Just a Travelin', Cachin' Con Man

Stellarcon 37 is over and done — a reasonably successful weekend for me, with a couple of entertaining panels, a few books devalued with my signature, and a bunch of geocaches logged. (Alas, I neglected to take any photographs this year, candid, incriminating, horrifying, or otherwise.) On Friday evening, Ms B and I headed over to the Greensboro-High Point Airport Marriott Hotel, checked in at the con, and then headed straight back out to procure a first-class, grade-A, truly fabulous Japanese dinner at Little Tokyo in High Point (their bulgogi roll made my eyes roll back in my head, and I've not been able to see straight since). A couple of panels at the con followed, along with some pleasant, relaxing time with Ms Kimberly at the hotel bar. Saturday, I returned, sans girlfriend, for another panel and a book signing, and then I headed out for what really makes a convention a convention — a geocaching run. Since I've pretty well cleaned up the airport area, I headed into High Point proper and successfully hunted several, including one that has eluded me on several previous occasions.

A definite highlight of the con was getting to hang out with fellow writers/geocachers Andi Newton and Chad Bowser. We met for the first time at Stellarcon last year, and this time around we found several moments to swap caching and tale-telling tales. They live over in Kernersville, which Kimberly and I fairly regularly infiltrate (Bistro B in K'ville is one of our favorite places in the world), so we're hoping to get together to scheme, plot, bamboozle, commiserate, and cache in the near future.

A right nice picture of my
right nice Mum

It was nothing if not a well-traveled weekend. Today, I needed to head up to Martinsville to help Mum with some pressing financial matters, so I rousted myself at the crack of dawn and, hoping to grab several new caches, made the trip in very roundabout fashion: first, up through Madison, NC; then up to Stuart, VA; over to Fairystone Park, VA; and finally into Martinsville. I did manage first-to-find on a couple of them, and, quite by chance, I ran into my friend Ed Kuykendall (a.k.a. Kuykenew) on the caching trail (we had shared first-to-find honors on a new night cache in Martinsville last weekend). Before heading home, I detoured through Eden to grab a new puzzle cache. That done, it was back to Greensboro to see how much of my house Droolie had left me.

It wasn't completely in shambles. Not completely. But the team from Designs by Droolie^® had definitely given the place a thorough once-over.

That is all.

It Is Happening Again... Stellarcon 37

Stellarcon 37 is taking place this weekend at the Greensboro-High Point Marriott Airport hotel. I’ll be on a few panels, signing books, and raising a general ruckus. Panel schedule as follows:

Friday, March 1
“Historical Horror Through the Ages”
8:00 PM – 9:00 PM

“Blood, Love, and Vampires: A Retrospective”
11:00 PM – 12:00 AM

Saturday, March 2
“Editors — How Do They Work?”
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Ms. B. and I will be skulking around the premises at various times, so watch your back. Seriously.

Stellarcaching

3-3-12: Brugger swinging with the dead folk

Back from Stellarcon weekend in High Point, and this year, much more than others in relatively recent memory, it was quite a good one. I headed over on Friday evening—doing a little caching along the way, of course—and went right into the first of several panels. It was a fun one about bad movie monsters, a topic so rife with material that the panel could have gone far longer than its one-hour limit. I headed out for a late dinner at Thai Chiang Mai, which was, as usual, quite decent, though very, very slow to arrive...no doubt due to a wall-to-wall crowd (which seemed to be the norm all over High Point this weekend; to my knowledge, there was no major event happening in town, but I was beginning to fear that High Point might fall through the earth's crust). Then back to the con to participate in the "Horror Through the Ages" panel, which proved to be a lively discussion about things that have scared people since the dawn of man. It might have been subtitled "Arachnophobia." Once done, I made my way through a dense and wonderfully eerie fog to a few more caches and then home.

Saturday, I grabbed Brugger and returned to the con for my reading ("The Jack-o'-Lantern Memoirs"), which had a very attentive audience. Not large, but attentive. Out for a most welcome lunch at Tex & Shirley's, where I allowed the server to talk me into trying their Manhattan pancakes...which proved to be fantastic. Then a few more caches, the most interesting of which we found at a scenic graveyard that had its own little playground to entertain the wee young undead. (Notice in the photo above that Brugger has displaced the unfortunate undead to take her turn on the swings.) A couple of drinks at the very pleasant Uptowne Tavern on Main Street (we didn't even make fun of the pretentious "e"), and then back to the con for the well-attended and energetic panel, "Writing as Therapy." A special shout out to writers Andi Newton, Chad Bowser, and Janine K. Spendlove, whom I had never met before and really enjoyed making their acquaintance.

