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.

Devaluing a book for friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott)

Friends Mark and Kelly... Do they know what they're in for? Probably not....

Chad has already given the book a look. Tina has not.

Shiny happy people... or something

The crowd moves in.

Friend and former co-worker Heather happy to have snagged a copy. Little does she know....
Photo by James Lyons

Door prize tickets

Michael the Bitch

There's a certain appealing eeriness about the total darkness—apart from my lantern—at Casa de Rodan
with virtually the whole city devoid of electrical power.

When Hurricane Florence reared her ugly head a few weeks back, advance reports indicated she was going to be the Mother of Dragons... er... Storms, and everyone in North Carolina was advised to buy hurricane snacks and batten down the hatches. Most of us at least got as far as buying some hurricane snacks, i.e., wine and brie. Florence brought significant rain to the Piedmont Triad, and took out power in a few places, but what was supposed to be this giant gale turned out to be more of a fart. Then a few days ago, Hurricane Michael showed up south of Florida, and word was we might get fairly heavy rain for a day or two.

Michael kicked our asses. North Carolina got hit with more wind, rain, and damage than any other state in the storm's path, and the Triad—where I am—got hit worst of all. According to official reports, about 90,000 people lost power. As yet, property damage has not been fully assessed. There were downed trees literally everywhere I went. Duke Energy indicated they had to contend with 75 broken poles, 40 transformers, 150,000 feet of wire on the ground, and over 2,800 individual outage locations. Falling trees knocked out a transmission line that fed two of Duke's substations in northeast Greensboro, and massive flooding delayed the repair.

The first sign that Michael is a bitch.Start bailing,
ladies and gentlemen...

The first sign that things were going really badly on Thursday was when water began flooding our second-floor office, primarily due to the balcony having zero drainage, and water six inches deep having nowhere to go but inside the building. Not to mention non-existent seals on windows, which admitted significant quantities of water directly into the suite. And air conditioning vents taking on water and dumping it on us from the ceiling. As far as I'm concerned, it's a staggering indictment of the builder's stupidity, which I have been harping on since long before Michael. It's easily the most horrendously designed building I've ever worked in. We—the staff of The Mailbox—ended up having to take responsibility for bailing and sopping up water all Thursday afternoon. The building management finally got some pumps working sometime after business hours, so that on Friday—after the worst of the weather had passed—at least we had a mostly dry office.

Since our homes were both dark, rather than go straight home on Friday evening, Ms. Brugger and I ventured over to Rioja Wine Bar, a favorite destination of ours, and one of the few establishments in the area to retain power. So we honored them with some significant patronage on Friday night, I can tell you.

Saturday morning, after about 30 hours in the dark, Ms. B.'s power came back on. So yesterday, still with no electricity flowing at my house, I trucked over to her place and made myself productive working on West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman, which is in its finishing stages. Despite my presence, Ms. B. managed to make the best of the situation. However, I knew my mom, in Martinsville, VA, was without power or working telephone. I eventually managed to contact some of her friends as well as my brother, who went up from Winston-Salem last night to make sure she was secure. And I headed there early this morning to help set things straight—ironically, just about the time my own power came back on, after almost 60 hours.

Martinsville was hit hard as well. It's a miracle my mom's power came back on when it did, as literally every power pole on the block north of her place—right up to her yard—was demolished. It was all still down when I left for home a short while ago.

I rarely have a good word to say about Duke Energy, and as a supposedly competent corporate entity, I have naught but disdain for it. However, I do give those hardworking crews who have gotten out there to clean up this horror all the credit they deserve. Given the sheer scope of the damage, I am fortunate I'm not still stumbling around in the dark. I did lose some of my refrigerated items, but I managed to get a fair amount of the most expensive edibles I had in the freezer transferred over to Ms. B.'s freezer before it was too late. Currently, my cable and internet are still out, but since I have phone service, I'm using my phone's hot spot to connect via my laptop.

This has been a matter of making the best of a bad situation and counting one's blessings under the circumstances. And quite frankly, because the storm turned out to be such a monster, dealing with it hasn't been the bitter pill it is when someone spits on the road and knocks out the power in Greensboro for hours on end—which is so commonplace that investing in a generator has become a most appealing prospect.

If you were in the storm's path, I hope you have made out no worse than I. My best to you and yours.

Damage to power lines at the lot adjacent to my mom's

Trees and poles down at Patrick Henry Mall, Martinsville, VA

Rufus Brugger cares not a whit about the inconveniences of hurricanes when it means he can lie on
Old Dude's laptop case.

Another Crossroad

Dave and Trish, lurking in the dark, as usual!

I met author/editor/publisher David Niall Wilson for the first time in the late 1980s—most likely 1989—at Necon in Bristol, RI. At the time, Dave was in the U.S. Navy, and in addition to writing his own fiction, he had recently started editing and publishing The Tome magazine. My first exposure to his work was a vampire story that had appeared in After Hours magazine, and I was so taken with it, I actually wrote him a fan letter—not something I have been known to do with any frequency. When we did get together face-to-face, we had such a blast that it became a regular thing. Our respective families would gather either at Chez Wilson—in Norfolk, VA, in the early days; later in Hertford, NC—or here in Greensboro.

But that was a long time ago. While we've remained close with each other online, until last night, it had been far too many years since we actually got together. Since our first meeting, we've shared too many life experiences to count, some together, some roughly paralleling. Both of us have divorced and found the life partners we were meant to be with (a special shout-out here to author/editor Patricia Lee Macomber, a.k.a. Mrs. Wilson, who has been the one to put Dave right where he needs to be—take that however you wish!). We've both gone all kinds of places with our respective writing careers, some fantastic, some bloody awful. Perhaps most noteworthy, Dave is founder and CEO of Crossroad Press, which has gone from its relatively meager beginning as a specialty e-book publisher to an influential publishing house boasting thousands of titles and many bestselling authors, publishing not only e-books but paperbacks, hardbacks, and audio books (not to mention being publisher of my novels The Lebo Coven, The Nightmare Frontier, Blue Devil Island, and The Monarchs).

A spot of delicious not-terribly-dead fish
(and tamago) at Sushi Republic

This weekend, Dave and Trish's daughter is taking part in a First Lego League competition here in Greensboro, so it was preordained that our wayward souls should, at long last, meet face-to-face again. With this week's major snowfall, things were starting to look a bit dicey, but in the end, it happened: after setting daughter Katie loose at the competition, Dave and Trish found themselves being abducted by Ms. Brugger and me for a night of Japanese food, wine, and general debauchery*. Dinner was at the always excellent Sushi Republic on Tate Street. I believe Dave can thank me for setting him on the sushi road back in the day, and in fact, for this service, the man should be paying me royally for perpetuity; Trish and Brugger, on the other hand, have never been bitten by the raw fish bug, poor souls. We followed up dinner with some top-notch spirits at Rioja! A Wine Bar, one of our favorite local establishments. As with many true friends, even after quite a few years apart, the four of us can fall right into our comfortable, familiar roles (Dave and Trish bowing to our superior character and moral fiber) and enjoy ourselves as if virtually no time had passed.

Today, the Wilsons are supporting their daughter in her competition, and will soon enough be returning to Hertford. We shall have to ensure that, next time, so many years do not pass between our gatherings. Frankly, I don't know how they've stood it this long.

Visit David Niall Wilson's website. Visit Crossroad Press. Visit Patricia Lee Macomber at Fantastic Fiction.

*Sitting around bitching about the creaking and moaning of our respective aging bodies.