I attended World Fantasy in Tempe (pronounced tem-pee by some locals) Arizona last weekend, the first time I’ve attended this convention. It’s understandably heavy on science fiction and fantasy, but there’s a horror fringe as well. It seemed the logical place to go this year since I have a book out about a fantasy series.
As is usually the case, most of the good stuff took place outside of the structure of the convention. I got to talk with Stephen R. Donaldson, for example, and give him a copy of my book. I talked with a few editors with whom I hope to work in the forseeable future. The editor of From the Borderlands, for example, who had earlier asked me if I had a novel to send her after she read my story, One of Those Weeks. Now that I’m getting closer to being able to fulfill that request, it was nice to touch base with her again and discover that she’s still excited by the prospect.
I moderated a panel on Saturday morning. There were supposed to be three of us, but Alan Dean Foster got his schedule muddled and missed it. Fortunately Janny Wurtz can hold her own on a panel, and she also saw someone in the audience who made a good addition to the panel about halfway through, so it wasn’t a disaster.
I also got a chance to spend more time with people who I don’t often get to do so at other cons. I roomed with Simon Wood (the hotel was ghastly only in its room rate, which approached $165 per night after taxes) and had dinner with Weston Ochse and his wife Yvonne Navarro (who read a very creepy story called Ascension one night), Ed Bryant and others. Graham Joyce read from The Facts of Life. For a change, the conference was in a part of town where attendees could walk to restaurants, so I actually spent a lot of time “off campus,” unlike the World Horror Conferences I’ve attended in the past, which were in remote areas near the airport.
Plenty of late-night parties and free booze, but the suites were very crowded, so I didn’t stay at any party very long. The registration pack contained an amazing selection of books, easily 15 or 20 hardcovers and paperbacks. No wonder attendees weren’t buying much at the con–who had room to pack anything else in their suitcases after that?
On Saturday afternoon, Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson and I went over to HorrorFind in north Phoenix to read. We’d heard that attendance was down, so we decided to merge our sessions into one rather than compete for the scanty audience. We arrived in time to see Tom Picirrili read stories and poems. I read “Special Delivery,” which will be in a future issue of CD to about 12-15 people. Paul read a creepy SCUBA story called “Night Dive” and Tom channeled a black jazz musician in an astonishing dramatic reading of his Shivers III tale “Horn of Plenty.” Who would ever have believed that voice could have come from him? I was blown away.
The convention was pretty sparse, though, so we hung around in the dealer room for a while (approximately doubling the room’s occupancy in doing so) then headed back to World Fantasy. I sold about seven copies of Road during the con, so I guess a few people had room for at least one extra book. I didn’t stay for the World Fantasy Award banquet yesterday afternoon, so I missed hearing about King and Gahan Wilson getting Life Achievement awards until I got home.
Phoenix was surprisingly cool–55 degrees the afternoon I arrived. It warmed up the following days, but it was still mighty chilly the night we sat out in the hotel courtyard for two hours to sign books.
Sounds like a lot of fun. Someday I hope to attend one of these – just to rub shoulders with the likes Donaldson? BTW – did he mention whether or not he had started writing the second book yet?
Last I heard, he had not yet started book two. He told me that he expects each of the next three books to take about three years to write, edit and publish. He’s not a fast writer, he says.