Another Asian dinner seemed quite appropriate, since High Point has a large number of Asian restaurants, so we chose Taste of Asia, which I had visited once before, a few weeks back. The sushi was excellent, but I can't boast enough about the service; as before, they were very attentive and anxious to see that we left more than satisfied. We did.

The evening's last panel...with apologies to all involved...was the only low point of the weekend for me. The subject: "The Messiest Way to Kill a Zombie." And that's what it was...for an hour. The panelists and audience were certainly spirited, but I can't really see devoting a few minutes to the topic, much less an entire hour-long panel. To each his own, of course. I compensated with bourbon.

My final con activity was a booksigning this morning, which went quite well; I sold and signed enough books to more than make the entire weekend worthwhile—even the zombie panel. Brugger and I hit Ham's for lunch...my traditional bison burger...and then off we went, her to an open house and me on a couple of long hikes after some caches in Jamestown. My favorite of the bunch had me out on a tree half-submerged in the lake. Much to my relief, I managed to sign the log and return to the lake bank without falling in.

Brugger and I ended the evening by watching Angel Heart, which I hadn't seen in its entirety since its initial theatrical release in '87. It held up very well; I do quite like it, despite its almost excruciatingly slow pace. Trevor Jones's magnificent musical score really helps make that movie.

I sleep now.

I look like this . . . because this is where my feets are.

Stellarcon 36

Friday, March 2 through Sunday, March 4, I'll be a guest at Stellarcon 36, in High Point, NC, at the downtown Best Western Hotel (135 South Main St., High Point, NC 27260) . You are most welcome to come and heckle the crap out of me (as long as you do it nicely, of course). Along with several panels, I have a book signing and a reading lined up. Schedule is as follows:

Friday, March 2
7:00 PM: Best Worst Movie Monsters
For every Jaws, there's an Orca. For every Bela Lugosi Dracula, there's a John Carradine Dracula. Come join the chorus of complaints about the worst monsters to grace the silver screen. With Tony Finkelstein, Dan Johnson, Les Rickard

10:00 PM: Horror Through The Ages
Even in more enlightened times, people remain scared of many of the same things that frightened us centuries ago. Our panelists discuss why. With Theresa Bane, Stella
Price

Saturday, March 3
1:30 PM–2:00 PM: Reading

5:00 PM: Writing As Therapy
To readers, books are entertainment, but what are books to writers? Listen as several authors discuss how writing helps them. With Danny Birt, Stuart Jaffe, Andi Newton, Janine K. Spendlove

10:00 PM: Messiest Way to Kill a Zombie
The title pretty much speaks for itself. With Dan Johnson, Brad Sappington, Chris Weed, Michael Z. Williamson
Sunday, March 4
11:00 AM–12:00 PM: Book signing

I'll have copies of Blue Devil Island, The Gaki, Other Gods, Legends of the Night, and CDs of all three of the Dark Shadows audio dramas I scripted (Path of Fate, Curse of the Pharaoh, and Blood Dance), all available at a special discount for the convention only. Come on down!

StellarCon 34

Doing the usual guest thing at Stellarcon 34, coming up this weekend in High Point, NC, at the Best Western High Point Hotel. Not sure of my entire schedule yet, but I'll be participating in the following:

Choosing a Publisher (panel), Friday, 8:00 PM
 
Allen Wold's Writer's Workshop, Saturday, 10:00 AM—1:00 PM
 
Cthulhu Take the Wheel (panel), Saturday, 5:00 PM
 
Horror, Oh, Horror (panel), Sunday, 2:30 PM

May have a reading and book signing somewhere in there, but don't have the schedule as yet.

The past couple of days have been for hunting rigorous geocaches. Yesterday, got two first-to-finds, one with a major terrain challenge. Headed down into the basin near Lake Higgins, knowing that, after all our recent precipitation, it would be something of a marsh. Heh heh...yeah. The marsh part was tough enough, but crossing a couple of streams was a real challenge. Crossed fallen trees, lattices of brambles, and set a new personal record for the broad jump, but sometimes there's nothing for it but just to go wading.

I must have made quite the sight when I stopped off at the grocery store on the way home. I'm sure I left a trail of muddy footprints and brier-covered fines all through the store. Quel rigeur!

