I spent Friday and Saturday in Tulsa for the first Sci-Fi Horror Weekend. This was a convention in the vein of Horrorfind Weekend or the Texas Frightmare Weekend. It’s geared more toward the movies and features the stars of some genre gems. The main guests were the stars of the first (that I know of) and best zombie comedy, Return of the Living Dead. There were also several people there from some of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels.

I imagine the weekend was not as well attended as the organizers hoped, but it wasn’t nearly as dead as the Horrorfind Weekend I went to in Phoenix. There was a pretty steady, if modest, stream of people meandering down the aisles. Some people stopped to look at books, but not much money ended up in the hands of the authors in attendance.

Not that it was a bad con. I met a lot of new and intersting people. Among those were Damon Blaylock, who I’d spoken to on the phone and via e-mail a few times. Damon has directed a movie called Howling Moon that is based on the same source material I used for writing Murdered by Human Wolves. I got to see his trailer, which looked really good, and met his werewolf star, Carl Buffington, who seemed very cool. I’m very excited to see the movie. Oh, and Damon wants to do an interview with me for the DVD release.

I met another dude whose name escapes me, but we spent a good bit of time talking about writing screenplays.

Then there were the old friends, like Duvy and Z, Joyce, Dennis MacDonald, another Enid boy writing horror, and Jackson Compton and his very, very pregnant wife (due any day now). John Ferguson, aka Count Gregore, was there and it’s always good to see him out and about.

It seemed kind of strange not having the event at a hotel, so there was no after-show hanging out, and it cost $16 to park for the two days. The biggest drawback of the event was my natural tendency to do everything wrong when it comes to driving. It took an hour and 45 minutes to drive from Moore to Tulsa, but then it took an hour and a half to make the 10-minute trip from the Convention Center to my motel. I got so freaking lost, then when I tried to get back there was road construction everywhere. That’s nothing new, though. If there’s a wrong turn to make, you can bet I’ll make it.