Happy Wednesday Scribblers, I hope you are having a wonderful week. Today I’m here to share my experience at World Fantasy 2026 (find out more here). The convention this year was located in Oakland, CA and I was asked to be the booth manager for Liminal Fiction (learn more here). Usually, when I do events with LimFic there is a small group of us authors, but this time there were 26 of us and we had a corner booth, so J. Scott Coatsworth (find him here) and I had our proverbial hands full. There was a lot to manage, and overall the group of authors (several new to LimFic) were terrific. With the con in Oakland, CA I was planning to commute up each day, but J. Scott offered to split a room and I took him up on the offer (and I’m so glad I did). Not only did we have a terrific view see below:

But we were going from about 8:30am until 9pm or 10pm each night with different events, or dinner, or meeting with folks. World Fantasy by far was one of the busiest conferences I’ve been at, and I enjoyed all of it.

Emz (HorrorAddicts.net Loren, J. Scott and M.D. Neu

Vanessa, Melissa, Brian, J. Scott, Steve, M.D. Neu

As you can see above we hung out with Emz from HorrorAddicts.net (find them here). And we got to have dinner with the crew (Steven, Mellissa, Brian, and Vanessa) from WaterDragon Publishing (learn more here) who are always a lovely group of people. Of course, those weren’t all the people I got to meet and see. I had the absolute thrill of my life meeting Kin Stanley Robinson (find him here) and talking with him and his son Tim (find him here) both of whom are truly wonderful guys. For those of you who don’t know, Kim Stanley Robinson is a huge inspiration for me and his works; Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars inspired me to write my A New World series (find it here). We had a fantastic conversation about his series and the affects it had on my writing. And since Tim and I write vampire stories so we chatted about our vampires and what we love about them and discovering that both Tim and I write different types of vampires, which is always fun to see how other people treat vampires. Find my vampire series here, and find Tim’s vampire book here.

I didn’t just get to run into Kim Stanley Robinson, I also got to chat with my cover artist Morgan (find him here) who did the incredible covers for Hawaiian Sun (find the book here) and T.A.D. - The Angel of Death (find the book here). Morgan is not only an amazing artist but a truly terrific guy.

On a special note, I was gifted a Haunted Mansion poster signed by the amazing Bob Gurr, which was a huge surprise and the gift made my day. A big thank you to Rina Weisman who ran the con and is a lovely person.

As you can see, I had an absolutely great time and I even managed to sell a few books. Thank you to everyone who came out and said hello, supported the con and stopped by our booth to check our books out. Here are some additional photos from the event to enjoy.