Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, and other Summer News

I'm delighted to be a guest at the above convention, and plan to stalk George Romero repeatedly and often.

I'm on the writer's panel this Sunday at 3:30pm in the Imperial Ballroom. The convention is located at: Crowne Plaza Meadowlands, 2 Harmon Plaza, Secaucus, NJ; 201-348-6900). Post panel I'll be signing and selling books. Should be much fun, so if you're in the area, come on down.

Also of note: a podcast of my chapbook, "The Lost" is live at dreadcentral. Thank Johnny Butane for the good work, curse me for all that line-botching! The story takes place at Filene's Basement on Long Island, where I once worked, and from which my feet are still recovering.

I've got a new interview up at HorrorBound, a very cool literary journal dedicated to promoting women in horror. I love them!

My essay, "Why I Write Horror" was just published in the Spring, 2008 issue of the St. John's Humanities Review.

Finally, my last event this summer will take place on July 23, 7-9pm, at the KGB Bar (85 East 4th Street, NYC 10003 ). It's a fundraiser for the Shirley Jackson Award and other, supercoll readers will include: F. Brett Cox, Jeffrey Ford, Jack Ketchum, Carrie Laben, John Langan, Peter Straub, David Wellington, and Jack Womack. It's $5 a head, a wonderful, cause, and also, when do you ever get all of these guys together in one room? This will be amazing, and I'm honored to be a part of it.

That's all, folks. Hope everybody's good!

While grocery shopping yesterday, trying to be a good consumer, I purchased 7th Generation toilet paper. Recycled, no chlorine bleach, etc. Turned out to cost more that $15.00, at which point I promised myself, never again. This reminds me of the incendiary 1960s article about managing finite resources, "Tragedy of the Commons." Basically, we all know we're supposed to buy recycled, and burn less fossil fuels, but this cost more time and money-- we're effectively handicapping ourselves against people who don't bother. Eventually, the conscientious individual sees no results for their sacrifice, and gives up. Net result, despite education and raging hippies, is zero conservation. And so, on this day that gas is now $4 a gallon, and the rich will continue to use it, but the poor won't be able to drive to work, it occurs to me that the tragedy has already happened. Oh, how I wish we had a government that interceded in such things, so that at least we got some tax money out of it, instead of giving it to the Saudis, or borrowing it from the Chinese.

And now back to this miserably hot day in June, which is expected to get up to 103 degrees, and surely has nothing to do with global warming.

Pen to Press

I returned last night from teaching a class at the Pen to Press Writer's Conference. It was a lot of work, but also very rewarding. I had a great class of talented, hard-working students who were eager to learn. I was partnered with fellow writer Hank Schwaeble, which proved a lot of fun. We wound-up agreeing on everything, but coming at it from different directions, which I hope served to strengthen the points were were trying to make.

Often, these conferences make professional authors inaccessible. The hoards of unpublished sit in on dry, overcrowded panels, and specifics of their own writing are ignored. This conference was different, and I think useful.