Author: Jonathon

Day 21 of the Tour

Travel Day, Went to San Francisco. Found some post cards. Signed some stock. Collapsed in Hotel Room.

 

Day 20 of the Tour

6:00 PM – Uncle Hugo’s 2864 Chicago Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55407

Uncle Hugo’s in Minneapolis smells like a bookstore should smell. That dry, pleasant scent of books, some old, some new, all well cared for, well loved. It’s a smell that has made me feel at home since I was a little girl. You don’t find it much in the big new stores. I admit, I love going in and getting a chai, sitting at little tables and browsing books, and socializing, which is what some of the super stores have become. But the turn over for books is so fast that there is no time for the books to settle into their shelves and make a home there. Not time to fill the air with that slight perfume of books. Uncle Hugo’s which is also Uncle Edgar’s is a store where a book, or a book lover can find a home, especially if you’re looking for a book that’s been out of print a while. We found some hard to find Nero Wolfe’s there. If it’s mystery or Science fiction, fantasy,or horror, you’re looking for they’re a great stop. Don’t let me give the wrong impression they have lots and lots of new books, but they also have used as well. Hard to find ones, too.

The signing went well. Around 140. We saw some of the same faces we saw last time at Uncle Hugo’s. Some people have changed their hair, longer or shorter, people with babies now have children, or are starting another kidling in the oven. Brave them. It was good to see everybody, and to make new aquantanices. We’re starting to watch kids grow up, families change, all once a year, or every other year, depending on how often we get to a certain area. It’s interesting meeting people through this brief window. Got to go for now. Bye all.

 

Day 19 of the Tour

World Horror Convention Day 4 Kansas City, MO!

It’s Easter Sunday, and we’re still at World Horror. Somehow the World Horror Convention just doesn’t seem like the place to be on Easter. I feel like we should have a t-shirt that says, “He is risen, and wants to eat your brain, Cuthulu.” This message goes out to everyone who couldn’t be home for Easter, Astare, and Passover. (If I’ve left out any holidays sorry, but these are all the holidays my friends and I celebrate right now.) I woke only four hours by car from home. It was both too close and too far. I woke homesick. I want to be with my daughter, Trinity. I want to watch her find the Easter bunnies gifts hidden around the yard. Last year my friends Karen and Bear brought their daughter Darby, and the two girls scoured the yard in their Easter dresses, all flowers and bows, complete with hats, and patent leather shoes. The crows got to some of the goodies before the girl’s did, but no matter. There was enough to share. I don’t think chocolate makes crows sick. Keeping our three dogs from finding the treats early, well, they just had to stay in the house until after the hunt was over.

Last Easter was special for many reasons, but one important one, was that Art, Jonathon’s step father was able to join us. He’d spent a goodly part of that year out of country. For months all he could tell us was he was somewhere sandy and hot. He couldn’t tell us how close to the fighting he was, or what he was doing, and our imaginations ran wild. As you’ve guessed he was shipped out not long after 9/11. Art’s speclity is base defense against chemical, biological, and nuclear attack. He was suddenly in very high demand. When he was finally free to tell us more details he wasn’t as close to the fighting as we’d feared, but he also wasn’t as far away from it as we’d hoped.

Art retired from the military four months before war was declared. Otherwise he’d have been shipped out again. Nonetheless to say, we were relieved. Especially, Mary, his wife, and Jonathon’s mother. After all these years, they’re still cute together. It does a body good to see them.

This letter goes out to everybody, but especially all of you far from home, in hot and sandy places, close to the fighting, and faraway. I know we’ve taken Baghdad, but I also know that that doesn’t mean that all the fighting’s over. Keep your heads down out there, and watch your backs.

I woke not so far from home, still in the mid-west, and I was chokingly homesick. But no one’s shooting at me, thank God. I am not half-way around the world,in a foreign land, wondering what will happen next, wondering what orders will come down, and what I will be called upon to do. Our thoughts and hearts are with you all. Believe that.

