About
For the record, Chesya Burke began calling it Mo*Con because she knew I hated nicknames, Mo in particular, and because my friends are who they are, the name stuck. So I blame Chesya for the name, but the idea of Mo*Con I blame on Brian Keene (for the uninitiated, most things related to the horror genre are Brian Keene’s fault).
After a late night of … networking at a convention, Keene and I got into a conversation discussing the theme of spirituality in his work. I found him to be a deeply spiritual man in an interesting place in his spiritual journey, vacillating between doubting God’s existence and being pissed at God. But the tenor of the conversation really resonated with me. So much so, I asked him if he’d be willing to come to my church and talk about his doubts in front of some of our congregation. He agreed.
Granted, I probably should have cleared the idea with our head pastor first. The idea of inviting not only a horror author, but many horror writers and their fans, frankly, terrified a lot of folks. We ended up having a special Sunday evening service (we had never had a Sunday evening service before or since) and to many people’s surprise, the event was a huge hit.
For the record, Brian and I weren’t surprised.
The next year, since I was encouraged to do it again except bigger, I brought back Keene and invited a few other friends: Wrath James White, Gary Braunbeck, & Lucy Snyder. WITH A SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE BY CHESYA BURKE!!! We had a spirituality discussion that ran nearly two hours long and the only complaint was why didn’t we go longer. We dove into the issue of race and racism in the genre. Gary Braunbeck debut an early version of the short film based on his story Rami Temporalis and then delivered a sermon Sunday morning that everyone still is talking about.
And, sure, there was the ambulance incident.
For year three, we changed gears a bit. Nick Mamatas, Mark Rainey, Matt Cardin, and Lucy Snyder headlined. Bob Freeman and Kim Paffenroth were among our featured guests along WITH A SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE BY CHESYA BURKE!!! There was a Celtic rock band (Mother Grove), there were spirited discussions on religion (from a variety of perspectives), writing (maybe I shouldn’t have introduced the editors as “rat bastards who have rejected me”), and gender issues (where we found out most of the men present live in terror of the women present) which probably shouldn’t have been taped because Lord knows the panelists forgot they were on camera.
And, sure, there was the police incident.
This is the history of Mo*Con to date. We want to continue to be a place where we can come together and discuss some of the larger issues which affect our writing, our social conscience, and our spiritual lives. And we want to have fun.
We’re taking bets on whether or not the fire department will be involved this year.