It’s been another whirlwind week on the Covenant book tour!

Two days after getting home from my Indianapolis/Cincinnati signing spree, I had to fly to one of my favorite cities — San Francisco — for a two-day business trip… so naturally, I slipped in a bookstore signing while I was out there.

On Tuesday, Sept. 23, I signed at the Borders in the Westfield Centre mall down on Market Street from 4 – 7:30 p.m.

I sold more than 20 books and met lots of interesting people. And my friend Loren Rhoads dropped out with her daughter Lenore; it was really nice to see them, though we didn’t get to talk much — Loren said “nuh-uh” to a  long conversation: “you’re here to work!” she observed. So that’s what I did for the next few hours, and met lots of people from Sweden and England and other places — since there was a 45,000-person Oracle convention going on just down the street at the convention center (the thing is so huge they actually close off a street to accommodate all the foot traffic).

After the signing, I signed a couple copies of Covenant stocked at the Borders at Union Square (I also had signed about 20 copies that were stocked across town at the Fisherman’s Wharf Barnes & Noble earlier that day) and then poked my head into Johnny Foley’s, which was jam-packed.

Thank God for mobile phones with an Internet connection! I googled for other Irish bars and found a place called The Liberties down in the Mission. I cabbed it down there and found a cozy dark wood Irish bar with Newcastle on tap and only a few patrons — a perfect spot for a late dinner and some editing.

I worked for a couple hours on my new novel THE 13TH (I’m polishing it up to turn into Leisure Books in about a month). Then it was back to the Argonaut Hotel (an awesome place – cool brick and beam rooms with a nautical theme and right by the tourist trap of the Wharf) before a half-day business meeting (and lunch at a Smith & Wollensky’s chain member).

I got home around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night and went to work the next day… because I then took Friday off to catch up with my family, do some PR work for next week’s signings and finally to head downtown to guest at the Chicago Horror Film Festival for the weekend.

This weekend I took my second “roadtrip” to promote COVENANT… on Friday morning, I hopped in the car at 6:30 a.m. and headed out on I-80 to Indianapolis for a noon signing at the downtown Meridian Street Borders store (which ironically, is housed in a building named “Barnes”!)

It only takes 3.5 hours to get to Indy from here, but there’s a time change, so I had to hit the road early… and I was a little worried about how long it REALLY would take, since I-80 going into Indiana from Illinois had been closed all week until Thursday night — last week’s torrential downpour courtesy of Hurricane Ike had put the interstate highway underwater all week!

In any case, after circling around trying to ditch my car in a labyrinthine underground parking garage for awhile, I arrived at the Borders just in time. The store has an interesting setup — books are in one half, then there’s a small lobby / elevator hall for the office building tenants upstairs, and then the Borders Cafe is on the other side of the elevators. They set me up facing the elevators in the “book” half of the store, which gave me a perfect vantage point for office building traffic. And it also led to Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong) asking me where the bathroom was. In typical oblivious fashion, I said I had no idea and suggested he look at the building directory behind him. The guys who’d come out to the signing then informed me that this was half of Cheech and Chong, who were in for a show that night. I guess his red tennis shoes should have tipped me off.

I signed 14 copies of COVENANT during the signing, and had a great time chatting with Maurice Broaddus, Michael West, Jeff Funk and Brian Shoopman, all area writers who came out to hang with me. Special thanks to Jeff, who handled special ops store reconnaisance for me, and ended up passing out a bunch of my postcards in the cafe! And since I forgot to bring my camera for the trip again, I’m glad that a couple of Maurice’s cellphone pix from the day turned out OK:

It was mid-afternoon when I headed out again, and did the 90-minute drive down to Cincinnati. After finding the Barnes & Noble on the Kentucky side of the river, I managed to accidentally cross the river back to Ohio and spent the next 20 minutes circling around to get back there…

I stopped at a TravelLodge next to the Aquarium and B&N, and while half the building was without power, (thanks to Ike — large grids of the city were still out of power there from the windstorm they endured) they gave me a room with a working TV and lights. I’d originally intended to head out of town and stay at a cheap Motel 6, but I thought… for $40, staying right next to the bookstore (and the neighboring brewery) was a great deal. Later that night, when I returned and found an occasionally flickering light was all that remained of the “power” fed to my room… I wasn’t so sure.

At the B&N, I set up at a table at the top of the escalator with a slightly diminished stack of books — they’d already sold a handful of the stock that had come in for the signing.

