Horror News Network, a site devoted to all things ghoulish in entertainment, just published an interview with me about my new ghost story novelette, The Unnatural Haunting of Mrs. Beverly Snow. It was a great interview, and we talked a bit about LGBT representation in horror.
Check it out here, at horrornewsnetwork.net.
And if you haven’t seen the new story yet, you can pick it up exclusively at Amazon!
Thursday, October 6, 2016
It’s that time of year again! New York Comic Con is back! I look forward to it all year, taking a long weekend off from work so I can go on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
I applied for a pro pass again this year, which is an amazing deal if you can manage it. They toughened up the application process, so I was very happy to be granted mine. The best part is it lets you enter through a different entrance from everyone else, skipping the line, which this year was wrapping around the block. I’m not the kind of guy to get up at the crap of dawn to wait in line for hours for almost anything, so I was able to get there around 9:30 in the morning and slide right inside.
Right off the bat I saw my first cosplayer, and I took it as a good sign that she was my favorite Star Trek character.
Lt. Uhura!
I usually avoid the mainstage panels, since you often have to wait ages in line to get into them, but I arrived a little early this time around because there was one I just couldn’t bring myself to pass by. ReedPOP, the organizers, handle these brilliantly, though – since the badges have little RFID chips in them, you just go to the line, tap in to register, then go away. You come back when it’s time for your panel and are guaranteed entry. How long you wait in line is up to you, depending on how good a seat you want. So I tapped in and then went on to explore the show floor for a while. I spotted this amazing Lego Supergirl.
And a few more cosplayers.
Carol Danvers, in her second Ms. Marvel/Warbird costume. Love that sash!
Raven and Beast Boy!
Pretty soon it was time for the first panel I had planned on attending, “Body of Evidence: How We See Ourselves in Comics.” I’m what they call a social justice warrior, so I try to go to as many panels on diversity as I can. This one was pretty good.
From left to right, the panelists were Birgit Pols, Leeanna Ladouceur, Tim Ferrara, Annit Stoll, Jessica Chautin, David Baxter, and moderator Valeria Acklin. There were a lot of interesting comments about body issues and how different body types are portrayed in media, but I was particularly struck by a comment Pols made about the feedback loop of us being fed a certain ideal by pop culture, our attractions being shaped by what we’re fed, and then pop culture giving back to us body types we’re attracted to.
I had a bit of a break before my next panel. First I got lunch in the massively crowded food court, where I spotted this lovely family.
Doctor, TARDIS, and Dalek! You know what they say, the family that Who’s together, glues together.
I went down to Artist Alley, my absolute favorite part of the con. While there I had a rather excruciatingly embarrassing moment with Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics and current writer of one of my favorite comics, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. I told him how much I liked his work, bought a copy of his choose-your-own-adventure Hamlet, To Be or Not To Be, waited for him to sign it, complimented him again, and walked away. Whereupon he said, quite politely, “Uh, that’s twenty bucks.” So, yeah. My social awkwardness made me steal a book from a creator I really admire. I stammered an apology, paid, and walked away. I spent the rest of the con hiding my face whenever I walked by his table, dying slowly of mortification. I’m dying again just thinking about it. Let’s look at more cosplayers, quick.
Green Arrow! I am living for this guy’s facial hair. I mean the whole costume is great, but that goatee is perfect Oliver Queen.
Aquaman! This guy’s ready for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade with those props.
Dazzler, in her classic disco ensemble! Love the hair.
And then it was time for the highlight of my day: “Tales from the TARDIS with Matt Smith, Alex Kingston and Jenna Coleman.” Oh, yeah. This was the panel I had arrived early for. I got back in line a full hour before the panel started to try for a good seat, and I was already pretty far back in line. Whovians are a devoted bunch. But I got in, and being on my own meant I was still able to score a great seat, just a few rows back from the front.
Things started on a bit of a sour note for me – two pre-show hosts came out to warm up the crowd, and one of them made a bit of a transphobic/homophobic joke to a Missy cosplayer. “You’re cute for someone who used to be a man.” Blergh. People laughed. I booed, but nobody heard me. It’s the kind of comment that so many people would think nothing of, which makes it all the worse.
But I let it go once the stars came out. I was too enraptured for my mood to be befouled by thoughtless prejudice.
There they are! So close I could touch them!
I can’t remember the moderator’s name, and Google is no help, but he did a great job of keeping the Q&A moving along. It was an hour of fun stories from some of my favorite people from my favorite show, so I was very, very happy.
Next up was another panel, “Body Confidence and Positivity in Cosplay.”
Left to right are panelists David Baxter, Bernadette Bentley, Robert Franseze and moderator Ivy Doomkitty. This was a really fun panel. I’m not a cosplayer myself, but I really appreciate the talent and dedication cosplayers put into their craft. Combined with my interest in diversity issues, it was fascinating to listen to these four talk with such enthusiasm and positivity about what cosplay has added to their lives. I dug it.
Speaking of cosplay…
That’s black-suit Spider-man, classic Spider-man, and Venom ganging up on the Black Panther. Personally, I think T’Challa could take them all.
Luke Cage, Power Man! Love it.
I was torn for my next panel. One option was “X-traordinary: The LGBT Characters of the X-Men.” I didn’t go to that, and kind of regretted it later when I heard that Peter David went on a bizarre racist tirade about the Romani people. I mean, I know it was ugly and uncomfortable, but it also feels like a real “you should have been there” moment. I watched video later, and yeah, it was pretty nasty. His apology on his blog didn’t cut it for me, either – felt like a deflection, and then in the comments section a doubling-down on his original statements. Really sad, as I like David’s work and he’s so progressive in other ways.
While I try to hit as many LGBT panels as I can, at the same time was “Using Tumbl to Sell Your Idea (From Marketing to Webcomics).” As much fun as NYCC is, I’m there primarily for business purposes, so anything that might be useful to my writing career has to take priority. I love Tumblr but have never found it of much use to me as a writer, and I was hoping to pick up some tips.
From left to right, that’s Zack Rosenberg, Marlene Bonnelly and Amanda Brennan, all from Tumblr, and then some creative Tumblr users, Nick Tapalansky, Kendra Wells, and C.B. Cebulski. The panel was interesting, but focused very much on Tumblr as a visual medium – most of the tips pertained more to artists than to writers. I’m not sure I got a whole lot of useful information that I didn’t already know, but it was entertaining and I’m glad I went.
I had a little time to kill, and found one ominous cosplayer…at least, I hope she was a cosplayer…
Death! Eep! I’m too young!
My last panel didn’t start until 8pm, but it was worth waiting for: “Race & Sexuality: A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tee “Vixen” Franklin & Steve Orlando.” I’m a big fan of both Coates and Orlando, and an admirer of Franklin’s work on furthering the conversation about diversity in comics, so there was no way I’d miss this.
From left to right that’s moderator Jonathan W. Gray, Orlando, Coates, and Franklin. It was a great panel, with a lot of illuminating info on Coate’s Black Panther and Orlando’s Midnighter and Virgil. Some tension arose when Franklin called Marvel out for going outside the comics industry to find their first black woman writer, a situation that Coates pointed out applied to him as well (Black Panther is his first comics work), but the awkwardness got smoothed over. (Mostly.)
And that was it! I headed out for dinner with some friends before making the trek home. Here’s my loot from day one:
Looking back now this was a fairly light day. The top row is all freebies. A couple of paperbacks from the Penguin Random House table that I will probably never read. They look fine, it’s just that I still haven’t read the free books I picked up last year. Why did I take them, then? What, and pass up free books? I also got some free comics from Dynamite, which I will read, and a postcard from someone that I haven’t looked at yet. I bought the first trade of Midnighter from Steve Orlando and got it signed, and there’s To Be or Not To Be, the horrifying story of my purchase of which from Ryan North I told earlier. And then there’s the convention program, with Wonder Woman looking very martial.
Then it was to bed, to get some rest so I could do it all over again the next day!
Day two coming soon…
I’ve got a new article up at Geeks Out! Selling Yourself at Flame Con: An Insider’s Guide covers my experiences as a vendor at the queer comic convention, and offers some tips for anyone who might consider getting a table next year. Take a look, leave a comment, show your love!
I’ll be at Flame Con in Brooklyn all weekend (this weekend, that is – Saturday and Sunday, 8/20 – 21/2016, in case you’re reading this in the fuuuuuuuture), selling and signing books. I made a little map to show you where I’ll be, at table 86. It came out kind of horrible but I made it and I’m sharing it.
I’m going to be selling an e-book only, Flame Con-exclusive novelette, The Unnatural Haunting of Mrs. Beverly Snow. It won’t be available elsewhere until October!
Flame Con is a queer comic/SF&F con – I went last year, and it was an absolute blast. This year has expanded to two full days in a bigger location, and I’m excited as heck to be exhibiting. Pre-sale tickets for Saturday are sold out, but you can get Sunday only and full weekend passes, and they say you might be able to get Saturday tickets at the door if you get there early. If you’re in NYC, and you like geeky stuff (whether you’re queer or not), it’s a great way to spend a weekend.
Tickets and all the info at www.flamecon.org. Hope to see you there!
Saturday morning, 10:30am
I’ve finally done it. After going my whole life without playing a Pokemon game, I’ve downloaded Pokemon Go. I was too old for the mini-monster mania the first time around, but I’ve been looking for a new game to play on my phone and it seems like everyone I interact with on social media is talking about this game. There must be something to it, right?
So the game is installed and I open it up. Hello, Professor Willow! He’s kind of hunky. I move on to customizing my trainer – not a whole lot of options, there. I usually make my game avatars as cute as possible, because I like to live vicariously and pretend I’m not someone who stands in his kitchen in his underwear eating toast over the sink at 10:30am on a Saturday morning. But I guess my trainer will have to settle for being exactly as cute as everyone else’s.
Name my trainer? Oh, crap, I hate this part. I don’t know if you can change it later so the pressure is really on. Brian is taken, obviously, as is Beastmaster. (It seemed appropriate, plus I had a thing for Marc Singer in the 80s.) I settle on BrianBooks, which matches a lot of my other online names but doesn’t have a whole lot to do with capturing and enslaving tiny aliens. (That’s what this game is about, right?)
There’s a Pokemon near me! There are three showing up on my little map, so I click the nearest and boom! There’s a blue turtle in my bedroom, perched on top of my comic book longboxes! It doesn’t seem to be doing much – just kind of looking at me. I can only see it through my phone’s camera – are Pokemon some kind of Lovecraftian eldritch horror thing where they’re all around us, invisible, at all time? Just how long has this adorable abomination been lurking in my bedroom? What nightmares has it seen? (I’ve done some things I’m not proud of.)
There’s a red and white ball at the bottom of my screen. Okay, I know this, I’ve picked up enough from cultural osmosis and an obsessed nephew over the years to know I’m supposed to chuck the ball at the monster. Well, first I try tapping the creature a couple of times, then shaking my phone, then yelling at it, but eventually I figure it out. I swipe the ball a few times and get it on my third try. Then the game freezes.
Dum de dum. Twiddling my fingers. Eventually I close the app and reopen it, and Professor Hottie is there to inform me that apparently I’ve captured a Squirtle, which sounds like something a hustler might do on a glass-topped coffee table. Yay?
All right, that was sort of fun. Let’s do another! The game tells me to go for a walk, so I walk into my living room. Apparently that’s not far enough. I have to go outside? Ugh. What kind of game is this? I guess I should put some pants on.
Saturday, noon
I found something called a Pokedex, where my lonesome Pokemon lives. Wait, you can rename these things? Okay, I need some kind of naming convention, something that’ll give me a long list of unique names. I’m a big Doctor Who fan, so I settle on companions, starting from the beginning of the show. There’s a ton of them, and I can go on to characters from the books and comics if I have to. So I dub thee Susan. Susan the Squirtle.
Susan is a Water type. I don’t know what that means. She has 100 Stardust and 3 Squirtle Candy. I don’t know what any of that means. The options to Power Up and Evolve are grayed out, so I guess I can’t do either of those things, which is probably for the best as I don’t know what they mean.
Still no pants.
Saturday, 1pm
I put on some shorts and venture out on my first hunting expedition. My kill zone: the Laundromat. (I’m multitasking.) I walk down the street, my face buried in the game, completely ignoring its warning to pay attention to my surroundings. I discover that the elementary school at the end of my street is something called a Pokestop. The game just calls it “The Cross.”
I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do with this. There’s something about installing a module, but I’m clueless so I just continue. I’m seeing a lot of rustling grass on the little map, but nothing happens when I click on it. There’s a park across the street and it’s apparently a Pokemon Gym, but Professor Sweetcheeks tells me I need to be level 5 to use it. Elitist.
