Just got back from ConestogaCon—I’ll share some of my pictures in a minute—but if you follow this link, you’ll find a treasure trove of reports from fellow Fang, Fur & Fey authors who participated. Melissa Marr also will be posting video soon. She recorded many of the panels. This is a GREAT group of writers and I’m so happy to be a part of it.

Conestoga Con is small but mighty!! Had a terrific time and a lot of credit for that goes to Elspeth Bloodgood who runs the programming track every year. Tulsa in July, though... well, I probably don't have to say anymore. In fact, they received so many comments on the weather (100+ degrees with 80% (maybe a slight exaggeration) humidity), the decision was made to change it next year to April. Unfortunately, the same weekend as RT.

But on to pics-- now, you all know I'm techno challenged, but I'll make the attempt anyway.



Here's Tiffany Trent signing the HUGE stack of books at the B&N we visited. Jeff Martin and book seller Becky made us feel welcome.



Jaye Wells and Leah Hodge posing for Mark Henry.




The aforementioned Mark Henry-- wild man extradordinare who read us porno while we drank coffee in Starbucks. Didn't surprise me that people moved quietly away from our table.





My first panel: UF: It's Not Just For Chicks

Panel members: Mark Henry, me, Mark Del Franco, Steve Wedel, Justin Gustanis








Diana Gabaldon was guest of honor. She walked past us at one point and Mark Henry said, "She's ethereal." She is. In her hand she's holding art work from the graphic novel adaptation of her Outlander series to be released this fall. Elspeth Bloodgood conducted her interview.




Dinner at a Mexican joint-- left to right around the table (except, sadly, for the four fans in back whose names I stupidly forgot to write down): Renee George (who has a wicked website--google Romance the Night) Mark Henry, Michele Bardsley (look for Wait Till Your Vampire Gets Home in Nov), Dakota Cassidy (all I can say about her is WOW), Caitlin Kittredge (girl wonder) Jaye Wells (debut novel Red-headed Stepchild comes out next year), and Leah Hodge (all around cool chick.) Renee sent me a pic which is actually much better than mine so here it is:



One of the panels was this really cool reenactment of a fight scene from your book. Here's the battle between Anna and a werewolf that takes place in the fourth book, Legacy, out the end of August. Sorry my pics aren't too good but maybe you can get the idea.







One with me and the group that did the fights scenes: The Twisted Blades



And last but certainly not least, one of the wonderful things about attending cons is meeting readers. This pic with Emily was taken after the panel Creatures: Vamps and Shifters.





PC Cast, me, Dakota Cassidy (uncharacteristically in the back)and Rachel Vincent.

So, that's it. I'll get better at the picture thing, I promise.  ¶ posted by Jeanne Stein @ 4:16 AM  6 comments

  Getting Trashed Mario here:

This weekend I rubbed elbows with scooter trash at the Mile High Mayhem Motorscooter Rally. I crashed their party at the divey but friendly (and cheap) Skylark Lounge. (Strictly as a tourist as I don't have a scooter)

The entertainment for the evening was a Rock Star video game competition. Here is the winning band, Hot Dog and the Condiments--from left to right; Hot Dog 1, Hot Dog 2, Pickle on drums, and Fancy Ketchup on bass.

More scooter-trash nuttiness on the dance floor.

Sunday night, nothing says high-brow entertainment like Lucha Libre! Mexican masked wrestling.


For those who don't know, my first three books were issued in hardback from the Science Fiction Book Club and (ironically) the Quality Paperback Book Club. Add these to your book shelf and you'll make me happy.

Even though the contest is over, check out my essay on the urban paranormal genre at Lynda Hilburn's blog.  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 9:23 PM  0 comments

  You might get lucky Mario here:

First off, welcome back Jeanne. And now she's gone again. This time for something fun.

