Scarlet Letters

Hey buster, wanna buy a book? This is the chorus most often found in convention dealer's halls, as we're all getting so desperate we're nearly mugging the passers-by. While sitting behind the rack of books at Midsouthcon this past weekend, I tried the Jedi Mind Trick: "These ARE the books you're looking for." I got a lot of amused giggles. Not so much with the sales. We're all in trouble. Nobody's buying books. Heck, Borders itself may go under any day. So I beg you to participate in the 2009 Horror Bail Out! The banks got one, so did Detroit (but not newspapers!). Here in the horror world, we're dying on the vine. Books aren't selling, magazines are folding and publishers are clinging by fingernails. So take a whole $20 and go buy a horror novel or subscribe to a magazine. Any magazine, any book. (Though you can try mine if you really want to - I make a great birthday present!) Go buy from one of Choate's participants and you'll get ...

Midsouthcon was held this past weekend in a strange Escher-like hotel with ramps and staircases leading to nowhere in particular. I have to say, it was a neat environment, even if the hotel policies annoyed me to no end. But this is not the place to gripe. Also, bourbon is evil. Instead, I'll tell you something interesting that happened in Memphis. I had just finished a panel on pulp fiction in which I was completely and utterly faking it - no idea what the hell I was talking about, but I've never yet missed an assigned panel, so I wasn't about to start. As I left the panel, I nearly bumped into a woman arriving for the WATCHMEN panel. She stopped and said, "Oh, I LOVE YOU!" This threw me off my step just a tad, and grinning, I stopped. She pointed at me and said, "SETTING SUNS!" Squee. You know, sometimes I still think SETTING SUNS is my favorite book. About half the stories seem horribly amateurish to me now and it's been out for years so just abou...

For reasons passing understanding these colors are all screwed up. Pretend the colors are normal. I cannot make up my mind.