Dick Hill

by Weston Ochse

You did what? What were you thinking? No chance in hell they’re going
to respect you in the morning. And they took pictures? Oh, you are so screwed.
Sucks to be you. I’m so glad that I’m not the one who did what you did.

My first big convention was World Horror Convention 2000 in Denver, Colorado. I was able to do things then that I’m not able to get away with today. Not only am I now a married man, but people recognize me. I’m sure if you were to google pictures of me, you’d find the one where I used beer cans as horns while a few friends of mine made a man sandwich on the bed. Or I could just save you the effort.

In Denver I had a blast. I partied late and often with the cabal. Pentagrams
were burned in carpets. Animal rights protestors were incited by lurid posters.
I spent real quality time talking with Dick Laymon, Doug Clegg and a bunch
of writers I’ve come to know and love as friends. I signed my first
autographs. I met my wife. Really, I couldn’t have had a better convention.

But that picture of the manwich and me is still online. If I ever
make the New York Times Best Seller list, that picture will be online. If
I ever run for governor, that picture will be available for all to see. If
I ever become Pope, the College of Cardinals will have a field day with the
ecumenical implications of the manwich. The only saving grace
is that I’m not actually part of the manwich. Boy, I’d hate to be those
guys.

But let’s face it. That picture, in the great annals of convention
debauchery is rather tame. Right now images are flashing uninvited through
your minds of things you’ve witnessed that are far far worse. We’ve all seen, and sometimes done, things that send shudders of embarrassment through our spines.

Nowadays when I’m at a convention, I need to remind myself that I’m no longer that anonymous partier trying to relive the best scenes in Animal House. My actions are magnified. I also need to remind myself that I’m not used to staying up until 4 AM, so when I begin drinking at 8 PM, by the time I reach 4 AM it means I have 8 hours of alcohol in me. Zoinks! There are times I’ve done things and said things that have left me embarrassed the next day. If it wasn’t that most everyone knows that I’m a good soul, I’d have shaved my head, grabbed a saffron robe and hitched a ride to Thailand long ago.

So in the best tradition of Storytellers Unplugged where we try and pass on hard learned lessons to those of you who dare to want to know them, thanks to my friends at The Other Dark Place, I’ve gathered a list of Does and Don’ts that you should consider prior to attending any and all conventions; especially considering that the World Horror Convention in San Francisco is right around the corner.

• Do introduce yourself to everyone.
• Don’t follow your favorite author down the hall, stopping when they stop, starting when they start, and repeating the word screwdriver over and over and over in a childlike voice.
• Don’t go to the wrong hotel and spend 4 days sampling bikini waxes.
• Don’t pass anything under a bathroom stall for someone to sign.
• Don’t get drunk and start groping editors, especially after you’ve tried to pitch your latest novel to them.
• Don’t try to steal beer from Alan Beatts’ Borderlands Party while underage. He’ll find you.
• Do keep a pen with you at all times. You never know if the only time you get Straub to sign a stack of books is in the elevator or breakfast buffet line.
• Don’t ask an author to sign a stack of books in the breakfast buffet line.
• Don’t get in an elevator with Harlan Ellison.
• Do bring more money than you think you’ll need.
• Don’t think you’ll be getting sleep
• Don’t walk up to a vendor table, assume that the magazines are free, and leave without paying.
• Do have a few drinks while at a party.
• Don’t get so drunk that you are forever known as, “That drunk we saw throwing up everywhere.”
• Do introduce yourself to your favorite writers.
• Don’t forget your own name or how to actually speak.
• Do bring lots of booze.
• Don’t suggest to Coop that maybe this would be a good time to cut back on the coffee and smokes.
• Do speak to Peter Straub if he attends. He is a nice cultured quiet spoken bear of a man with a hysterical quiet sense of humor if you pay attention.
• Don’t swim in the Koi pond at NECON.
• Do put your “Do Not Disturb” on your door.
• Don’t expect the hotel staff to respect it.
• Don’t let Coop take your camera into the
  men’s room.
• Don’t walk up to a guy, grab his name badge, squint, pull so hard on it he moves and exclaim, “What kind of a fuckin’ name is Dan0oo anyway?”
• Don’t be such a hillbilly that you have to have John Skipp show you how to uncork the tub after a shower.
• Do sit next to Keene at the mass signing. You’ll sell more books that way. You’ll also get to meet all of the folks in line to see him.
• Don’t be used as a prop in a Harlan Ellison
  yarn.
• Don’t bring your self published book and glad hand it to every editor and writer at the convention.
• Do br
  ing copies of self published books to give to Wenchie, BloodyMary, Renfield and Suzie (The Reviewers at HorrorWeb). And also bring your camera for the priceless looks they’ll give you and your running shoes if you have any hopes of outrunning them or the books
  they hurl back at you.
• Don’t cram onto an elevator with 20 people when the elevator’s only meant for 10-15. It WILL get stuck…especially if it’s at Horrorfind in Maryland. (And if you are in that situation, and you have the only cell phone, DON’T insist on being such a maroon that you
  call your lawyer before calling 911.)
• Don’t let anyone sign any part of your body that can get you in trouble later.
• Do take chances. Talk to people, pitch your book when asked, and approach that person whose name you know but who you’ve never been formally introduced to.
• Do bring extra everything, including money and space.
• Don’t incur the wrath of the hotel chefs by stealing their idol lest they form a posse and hunt you down.
• Do talk to people about their tattoos.
• Don’t, after drinking until 5 AM, get talked into an 8:30 AM pitch to a NY publisher because there’s suddenly an open spot.
• Do throw cheeseballs during readings.
• Do take pictures of EVERYTHING.
• Don’t take the incriminating ones with YOUR camera.
• Don’t go up to Maurice Broaddus and exclaim, “Wrath! I thought you were bigger!”
• Don’t go up to Wrath James White and exclaim, “Maurice! I love your stuff!”
• Do check out random fiction readings if you get a chance, because a lot of them are pretty awesome, and they’re always kind of sparsely attended.
• Don’t introduce yourself to someone with “That man over there needs to die. Help me figure out how.”
• Do walk up to Tom Monteleone and ask him if he’s really Italian, if only so that the rest of us can watch the thermonuclear explosion.
• Do allow the dominatrix to whip you in public only if you remember that even cell phones can take pictures these days.
• Don’t glance at someone’s nametag and then walk away if you don’t recognize the person’s name.
• Do attend the panels, because even if they’re really dull, it’s kind of funny to watch the pained looks on writers’ faces.
• Don’t get stuck in an elevator with Harlan Ellison, but if you do, make sure that he includes you in the class action suit against the hotel.
• Don’t walk up to an editor who has a story of yours under consideration and and ask, “Why haven’t you read it?”
• Don’t walk up to an editor that rejected your story, and start berating them about it, if you have any hope at being published anywhere… ever.
• Do spend time in the bar, even if you don’t drink, because that’s where the action usually is.
• Do not tape posters on the walls of the hotel. It only gets the hotel staff mad at the conventioneers and the convention staff takes the brunt of the hotel’s ire.
• Don’t shirk your duties if you’ve been elected to moderate a panel, and trick Jack and Seth into doing it instead, so that you can go drinking.
• Do have a great time, because in the end, conventions are opportunities for everyone to come together on an even level and enjoy each other’s company without the stresses of everyday life.

