I attended StokerCon, the annual convention of the Horror Writers’ Association, for the first time this past weekend. I remembered that I’m the loudest shy person you’ll meet, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who didn’t comment on my awkwardness as I waited beside them, looking for an opportunity to introduce myself.

It was a lovely weekend, busy and exhausting but also fun and incredibly productive. I met soooo many wonderful people and made new writer friends. I got the opportunity to tell two of my favorite authors, James Tynion IV and Caitlin Starling, how much I love their work (and then restrained myself from trailing them down hallways). I met the wonderful Ellen Datlow and was able to thank her in person for including me in her next Best Horror of the Year volume.

I’m so grateful to everyone who came out to my reading Thursday. I think that might be the most people I have ever read to, and I was really gratified to receive so many wonderful comments afterward about what people enjoyed. It was a fun group to read with, and both Jacques Mersereau and Kathleen Palm had fun and varied readings that made for a lot of contrast!

I also had the chance to meet with a few other members of the online writing group I have been with for years. These are AMAZING writers who all have incredible things coming out (Temple has SIX BOOKS this year!?!?!?!), and they’re incredibly kind, lovely, and generous with their time. Rachel (author of the Bram Stoker-nominated “And She had Been So Reasonable“) read from her already-incredible-but-not-yet-finished novella tentatively titled “HouseMaggie,” about a woman whose wife becomes their house. Temple has an incredible number of books already out and forthcoming, but the most recent is The Neon Revelation. And Ryan will have a novella out next year with Laughman House Publishing, No Future to Be Had.

The list of panels was brilliant and almost too much. I could not make it to everything I wanted because there was so much overlap, but it was so cool to see multiple panels on BIPOC and queer/genderqueer authors and literature. The Gothic was a common theme of panels this year, and it was very cool to hear multiple conversations about ways that the gothic subgenre evolves in the hands of authors who are queer or of color. I could not make it to all of them, but I attended “Female Asian Gothic: Fury and Metamorphosis,” and “The Ghost in the Margins: Queerness in Gothic Horror.”

These panels both discussed all the ways that isolation and anxiety shift within their version of the subgenre. Panelists in “Female Asian Gothic” mentioned a lot of elements, but a lot of conversation focused on being diaspora authors reaching for their heritage and also on the unique ways in which family dynamics make for a kind of isolation that happens without really being alone. The “Ghost in the Margins” brought in historical queer gothic books such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Haunting of Hill House, but also on the power of the gothic for queer and genderqueer authors to talk about their unique experience of isolation and anxiety around bodies and relationships. Both panels addressed the current political climate, from the attacks on queer and trans people by public and private entities to the upswing in anti-Asian racism since the arrival of COVID. The gothic has new contexts and offers potential for exploring them.

I could probably talk about a lot more, but I am tired, I’ve got a book to write, and I’ve got a lot of new books to read.