I had a fabulous time last weekend as a guest at North Virginia Community College – Manassas, who has been running a “Horrorfest” all month to celebrate student creativity on the dark side. The event began with my reading in Colgan Theater (I read a sampler of things, from excerpts from 100 Jolts to zombie poems from Gorelets Omnibus to a dark slide show of images and poetry based on my trip last Halloween season to the Mutter Museum). The booksigning afterward was great because I got to meet lots of great folks, from people I knew only from twitter to a few good folks from Virginia Writers Club. Though I was so busy that I didn’t get many good pictures, it was relatively well-attended, and the dynamic duo that run Raw Dog Screaming Press came down from Baltimore to hang out. The following day, I held two workshops with NOVA students (called “The Sense of Dread” and “Taking Your Reader by Surprise”), which included not only some deep conversations about writing in the horror genre, but also a deconstruction of a Black Sabbath song and writing activities involving such things as clowns and hammer killers. It was a lot of fun to meet new readers, and I was honored to come to NOVA to inaugurate Halloween week. Thanks to Prof. Lorraine Goldberg who coordinated and was an awesome host for both days (and good luck NOVA students on your short stories for the writing contest!).
You can see even more photos in the Raw Dog Screaming Press page dedicated to the event.