This past weekend, The ’Warp attended the inaugural NY Horror Show, in Happauge, Long Island. How’d it go at our first stop of the 2015 convention tour? Read on!

Since I was working the booth alone for this show (that happens, on occasion), I didn’t have any chance to check out the show—or take many pictures, so I had to borrow a couple of head shots from folks’ Facebook pages—but plenty of people stopped by to speak with me and pick up The ’Warp’s offerings. And since the whole idea of going to the show was to introduce horror fans to the company and our titles, that worked out pretty well!

Saturday
Saturday got off to a slow start, but apparently some horror fans like to sleep in late. Which was fine, since things picked up around noon. If you read my State of the Union address back on January 13, then it should come as no surprise that the titles that con attendees were most interested in were my young adult novel Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1, the comic book The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1, the graphic novel Lorelei: Sects and the City, and the illustrated classic Carmilla. It always amazes new readers that Carmilla predates and somewhat influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but what really sells them on the SWC edition are the fantastic illustrations by Pan and Lorelei artist Eliseu Gouveia. Horror fans know good art when they see it!

Mixed in with the buyers and the just-looking crowd were a few folks who stopped by to chat:

Ahmad Ali is a local blues and soul musician, and the host of the radio show Café Ali on WUSB-FM. We got into a discussion about creativity, and the possibility of Ahmad interviewing me for an upcoming episode. Check out his site, and under “Music” give a listen to his work, including his incredible cover of Bobby Caldwell’s 1970s hit single, “What You Won’t Do for Love.” Ahmad knows how to make his guitar sing!

Horror authors James Chambers and Marc L. Abbott paid a visit to catch up, and to talk about writing and Pan and the struggles of small-press publishing. I’ve known James for a few years, ever since we had stories appear in the zombie anthology The Dead Walk Again!, but this was my first time meeting Marc. Definitely visit their sites and check out their work.

In the afternoon, a young woman named Kassandra Cosplayer and her photographer friends from Art Zeal came by to check out Pan and the rest of the SWC lineup, and fell in love with Ms. Zwieback just by hearing about her. (Hey, who doesn’t fall in love with Pan, once they become aware of her?) In fact, Kassandra was so enthused about Pan that…well, I’ll save the details of that discussion for another day…

The day wrapped up with a visit from poet Rich Orth and his lovely wife, LoraLee (with a great name like that, of course Lorelei caught their attention), and another discussion on the ins and outs of writing and publishing took place. Rich gave me a copy of his dark-fantasy poetry collection, Bloody T’is My Valentine, available from James Ward Kirk Publishing (check it out!). Then it was time to pack up the table and head home, to prepare for tomorrow.

Sunday
The day kicked off with a terrible winter blast of freezing rain across the Northeast that caused at least a hundred road accidents in the tristate area, but horror fans fought through the bad weather for the show’s final day. And not long after I was set up for business, I spotted a couple walking by, and the woman’s familiar hairstyle caught my attention.

“Well, this is an odd coincidence,” I called out. The woman looked up, saw me, then looked higher—and noticed Pan on the banner. Between the similarity in hair coloring, and the fact that she and Pan were both wearing black T-shirts with cartoon heads printed on them—hers was Jack Skellington, from The Nightmare Before Christmas—it was no surprise when the new Panatic, Cat, bought a copy of Blood Feud. And then her friends and other folks (including me, of course) asked her to pose with the book. Thanks, Cat, and good luck in the roller derby!

Dr. Howard Margolin, host of the WUSB-FM radio show Destinies—The Voice of Science Fiction, came by with his daughter, cosplayer Rachel Red, and I introduced them to the adventures of our Ms. Zwieback. Howard, who last year interviewed art legend and Pan cover painter Bob Larkin, invited me to appear on an upcoming episode, after he’s had time to read the first Pan novel, Blood Feud, and become familiar with her story and my writing skills. Great! That will help promote the debut of the second Pan novel, Blood Reign. And Rachel, being a teen Goth herself, became another member of Zwieback Nation!

Kassandra Cosplayer and Art Zeal made a return visit toward the end of the day, and we did an on-camera interview to promote Pan. I’ll let you know when and where that gets posted (probably on YouTube). I’ll be easy to spot: I’m the one who talks too much and momentarily forgets how to spell his character’s name when giving out the website address. (I have got to start coming up with shorter names for URLs.)

Rounding out the con was a visit by an actor named Kurt, who specializes in working as a zombie at Long Island’s haunted house attractions; we spoke a few times during NYHS while he was wandering the aisles. We’d met at last year’s Eternal Con, where he’d been promoting his appearances at a laser-tag park—he was one of the walking dead in a zombie apocalypse scenario—and I’d asked him questions about his work. What makes Kurt stand out from the other zombies (other than being a laid-back, fun-loving guy when he’s not in character) is that he can let loose the unholiest of high-pitched screeches that would absolutely scare the crap out of you if you heard it. That talent was what made him so successful at the laser-tag park—his scream would so freak out the human participants when he came lurching out of the shadows, they’d forget to shoot him—and then he’d “kill” them. Nothing like a zombie who’s good at his job, right?

So, that’s the report on the first NY Horror Show. All in all, it seemed to be a big hit with horror enthusiasts, and SWC gained a bunch of new fans, which means it’s more than likely you’ll find The ’Warp set up at next year’s con—freezing rain and interstate pileups permitting.

The next two stops on the SWC 2015 convention tour are the twentieth anniversary edition of the Big Apple Con (March 7, in Manhattan; yes, I just added it to the schedule), and the Connecticut HorrorFest (July 18, in Danbury, CT). Hope to see you there!