I added some copies of Needles & Sins to the pile and met a bunch of interesting people over the course of the night, from the local man who had come because of the newspaper listing for the event and thought that it might be more of a true “event” with a lecture  (maybe someday!) to the new mother who travels frequently on business to Schaumburg (the town neighboring where I work)  to the mother whose daughter pressed the big red button to sound the alarm and stop the escalator just as I was beginning to sign her mother’s book!

I hung out at the store until about 9 p.m., and sold all 16 copies of Covenant that they had there, as well as 4 Needles & Sins.

Then I headed across the street to the Hofbrauhaus for a couple tankards of on-premises brewed Dunkel and a plate of schnitzel and sauerkraut (heaven).

I would have had more except by the time I thought to ask for more kraut, the kitchen had closed 🙁

I worked on some edits to THE 13TH there, before returning to my motel room to find that I was really going to be sleeping in the dark… since there was no power to turn on a light (though the occasional flicker from the wall lamp when a tiny surge of power did make it through was kinda eerie).

Chalk up another one to John’s ongoing saga of roadtrips of terror … no air conditioning… no screens on the window to leave it open for air… and lights that crackled on and off through the night.

I didn’t sleep that well.

In the morning, I showered in the half-dark, and then drove down to Florence, KY to sign the copies of Covenant that they had in stock (they’d already sold 15 of the 24 they’d ordered, which was cool to hear!)  I also stopped at a Cincinnati Borders that only had one copy, but the manager was really interested in the book and offered to host me for a signing if I swing back that way.

Right next to their store was a place called The Pub, painted all black and advertising 11am – 3pm breakfast on the weekend. I said what the hell and bit — and was glad I did. Piping hot coffee and a melange of mashed potatoes, eggs, bacon, peppers and cheese called “The Blanket” filled in the empty hole from the sauerkraut I missed the night before, and after that I shot out to one more B&N to sign some copies of Covenant before camping out for my official signing at Cincinnatti’s Eastgate Mall Borders for the afternoon.

Over the course of three hours at Eastgate, I sold 23 copies of the book (I left them 1 autographed copy!) which the store manager was very pleased with (she said usually authors sell 5-10 books in an afternoon there).

Again I met lots of interesting people and really enjoyed talking to all of them.  I do hope a bunch of the folks who took a chance on the book because the author was there shaking hands enjoy the novel. The end result of the weekend was 52 copies of Covenant sold (and 9 copies of Needles & Sins), with another 52 copies of Covenant signed and left with “autographed copy” stickers in various stores. And more than 30 people signed up for my monthly e-newsletter mailing list.

At the end of the day, after dropping into a B. Dalton and Borders on the north side of Cincinnati to sign their copies, I had a nachos dinner at BJ’s Brewpub (with a great “Nutty Brewnette”), before driving 4.5 hours straight through (only one bathroom break!) to get home at 11:40 p.m. Saturday night. I woke up this morning still feeling a bit bug-eyed.  But I took Shaun and Geri to breakfast before heading a half hour south to watch our nephew play (and win) a grammar school football game (and then crashing on their recliner to watch the Bears lose miserably).

Overall – it was a great (if tiring) weekend!!!

Over the years I’ve submitted some stories to M. Christian’s erotic SF anthologies, and tonight, he posted an excerpt from one of the racier segments of my book COVENANT in prep for my visit to San Francisco next week (Thanks MC!)…

To check it out, go here: http://frequentlyfelt.blogspot.com/2008/09/covenant-by-john-everson.html

Horror Fiction Review has just posted an interview with me that we did last month!  Check it out here.

Horror World’s LiveJournal feed has posted a nice news update on what’s going on with my Covenant book tour.

And the new issue of Rue Morgue has a thumbnail review of the book that reads:

 “COVENANT—now available as a mass-market paperback—won Everson a Bram Stoker Award back in 2004, and after reading it, you’ll agree that this tight, gripping story was definitely worthy of the distinction.”

Dread Central also did a nice write-up on my book tour, as well as a Covenant book review.   The review called the novel, “a lot more fun to read than I initially expected…” (what did he expect?). 

The reviewer went on to note, “Too often authors don’t want to tackle bizarre or uncomfortable sexual situations, afraid of how they can affect a reader’s comfort level with the story, but Everson has no such qualms. Indeed, the sexual aspects of Covenant are what help it stand out from the crowd of plodding small-town horror stories.”