NORTHERN HAUNTS and StellarCon

Recieved my contributor copy of Shroud Publications' Northern Haunts antho today; it features my tale "Black Tom," which is a horror story about—I'm sure this will shock you—geocaching. All the stories (exactly 100 of them) are very short and told in the first person, to affect the mood of a scary campfire tale (my favorite kind). A very nice-looking volume, also featuring stories by James S. Dorr, Blu Gilliand, Nate Kenyon, Gina Ranalli, Steve Vernon, and...let's see...94 other authors.

This weekend, or at least a portion of it, I will be at StellarCon, in High Point. I've got a panel at 9:00 PM tomorrow night, but I'm not certain at this point what the rest of my schedule will be. Reckon I'll find out when I get there. I will probably be doing a reading and booksigning sometime on Saturday. If you can get my coordinates, perhaps you can track me down.

Stellarcon Done, More Caching In

Stellarcon turned out pretty good this year, though it started off slowly on Friday evening, with a non-existent audience for what I thought might be an intriguing panel—"Zines: All the Reasons NOT To, and Why You'll Do It Anyway." Now I can only imagine how many misguided souls are going to go off half-cocked to start a magazine, when—if they had bothered to come to the panel—they could go off cocked, locked, and thoroughly fucked up.

Saturday began with one of Allen Wold's writing workshops, in which the participants write the hook to a short story in a hundred words or less. Overall, not bad stuff this year, though the workshop was situated not in one of the usual conference rooms but in a suite on the second floor—which meant we panelists had the privilege of running the workshop while standing or leaning against the wall instead of sitting in plush leather chairs. Thanks a million.

The rest of the panels I was on were well attended. The "Kaiju" panel, moderated by former Stellarcon organizer and major Godzilla fan Bill Mann, was a hoot and could have gone on for several hours. My booksigning turned out to be a good one; in fact, I ended up signing quite a few autographs over the course of the weekend. Not sure what's up with that. (Maybe my work attracts masochists?)

Finally, my deepest apologies to those who came to my reading last night only to find the author a no-show. He was stuck at a dinner event that stretched out far longer than anticipated, with no wheels of his own to get him back to the hotel. I trust no one was so broken-hearted that they will stop buying my books forever, or turn into Klingons, or something similarly radical. It would not have been an entertaining experience anyway; after such a severe and prolonged bout with bronchitis, my voice was actually beginning to fail by 8:00 PM last night.

All things considered, Stellarcon has outgrown the High Point Radisson, and I wish the organizers would bring it back to the downtown Greensboro Marriott. I realize it's more expensive, but the High Point hotel is hopelessly inadequate, with its two feeble elevators (sometimes necessitating a wait of fifteen minutes or more just to go up or down a single floor), no stairs available from the first floor, the slowest restaurant service in the southeast, inadequate parking facilities, and no other eating/drinking establishments of any worth within reasonable walking distance. I cannot imagine that there aren't better alternatives to this pain-in-the-ass location for a con.

Today, I went out and about geocaching in Martinsville. Found two nice ones and hid my first cache, in a neat location just outside of town; it should be listed on the geocaching site within the next few days. I've found just about all the Martinsville caches now (there are a couple of others I'll get to soon). There are only several hundred in Greensboro, though, so I doubt I will exhaust them anytime soon.

There were two in close proximity to the hotel in High Point, but as it rained the whole time, I didn't go out looking for them.

StellarCon Schedule

I'll be a guest at StellarCon/DeepSouthCon at the Downtown Radisson in High Point, NC, this weekend (3/14–3/15). In case you're dead-set on avoiding me at all costs, here's my schedule.

Friday
"Zines: All the Reasons NOT To, and Why You'll Do It Anyway"
9:00–10:00 P.M.

Saturday
Allen Wold's World of Writing (Writing Workshop, reservations only)
11:00 A.M.–1:00 P.M.

"The World of Kaiju"
2:00–3:00 P.M.

Signing (with Val Griswold-Ford)
4:00–5:00 P.M.

"How to Annoy Your Publisher"
5:00–6:00 P.M.

Reading ("The Jack-o'-Lantern Memoirs")
8:00–9:00 P.M.

I won't be there on Sunday, so that may be your safest bet to attend. For those unable to run away fast enough, I'll look forward to seeing you. If you're not careful, I'll devalue your books with an autograph.