I Join the San Diego Chapter of the Horror Writers Association (And Immediately Feel Like an Idiot)

Why this book? You didn't write this book. No, I didn't. Hush up and I'll explain.

So, this happened.

On April 23, I went to the first, organizational meeting of the San Diego chapter of the Horror Writers Association (HWA). As an affiliate member of the HWA and a basically-San Diego-based writer...

Imperial Beach!

... I felt that this was a good idea. The first meeting was at the awesome Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, a place I'd been a time or two before.

They'd moved since the last time I was there, so I ended up late to that first meeting.

An exceptionally charming first impression, I'm sure.

I arrived during introductions. Two had already introduced themselves -- a man and a woman. I took a seat, apologized for my tardiness (though, I am oddly-satisfied to say, I was not the latest), and watched the rest of the folks introduce themselves. I ended up sitting with the ones I hadn't met to my left and the rest of the room to the right. We introduced ourselves, we chatted, we discussed what we wanted to do as a group, and we discussed when we wanted to do it. If you want any more detail than that, you'll need to join. Fnord.

During the meeting, I met the woman sitting to my left, whose intro I'd missed. She was quite pleasant, as was everyone else who was there. And there were 14 of us there. It was a pretty amazing first meeting, and we all knew people who weren't there who plan to join.

It was excellent. There was still that one still-unknown-to-me guy, but time was short and my sub-group got caught up discussing J. Michael Straczynski, and that was that.

(You may have already figured out where this is going.)

Imagine my surprise when I got home and checked the San Diego HWA Facebook page and discovered that the gent whose name I failed to get was Kevin David Anderson. As in Night of the Living Trekkie's Kevin David Anderson. As in, the guy who wrote one of the few fantasy/horror books I have shamelessly crowed about and pimped out in the past few years! As in, one of the best zombie books I've ever read's Kevin David Anderson! As in... seriously here... one of other writers in the Kizuna: Fiction for Japan anthology. We've got stories in the same freaking book! We're FB friends! And...!

And I failed to know who he was.

I feel like an idiot.

... And in other news, I'm now an official member of the San Diego chapter of HWA.

(I'll discuss some of the other members of this soon-to-be-legendary group later, when they're comfortable with me talking about them without restraining orders coming into play...)