Return from Philcon!

For the second year in a row, I spent my birthday weekend at Philcon in Cherry Hill, NJ. Not a bad way to do it, actually. I sold 8 books, so that made it a better birthday than if I had sold two…or one…or none. I shared a table with fellow members of the Garden State Horror Writers and did a “Rapid-Fire Reading” with fellow members of Broad Universe. It was nice to have a chance to socialize with writers from both groups. I also took part in panels on “200 Years of Phobias” and “What Price Immortality?” You don’t get a lot of time to prepare for these topics, so it can be a test of how fast you think on your feet. (Well, we were all sitting down, but you know what I mean.)

I went to Jonathan Maberry’s reading on Saturday of his forthcoming YA zombie novel, from which he read a very moving passage. Yes, a serious, moving scene from a YA zombie novel! That takes talent.

And I attended an amusing panel that night called, ‘Vampires: Geesh, We Just Can’t Get Rid of Them.” Contrary to what you might think, most of the participants were vampire fans, but analyzed whether the current fad of romantic/sexy vampires is robbing them of their scary elements. I somewhat agree, and put in my two cents during the Q&A session.

Anyway, this is my first entry in this new blog, and I will try to keep up with it regularly, even though I badly need the time for my actual writing. (Another issue I hashed out with the other GSHW folks over the weekend.) I’m nearly through a decent first draft of my next novel, and I don’t want to get so caught up in sharing my grand philsophical insights that I forget to finish it. (I have so few grand philsophical insights to begin with!)

Also, I have a house guest coming this weekend and vacuuming to do. So for now, ‘night all!