I had a great four days in New York at World Horror 2005, though I’m a little bit slow on the uptake today. I didn’t party hard, and I didn’t stay up terribly late, but I’m still a little bit wrung out and spaced out. Travel does that to me.
I got into La Guardia at 12:45 and had to make a beeline to the conference hotel to moderate a panel at 2 pm, the first one of the convention. Made it with about fifteen minutes to spare. Brian Keene met me in the lobby and took my luggage off my hands, which made life easier. More than one person offered their condolences when they found out I was rooming with Keene (and Steve Shrewsbury, too), and try as I might, I couldn’t convince anyone that maybe Keene was the one who needed the words of comfort.
The panel was a fine indicator of how good the convention was going to be — animated, witty and funny. Having Jack Ketchum and Tom Monteleone on the panel helped a great deal, but there was good participation across the board and from the audience, too.
It was a very busy convention. The programming slate was outstanding, and I had very few moments during the day when there wasn’t much to do. I had to sacrifice some programming on Friday afternoon to find time to have lunch with my agent. I had a fun dinner with Jack Ketchum, Hank Wagner, Dave Hinchberger and his wife, Phil Nutman and others at the Carnegie Deli on Thursday night, where they serve huge dill pickles the same way you get chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant and the pastrami sandwiches are about six inches thick. Had dinner with Michael Slade (Jay Clarke and his daughter Rebecca) on Friday night.
Among the highlights of the programming for me were the one-hour Q&A session I had with Mick Garris on Friday afternoon and the Flash Fiction contest Friday night, where my story “Your Shoes” tied for second place. The judges were Michael Slade (and, no, I didn’t buy them a lot of drinks at dinner earlier to ensure the fix!), F. Paul Wilson and Ellen Datlow. The story will be posted at the Twilight Tales web site in the near future. We had five minutes to read our stories; anything that went long would be cut off. None of the 15 entrants risked the wrath of Bill Breedlove, though.
My second panel, moderated by Jack Haringa, was on Friday at noon, where we talked about publishing non-fiction but ended up talking mostly about reviewing horror–the tendency of some reviewers to be either overwhelmingly positive or negative, and what might be done to moderate that trend. My reading was on Saturday morning, after Rain Graves and Elizabeth Massie. I had five or six people in attendance (thanks, Weston and Yvonne and Rain). The story was called “In a Country Churchyard” and it is one of the two dozen or so that I found in the attic last month that dates back to the early 1980s, though I’ve edited and revised it since rediscovering it.
I watched Riding the Bullet for the first time on Thursday night, and Garris screened the first fifteen minutes of Desperation on Saturday evening after his reading.
The most talked-about person at the conference was, undoubtedly, Harlan Ellison, who I’d never encountered in person before, but who lived up to all the stories told about him. He was loud, obnoxious, offensive, abrasive, contentious, argumentative, insulting, and funny as hell, all at the same time. Where he finds the energy and stamina to be that loud all the time defies me. I’m glad I wasn’t one of the four-to-eight people stuck in the elevator for ten-to-thirty minutes (depending on who was telling the story) with him on his way to the Hollywood panel, which was so well attended that we had to move it from the panel room to the ballroom. On Friday, I joked about forming a support group for people who Harlan Ellison screamed at, but investigation proved later that it would have been redundant with the WHC attending membership.
The only issues I had with the conference were the interminable wait for elevators (fortunately my room was on the fourth floor and I got my exercise on the stairs more often than not), the overpriced lobby bar and the small hospitality suites. The latter were so crowded that I had a hard time enjoying myself and rarely stayed longer than a few minutes because of the jostling and pushing as people made their way to the alcohol in the back. I cringed at paying $7 for a beer in the lobby, and I probably wasn’t alone in choosing not to do that, so that diluted one of the central places for hanging out at cons like this. Usually, if you didn’t know what to do with your time between events, you could go to the bar, but this one didn’t open until 4 pm and was so expensive that it didn’t even make Plan C on my list of fallbacks.
The dealer’s room was well represented. One dealer in the hallway had these cool Victorian portraits that changed into evil ghouls when you walked past them. It was the sort of thing you first notice out of the corner of your eye–made me wonder if I shouldn’t have skipped the offer of absinthe served in a bronzed human skull the night before.
Most nights, though, I barely saw midnight, if at all. The days were full enough for me without sacrificing brain cells at the alter of alcohol in the wee small hours of the morning. Guess I’m showing my age! I’m probably forgetting a ton of stuff — like meeting Michael Whelan, talking with Peter Straub, and a whole host of other cool folks I met or re-met during the show. I may have to post addenda as things come back to mind.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday morning exploring Central Park for the first time. The place is huge! I only got as far as the big reservoir in the middle. The one huge mystery, though, was the ice skating rink that was being used yesterday. People were skating–outdoors–and it looked like the surface was ice, though it can’t have been unless there’s some magical underground cooling system that keeps it frozen. It was sixty or seventy degrees at the time. Impressive.
As usual, I didn’t get to see much of the city beyond seventh avenue and a ten street stretch extending down to Times Square. There was just too much to do at the conference.
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