CONTEST! This week I'm the guest blogger on Lynda Hilburn's wonderful blog, Paranormal Universe. Check out what I've written about the paranormal genre. Leave a comment and you might win cool stuff to include our fave: A DEVIL DUCK.  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 6:17 AM  0 comments

 

Hello friends—

I’m back in Colorado. My dad passed away on July 11th. I want to thank all of you who were nice enough to email or write your condolences. It is much appreciated.

Today I’m off to Tulsa for Conestoga Con and the Fangs, Fur & Fey mini-con. I will take pictures. Mario is shaming me in the photo department.


Got these images from Toni Kelner, one of the editors of Many Bloody Returns. Below is the trade cover and above, the German edition. The release date for the trade is Feb. 3.





In the next three months, I’ll be attending six different conferences. I think I’ll post my schedule next week so if I’m appearing anywhere near you, you can come by and say hello. All in preparation for the release of Legacy on August 26. Then there’s a round of signings here and in SoCal. It’s crunch time once again.  ¶ posted by Jeanne Stein @ 4:29 AM  3 comments

  We don't need no stinking badges Mario here:

I try not to collect crap. I have however kept all my conference badges since becoming published.

I spent most of this week working on proposals and answering what has been an unusual amount of correspondence. I had planned to show only face at the Art Festival at City Park but I wound up staying until the evening (the free booze helped). My friend Eric Matelski paints live beside the band.
New York escapee Jennifer Mosquera shows off her world-traveling art mascot Felipe. (Please ignore Jennifer's fingernails--she's a working artist.)


Here's a sample of Jennifer's art.
  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 8:50 PM  1 comments

  The face behind the voice Mario here:

If you haven't heard, Audible.com bought the audio rights for my first three books (recordings available in September). Here's the voice for my vampire-detective Felix Gomez, the talented Jay Snyder. As appropriate for someone doing Felix Gomez, Jay's hoisting a beer in a New York bar.

I was in New York for ThrillerFest. Being in the Big Apple, I had to first wander around and see what was new. Since scooters are currently the rage and with the obscene price of gas, it's no wonder the NYPD has their own fleet of scootertrash.


The first night, eight of us thriller writers* ganged up for a signing with bestseller author and MC for the night, Lee Childs at the Park Avenue Borders. (*including Laura Benedict, Laura Caldwell, JT Ellison, Michelle Gagnon, Shane Gericke, Tim Maleeny, and Alexandra Sokoloff)

We had a full house though I suspect the attendance had as much to do with the raffle of an eight-foot snake (modeled here by a groupie of Child's) as it did with our literary talent.

What's New York City without a night on the town? Here we are ridding Manhattan of the scourge of margaritas, one glass at a time. Agent Lukas Ortiz and fellow authors Michelle Gagnon, Jason Starr, and Allison Gaylin.

ThrillerFest had on its schedule the big kahunas of bestsellers. Here on the right is the legendary RL Stine. At the left are Robert Liparulo and Jon Land.

A banquet shot in the Grand Hyatt (meaning $$$ for everything).

The ThrillerMaster Award was given to the prolific and successful Sandra Brown. Now on my TBR pile.

Back to Jay Snyder. He shared with me the good news that he and fiancee Michal were tying the knot on Sunday. Gracious voice-over artist that he is, Jay invited me to their reception in Brooklyn where I got to meet Michal (in the blue dress) and many other cool friends in the voice and musical profession. As you can see, Jay cleans up nicely.

Best wishes to the happy couple.
  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 9:44 AM  5 comments

  Hi friends-- this will be a short, sad post. I'm in San Diego. My father is gravely ill. He's survived an unhappy childhood, a stint as a cowboy in Montana, two wars, and raising a family of four kids in a house with one bathroom. Please send all your positive thoughts his way...I want nothing more than for him to go peacefully and gracefully into that gentle good night.