After getting my laundry going I sit on the bench to wait and check the game. Ah! My Laundromat has been invaded!
This is something called a Fearow, and I need to capture it before it murders that child. I throw about thirty balls at that god-damned bird before I finally catch it. No time to rest, though – there’s another bird, a Pidgey!
Damn, look at those eyes. Those are the eyes of a killer. I catch that one on the second try. I’m getting better! I go back to get my finished laundry and am assaulted by a second Pidgey! What’s with all the birds in this Laundromat? That’s not sanitary. I’m a little confused, because I already have a Pidgey, but I dutifully catch it anyway, because free-range Pokemon are a safety hazard.
On the way out, I notice that the game’s GPS seems to think I’m in the park across the street and so I stumble across another Pokemon, some kind of flying blue rodent called a Zubat.
It’s half-terrifying, half-adorable, and it takes me another thirty tries to catch the stupid thing. I can’t figure out any ball-throwing strategy, it seems to be pure luck. I anticipate running out of Pokeballs very soon.
Somewhere in there I became level 2. Level 5 seems very far away.
Back home, it’s time to rename my new menagerie. I was wondering if the Pidgeys would stack but they both appear individually in my inventory. Following my Doctor Who naming convention, the Fearow becomes Barbara, the first Pidgy Ian, the second Vicki, and the Zubat is now Steven. Now my laundry is hanging to dry, and…oh dear. I seem to be putting my shorts back on. This is not how I planned on spending my day, but the bloodlust is upon me. I must hunt.
Saturday, 3:00pm
I finally figured out what the Pokestops are for (and by figured out, I mean Googled). So I go to the elementary school, spin the picture, and collect some Pokeballs. Score! I also find a Weedle on the street. He’s adorable! And I hate bugs!
I go for a good long walk and it’s like I don’t even know myself anymore. I really hadn’t anticipated leaving my apartment today. I don’t know what this game is doing to me. I walk around the park near my apartment and catch a few more, including a Spearow, which I learn from the Pokedex is the lesser evolved form of the Fearow I caught earlier. I explain to the game that evolution is not a progressive process and so having lesser or greater evolved forms doesn’t make sense, but I don’t think it’s listening.
All around me the digital grass is rustling, but I can’t figure out how to actually track one of these things. So I just wait until I stumble across one. Fun fact – my neighborhood is infested with Zubats. I have six of the horrible things now. I seem to be getting better at catching them, although I don’t know why, as I haven’t changed my technique at all, my technique being, “push the ball towards the Pokemon until the game tells me I caught it.”
I hit a few more Pokestops and collect an egg, which I start to incubate. I have to walk five kilometers to hatch this stupid thing! Is this game trying to trick me into exercising? I don’t trust that. A lot of the Pokestops are churches. Exercise and religion, my two arch-nemeses! This game is really testing my limits. The other Pokestops I find claim to be a mural and a statue, but I see neither in the real world. I collect the Pokeballs anyway.
I find a Poliwag in the street.
Get out of the street, you stupid Poliwag! You’re going to cause an accident! Drivers will get road-hypnosis from that weird spiral on your stomach!
Outside a church I see a young woman walking around with her phone up in the air, much like I am. I suspect she’s playing the game, as she seems to be tracking something, as if she’s zeroing in on an elusive Pokemon. I want to ask her how she finds them, but I’m shy, and also afraid that she’s just taking pictures of the church and will think I’m a lunatic if I ask her for tips on catching monsters.
The game sucks my battery dry, even with the battery-saving function on, so I head for home to review my catches. I realize I need to rethink my naming convention – if I give each Zubat their own name I’ll run out of Doctor Who companions in no time. I also think I want to give similar names to the different evolved versions. I consider using the full names, but that’s too many characters, so I just add an exclamation point for the evolved versions, and a number for the multiples. So my Pokemon prison now houses Susan the Squirtle, Barbara the Spearow, Barbara! the Fearow, Ian the Pidgy (times 2), Vicki the Zubat (times 6), Steven the Weedle (times 2), and Katarina the Poliwag (times 2). Is that good for a first day? I have no idea. I do know that this might not be the best game to have taken up for someone with a strong collector mentality.
Too late now! Hmm…it’ll be dark soon, and I read that you can only catch some nocturnal Pokemon at night… Better put my shorts back on.
