[AUTHOR'S NOTE: The below is my first published work that appeared in early 2008 in an e-zine that is no longer around. It's been sitting in my Short Stories file on my computer for several years gathering e-dust, so I decided to re-post it. A word of warning. "Incident on Ironstone Lane" is torture porn, with enough graphically violent scenes to give Eli Roth a run for his money. So be forewarned, and enjoy.]
The line seemed to stretch forever. It coursed down the rear wall of the celebrity hall, dog-legged until it reached the twin doors, then double backed on itself. It blocked an entire string of celebrity booths, making it difficult to navigate the narrow aisle between the tables. A seemingly endless procession of fans inched along like a giant worm. Loud. Annoying. Irritating. And all of it for that asshole Robert Caine.
Tom Bowen sat at his own table thirty feet down from Caine, seething. He had been here for three hours already, watching the line snake past. It was infuriating. Caine didn’t have a shred of talent or an original idea. He just rehashed a few tired plots about angst-ridden undead and holier-than-thou vampire hunters, spiced it up with some third-rate action and sex, then sat back and watched the dullard fans rush to buy his tripe like lemmings racing to a cliff.
Tom should be the feature celebrity writer, not Caine. In a world where talent and hard work mattered, he would be. But playing by the publishing rules never paid off, a rule he learned too late. He had met every deadline, even when it meant crashing on the manuscript into the early hours of the morning. He had made every change his publisher requested, even when it meant cutting scenes dear to his heart. He had spent hundreds of hours attending conventions, answering fan mail, and making himself available for interviews. And for what? Loyalty? His fans soon began bitching about the endings to his books, as if any of those morons could come up with a coherent sentence. Once sales slumped, so did his publisher’s interest. They used to run full-page ads for his novels in all the major horror magazines. For his last book, they didn’t even bother sending out advance copies for review.
Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat, stretching his chest muscles to relieve the pressure. He felt that all-too-common flushed feeling in his face, a sure sign his blood pressure was spiking again. He reached down to the floor and picked up his bottle of spring water. Shit. It was warm. At least it was wet. He needed something to get the bad taste out of his mouth.
He used to draw the big crowds. He remembered the day when a Tom Bowen book would spend weeks on the best sellers list, or when he could do a twenty-city book signing tour and easily pull in a thousand fans per event. When you added in movie rights, graphic novels and video game tie-ins, and requests for interviews, he used to be one of the biggest names in horror.
But that was five years ago.
The current reality was Tom had spent two days at Baltimore’s Horrorfind Convention, one of the largest on the east coast, and had autographed only a handful of his latest novel. Tom looked over again at Caine’s table. Tom wanted more than anything to go over there, cut to the front of the line, and beat to death the fucker with one of his own books.
Instead, as always, he wimped out and settled for a frustrated grunt. “This sucks.”
“Tell me about it,” Theresa Williams said with a smile, putting on a pleasant face for the convention goers. Tom knew better. He had known her long enough to be able to judge her moods. Theresa may have been smiling, but the monotone quality of her voice meant she was in one of her pissy dispositions.
Tom glanced over at the stacks of his latest paperback, Blood Tide, that were piled along the edge of the table. “Will you look at this? We brought three hundred copies with us, and sold less than a dozen.”
