STC Authorcon II Autopsy

 

Another quality post brought to you by Steve! 

Hey, kids! Last month I talked a little bit about the origin of Scares That Care Authorcon and my plans for it. Now I am back from the con and, let me tell you, it was a hell of an experience!

First, and most importantly, the charity was able to fulfill its obligations to its three recipients this year, and Authorcon III will be happening. So yay!

Second, this was my most financially successful convention in the ten years I've been doing them. Anecdotal evidence suggests many of my peers had a similar experience.

Third, my non-scientific emotional radar is telling me that that ineffable "it" of STCs past is back. When STC first came back after the pandemic I remember speaking with John Wayne Comunale into the wee hours of the night and we both agreed that the atmosphere of the con had become bizarre, perhaps even a little unhappy. This year I felt the same way I used to years ago, that the con was the highlight of my year. And, yes, I told the organizers that.

Now, a caveat. Whenever I read a con recap, I immediately scan for pictures and mentions of myself, because I am a little, little man. You and I could absolutely have had an amazing conversation or experience over the weekend that will not make it into the paragraphs below, and for that, I apologize in advance.  But I had so many great encounters, barring just making this post a list of names (and even that would by necessity be incomplete) there must be some abridgement.  Feel free to yell at me in the comments about how you should absolutely have made the cut, though.  (Also, fans and non-public figures will not be fully identified.)

After scaring a Jovi off my front porch Thursday morning while packing in my underwear, I departed for Williamsburg, stopping only to pick up my customary Wawa tuna hoagies on the way, and arrived at the venue at about 5:00 pm.  The fine balloon artists of Air Studio had fashioned for me a bespoke black tentacle sculpture in honor of my con exclusive, THE THING UNDER YOUR BED.  The tentacle proved to be far more popular than I was as I brought it in, and many people were excited to finally get to see it in the (latex) flesh.

Thursday evening Wile E. Young and I had promised to have dinner with Sean I., a longtime fan who I gather was a bit worried about being popular at the con. Consequently he chose the three sexiest men at the event to drape himself with at dinner, that being my collaborator, myself, and legendary silver fox Craig Brownlie.  We advised no one, which, in retrospect, was something of a failure of concept, that our safeword would be "corduroy" if dinner with Sean turned into an Annie Wilkes-type situation.  Fortunately (?) it did not.

Thursday evening Wesley Southard and Mike Lombardo showed up, so I promptly went to bed.  No, I'm just kidding.  I just ditched them to link up with Jeff Strand, exhausted from being the new Writing Workshop instructor, and his surrogate daughter Bridgett Nelson, who probably tired of all the praise I kept heaping on her debut, A BOUQUET OF VISCERA.  Then we moved out to the lobby to drink with John Durgin, Aron Beauregard, and Daniel J. Volpe.  My good friend and piercer extraordinaire Kenny H. then made a surprise appearance alongside "his lady."

Friday morning Kenny texted me to ask when we would all be going to Rick's Cheesesteak Shop, another STC stalwart.  I then texted Wile E., Lombardo, and Wes, to discover that everyone was, in fact, already in the lobby ready to go for steaks.  I then decided to TikTok the rest of the con, made a single video at the restaurant, and promptly forgot to TikTok anything else for the rest of the con.

That afternoon the charity staff conducted the opening ceremonies, awarding the STC Crystal Pepsi Award to Brian Smith and the First Annual Wilburn-Thomas Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence to Jonathan Janz, recognizable by his hammer pants.  The vendor room was supposed to open at 5:00 pm, but the auditorium cleared out at 4:45 pm , and I promptly sold about ten books before we had even technically opened.  The rest of Friday was insane, and I nearly cleared out my inventory.

Me and Erica W., a fan

At 6:45 pm I moderated the Collaboration panel with Wile E., Wes, Ruthann Jagge, and Daron Kappauff.  That went extremely well, and as I had another panel at 8:00 pm, I stayed up on the second floor, talking to Kenzie Jennings, who was not having very good sales at all, which was apparently indicative of how things were going on the second floor.  That will become important again later.

The next panel was military and alphabet soup ops, led by Scott M. Baker, and featuring myself, John Lynch, L.P. Hernandez, and Rachel Brune.  I was shocked to learn Hernandez was still on active duty and publishing, something I'd always been too cowardly to attempt myself.  I was glad we got to swap service stories, and much to my surprise copies of BROKEN-DOWN HEROES, my semi-fictional war memoirs, began to walk off from the table after that.

I had intended to get precisely zero books myself over the weekend, because that always destroys my profit margin if I go down that route, but Jessica Eppley gave me a copy of her horror debut PENDULUM, I couldn't resist getting a new Strand, and I remembered I'd wanted Mona Kabbani's FOR YOU since she had pitched it to me at Authorcon last year, and I had been obsessed with the cover of Nathan Ludwig's THE COMFY-COZY NIHILIST and Wile E.'s...too long title to recount here.  So zero quickly became not zero.

