OK. IT’S ALL ABOUT to get crazy again. Tomorrow I’m off to Milwaukee for the weekend to guest at ZombieConX… which will also serve as the launchpad for the mass market paperback release of The 13th. Leisure Books shipped the first box, hot of the press, directly to the hotel… so copies are actually there waiting for me now (I haven’t seen a copy myself yet!)
After Zombie Con, I’ll be doing a couple events in Illinois before heading off to Seattle for my dayjob’s annual convention… though while I’m there, I’ll do a signing at a Barnes & Noble to mark the official bookstore release of The 13th which should hit shelves everywhere the week I am out of town. After that, I’ll be doing at least a dozen appearances over the next couple months to promote the novel.
Chicago Horror Film Festival Redux
Before I fall into the craziness of the book tour, I wanted to make sure I posted about the Chicago Horror Film Festival though! I was a guest there two weekends ago, and had a great time.
Unlike last year, when I only saw one film at the fest, I made a pact with myself this year that I would actually leave my table of books in the lobby and duck into the theatre proper to see some of the indie films, and I’m glad I did. One of the shorts – Clowns vs. Ninjas – I saw last month at Dragon*Con, but two other shorts, The Auburn Hills Breakdown and Everything I Learned About Zombies I Learned From the Movies were standouts. Dead Exit, a zombie short, had one of the most shocking beginnings I’ve seen in awhile. On the features side, the dark descent into madness of From A Place of Darkness and Pickman’s Muse (a Chicago production) were both brilliantly shot, and the British ghost story Scar Crow was nicely atmospheric as well.
I sat next to filmmaker John Borowski for much of the weekend, which was propitious. John is a Chicago film writer/director of the serial killer documentaries H.H. Holmes America’s First Serial Killer and Albert Fish, and I’m looking forward to working with him on a couple projects in the next year. I also reconnected with lots of friends made last year at the fest, from Ron Fitzgerald and his sultry assistant (and fellow writer) Fluff, to the guys behind www.chicagolandhalloween.com and the www.horrorSociety.com.
Here are a few pictures from the event, including contestants from the Zombie Pinup Contest:
