We are thrilled to welcome the following amazing dais of Guests for Camp Necon 43!
Please read below to learn more about our Writer Guests of Honor, Artist Guest of Honor, Toastmaster, and Camp Necon Legends!
Writer Guest of Honor Eric LaRocca
Eric LaRocca (he/they) is a two-time Bram Stoker Award® finalist and Splatterpunk Award winner. Named by Esquire as one of the “Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age” and praised by Locus as “one of strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction,” LaRocca’s notable works include Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats, The Trees Grew Because I Bled There: Collected Stories, and You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood. His upcoming novel, At Dark, I Become Loathsome, will be published in January 2025. The book has already been optioned for film by The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus. He currently resides in Boston, MA with his partner.
Writer Guest of Honor Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award winning and International Latino Book Award winning author and poet.
Pelayo writes fairy tales that blend genre and explore concepts of grief, mourning, and cycles of violence. She is the author of Loteria, Santa Muerte, The Missing, Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Children of Chicago, Crime Scene, The Shoemaker’s Magician, as well as dozens of standalone short stories and poems.
Loteria, which was her MFA in Writing thesis at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was re-released to praise with Esquire calling it one of the ‘Best Horror Books of 2023.’ Santa Muerte and The Missing, her young adult horror novels were each nominated for International Latino Book Awards. Poems of My Night was nominated for an Elgin Award. Into the Forest and All the Way Through was nominated for an Elgin Award and was also nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. Children of Chicago was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in Superior Achievement in a Novel and won an International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery. Crime Scene won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection. The Shoemaker’s Magician has been released to praise with Library Journal awarding it a starred review.
Her forthcoming novel, The Forgotten Sisters, will be released by Thomas and Mercer in 2024 and is an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.”
Her works have been reviewed in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Review of Books, and more.
She is represented by Lane Heymont at Tobias Literary.
Find Cynthia on social:
Or at Cynthiapelayoauthor @ gmail dot com
Writer Guest of Honor Errick Nunnally
Errick Nunnally was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, he served one tour in the Marine Corps before deciding art school would be a safer — and more natural — pursuit. He is permanently distracted by art, comics, science fiction, history, and horror. Trained as a graphic designer, he has earned a black belt in Krav Maga/Muay Thai kickboxing after dark, and first prize in one hamburger contest. Errick’s writing includes: the novels, Blood for the Sun, All the Dead Men, and Lightning Wears a Red Cape; a comic strip collection, Lost in Transition; and a short novel The Queen of Saturn and the Prince in Exile, available in April 2025 from upstart publisher Clash Books. The following are some magazines and anthologies that he has appeared in: Galaxy’s Edge; Fiyah Literary Magazine; Lamplight; and Nightlight, a Black Horror Podcast. Eventually, Errick came to his senses and moved to Rhode Island with his two lovely children and one beautiful wife. Visit erricknunnally.us to see more of his work.
Artist Guest of Honor Dan Brereton
Dan Brereton is one of a bare handful of painters left in the industry who still do comics full time. Just barely out of art school, Dan burst onto the scene in 1989 with the award winning Black Terror miniseries (Eclipse Comics) and hasn’t looked back since. In the last 12 years, he’s produced an amazingly prolific body of work and has been nominated many times for several different industry and fan awards.
Dan lived in the Sierra Nevada mountains with his three kids and a string of ill-fated pets and has just moved to Nevada. Dan’s hobbies include reading crime fiction, watching monster movies (and pretty much any other kind of movie he can get his hands on), travelling to comic conventions, and wrangling his children by way of threats, intimidation and candy.
Toastmaster Richard Dansky
With two decades’ experience in video games, Richard Dansky has contributed to over 40 titles in iconic franchises like Ghost Recon, Might & Magic, Splinter Cell, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six, His most recent credit was on Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Richard is also the developer of the 20th anniversary edition of the acclaimed tabletop RPG Wraith: The Oblivion, and has published seven novels and one short story collection. A former executive of the IGDA Game Writing SIG, he serves on the advisory board on the Game Narrative Summit at GDC. He lives in North Carolina with his mathematically improbable collections of books and single malt scotches.
Camp Necon Legend Robert McCammon
Robert McCammon is the author of 23 novels and two short story collections. Starting with his first novel, Baal, in 1978, McCammon quickly became one of the bestselling horror authors of the 1980s, with three consecutive novels hitting the New York Times Bestsellers List: Swan Song, Stinger, and The Wolf’s Hour. During that time, he also won several Bram Stoker Awards for Best Novel and Best Short Story. As the ’90s dawned, McCammon expanded his writing away from the horror genre, and his 1991 classic Boy’s Life won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. After Gone South in 1992, McCammon decided to try historical fiction, which had always interested him. After clashing with a new publisher over the direction of his new books, McCammon retired from publishing for ten years. He returned in 2002 with Speaks the Nightbird, which became the first book in a planned nine-book series about Matthew Corbett. The Corbett books are set in the early 1700s, and each volume has explored different genres: mystery, adventure, chase, pulp, thriller, and more. In addition to the Corbett books, McCammon has also written contemporary novels, including The Five, The Border, and The Listener. Cardinal Black, book seven in the Matthew Corbett series, was published by Cemetery Dance on April 30, 2019. McCammon is currently finishing King of Shadows, the next book in the Matthew Corbett series. McCammon lives in Birmingham, AL.
Camp Necon Legend Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for over thirty-five years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short fiction for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited more than a hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year, Lovecraft’s Monsters, Fearful Symmetries, The Doll Collection, The Monstrous, Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror, Black Feathers, Haunted Nights (with Lisa Morton), and Mad Hatters and March Hares (stories inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There). Forthcoming are The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea, Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, and The Best of the Best (covering the first ten volumes of the Best Horror of the Year series).
She’s won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, and the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor. Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for “outstanding contribution to the genre,” was honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career, and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.
She lives in New York and co-hosts the monthly Fantastic Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar. More information can be found at www.datlow.com, on Facebook, and on twitter as @EllenDatlow.