Now that I’ve been all serious and sincere, let me try to share my Easter Sunday with you all. All of you who’ve never been to a science fiction, horror, or fantasy convention let me explain about Sunday, the last day of the con. Most people have gotten little, if any sleep, and they have hundreds of miles of driving ahead of them, or planes to catch, and Monday morning starts day jobs again for most of them. We were beat because it was the fourth week on the road for us, so we’re just going to be tired, but if you don’t believe the dead can rise and walk again, be at a big convention on Sunday. The walking dead are everywhere. People who have dressed up all weekend are in jeans and t-shirts, mostly black with odd, or macabre slogans on them. Most wearing sunglasses, me included. So we slither and slink down to the hotel restaurant, and find that the hotel has an Easter brunch. Reservations only, everyone fresh from church, dressed in pink and bright pastels. There were easter bonnets in the room. People sitting at white clothed tables with bright center pieces of giant eggs, and bunnies. There was a costumed Easter bunny walking around scaring small children, and groggy con goers. The restaurant that had been dim and rather bar like all weekend suddenly glowed with color, and I fought he urge to scream, my eyes, my eyes. There were Easter lilies everywhere, to which I have a rather pronounced allergy.

The lavender lady at the little podium tried to turn my husband and I away, because we had no reservations. I explained that we were guests of the hotel and no one had told us there would be no breakfast on Sunday without reservations. She deigned to let us sit at the bar and go through the buffet. I explained I could not sit at the bar because of the smoke, and was informed that for today the restaurant was smoke free. It had been a freaking smoke hazard the rest of the weekend.

Jonathon saved our seats while I went through the buffet. Okay, first of all I am wearing black; black jeans, black boots, black t-shirt. The t-shirt reads, “But soft what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is AAAAHHHHH The Sun!!! *FOOM* … Vampire Theater.” I thought it was funny. I am wearing sunglasses because my allergies make my eyes like sensitive, and occasionally I get light induced migraines. So I’m in line with all the bright, happy, pastel people. I looked like I’d crashed their party. They’re looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, and they have no idea what to make of me. Then I see the ice sculpture. It’s a giant bunny on it’s hind legs, rearing above us all with it’s front paws stretched outward like Frankenstien’s monster. It had already begun to melt, and heavy droplet of water dripped, dripped, from it’s outstretched limbs. I stood in the line of happy Easter people and stared up at that dripping bunny, and wondered how many small children had run screaming. I know it was the most frightening thing I saw all weekend.

 

Day 18 of the Tour

World Horror Convention Day 3 Kansas City, MO!

Saturday at a con. How to describe it. Usually it is the biggest day, filled to the brim with panels and such, rushing from one thing to another and trying to squeeze food in, in between it all.

This was I believe the Laurell and a mike panel, where she does her ‘traveling Laurell Show’. There was a moderate sized crowd and once they got over the shock of having Laurell actually know how to use a mike, some good questions. Afterwards, she was worried that she had gone a bit over the top. I assured her that she hadn’t.

One of the side benefits of the con, was that I got back in touch with someone I had worked with about five years ago, and then had lost all contact with. Then I ran into her here, and it was nice to see her again. Both of us have gone one to do well in our professional lives, and have had some significant changes. But all in all, we are the same people that hung out together at work, and had lunch at the same table in the caffiteria and could talk about almost anything. Now she is in SF and making a fine living writing strategy guides for computer games.

 

Day 17 of the Tour

World Horror Convention Day 2 Kansas City, MO!

Today we did the “What ever happened to Dracula” Panel. As with most panels, though, it ranged in topic from folk lore, to History, to the writing business. We then had lunch at a Malasian place and fond a new cuisine to add to out list of ethnic foods we like.

After all that, we had the mass autographing. which basically was a room full of authors signing like mad for about an hour. What was most amusing, was that they opened the room to everyone who was only there to get something signed by the other authors, then had everyone who was waiting for Laurell, line up and wait outside.

