I spent last weekend at Crypticon, a horror film and writers convention here in the PNW. If you can imagine a gory, irreverent comic-con but with blood cannons, coffins for children in the vendors section, and Jell-O shots stamped with infectious mosquitoes at the afterparty, well…

Which may seem like an awful time to some, but I had a blast!

So much so that I slept all of Monday to recover from it (blasted MS).

The Seattle branch of the Horror Writers of America hosted a table for members’ books. I was able to sell some copies of my latest book there while meeting some of my HWA member peers. It was a great chance to get to know co-chairs Brianna Malotke and Josef B. Wilke, who really did the membership a huge service with their time and attention to our various books and other merchandise. Other members I enjoyed chatting with: Royce Buckingham, M. Leigh (Melissa Stewart), and Gordon B. White.

One table down, my podcast partner in crime, Clay Vermulm, sold books and merch, and we hung out at the 13th Floor shindig later to watch the bloody sideshow stream on past.

At the event, I reconnected with some great people I’d met there before, such as badass filmmaker Lisa Ovies and Jennifer Douwes, and made new connections with authors Maria Giakoumatos and Matt Dinneman, and podcasters Eric Li of Scariest Things and Justin of the Grit City Podcast.

Also… not gonna lie, it was awesome to see Billy Zane in the celebrity zone, as I’m a huge fan of his movie, Dead Calm.

Which is all to say that this long weekend of scares and frights is mostly about meeting up with people who like to examine the value of horror in our culture… how it shifts with politics and polarities, how it defines generations, how it shows the evolution of marginalized communities, how asking “what if?” in the darkest, meanest possible way is actually an act of understanding, overcoming, compassion, even healing.

I learned a bunch about two tropes: “the final girl” and the gas station in the middle of nowhere. I also savored the discussions about women in horror (as story subjects and as actual filmmakers) which is a sound reason I will go back again and again.

I watched two blocks of films while I was there, far fewer than normal, which is unfortunate because Crypticon has a great film fest, but I did manage to screen three creepy short films from Spain as well as a package of local films on Friday night which were pretty satisfying in their ability to incorporate terror and storytelling and tension in a fresh way.

This isn’t dubbed a family event, and if you saw the schedule and the cosplayers, you’d see right away why… events start and run late-late-late, and the costumes are borderline grotesque/obscene/profane (unless you happen to love body horror, in which case you would love all the (prosthetic) flesh torn asunder, the blood-soaked clothing, the strange and macabre face paintings and ghoulish contact lenses, the references to slashers and witchcraft, to demonic possessions and monster mashups.