The Blog Where Horror Dwells: It’s a Party! FUGUE DEVIL: RESURGENCE Book Release

Old writer dude and Samaire Wynne, owner of Black Raven Books

For me, this was a most anticipated day — the release party for Fugue Devil: Resurgence at Rioja! A Wine Bar, in Greensboro. Some weeks ago, Ms. B. and I visited Rioja, as we are often wont to do, and got to talking to Jake Assaf, the owner, about my upcoming book. He suggested we have a book release party at Rioja, and this struck us all as just about the best idea ever. Books! Wine! Food! Party! Many happy peoples! Wine! So, we settled on June 4 as the fateful day, and there has been plotting ever since.

Jake, owner of Rioja, took this photo of Ms. B.
and me just before the festivities commenced.

Samaire Wynne, good friend and the owner of Black Raven Books, came down from Martinsville, VA, for the event. My daughter, Allison, was in town, so she came too. I made up a bunch of appropriately themed tickets and scrounged up some door prizes, which included a couple of bottles of wine and a number of my earlier books — including Blue Devil Island, The Monarchs, West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman, and others. Things were scheduled to get started at 4:00 p.m., and — sure enough — the traffic flow began right on time. Before we knew it, Rioja was completely filled up, and we had wine, food, and books flowing all over the place. Naturally, I was hoping we'd have a good turnout since it meant significant sales for both us and for Jake, and we were so not disappointed. As far as I could see, Jake was hopping great guns the entire time, and we sold bundles of books. Everyone in the place seemed to enjoy themselves, and Ms. B. and I got to see many friends, old and new, from just about every sphere of personal influence — former officemates, geocachers, writers, artists, supper club mates, friends of friends... you name it.

After all these years and a lot of books, this was the first release party I've put on, and it will definitely go into the record books as successful. Now, whether I'll be fired up about doing this kind of thing for future books, who the heck knows? But for Fugue Devil: Resurgence, a big ol' party was just the ticket.

After the event, Brugger, Samaire, Allison, friends Terry & Beth, and I headed over to nearby World of Beer to snag some dinner. The place was a madhouse, at least at first, and we spent most of the next three hours waiting for drinks, waiting for food, waiting for service in general. We enjoyed the food, but the experience was far from fully satisfying, especially since the place cleared out quite a bit long before we were ever served. I've generally enjoyed the place, so I'm sure we'll give them another shot. I really hope they'll do better because, as near as we could tell, they could have and should have done better this time around.

So, a little sad we ended on a less-than-stellar note, but the high from the book event isn't going away anytime soon. 'Twas indeed lovely.