Wile E. and Wes ran off to get some pizzas, while Brian Keene wandered around in a daze in the lobby saying, "I want some pizza.  Why won't anybody get me any pizza?"  It was an insoluble problem.  Fortunately I was sitting there talking to Jason Cavallaro about procuring girlfriends for the six thousand monkeys he oversees in his day job (true story) because, like Solomon, I was able to cut through that Gordian Knot and said, "Brian, shut up and eat some of Wes's."  

After catching up with Zach Rosenberg on some bitchy industry gossip which neither of us can ever share again due to mutually assured destruction, I joined Wes and the others and discovered that, unlike the Gordian Knot, the pizza had not been cut.  So like the human animals we are, we ripped chunks of cheese-covered dough off a large pie with extra COVID and jammed them down our gullets.

Saturday the vending quieted down a bit compared to Friday, but nevertheless never really slowed down.  Even cooler, the charity staff had moved all of the second floor tables down to open spaces in the lobby and ballroom, so that Kenzie and her comrades would have a better shot at sales all weekend.  What other con would do that for its vendors?  None, I can assure you.

At noon, Wile E., Daniel, Jeff, Tommy Clark, Armand Rosamilia, John Urbancik, and I had our remembrance of our dear, departed friend Jay Wilburn.  There wasn't a dry eye in the house from Armand's opening remarks onwards, and I think the catharsis from that event is part of what put me into such a better emotional place at the con this year.  Afterwards, Jay's wife asked me to help distribute some of his personal effects, including some blackout poetry by Jessica McHugh and some art prints, so I spent most of that afternoon taking care of that, and giving Jay's friends something to remember him by.

After the vendors' room closed at 6:00, Wes, Wile E., Lombardo, Lucas Mangum, Nathan Ludwig, and a few others headed to Maurizio's Italian restaurant for some manigott'.  This will also go down as the night where four of the finest minds in bizarro and splatterpunk developed the concept for RAPE APE: THE RAPIEST APE (coming later this year from Godless.)

Me and Nathan Ludwig

Saturday night was the pièce de résistance (Fr: "piece of resistance") of the con, the Gross-Out Contest.  I, naturally, won, according to everyone present and several people who hunted me down afterwards to say so, although according to the judges it went to some Chris DiLeo guy.

The festivities moved from the stinking heat of the Gross-Out venue to the bar and lobby.  I got to hang out with super fans Rachel S. and Sonja S. (no relation) and listen to Lombardo's vague reminiscences of British television show "The League of Gentlemen" before moving on to the court of King Maurice Broaddus.  If you've never heard Maurice spin a yarn, I can assure you, you are missing out.  I even got to hear one from him I'd never heard before. 

Me, Craig Brownlie, Lesley Conner, and Maurice's son listen to Maurice Broaddus

Sunday Wile E. and I had a reading.  We started with our standard five-minute con specialties, but then as the crowd poured in, we both each read a full short, which I haven't done in years.  Mine was fine, but Wile E. read a tense, utterly engrossing piece about people becoming transfixed with alien lights which I think is going to become a neo-horror classic.  We closed out the vendors tables, and the official con ended.  But Sunday night was coming, often my favorite night of a STC event.  And this year I was in for more than I ever bargained for.  I took a nap for a few hours and struggled to make it to the bar by 7:00 pm, worried that folks would be toddling off to bed early.  There I got to meet Tim Lebbon and Gemma Amor, and discussed the idea of a STC UK, although who knows if that is even possible.  When they and Brian toddled off to bed at 7:45 pm or so I joined Candace Nola, Anton Cancre, Lucas Milliron, Craig, and some others, including the entire Nola clan, for beers until we closed out the bar.

We moved on to the lobby, where every unfinished bottle of liquor in the hotel gradually began to accumulate.  There, Craig and I explained, in excruciating detail, the entire plot of the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Inner Light" to Joseph Pesavento.  No doubt this alone was worth the price of Joseph's admission.

Don Noble, the cover artist of THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE, joined us and began explaining to me how to make modern home-made body armor.  Then Ali S., poor, sweet Ali S. walked by and I yelled out, "Ali!  Why haven't you hung out with us yet this weekend?"

And thus was the Sunday Night Squad born.

We stayed up until at least 6:00 am, smoking way too much, drinking way too little, nearly making Don late for his flight, absolutely making Ali late for hers, nearly killing poor Joseph when he was just trying to get a blood sugar cookie, playing "Heart and Soul" on the lobby piano, and generally making the entire lobby a No Lame-o's Zone all night.

This is what I'm talking about when I say the con was back.  This, this is what I used to do five, six years ago with Lombardo, Rachel Autumn Deering, and other folks I've fallen out of touch with.  We'd find hidden nooks, talk all night, and let the mighty power of fellowship found in the world of literature take us away.

On my drive home a Katy Perry song played on the radio.  She sang, "Just because it's over doesn't mean it's really over."  And I know, that's a stupid pop song about breaking up with a boyfriend who probably never existed or something, but it kept going through my head the whole way home.  

Authorcon isn't really over.  

Scares That Cares isn't really over.

The way it makes you feel isn't really over.

It's never really over.