Holy smokes! Killer Con 4 was purely and simply FANTASTIC! Great guests, great facility, great programming and staff. But the very best part for me was receiving the pleasure of hanging out with message-boarders Konnie, Jeff, Tony, Chuck, and Anthony. They are dynamite people, and I hope this was only the first of many Killer Cons they attend. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun at a convention before (and I’ve been going to these things for eons!) They usual suspects were great as well: Ketchum, Keene, Wrath, the Deadite Crew (you should’ve seen the zombie makeup Jeff Burk got! I thought he was genuinely a member of the walking dead!) F. Paul Wilson, Allen K. (one of my very favorite artists), Bill Gagliani, Gene O’Neil, Gord Rollo, and–damn–tons more. Icon William F. Nolan was there, along with Brian Lumley (both very nice guys) and super successful Kelley Armstrong (very cool gal). John Skipp was his usual blazingly introspective and intelligent self and also demonstrated a new-found area of expertise: dance machine! I got to have dinner with my former Leisure editor and good friend Don D’Auria, which was an especial treat. The Gross Out Contest was among the most disgusting, with a central topic that seemed to pay serious homage to that region of the human physique which exists to void the Ole Number Two. I met Damien Walters Grintalis who first novel INK comes out from Samhain in a couple weeks; the books concept is dynamite (but I won’t tell you, so you check it out yourself!) Jack Ketchum and I toasted our 20th year as friends and convention cohorts (and, lucky him, he received the luxury of lounging back on a, shall we say, Bed of Bosoms. (I’m sure the pix will appear on the internet soon.) I almost heave-ho’d when Konnie, Jeff, Tony, Chuck Rios and I went up to the top of the Stratosphere; turns out it’s 900 feet in the air! There were people paying 100 or 200 bucks to bungie jump from there. I passed on that privilege. Konnie’s aforementioned “souvenir” shopping spree was indeed interesting. (I won’t go into details save to say only in America could you find glow in the dark rubbers and walking breasts). There was one shop that sold, among much else, an untold number of skulls or all shapes and sizes. And there was a GREAT Zombie Elvis statue. (I should’ve bought it) My total beer tally for 4 days was 7 beers–not bad!–and I only lost 30 bucks gambling. In all, it was a wonderful convention; I’m definitely going again next year, and I hope many of you can too.
Later!
Edward Lee
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