J.  ¶ posted by Jeanne Stein @ 10:52 AM  9 comments

  Here and Gone Mario here:

As a writer, I have the opportunity to meet lots of great people. Last week I was a speaker at the Rocky Mountain High-IG AG, the convention of MENSA. Yes, those super-brainy folks. And yes, they invited me. And no, it wasn't for experiments.

I sat on a panel, It Can Be Murder: Writing Mystery Novels, from the local chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. The authors were Bonnie Ramthun, Bob Spiller, Sarah Hoyt, and myself. Here are Bonnie and Bob after the panel. By then, Sarah had activated her cloaking device and zoomed away.


Thursday I did my part and supported Lighthouse Writers by attending Mixed Taste presented by The Lab at Belmar.


What do Tamales and Memoirs have in common? Jorge de la Torre, chef and Dean at Johnson and Wales University, and Michael Henry, co-founder of Lighthouse, try to explain.


Then sadly, some people we almost meet and then circumstances pull us away. Last year I was asked for a blurb on The Devil's Mambo by New York writer, Jerry Rodriquez. Here was the blurb I gave him:

Double-barreled, 12 gauge pulp. A wallow in gratuitous violence, cheap thrills, and debauchery. You'll love it!

I had hoped to meet Jerry at the Debut Authors' Breakfast at ThrillerFest 2007. Unfortunately he couldn't make the conference because of pneumonia. Okay, we'll meet this year. Now I found out he died on June 22, 2008 from cancer. Jerry was 46 years old.

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 7:09 PM  1 comments

 

Saw my first summer movie yesterday—WALL-E from Pixar. Now since it’s a family picture, I normally would have waited for it to come out in video, if I felt the need to see it at all. But my sis-in-law is visiting and she wanted to see it
so being the champ that I am, I went along.

It’s so cute, it sucked me right in. If you don’t know the story (and I won’t give anything away,) there’s this cute little R2-D2 kind of robot who is alone on earth performing the task he was given 700 years in the past by the last humans before they exited the planet. Seems around the year 2100, we humans turned Earth into a vast, polluted landfill and had to escape to a space station to survive. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class) sole task was to gather up garbage, compact it, and put it in piles. But it’s now 2805, WALL-E is the last of his kind left and probes are being sent back to earth from the space station to see if Earth can again support life. The probe turns out to be a cute little sophisticated device called EVA—that’s all the plot I’ll share. But it’s well worth seeing. And this is from one who eschews movies that do not contain sex and violence. I give it two fangs up.

Next up, though, Ironman and Wanted. What about you?





Speaking of movies. This one sounds good: Ghost. It’s a political thriller starring Nicolas Cage and Pierce Brosnam. Directed by bad boy Roman Polanski. Production starts in September. From Variety:

Cage will play a ghostwriter hired abruptly to finish the memoirs of an ex-British prime minister after the first scribe turned up dead. The ghostwriter's research leads him to uncover skeletons in the pol's closet that put the writer's life in danger. (Tilda) Swinton will play the wife of the former prime minister (Brosnan). Her marriage is crumbling, and she falls for the writer. Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde are producing. Polanski and Harris teamed to write the script.

Since we’re talking about screens, let’s switch to the tube—YouTube offers both an unaired teaser for Angel and the unaired pilot for Buffy. It’s fun to watch. Buffy is shown in about five minute segments so you have to link from one to the other. But here’s the first. Notice anything different about Willow? And Julie Benz? Let's see how observant you are! :-)

As for me, summer slows me down. I’m working on proposals for new projects, trying to get up energy to start the sixth Anna book and gearing up for the September release of Legacy. I swear I work harder as a writer than I ever did in any day job.

Wouldn’t trade it for the world. Anybody got any interesting summer plans they'd like to share? We're listening... well, at least I am. Mario is off somewhere doing something.




I saw George Carlin in person a lifetime ago in a small San Diego Pub. I still remember his Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say On Television.
That was in the 70's-- I think I've heard them all by now.



Happy Fourth--

  ¶ posted by Jeanne Stein @ 5:21 AM  2 comments