I guess I should start off by mentioning the hurricane. Did you notice how it veered north … away from Corpus Christi? Perhaps I am he of little faith? Perhaps. Whatever.

So, I’m in Dallas for FenCon. Alas, Joe Lansdale is among those evacuees of the coast and was unable to make it up here for the con. Sorry Cherie, but I didn’t get to pass on your thanks to him.

Day One of the con has been fun. I was on two panels, have already sold more books than I did at Horrorfind (which was zero, if you recall, so it wasn’t hard to beat). I have another panel at 11 p.m. … on blogging, coincidentally. It’ll be interesting to see who’s sober enough to show up. Not that I’ve seen much drinking going on. It’s not like Horrorfind, though I guess there are some room parties going on or planned.

Personally, I’m following in the footsteps of the mighty George Thoroughgood and am sitting here alone, typing, with a Baltimore Sunrise to sip on. If you don’t know what that is … well, you probably don’t need to know. Once this blog entry is gone, it’s back to work on Ulrik. The story is flowing really, really well. It’s just a matter of having the time to work on it. I’ll likely spend a good deal of tomorrow locked away in here writing. I love my kids, but damn! It’s sweet to have quiet, uninterrupted time to write. I haven’t had to fetch a Popsicle, make a sandwich, clean a mess or kill a fly all day.

However, that does not mean I’m complaint free. Perhaps you know of my love/HATE relationship with SBC Yahoo. The damn Dallas phone number won’t pick up. When I try to dial in on my clunky old laptop it just rings and rings and then gives me a message saying it couldn’t make a connection. So to check e-mail today I friggin had to make a long distance call back to Moore, Oklahoma, just to get a connection.

I’ve spent a good deal of time with Angeline Hawkes-Craig today. She’s full of stories. And I got to sit beside Charlee Jacob on a panel. It was great seeing both of them again. David Lee Anderson is down here, too, so I’m glad to see I’m not the only Okie.

I also got to meet “Alien Motives” Bill for the first time. He gave me a paperback of L. Sprague De Camp’s biography of H.P. Lovecraft. Sweet! You know what I’ll be reading tonight.

Okay. I’m writing this in MS Word. I’m going to try some other connection numbers in this area code and see how it goes. If I have to call Moore again, though, I didn’t want to be connected while I typed this.