For anyone who thought Covenant was racy, all I can say is… just wait til Sacrifice LOL!

So, while it’s now been out a couple weeks, this was the “official” COVENANT debut party weekend… with a signing staged at the Bolingbrook, IL BORDERS store Friday night just a mile or two from my house, and the “official Launch Party” at Frugal Muse Books in Darien, IL Saturday afternoon, just a few miles down the road.

Frugal Muse is an independent bookstore that has always supported my books (and was my “local” bookstore for the 7 years I lived in Darien) so it was great fun to stage my “launch” there…

Thanks to the fallout of Hurricane IKE, it pretty much rained non-stop all weekend (“flooding” was a part of the front page headlines of every newspaper in Chicagoland this weekend) so bookstore traffic was not exactly stellar… but still,  I met at least 20 people in Bolingbrook who took home copies of Covenant, including a doctor and a 17-year-old young writer who came to the store specifically to meet me. It’s always cool to meet a young writer, so I hope, in the end, she enjoys the book!

The Doings, part of a chain of local papers did a nice write-up on the signing tour, which you can read online here.

Saturday at Frugal Muse Books, it was kind of a “class reunion” of sorts. People from my work, my wife’s work, my old neighbors, and other friends all dropped in to celebrate the official “launch” of Covenant with me. Click on the photo at right to see a larger version!

The torrential downpours around the area kept some people away, I think, (my wife Geri and I both woke Saturday morning from dreams of a flooded basement — which thankfully didn’t happen to us but was the reality not a dream for hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the area).

Luckily we didn’t have a flooded basement, but after the signing, when a bunch of people came back to the house with us for some pizza and beer… we found that our air conditioning had decided to choke… so while the house wasn’t flooded, it felt like you were breathing water!

Anyway… we made the best of it and true to “kids of the ’80s” form, we used the old turntable in the pool table room to spin LPs by The Hooters and the Pretty In Pink soundtrack.  Kids of the ’80s indeed…

It was a great day with family and friends, and I’m looking forward to next weekend’s stops in Indianapolis and Cincinnati!

Talk about a busy week! Last Thursday I signed in Nashville, then spent the weekend at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, and then on Tuesday I toured the Makers Mark distillery in Kentucky on the way home. This Thursday night, I sat in on the Radio Free El Paso show (AM 1650) with Ken Hudnall. The show is also simulcast on the web at www.khro1650.com. We talked about Dragon*Con, Covenant, Star Trek, The Night Stalker and a bunch of other stuff. It was great fun and I’m looking forward to being back on the show soon.

Finally, capping off my 8-day week, last night, I had a booksigning at the Borders in Southlake Mall in Merrillville, IN. I met all sorts of cool people there (including a policeman who told me about seeing a real life gross-out where a guy’s eyes had literally popped out of his head). And the family of an old high school friend turned up, after reading an article about the signing in The Times newspaper. It was great seeing them again for the first time in a couple years. Jeanne, the store manager, was wonderful to work with, and set me up at a big table with stacks of my books, while periodically making in-store announcements directing people to stop by my table. I sold around 20 copies of Covenant and signed a bunch of people up for my e-mailing list… so I’m looking forward to hearing from some of them when they read the book!

On the “media” front, the new issue of Rue Morgue magazine has a nice plug about the book in its short reviews section, which I found at the Borders last night. The review said: COVENANT – now available as a mass-market paperback – won Everson a Bram Stoker Award back in 2004, and after reading it you’ll agree that this tight, gripping story was definitely worth the distinction.

The new “Pod of Horror” also has a short interview with me in it that I did from the car while driving to Nashville last week — you can download and hear it at http://www.horrorworld.org/poh.htm. Horror World also is doing a contest for a free copy of  Covenant and features the book as their lead review this month. See: http://www.horrorworld.org/reviews.htm.

Today it’s off to a wedding, and then I actually have a chance to breathe for a couple days before my signings next weekend, including my official “Launch Party” for Covenant at Frugal Muse Books in Darien on Saturday.

Dragon*Con Part II — the road home

I survived the roach.

I never saw him again. Though… perhaps he got off the floor of that dingy hotel room after I clobbered him with the TV remote and crawled down my throat to get his vengeance while I was sleeping… because today, the area of my tonsils feels like it’s been sandpapered.

Yep, I’ve got the post-con, didn’t-sleep-for-four-days blues. And another busy weekend coming up to boot — a newspaper interview and booksigning tomorrow night and a friend’s wedding Saturday.

