I went on Saturday. I saw Jacob reading three short pieces- one was about wolves and silver spirits, another was about those big easter Island heads appearing in Los Angeles, and there was another one. They were entertaining! After the reading I accompanied Jacob and a friend of his and I watched them eat in the bar.

The celebrity room was cool- I got to talk to two celebrities. First I talked to Ken Foree, who was in The Devil’s Rejects! Then I talked to Tony Todd, who’s been in a lot of things but is best known for portraying The Candyman. George Romero, (Night of the Living Dead) was there, but you had to wait in line and I didn’t. There were also a lot of people who had portrayed zombies in the various Romero films there, and of course the ubiquitous Count Gore De Vol. I actually grew up not far from Channel 20 when Count Gore De Vol was on, so I remember when he was on the air.

Finally I got to talk to John Lawson, the mad genius behind Raw Dog Screaming Press. Raw Dog Screaming publishes recognizable names in horror- Michael Arnzen, D. Harlan Wilson, Matthew Warner, and books by both of the husband and wife team of Ego Likeness – Donna Lynch and Steven Archer. John Lawson is always friendly and interesting to talk to. I met Donna Lynch at Balticon a few years back, and she wrote up a list of Goth/Industrial bands for me that I still have! I now have two advance reader copies to review eventuially- Blankety Blank: A Memoir of Vulgaria by D. Harlan Wilson and Isabel Burning by Donna Lynch.

One thing I did notice is that there are English spellings in Isabel Burning. “Colour” for “color”, “humour” for “humor”, and that sort of thing. It’s best to avoid English spellings for a book printed in the United States, written by an American author. One Britishism thrown in frequently was the adjective “bloody”. However, there’s much more to the difference between the way Americans and Brits speak than just using the word “bloody” and the British spellings. I’m surprised the editorial staff at Raw Dog Screaming didn’t pick up on this. It would have been better had the book simply been set in the US. As it is, it comes off as a tad pretentious.