejection, and other setbacks.
with Susan Bigelow, Michael J. Daley, Barbara Krasnoff (leader), and Shariann Lewitt.

And if you don’t catch me there, you can always find me hanging out in the halls or in the bar chatting non-stop. When I’m not in the audience watching the other programming, that is.

If you’d like to join me, it’s not too late. You can find more information here.

Hope to see you in two weeks!

I’ll be leaving for Melbourne a week from tomorrow to attend Aussiecon 4, and just in case you’ll be there, too, here’s where you’ll be able to find me.

All four of my panels seem to be horror-themed this year, including one at which I’ll stand up for zombies against those annoying vampire-lovers. It won’t be pretty.

Hope to see you there!

But is it horror?
Saturday 1200 Room 212
What is horror fiction and who decides? The authors? The readers? The publishers and editors? The marketers and booksellers? Does the horror genre even truly exist?
with Joshua Bilmes, Ellen Datlow, Richard Harland, Rocky Wood

Monster mash-ups
Saturday 1500 Room 207
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Sense and Sensibility and Sea-Monsters. Little Vampire Women. Jane Slayre—it’s open season on the classics as well as the undead. Just what is going on here and where did it all start?
with Darlene Marshall, Chuck McKenzie, Faye Ringel, Damien White

Vampire vs Zombie Smackdown
Monday 1400 Room 204
Two kinds of undead, no holds barred.
Participants on the one hand – Scott Edelman, Rob Hood, Chuck McKenzie.
On the other – Narrelle M Harris, George R. R. Martin, Faye Ringel

Maybe I am too normal to enjoy this book…
Monday 1500 Room 212
Horror authors share the worst things ever said about their work and discuss the context of the outburst. Audience members are invited to share their own worst “critiques”.
with Will Elliott, Deborah Biancotti, Rob Hood, Martin Livings

I’ve been so busy I only just realized that though I uploaded my final Readercon clips to YouTube long ago, I never mentioned it here. After my first convention outing with my new Flip camcorder, I posted a total of 13 videos from the weekend. Here are the final five clips.

First, some of the beginning and some of the ending from the panel on “The New and Improved Future of Magazines,” featuring John Joseph Adams, John Benson, Leah Bobet, Robert Killheffer, and Sean Wallace.

(more…)

I’ve been so busy preparing for, reporting on, and recovering from Comic-Con that I’ve had no time to share my thoughts about it here, so why not let a picture stand in for those thousand words?

One afternoon, as I was racing from one end of the humongous exhibit hall to the other, I spotted a dealer selling the original art for the cover to an issue of Doorway to Nightmare I’d written long, long ago. (Make that long, long, long ago.) So I stopped my power walking and asked, “How much do you want for the Kaluta?”

The dealer’s answer? “Thirty.”

You do realize I was meant to add three zeroes after that number, right? There was of course no way I could afford to own the drawing, but I figured I should at least get a picture with it.

And so:

Here’s the cover as it was originally published.

Time flies. Money flies, too.

Been real busy at Comic-Con. Too busy to post here. I worked from 5:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. yesterday writing and/or editing 20 stories for Blastr. But there were plenty of fun moments mixed in.

Like talking to Seth Rogen about the Lone Ranger.

And this. Danny Trejo, star of Machete and fearsome dude, handed me a beef taco last night. I ate it. I had to.

Would you have turned this guy down?

More later when I come out the other side of Comic-Con!

Balticon is next weekend, and as usual with local cons (as local as a con two hours away can be), I tend to condense the experience into a single long day.

This year, that day will be Saturday the 29th.

Here’s where you’ll be able to track me down.

3:30 p.m.: Reading. (I’ll probably read the original story from my zombie collection What Will Come After, which I don’t think I’ve read before at either Balticon or Capclave.)

5:00 p.m.: What’s Love Got To Do With It? (What is the place of love in the stories you like to read? What does it do for the reader? with Elaine Corvidae, Maria V. Snyder, and Anthony Stevens)

See you there!

You’ve all been so well behaved during my recent run of gardening neepery that I feel I owe you something special. So here—unseen as far as I know since it was first published 38 years ago—is Billy Graham’s take on the comics fan scene as printed in the program book for Phil Seuling’s 1972 July 4th weekend Comic Art Convention.

What’s that, you say?

No, of course I don’t mean that Billy Graham. I mean the other Billy Graham, the comic-book artist best known for drawing Luke Cage, Hero for Hire.

Give it a read and start getting in the mood for the San Diego Comic-Con, which is only—gulp!—10 1/2 weeks away!