I had a great breakfast at a greasy spoon Waffle House on Tuesday morning before heading out of Bowling Green, KY. An hour down the road I opted to follow the Bluegrass Highway to find the Makers Mark Distillery (a “historic site”!!!)

Anyone who knows me knows that I always chase my Newcastle with a shot of Makers, so when I saw on the map that I was just a little ways from the distillery… it was a fait accompli.

What I didn’t realize, was just how FAR off I-65 the place actually was. While it looks close on the map, the roads there weave around and double back and it took a good 45 minutes from leaving the highway before I finally found the sign that signaled the “end of the road.”

While the roundabout rolling country roads made the travel time double what the distance should have cost, I was fascinated to see the distillery in action, and I learned why I like Makers Mark and Pappy Van Winkle’s bourbon better than any others — they are 2 of the 5 bourbon makers who don’t use rye in the process (Makers uses red wheat).

I even had my picture taken next to the distillery purifier where all the good bourbon comes out. AND, to make it even better, this turned out to be the first day the distillery was in full operation again after a month off — and they were bottling red-white-and-blue wax-capped bottles to celebrate the election coming up (Makers does a number of different wax cappings, which make their product more collectible).

I let myself be suckered into the ultimate tourist trap and “dipped” my own bottle of Makers in the wax… so now I have a souvenir bottle of bourbon that I can never open (unless I want to ruin my cap!).

The detour ended up costing me over three hours, all-told (hard to swallow when you’ve got 8 hours to go) but at the end of the road I met my wife and son for a good ol’ Chicago Aurelio’s Pizza in Tinley Park… which is worth any drive.

Here are some more photos from the Makers distillery:

The entry road to Makers Mark goes through an old bridge.

The women on the line were dipping red, white and blue wax caps.

Here’s a true “dipping” in action.

Here’s the bottle I dipped, drying under a fan.

A nice shot of “whiskey creek,” where all the water for Makers comes from.

The Road to Dragon*Con ’08, Part I

People have told me for years that I should go to Dragon*Con in  Atlanta, but I never found a good reason – while it’s a huge  convention (30,000+ attendees) – it’s known for being a SF/F/Gaming  con, not a horror home. Nevertheless, this year when I found out  Covenant was being released the week of the con, I figured, what the  hell?

I also figured, why not drive down, save a little on airfare, and do a  couple signings on the way.  So that’s how and why I headed south last week, driving from Chicago to Atlanta.

I left Thursday morning and drove an 8-hour leg into Nashville, doing  a phone interview for Pod of Horror #47 along the way. When I got the the  West End Borders, I found out that the manager had been down with  meningitis for the past three weeks, so the store hadn’t posted signs  or done any promotion for the event… needless to say, it was a slow  night.

Luckily, Deanna and David Crews from Hypericon turned up to keep me  company, and I converted a few idle browsers into Covenant buyers  along the way.

Afterwards, I drove downtown to the “strip” where there are a couple  dozen honky tonk bars with free live music crammed all together. I  poked my head into just about every one of them, before heading  another hour south and finding a $25.99 room somewhere in southern Tennessee (I have no idea what the town was.)

Friday morning, it was a little over 3 more hours on the road, before I finally arrived in Atlanta. The road had taken its toll, however, and  I was worried I wouldn’t be able to pull off my 1 p.m. reading — which I had to be at within a couple hours of checking into the Day’s  Inn. But a shower, caffeine and pure willpower got me my badge and  registration and put me in the reading room ahead of time… not that  there was much need… I ended up with only two audience members —  including Elizabeth Donald, who had heard about Covenant on Shocklines.  Ultimately, I did a pretty good reading of “After the Fifth Step” and  the first couple chapters of Covenant… too bad hardly anyone heard!  If I go back again next year, I will definitely lobby to not be the  first reading slot on the program…

My Bad Mojo panel that night went a bit better, and I met Carole Nelson  Douglas, whose work I’ve seen for years. She was very funny as the  group of us (including Rachel Caine, Cherie Priest, Caitlin Kittredge, and Phaedra Weldon) dodged through a series of questions by our intrepid  moderator, Mike Miller, who would turn out to moderate all three of my  panels. That, actually, was one of the unique (and smart) bits of the  DC program — having a staff member moderate the panels. At other cons  I’ve attended, the writers end up moderating themselves… which  sometimes works, but I thought the “uninvolved” moderator was more  effective.

