New Orleans Jam

I meant to write an insightful post about my amazing adventures in New Orleans for World Horror Convention 2013.

But instead I wrote this song. It’s on the ukulele, so you know it’s probably heavy metal.

But you can read a little about my experience by surfing over to these blogs.

Brad C. Hodson

Mercedes Yardley

(any of you jokers reading this, link drop those I am too lazy to remember in the comments)

What you need to know boils down to this:

• I travelled with my great friends Mercedes M. Yardley and Matt Czar. Bailey Hunter and Harley May joined us. And we explored the city like champs.
• We rented a house instead of staying at the hotel. Best. Idea. EVAR. Way to go AirBnB
• Bats fly around the city. This is awesome to me.
• Horror writers are far more cuddly and friendly than they have any right to be.
• I met with my publisher. Yes. My publisher. I’ll spill the deets when we have the cover, promise.
• I ate alligator and it really did taste like chicken. I wonder if bats taste like chicken too.

Friday Funny: Best Hamburger On Earth, Evarrrrr

Have you ever asked yourself: "Self, how can I tell the difference between a burger that is weak, and one that has strength?"

Well ask no more, because Daym breaks it down for you.



There is something so magnetic and delightful about this guy's profound enjoyment of his food. I personally think more people should get this excited about what some might call "mundane" and "everyday" things.

But maybe not THIS excited...



(Unless you're also riding a dinosaur while filming this rainbow)

World Horror Convention 2013 Preshow

As this post launches itself into the waiting arms of the interwebz, I'll be halfway to New Orleans for World Horror Convention and the 2013 Bram Stoker Awards.

I like writers' conventions. My personality type is energized by people. As stated by one online personality test (always so accurate!) "Strangers are just friends that Mason hasn't met yet."

However, I am doubly looking forward to this convention.

Not only will I be hanging out with some really incredible people whom I've met at recent conventions (whom I've blogged about here and here and here) but we're renting a party house.

Ok, maybe not like, raging parties. But my dear pal Mercedes Yardley of Illiterati fame, and Matt C (a writer friend and coincidentally my neighbor!(and who is in our rival critique group that has yet to come up with a name)) and the ever graceful and sly Bailey Hunter (@Slave_To_Coffee) are renting a house in the French Quarter from which to launch our midnight attacks.

Well, we might be reading and writing lots. That's kind of like a midnight attack, right?

Kind of like how these are really cute stuffed beavers... right? Right? RIGHT?

These devil beavers were for sale on Craigslist...
They haunt my dreams with their beady eyes.
No really, they have beads for eyes.

Plus, when I get back I'll have some exciting news to share with you peoples.

My Non-Luddite Rant Over eBooks

Moving stinks, don’t it?

Especially when you possess more books than most county libraries.

This is just the foyer area...
Floor to ceiling, baby

I more than once heard exasperated friends (who’d I'd roped into helping me lug boxes around) ask whether I’d ever heard of eBooks.

Why yes. Yes I have.

See, I’m not really a Luddite. I have the smart phone, I do the Twitter thing (I still think people who tweet should be called twits, just saying)

But gosh darn it, I want to FEEL pages when I read a book. I love the wood pulp smell of my old battered paperbacks, and the dusty tang of all those gilt-edged hardbacks.

And there’s a part of me that doesn't entirely trust digital media.

Not the content, but the technological architecture and it’s susceptibility to manipulation by anyone with either power or an agenda. Since eBooks are a post-Napster commercial enterprise, the architecture is “locked”.

As opposed to, say, MP3s.

You can make MP3s to your heart’s content. There’s nothing really stopping you from playing, copying, distributing or sharing MP3 files—at least not from the technological side. The MP3 was originally a proprietary audio file format designed by Steinberg in Germany; they used to charge a licensing fee to create MP3 files. But no one programmed in DRM so somewhere along the line the genie was let out of the bottle and no power on earth can put it back in the bottle for Steinberg to control.

In other words, you are the master of your MP3 files. Enjoy that, revel in it, cackle a little maniacal cackle if you must.

It is different for your eBook.

Did you know that in 2009 Amazon pulled copies of George Orwell’s “1984” from Amazon AND FROM the eReader of everyone who had purchased the book? (They call that irony) It’d be like a publisher reaching into your bookshelf and removing the book you bought last week. It doesn’t even matter the reason the book was yanked: IT WAS YANKED. Sure, sure, the internet goes berserk when it happens, but this feature is BUILT INTO THE ARCHITECTURE.

Are you picking up the paranoia in my all caps?

Yeah it’s convenient, and yeah it feeds our instant gratification itch. But it’s not really ours so long as the technological architecture facilitates content control by anyone other than the end user.

What do you think, O great expanse of Internet?