But this was also my first World Horror. My first World anything Convention. And I was there for business, not pleasure. I’ve been to many a SF&F cons to know what to do and what not to do. I know not to drink anything offered to me by a strange man in a toga, Unless I know him. I know that you should never insult anyone dressed like a Klingon unless they are drunk enough that they can’t run after you. But all that knowledge is worth bupkis at a business Con. Business Cons are all about the deal and making the connections that will get you the deal. I had the strange pleasure of standing around talking with some of the people who make deals happen, and having people approach them, and then wonder if I’m someone that can make a deal happen. It was confusing the first time it happened, but each subsequent instance made it all the more mind boggleing. I was talking with Warren Lapine of DNA Publications, and had several people try to pitch something to both of us. Later I was talking with Ginjer Buchannan, and had someone else try and pitch something to me first. It got more interesting from there.

I guess it comes from the fact that I appeared confident and collect, that I could hold a conversation with them, and have valid input to the conversation, and that I was hanging out with some of the Big Names of the con and feeling right at home. Maybe having Laurell as a spouse is a benefit. I am not intimidated by authors, editors or publishers. They are people just like me, and want to be treated as such. The fact that I was able to converse with a publisher for almost an hour about literature and how no-one reads the classics anymore while having people come up and try to pitch stories to him, all of which were re-hashes of Homer in one way or another, was enlightening.

What I’ve taken away from WHC is that giving the people what they want isn’t the nature of the deal. The nature of the deal is making the people want what you are giving them, and have them pay top dollar for the priveladge of having it.

 

Day 16 of the Tour

World Horror Convention

Kansas City, MO!

It’s my first World Horror, ever. Other than the fact that the vast majority of people are wearing black, and there seems to be more leather, it’s a lot like World Con, or World Fantasy. Once upon a time I went to the big conventions to make deals. I had breakfast meetings, brunch meetings, lunch meetings, dinner meetings, all in the hopes of selling some new project. Other members of my writers group sold projects this way, but I never did. My stories, once finished for others, were either too violent, too disturbing, or strangely not dark enough. Or just didn’t fit what they were looking for. Oh, well. I still think that any writer that is interested in fantasy, science fiction, and horror should go to at least one of the big cons a year, plus the Nebulas. Just to keep your face and name in front of people. Also, dress up. Over dress if you need to, but look professional. Dress like you’re already successful, and you’re more likely to get that new deal. It’s that old idea that if you look needy, people run, but act like you don’t need anything from them and they’ll ask what they can do for you. I did not dress up every day for World Horror, for two reasons. One, Jonathon and I are too tired for formal wear more than once this weekend. We dressed up for opening ceremonies. In fact other writers said we made them look bad in comparison in his suit and my velvet and fishnet. I got to wear my bat boots with the silver bat buckles. We looked great. It was fun. The rest of the weekend we dressed down, or at least not that up. Because I have no deals to make. I’m doing two series. I can’t write a third. I have two publishers already, again, i don’t need a third. I don’t have time to do short stories much, if at all. An anthology has to be something that really captures my interest, and even then, it’s a matter of time, or lack there-of. I could almost smell the deals being made, the hunger for that next big break, in the very air of the hotel, and I was apart from it. I believe this was my first World anything where I wasn’t looking to make connections, or do some business. I did panels, and my editor Ginjer Buchanan was there, so we talked, but the big decisions were made months ago.

 

Day 14 of the Tour

7:00 PM – Borders 830 N. Michigan Chicago, IL 60611!

[Tax Day. Hope you’ve filed! – Jon]

Another fantastic view. This time of Lake Michigan, and the Chicago waterfront. The water is very very blue, green and strangely cerulean, grey and every shade in between. The water stretches out and out to meet the sky in a line of hazy blue, so that at first it seem that the sea and sky just merge, simply become one. Then a tiny white boat breaks the illusion, and you look up and see the sky, and look down and see the water, and know that they are both beautiful but separate things. We are waiting for food and tea and the event is yet to come. Though we did do two stock signings once we got to Chicago before we got to relax in our room.