I wandered around halfheartedly after the panel, haunting the  Cruxshadows booth and watching a bit of a short horror movie before  turning in to get some sleep so that I might actually be alive for the  con on Saturday. That was the one bad thing about driving down — by the  time I was recovered and really ready to stay up most of the night, it was the last  night of the convention (Sunday).

On Saturday morning, I drummed up an autographing flyer and ran that around to various  “junk flyer and postcards” tables. In between, I saw some of the  Dragon*Con parade, where scores of Stormtroopers and other Star Wars  figures marched along with other characters. The “dress up” factor at  this con in phenomenal — all weekend long people are standing in the  lobbies of the hotels (FOUR of them)  taking impromtu photos of other  con-goers in costume.

I think it’s safe to say that thousands of the  con-goers “dress up” in at least some way to attend this convention,  which makes the atmosphere of the whole thing feel just a little like  an adult Halloween.

Anyway, after the parade, I met Pam from a local Barnes & Noble store who had ordered some books  to bring for my signing, and set up at a table in the Autographing  room next to Star Trek novelist Keith R.A. DeCandido. I felt a little silly  even sitting in the room with him — he had a good 20 books lined up across the table, while I simply had a giant pile of Covenants, with a  couple copies of my Needles & Sins collection for good measure. I’m afraid I never achieved a signing line, but I did have someone turn up who’d seen me on a panel the night before, and I sold a handful of  books in the first hour. I then stayed on for an extra hour, because  Laurel K. Hamilton and Sherrilyn Kenyon were signing after us — I  figured some of their audience might take a chance on Covenant… and  I was right.

I signed for the second hour next to Jody Lynn Nye, which was fun since we’ve known each other tangentially for years because we both  occasionally attend the Chicagoland Twilight Tales reading series. We also both had stories in the Spooks! anthology from Twilight Tales that I co-edited. She was actually the first person I talked to in two days that I really knew! I sold another 10 books over the next hour before we called it a day. 

Then  I headed over to the Sheraton for a couple hours to check out the  “TrekTrak” where they were showing a fan-created two-part episode of a  new Star Trek program: Star Trek: Phase II. It was astonishing  how close the sets and sound effects mimicked the original, and every  now and then the actors playing Kirk and Spock actually hit some phrases that were spookily like the original Trek. It probably didn’t  hurt that the episode was taken from a script that David Gerrold (“The  Trouble with Tribbles”) had originally written for Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was ultimately never filmed. I’m looking forward to  downloading the episode when they release it online in a few weeks (there were  still some special effects that needed to be input in the rough  version I saw).

After that, I headed up to the guest Con Suite, and ran into Gigi Edgley from Farscape, which was tres cool, as she was my favorite character on the series. I also said hi to Mickey Dolenz from The Monkees, of all people.

As enjoyable as the Star Trek film viewing and meeting Gigi was, and as wildly entertaining as it was to simply people watch on Friday and Saturday, by the end of Saturday night, I realized I’d slightly miscalculated my con-going plan.

I’d spent the week before the con trying to use MySpace to drum up some attendees for my Nashville signing, and hadn’t set up any connections with the few people I DID know, at least through online forums, who were going to be at Dragon*Con.

Definitely a mistake.

I was feeling pretty isolated by the time I sat down Saturday night in the Hyatt and talked to a couple girls from Champaign-Urbana, IL (ironically enough, the home of my alma mater) about Stephen King books and movies. But after a Bass Ale and the chance King conversation,  I took in the nunsploitation panel and felt better (they’re just too silly to NOT feel better after watching cheesy clips from nunsploitation flix!), before seeing a really hilarious indie sexploitation film that teaches women how to successfully overcome the obstacles of working in a skyscraper environment.

Not having any of my usual gang around to talk to, I turned in a bit early again (by 2 a.m.) and cursed myself for missing the Cruxshadows show. I’ve seen them a couple times before, in Austin and San Antonio, but I’d meant to poke my head into their set … instead I got sucked into the movie track and forgot to leave!

Sunday was my best day at the convention, because I was past the stressful part of the signing and reading, and more to the point, I finally hooked up with some friends.  For the “Personal Demons” panel on Sunday morning, I sat next to Jonathan Maberry, who I’ve talked to online for a year or two now. It was great to finally meet him and his wife Sara. And to add to that, Garrett Peck, who I haven’t seen in a couple years (we’d met at World Horror Cons previously)  turned up and “crashed” the panel, since he was part of the Lone Wolf Personal Demons CD-ROM a few years back. He saw the panel title and figured “what the hell – I should be on that.”  Gary Raisor was also on the panel, and the group of us spent a bunch of time chatting afterwards which was nice — it was the first conversation I’d had with anyone I knew in almost three days! It was the kind of “shop talk” I’m used to having 24/7 at a convention.

