It was the best of times . . . and then it got really good.

Was here for StokerCon 2017 this weekend:

But I never really saw it from that exact angle, or all lit up like that. Really, here’s the angle I saw it from:

That’s me reading “Dear Final Girls” at the Shades & Shadows event. And here’s a game of Werewolf the Apocalypse I got to public-play with the creator of the whole phenomenon, Bill Bridges, along with, after Bill on the far left, George R…

That’s the afternoon. For the evening:

http://www.shadesandshadows.org/2017/04/shades-shadows-live-at-stokercon/…

Top row: Nnedi Okorafor, Kij Johnson, Steven J. Mariconda and Peter Straub
Bottom row: some dude, Ellen Datlow, Richard Stanley and John Jude Palencar

Artist: Michael Bukowski…

With no variant covers! What you saw was what you got:

[ wish I knew who drew this like it was nothing, when, actually, it’s everything ]

You know George RR Martin tells that story of having the first ticket to the first comic con? That’s how getting to be a guest here feels to me: like a new, excellent thing is happening. So many cool people—creators, readers, fans, cosplayers, 1491s, friends, food trucks, movies, green chile every other breath—and so many excell…

Looks like this is the second Stanley Hotel post I’ve done here (the first). This time it’s for teaching, though. Also? Every single place I go on CU campus—bulletin boards, monitors, displays—I’m looking back at me:

This is that click.

And, for the media fun, here it is on the front page of Boulder’s Daily Camera, here‘s the cover story in Westword, and here‘s some video and a write-up from 9News in Denver. I would say click “her…

Was so cool A) to get to intro it, and B) to get to SEE it on the big screen. I mean, was cool just even seeing it on the wall (I’m like Cher in Colorado, yes: just one name):

[ That snap’s by Christopher Rosales ]

And, yeah, that poster: I guess I see what people are talking about—that Attack the Block owes more than a little to Wolfen.

As for why this was also cool: the werewolves in Mongrels, they’re modeled on the wolfen. The Wolfen may have been the first horror nove…

Digging through some old boxes, stumbled onto this little pamphlet. Way I remember my first reading, it was for this story “West Texas Dirt” I’d won an award for, in 1994, the last year of my undergrad work at Texas Tech. I guess I must have done this one too, though—with a friend I’d go onto MA-land with, Ashley.

Bill Wenthe was the real draw, of course. As he should have been, and still is. Dude writes some solid poetry.

Also, I was so sure that that “…

I forgot to ever say this here on the site, I think. So:

[ click ]…

Was a good signing line for this last night. It’ll forever be my first comic book signing line, too. And this’ll forever be my . . . first published comic project, I guess (“Werewolves on the Moon,” a chapter of Mongrels adapted to a ten-page comic, is coming out in an anthology at some point, but it was turned in better than a year ago, I think).

Anyway, the specs on this: the First Folio‘s on tour, and its only Colorado stop is here at CU Boulder. So t…

One of the cooler group-photos I’ll ever get to have been in, I suspect, since, I mean, it’s too late for me to photobomb The Right Stuff or Reservoir Dogs, or sneak into that hot tub with Steve McQueen, or jump off the roof behind Joan Didion’s Vette:

And, for reference, here’s the original:

So cool that Pablo Kiolseth remembered the right way to hold his hands at the front of the shot. Though, had I been actually thinking ahead, I’d have had my Ze