Dark Drafts: A Weekend of Authors and Ales

SOMEHOW, IT’S ALREADY been a week since I was in Pennsylvania for the Dark Drafts Festival at Bube’s Brewery. Jan. 24-26, 2025 was really a weekend that I will remember forever because it was an adventure all around. Tiffany Koplin from the Facebook Books of Horror group encouraged me to sign on at the Tomes of Terror event last fall and I was nervous about doing it for a couple reasons:

A) I’ve never driven that far to a con and if I went, I wanted to drive so I could take a good selection of books. And…

B) I didn’t really look forward to traveling in late January, when ice storms and blizzards are often the weather forecast. I drive a Mustang, so if there was a snowstorm that week, I was screwed.

But I lucked out there. The weather stayed great the entire weekend. I left Thursday after work and stayed overnight near Cleveland (the halfway point, which also gave me the opportunity to have dinner at a fave chain – B.J.’s Brewhouse). I hit a few snow flurries, but that was it. Leaving Thursday allowed me to get into town in Mt. Joy, Pa. in the afternoon on Friday instead of driving 11 hours straight, so I had time (and energy) to unload and participate in the VIP functions that night.

Friday – Pre-Game

I have never driven past Cleveland on I-80 before, so I enjoyed the rolling hills of east Ohio and Pennsylvania after the boring flatland of Illinois and Indiana. And it was kind of cool to drive underneath small mountains! There are a handful of tunnels that you go through in Pa.

Before I went to the event site, I decided to make a stop at Vortex Books & Comics in Columbia, Pa., just a few minutes away, to visit my old Delirium Books and Leisure Books labelmate Brian Keene. He just opened the store a year or so ago and it’s a super cool space. Right on the corner of a downtown area, packed with comics and well-curated books. I knew I was going to see him later that night at Dark Drafts, but I wanted to make sure I saw his store before the weekend got crazy.

It was already dark by the time I got to the brewery, and things were in frantic motion there as they finished setting up for the evening’s VIP party. I met Kate Hopkins and Kendra Allen, who put the whole thing together, checked into the hostel-style room upstairs and dragged all my books to my table for setup later.

Then… I headed to the bar to grab a quick dinner and to check out the thing I’d been wondering about for weeks:

Everson IPA.

The brewer, Tony Morrell, had tapped a West Coast IPA two days earlier that was named in my honor, and I was anxious to know if I was going to like it or not…

Luckily, I loved it!

Thanks to J.A. Barrios, who had dinner next to me at the bar, for shooting a picture of me seconds after my first sip!

Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni came over for the VIP party that night, so I hung out upstairs with them for a bit and reconnected with Wesley Southard for the first time in ages.

After some fun reminiscing about World Horror Conventions and other things of old, we all went down to the bar for the VIP party and everyone tried on the mic for karaoke (I sang The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry”). Several Everson IPAs were quaffed before bed that night.

And bed, I might add, was in a pretty cool location.

The brewery has a few rooms on the top floor that share a communal bathroom. Each is a theme room, and I had the Arabian Nights room for the weekend.

It was comfy and cool:

Saturday – Game On!

Saturday morning began with a VIP breakfast courtesy of Dark Drafts, which was awesome. I don’t usually eat breakfast, but since I was going to be behind a table all day, it was just what I needed. And then I went downstairs with my coffee to finish setting up the table.

The layout for the weekend was kind of like an author treasure hunt. There were over 40 authors at the show and the brewery had rooms all over. There were four rooms on the main floor with a handful of authors each (I was in one of those). Then upstairs in the big ballroom/breakfast area, there were a bunch of authors. And then in the two lower levels (“the catacombs”) there were a bunch more!

So attendees roamed all over the brewery all day.

I was next to Ben Farthing, whose name I had known from Books of Horror, but who I hadn’t read before the show. He was a great table partner, and at the end of the show, we swapped books — I immediately read his I Found A Circus Tent In The Woods Behind My House when I got home last week and loved it.

I talked to a bunch of readers, and met a guy who had had me sign copies of Covenant and Sacrifice the last time I was at an east coast event — Horrorfind in 2012. I signed The 13th for him this time around.

While I didn’t get to meet as many of the other authors as I wanted, due to us being so spread out, I did meet a bunch, and everyone was super cool.