Right after that, in the con suite, I met Toni Stauffer and Alethea Kontis from Shocklines, who I’ve known online for years. Toni showed me the shortcut to the Hilton, where I caught up with Gigi again and got a quick picture (shown above), and where I also saw Adam West and talked briefly with Walter Koenig (Chekov). I thanked him for being such a longstanding and entertaining part of my life (acknowledging that he’s heard that a million times before).

That afternoon, I hung out a bit at the Larry Smith Bookseller table, to try to help handsell the copies of Covenant they bought off Barnes & Noble’s overstock from my autographing session. Then I headed back to my hotel to hear the new edition of  Pod of Horror which debuted that day with my interview on it (I love having email on my cellphone!) 

After a quick dip in the pool to wake up, I headed over to my 8:30 p.m. panel Memento Mori, which again featured Jonathan and Phaedra (who’d been on my first panel) as well as Gail Martin, Elizabeth Donald and Christina Barber, who did dual duty at Dragon*Con as an author AND musician (her band Ego Likeness  played that night at the Marriott). Elizabeth livened things up as she tossed chocolates to the audience for cogent points and questions as if they were trained seals.

Gail actually did a video podcast with the authors after the panel, which you can see if you click here. My little segment is just over halfway through it.

It was the most fun thing I did at DCon, and afterwards, Elizabeth, Jonathan and his wife Sara and Mike, our moderator all went out to dinner with me to a little pub around the corner, since I hadn’t eaten since the morning. I wish we had thought to take a picture of THAT crew! Much shop talk ensued, and was great fun – I hated for it to end, but we stretched dinner to long after 11 p.m.

After watching Ego Likeness, I went to the horror movie track and caught one of the highlights of the con — a showing of a zombie musical called Zombie Love. It was so good, when I got back to my hotel at close to 4 a.m., the first thing I did wasn’t brush my teeth or go to sleep — it was to break out my laptop, go to the URL for the movie and order it. I can’t wait to show this to family and friends.

Sunday wasn’t as “sad” a day as the end of World Horror Cons usually are, because while the outflux of people was kind of a downer, I didn’t know any of them! (Usually at World Horror Con on the last day, you’re shaking hands or hugging every third person you see saying goodbye!) I did finally run into Chesya Burke for a quick chat (I’d seen her on an escalator my first day there), which was cool.

I also watched a 10 Best Horror Movies panel (and even agreed with about half the choices), took a last walk around the dealer’s room, saw Toni and comic artist Doug Preston again (who I’d met the previous day) and stocked Larry Smith Booksellers with some copies of Dark Arts Books, before I handsold a few copies of Covenant to people in the lobby (I hate hand-selling my own books, but I wanted to make back the money I’d spent buying some of the Barnes & Nobel leftover stock from my autographing).

At 4 p.m. I headed out of the con and a couple hours on the road later had dinner at a Big River in Chattanooga, where I learned the Big River chain has bought out one of my favorite other chain breweries, Rock Bottom Brewery. (They also now own Gordon Biersch). So now even brewpubs are becoming giant corporate conglomerates!

A couple hours later I pulled off in Nashville to have a beer and listen to a couple of bands before putting another hour on the odometer and camping out in Bowling Green, Ky.

It’s kind of irritating that despite having towels in this budget motel (which cost me $18 more than my cheap-o stay on the way down, which did not) this is the only hotel where I’ve ever had the unwanted opportunity to swat a two-inch long cockroach (TV remotes are apparently good for more than just switching channels.)

I’m very depressed to say that while the giant roach lay apparently dead through the bulk of my penning of this journal entry, when I got up to start getting ready for bed, it was no longer dead on the floor. I didn’t realize you had to decapitate the damn things… so now, as I pen this final entry, I’m about to go to sleep in the same room as a giant roach that wants vengeance…

I’m loathe to sleep right now thanks to that, but tomorrow is another day… and  another 8-hour day on the road in fact, so… wish me luck…

Here are a couple more interesting shots from Dragon*Con:

Read about my trip home from Dragon*Con.