I got back from HorrorHound Weekend (Columbus, OH) the same day I left. I couldn’t bear being away from my family longer than about eighteen hours (yeah, I’m a loser), so I only took in the Saturday portion of the convention.

But boy, what a Saturday it was.

I’ve been thinking all week—when I’ve had time to think, that is—about how to summarize my day at HorrorHound, but I’ve failed to come up with any kind of unifying theme. So you’ll have to go without.

What I will share is a list of observations. Starting with…

If I wasn’t already excited about being a part of the Samhain Horror stable of authors—and believe me, I was—I felt even more grateful after Saturday. Not only did Samhain sponsor the HorrorHound Weekend event, they set up a nifty booth with hourly raffles, free prizes, awesome-looking posters, and a book-signing studio for yours truly. I could go on at length about how wonderful Mackenzie and Amanda were and how incredible Dawn and the other Amanda were, but to save time, I’ll just say this:

If you’ve ever written a novel, you know what a solitary, thankless endeavor that can sometimes be. People respond to your declaration of novel-writing with a mixture of apathy, pity, or barely-concealed derision.

This was the opposite of that. The Samhain crew made me feel special, wanted, and important, even if I’m none of those things (okay, I am pretty special, but that’s beside the point). So before I go any further…THANK YOU TO SAMHAIN!

See the dude up there? Yep, Norman Reedus. I guess he’s on some show called The Walking Dead. I wouldn’t know because the guy was too busy fleeing a slavering armada of female fans that was twice as frightening as any group of zombies could hope to be. I’m betting he brings his crossbow to the next convention.

Those of you familiar with Sherlilyn Fenn (smoldering at you from above) won’t be surprised to learn that I had a fairly sizable crush on her in my teens and early twenties. She was at HorrorHound, but I didn’t see her. Maybe she was fleeing, too (no, not from me!).

But I did meet…

The above actress looked very familiar to me (her booth was stationed across from mine). When I finally got the time to go over to her, I was delighted to learn her name was Lynn Lowry and that I’d seen her in such cool films as The Crazies and Cat People (from which the screen cap above is taken). She was kind, gracious, and even more importantly, she got a copy of my debut novel. No word yet on whether or not The Sorrows has given her nightmares…

I saw Pam Grier at the convention (pointing a gun at you below)…

…but I didn’t see Tippi Hedren.

I got to meet an extremely cool (and even more talented) writer named Sheri Holman. If you don’t know that name yet, you soon will. Just check out this New York Times Editors’ Choice review of her fantastic fourth novel. The wackiest part was, she signed and gifted me a copy of her book and bought a signed copy of mine! This despite the fact that an unsigned copy of The Sorrows is worth a fortune (thanks to Hugh Grant and the screenwriters of Notting Hill for that joke).

My booth was caddy-cornered from Doug Bradley, who is better known as Hellraiser‘s Pinhead. I didn’t talk to him. Didn’t make eye contact either.

On that unsettling note, I’ll say this: HorrorHound rocked. The atmosphere was genial, the people good-natured. I found the staff to be polite and organized. I found the fans to be outstanding and quite wise in their choice of reading material. I sold and signed books steadily through the day, and I even got my first fan picture taken.

So this blog post is dedicated to Adam and his very cool wife. You two and all the rest made my first convention as a “guest” a memorable one.