I was especially psyched to finally meet Dan Franklin (whose Down Into the Sea is amazing!) Dan is not only a great author, but he is my editor at Cemetery Dance, so it was awesome to be able to spend a little time talking about the cover and contents of my upcoming short fiction collection, All Triggers, No Warnings, that they’ll be publishing late this spring.

I also had a great time talking with Candace Nola (who told me stories about mustard that I will not repeat) and Leigh Kenny who came in all the way from Ireland. Brad Ricks helped keep me brave enough to do karaoke on Saturday and Sunday nights and Lisa Breanne pullled me into the end of the masquerade on Saturday night. She is an IPA lover, like me, so she brought me some IPAs from the Northwest to try — Fremont’s Lush IPA, Ninkasi’s Total Domination IPA and Scuttlebutt’s Living Daylights hazy IPA. I brought her some of the Midwest’s best — Bell’s Hopslam and 3 Floyd’s Zombie Dust and Turbo Reaper.

Prior to the masquerade (and a turn at the karaoke mic for “Blister in the Sun”), I hopped in the car to explore the area a little. Thanks to the recommendation of an attendee, I went to dinner at Mad Chef Craft Brewing, a pretty hoppin’ brewery about 10 minutes away. I loved their Green Lights IPA so much I brought home a crowler.

While I was there, I did some writing and ended up in a long conversation with another couple at the bar. It’s the unexpected things that you run into on road trips that are the best!

Sunday, Fun Day

I was moving a little slow on Sunday morning after a late night with lots of beer, but so was everyone else! Traffic at the show was a lot slower than Saturday, so I took some time to talk with some of the other authors, traded some books and talked a bit with my (somewhat) local friends Tiffany Koplin and Staci Mae from Books of Horror.

At one point, they pulled me into the brewery to take a professional picture with my Everson IPA, which was fun… and later that night, I actually met the brewer, Tony, who was super cool. We talked for at least a half an hour about beer styles and hops. Definitely another unexpected high point of the weekend.

When the show proper was over on Sunday afternoon, I packed everything in the car and headed back over to Vortex before they closed. I realized that I had not actually gotten the chance to LOOK at what was on the shelves when I got into town, because I just talked to Brian. This time, I bought a copy of Suburban Gothic by Brian Keene and Bryan Smith, which I’ve wanted to pick up for years, so now I have a signed copy. Going to have to connect with Bryan one of these days to get the other signature!

I stopped for dinner at Loxley’s, a cool place that Wes Southard recommended; great beer menu and it looks like a fun place in the summer with all sorts of outdoor space. Tried a couple of IPAs there (Big Oyster’s Hammerhead and Funk’s Super West Coast), but wasn’t blown away by anything like the night before at Mad Chef.

So then I headed back to Bube’s, (which is when I met Tony) and after dropping a growler of Everson IPA in my room, I briefly joined a ghosthunting tour of the brewery. They were using phone apps that can pick up low radio waves that ghosts supposedly can use to communicate with the living. I have to say, I am glad I saw it, and heard some voices from the apps, but… I remain wildly skeptical of using mobile phone apps to talk to spirits. Even though one of the apps did spit out “John” shortly after I walked in the room. It’s a common name, after all. And it said nothing else that seemed non-random. At one point, I stood where there was a cold spot seconds before and felt nothing. The ghosts are gonna have to give me a little more than that to make me a believer.

Eventually, I returned to the bar for a round of karaoke with Brad Ricks (I sang The Replacement’s “I’ll Be You,” and Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing.”) I didn’t close the place down that night, since I had to be up at dawn to do the 11-hour drive home. It was actually a good drive; I hopped onto a couple conference calls for the dayjob which helped kill a couple hours. And when I got home, instead of collapsing, I took my wife out to Miller’s Alehouse for dinner. So after a weekend at a brewery, I closed it off with my favorite 3 Floyd’s Zombie Dust pale ale.

All in all, it was a phenomenal weekend. I just wish I’d taken more pictures and gotten to talk to some of the other authors more. Maybe next year?!

Here are some more photos from the weekend, including one of my book and beer haul!

2 Comments

  1. Looks like you had a helluva good time John. Really terrific pictures and updates on some IPAs (Ninkasi Total Domination is one of my favorites here in the PNW). I’m really looking forward to your upcoming books. And, save me a pint of your Everson IPA.

  2. It was a great weekend and I really liked Total Domination – Lisa really wanted me to taste that one and I’m glad she brought it!

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