What a wonderful weekend at the Frightreads horror book festival in West Friendship, Maryland. I got in as a vendor via a late cancelation. My sales rocked. All my swag and marketing paraphernalia was claimed. This thing has grown massive and what a blast running into friends, old and new, like Richard and Billy Chizmar, Anthony Williams, Brian and Christina Kocienski, J.W. DeSantis and people who’d come to see me and grab my latest works. I made new friends at the festival and have been invited to a handful of upcoming book events.

And after nabbing my only purchase of the show, A Toxic Avenger four film box set, I got to meet the legend behind the Troma empire himself, Lloyd Kaufman. The man is an absolute riot and completely kind. Toxie here was slipping me some horror recommendations before the camera got us. Too flipping cool.

My wife, fellow author TJ Perkins, joined me on day one and we had a total blast as you’ll see in the following pictures. On the second day, I got attacked by Jason Voorhees circa the ninth Friday the 13th film and the day before, stalked by a larger-than-life Chuckie, but I made it outta there with all limbs still intact.

The Baltimore-based Charm City Ghostbusters were on-hand with their own decked out Ecto-1 and a ton of operating film props. The O.G. Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, Billy Bryan, was amongst their cavalcade. Bryan was a righteous dude, coming by each one of our vendors tables to shoot the breeze on the first day before things got revved up. One of the stars of the promenade was cosplayer and aerialist Becky Taha, who had the most spot-on timing all over the floor. My nickname for her persona was “Snack Clown.” We had a groovy time trading war stories with a duo from the Baltimore Krampus ensemble. Thank you, Frightreads, and thank you to everyone who visited me and bought a book, in some cases more. Mad love for you all.

My wife has a weird “thing” for mutant flora.

–Photos by Ray Van Horn, Jr. and TJ Perkins