Gary and I spent the weekend at a small convention in Indianapolis called Mo*Con, which is hosted by Maurice Broaddus. Mo*Con is unusual -- perhaps even unique -- because it's a convention for horror writers and horror readers that takes place in a church and focuses on the relationship between religious faith (including personal struggles with religion and anger against dogma) and writing horror fiction. The other panelists were Brian Keene, Chesya Burke, and Wrath White. The con basically came about because Maurice wanted his church group to see that horror writers aren't a bunch of blood-chugging Satanists. Also, there was a potluck dinner, which is not terribly common at conventions.
It was a good weekend; the panels were interesting and we got to spend time with friends we hadn't seen in a while. I don't subscribe to any religious faith (but am not an atheist) and nobody tried to convert me. I found it a lot more tiring than a regular con because we were always talking to or meeting people so you had to be "on" constantly. Also, since we were in a church, I kept my filters on so I didn't let fly with a casual "fuck" or "shit".
This is the last con we'll be doing for a while. We wanted to go to Dragoncon in August, but we're tired and have a lot of work to get done.
In other news, Gary got word from Leisure Books that -- in order to give readers a better overall picture of the interlinked plots in his Cedar Hill series-- his novels In Silent Graves and Keepers have gone into second printings and will hit shelves at the same time as Mr. Hands next month. This is very cool, since the 1st printings for each book were in the range of I think 36,000 copies or so. So, they've been selling pretty well.
In August of '08, his 4th Cedar Hill novel will come out ... it's entitled Coffin County and it's the prologue to the entire series of novels, short stories, and novellas. If he plays his cards right, he might even be able to convince Leisure to take a gamble on a Cedar Hill short story collection after Coffin County comes out.