The Ghosts of October

October was packed full of good times. I don’t think this is all of them, but it’s all of them I can dig up goods for—or, that I can remember to dig up pics and links for.

Started out giving a zombie lecture to an auditorium of people at CU:

zombie shots: Teresa Nugent

Then I was at the Lighthouse in Denver for Atlas Obscura’s way-cool, properly spooked-up event:

pic: Josh Schlossberg

Then it was GoH’ing at MileHiCon, where I got to give a little mini-talk on slashers:

At which point I blasted off for Alabama, which had even more slashers:

pic: Nathan Poole

Also in Alabama, I got to read to a—first for me—candlelit outdoor amphitheater of people, followed by lots of book signing and picture taking. Great, great time:

pic: Charlotte Pence

Oh, and how could I forget: somewhere in there I flew down to Texas for the Permian Basin Writers’ Festival. Which is to say, I went home to Midland, gave a couple talks, saw a couple people I hadn’t seen in forever, and then took a very rare photograph for me—some Whataburger trash in the bear grass. Which is something I never get to see up here in Colorado:

And, talking stuff all in the wrong order, there’s this “Bringing the Weird and Dead to Life” panel I did with Carrie Vaughn and Molly Tanzer and Marcio Acevedo at Front Range Community College:

( a lot of pics were taken, but man, I don’t know where they ended up, just know I signed releases for them )

Too, CNN came calling, wanting to put me on the small screen talking about Halloween, but, really, man, I just don’t know that much about it, and had to tell them. Though, had I read this thread beforehand, I probably could have faked it:

click for the whole thread, not sure how these tweet-embeds work, just that they work differently every time . . .

And, midst and among all this craziness, I was on the television and radio news pretty much constantly, but still did a couple of normal (phone, pod) interviews as well:

And, was honored to have made some of the many Halloween-type lists circulating in the land of October:

And, had stories come out in some way cool anthologies:

And maybe even most important: I finished another novel. That makes three I’ve written this year (two slashers, one haunted house). Now maybe I’ll see if I can jam down a novella or a comic book or a screenplay these last couple months. However, an early copy of the third book in Arden’s Bear and the Nightingale series (there a better name for them?) just found its way to me, and I know that’s getting top, top priority.

Anyway, anybody needs me, I’ll be the one still cleaning all this make-up off his face

Fabulous Skeletal Starchild
( really I’m the one haunting all the Halloween clearance aisles, but shh, I don’t want anybody else getting all the good stuff )

As for where I am next . . .  I think it’s Tattered Cover (Colfax, surely) in Denver, December 5th, 7pm, then BookBar (Denver, still) December 8th, 7pm again. And, on Thanksgiving day, my story “Moonboys” goes live and free (with audio!) on Lightspeed.

Anyway, until next Halloween, keep that pot stirring:

(this has to be a Macbeth gag, yes?)
Author: SGJ