The third day of StokerCon was an especially great day, although all of the days were pretty awesome. I am going to start with Saturday though as that is because that was the best day. I got to see a lot of old friends and a few old friends I met for the very first time. For the uninitiated, StokerCon replaced what was known as the World Horror Convention; a group of writers, academics, librarians who deal with-you guessed it, horror more commonly known as the Horror Writers Association (the HWA.) I attended the very last one in Georgia after I halfheartedly left the podcast I had created and was running at the time. (That’s an adventure unto itself and for another time.)
The peak of the convention is the coveted Bram Stoker Awards. It’s the “Oscars” for writing spooky things. An acknowledgement from a writer’s peers that their work isn’t only good, but exceptional.
So, let’s go back in time.
All the way back in 2011, I became part of up and coming writers all housed at one publisher. We were a scrappy group of writers who lifted the pen on the regular and made beautiful darkness. This was all twelve years ago and this small group of writers have remained mostly in tact. A few have almost given up the ghost, but somehow, there still stands a an admirable group.
And so it happened that there was a semi-reunion of some of us at StokerCon23 and while it was difficult to get us all in the same picture at the same time, I did manage to get a bit of us.
The big smile on the left is the great Jessica McHugh. On the right is the Three Named Devil, Paul Michael Anderson. Jess writes books while writing other books. She has always operated this way as long as I have known her and she does it by hand. That’s a lot of work and it pays off as she’s been nominated for multiple awards. Paul is an extremely talented author who has a ton of street cred and all the talent that backs it up. (If you see #bfy, it may be from one of us and our brother C. Bryan Brown.)
In the middle is another picture of Paul Michael Anderson and on the right is the great Kenneth W Cain. Ken is one hell of a writer, editor and human being. Ages ago, he asked me to narrate his collection called Fresh Cut Tales. That was amazingly fun to do and still a gas to hear! Oddly enough, when we met in 2012, we both had literal babies. Now we have old babies. Ah, the passage of time…
On the right is Jessica McHugh again and in the center is the extraordinarily awesome Lydia Peever! I have known Lydia for what seems like forever and this was the very first time meeting her in person. You couldn’t sandblast the smile off of my face. She is a good friend and a hell of an author. (Looking for an amazing vampire story? Get hers -it’s called Nightface. (Seriously. I put hers up there with Invisible Chains by Michelle Renee Lane, and Interview with the Vampire by the late Anne Rice. )
On the right is Lydia of course and in the center is the mighty Cynthia Pelayo who won the Stoker for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. Cina also made Stoker Award history by being the first Latina winner.
Ever. (Trail; blazed)
This one is Stephanie M Wytovich and in lieu of asking her to send me the picture she took, I felt better about lifting this from her Instagram page because it makes me so happy to read. I met her at a horror convention a million years ago and we’ve been friends ever since. She’s amazingly talented and legit has the most adorable daughter. She’s an award winning poet, novelist and a professor. She’s also a badass.
All of those pictured above are in fact, badasses. Regardless of where we all started, we are all continuing to move forward which if you think about it, is the goal. All of us who write have the seeds of doubt planted into our heads and our job is essentially to trim the hell out of that thing until the day you can pluck the seed fully out. They way to do that, the method of removal is to move forward. Always, forward.
I hope I didn’t miss anyone that was at StokerCon that falls into this group and please let me know if I did; we all joked that we should in fact form a trauma recovery group with our collective experiences at any given point. It was one of those “We have to laugh or we’d just cry a lot” moments and we chose to laugh.
We have travelled actual miles and we are still going, moving forward. Onward and upward. The most important part is that we are still here.
Still here.
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