And remember, it’s all fun and games until someone punches the dominatrix.

Have fun everyone, see you in San Francicso and stop by and say hello!

When my turn in the essay-barrel came around last time, I was smack in the middle of WorldCon, and didn’t even realize it was Time until the day had gone by. This time, I’m caught on the tail end of two book deadlines, and only an electronic sticky note saved me from having to hide my head in shame two months in a row.

The theme of this short essay isn’t Time Management, or Lack Thereof, however. The theme today is Word Count.

My novel is coming in short. So’s the middle-grade manuscript I’m working on.

Consistently, this happens. Under contract for 100,000 words? The story will come in at 85,000. 60,000 words? Looking at 49,000.

I can usually make it up in revisions, but it’s always an uphill slog.

A friend once pointed out that nothing less is expected from someone (that would be me) who writes haiku in order to relax. I write sparse.

But I have a different explanation.

I am the youngest of three daughters, youngest by six years. Three girls, which in suburban middle-class America meant that I grew up sharing a ‘kid’s’ bathroom. Six years difference, so when I was a pre-teen, they were already moving into the wonderful teen years. Which meant that they were spending an awful lof of time in front of the mirror. So the moment you actually got into the bathroom alone, you made the most of it. Settle in. Bring a book. Or, in my case, read whatever books your sisters had left there.

Which, one year, included a range of fiction for their high school English classes.

Which included a large amount of Hemingway. Novels and short fiction alike.

It is my considered opinion that this scarred me for life.

No, I don’t think I’m Hemingway. I don’t want to be Hemingway. (I certainly don’t want to go out like Hemingway). My characters are distinctly non-Hemingway-esque (stoic? It is to laugh). But I have to acknowledge the specific influence that bastard has had on my work.

Lord (and my editor) know that I can write a convoluted and complex sentence with the worst of them. I have been known to commit semi-colon abuse, to say nothing of the unlawful (over)use of adjectives. But there’s also always in the back of my mind this unconscious awareness that the modern world does not require the same level of connectivity from sentence to sentence; readers are capable of being interactive, intuitive. I don’t have to – and won’t – connect every single logic-dot.

Say it well, certainly. Say it with as much color commentary as possible (writing is all about the color commentary and the play-by-play). But pare down the language. Make it transparent. Allow the story itself to be the front player, as complex as it appears simplistic.

And that, my friends, leads to manuscripts that, despite the relative heft of plot, will never be considered door-stoppers or bug-whompers. My prose style won’t go there. I’ve tried — my contract requires that I try for that (Luna, for example, wants 100-150,000 words; my past two books for them came in at a final count of 97,500 each). For a fantasy writer, I do Lean, not Fat. Terribly un-genre-ish of me. Why, oh why, could I not have been so heavily influenced by Tolstoy, or Dickens, or Austen?

Hell. Even this essay’s coming in short.

And I blame Uncle Ernie.

(it’s nice to be able to blame the shortfall in wordage on someone who can’t fight back. My editors may sigh but hey, Hemingway.)

So be careful what you leave around in the bathroom, folk. You never know who is imprinting on what — and how it’s going to drive their editor insane, three decades later…