Apr. 26
2:33 PM
World Horror Convention this weekend, and other places I’ve been, other places I’m going
This weekend is the World Horror Convention, and I will be in attendance from Thursday afternoon until the wee hours of Sunday morning. It's in Austin this year, a city I've always wanted to visit...which makes the hotel's location a ways out of the heart of the city off one of the country's deadliest freeways a bit disappointing, but I still hope to escape down to the river at some point. In terms of what I'm doing at the con, other than hobnobbing with my friends and creeping on my betters, is as follows:
9:00 PM Thursday: Reading from The Enterprise of Death in Robertson (hopefully the name of a room and not a hollowed-out corpse)
09:30 PM Thursday: Attending Molly Tanzer's reading from her story in Historical Lovecraft in the same
11:00 AM Friday: Attending the panel Molly's moderating on short fiction in Phoenix Central (see above). The panel consists of Joe Hill, Suzanne Church, Orrin Grey, Claude Lalumière, and Brad Sinor, so it should be pretty awesome.
02:00 PM Friday: Moderating a panel in Phoenix Central on "New Blood" in horror. The panel members are Rio Youers, John Horner Jacobs, John Rector, Guido Henkel, and Norman Prentiss--looking forward to meeting these guys.
05: 00 PM Friday: Attending a panel S.J. Chambers is moderating on "Horror in the Academy." The panel is Stephen Graham Jones, Helen Marshall, Chesya Burke, John Langan, and Matt Cardin, so yeah, again, should be fun, smart stuff.
07:00 PM Friday: Attending a panel moderated by Gemma Files on why most horror movies are terrible. The panel be: Brad Keene, Thomas Sipos, Joe Hill, SG Browne, and Mark Wheaton.
01:30 PM Saturday: Attending John Langan's reading
02:00 PM Saturday: Attending a panel on genre mash-ups--Nicholas Kaufmann, Cathy Clamp, (M), Sandra Kasturi, C. Cameron Pierce, Robert Boyczuk, and Paul Tremblay are the panel.
07:00 AM Sunday: Stumbling into a cab and booking it.
That's what I've got in the non-existent planner, and other than this I'm playing it fast and loose as those Clint Eastwood orangutan pictures; other than my reading and the panel I'm moderating it's always possible I'll fuck up and miss something here, there, wherevs. Of interest: Joe R. Lansdale has a reading while I'm at a panel, but if you get the chance he's a phenomenal reader--we just caught him here in Boulder last week and he's tremendous.
Also of interest: my friend S.J. Chambers is hosting a book launch in Austin on Sunday evening for The Steampunk Bible that she and Jeff VanderMeer are releasing--it should be a bully night out, and details are here at Chambers' site.
Other than WHC, things continue apace. I'm going to make a post sometime soon about all the movies and texts I've been ingesting, but for now here's a review of J.M. McDermot's excellent Never Knew Another that I wrote for Innsmouth Free Press.
Speaking of Innsmouth, they've officially released their Historical Lovecraft anthology: Behold! In mid-May I'll be exchanging guest blog entries with my fellow contributor Martha Hubbard, so look for her coming on the ninth day, or thereabouts.
Enterprise is continuing to be a divisive little book, but it's recently gotten some very good press from such diverse locales as Innsmouth, Wall Street, and the Sceptered Isle. Links:
-Wall Street Journal
-Innsmouth Free Press
-Book Geeks
There have been others, some favorable, others less than, but for now I've got many miles to go before I sleep and so had best scoot to the loot. I leave you with a pair of videos, one by Ramona Falls which Laird Barron recently turned me onto and another by Losers, which it reminded me of (and actually uses one of the same images as, I believe). The RF one is maybe a better video and song, but I rather love the Terry-Gilliam-meets-Married-to-the-Sea vibe of the Losers' video.
and
See you in Austin, or beyond!