I haven’t lived in Brooklyn for decades, but during the 30 years I did live there, I never once ventured into the neighborhood known as Red Hook. Never wanted to. Why? I blame Thomas Wolfe.

I encountered his short story “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” at an early age, and Red Hook was depicted as a place in which a teenager most definitely would not want to wander. (Well, this teenager anyway.)

I’m sure the area had changed between the 1936 publication of the story in The New Yorker and the time I first read it in the early ’70s, but still … I had no plans to go there. And so never did. Until Tuesday, when I was brought there by BBQ.

Hometown Bar-B-Que, to be precise. (more…)

Readercon—which has been my favorite convention for more than a quarter of a century—is right around the corner, running from July 9 through 12 in Burlington, Massachusetts. Here’s the programming where you’ll be able to find me.

Thursday, July 10, 9:00 p.m.
What Don’t We Read—and Why?
If all of the signals—the reviews, the blurbs, the cover, the author, the publisher—suggest you’d hate a particular book, is that sufficient reason to pass on it? Have you ever tried to read something you thought you’d despise and realized that you loved it? Do you give every book a certain number of pages to win you over, or feel obligated to finish any book you start? If a certain critic praises something, does that make you want to run the other way? We’ll discuss these and many other ways not to read a book.
with Stacey Friedberg, Natalie Luhrs, Sarah Smith (leader), and Patty Templeton.

Friday July 11, 4:00 p.m.
Reading
I’ll be reading my unpublished short story “The Pillow of Disappointment and What Was Found Beneath It.”

Friday July 11, 8:00 p.m.
Dealing with Discouragement
As writers, we learn very early on to handle rejection, but how do you handle it when a story you’re sure is good is rejected by 20 different publications? Or when your carefully crafted novel is shrugged off by five different agents? Or your self-published novella is bought by only 25 people, all of them friends and relatives? Or your fantasy novel disappears from public view after a couple of weeks? We’ll explore personal strategies to deal with disappointments, rejection, and other setbacks.
with Susan Bigelow, Michael J. Daley, Barbara Krasnoff (leader), and Shariann Lewitt.

And if you don’t catch me there, you can always find me hanging out in the halls or in the bar chatting non-stop. When I’m not in the audience watching the other programming, that is.

If you’d like to join me, it’s not too late. You can find more information here.

Hope to see you in two weeks!

For years, as part of advising writers to hold on to what makes them unique, I’ve been paraphrasing something I once heard Tony Bennett say long ago. The quote goes something like—

What when I was young and just getting started critics considered my flaws, now that I’m old and successful they consider my style.

You’ll just have to take my word for that, though. I’ve been unable to track down either the exact wording or original source for his words. But it doesn’t make them any less powerful. (If your search skills are better than mine, have at it.)

Meanwhile, as I caught up today with back episodes of Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, I heard something similar. It was part of the May 10, 2015 episode (yes, I’m that way behind), this time coming from Fred Astaire.

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style.

So keep making the “mistakes” that only you can make once you’re confident they’re saying what you want them to say. Because those are what someday you may end up being celebrated for … if you can believe Bennett and Astaire. (I do.)

And while you’re at it, don’t forget what Gertrude Stein and Bruce Sterling had to say about being yourself either!

Forty-one years ago at just about this time of the morning, this guy (who was neither Amish nor an Abraham Lincoln impersonator) nervously arrived at 575 Madison Avenue for his first day on staff at Marvel Comics (as this date was a Monday that year) …

… where he met this gal, who’d started work at Marvel Comics two months earlier.

(more…)

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted mysteriously about a new DC Comics cover featuring Superboy, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and the Atomic Knights, hinting that its existence was meaningful to me. Many wondered if I was implying I’d be writing comics again, but for reasons alluded to in this recent interview, that’s unlikely to ever happen.

To those who asked over on Twitter and Facebook what I could possibly have meant, your answer can be summed up with another DC comic book cover, one from a long, long time ago.

1962, to be precise. (more…)

So last night I had Chef Paul Fehribach over for dinner.

Sort of.

To be more precise—I was so impressed by my recent meal at Big Jones that I picked up a copy of Chef Paul Fehribach’s new cookbook before I left his restaurant. (I wasn’t the only one of us who did that.) And last night was my first attempt at turning one of his recipes into reality.

Before I used The Big Jones Cookbook that way for its intended purpose, I read it from cover to cover and found it the most interesting cookbook since James Beard’s American Cookery, which is perhaps the first I ever bought. Both are entertaining to read, and I even saw parallels in each chef’s defense of quality ingredients and sadness over the sorry state of what we have to put up with when it comes to food these days. And though 43 years separate the “these days” of Fehriback and Beard, I sensed a kinship between them. (more…)

Back in March, my wife published her first novel, the comics-inspired Temporary Superheroine, and she’s now followed it up with something completely different—Captive of the Cattle Baron.

Here’s the cover—

While this blurb should let you figure out whether it’s your kind of romance—

Abducted by rancher Baron Selkirk—okay, it was an accident, but now he won’t let her go!—former TV child star turned horse whisperer Addie Jelleff enjoys a respite from the media circus that ruined her quiet retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but she’s due back to town to defend her actor pal at his trial very soon. Baron’s vast, isolated ranch is only one of his many attractions, but he’s awfully domineering and she can’t possibly give in to their growing attraction while she’s virtually his prisoner, can she? Baron sees the situation differently. Forced to drop his geology career and take over the family ranch, he’s frustrated by too many people saying no to him. Isn’t he in charge? Why is Addie so mysterious about her past and her commitments to another man? Why won’t she give in to Baron, when every time they touch, they catch fire? It’s a battle of wills—with neither one backing down. Addie can tame the wildest stallion, but taming her own growing attraction to the high-handed rancher and keeping him from breaking through her defenses requires all her strength—and some help from unexpected sources.

If you’re intriguned—due to nepotism or any other reason—head on over to Amazon today!

Good news! Michael Bailey has accepted my 10,000-word dark fantasy “That Perilous Stuff” for the third installment of his Chiral Mad anthology series, currently scheduled to be published during the first quarter of 2016.

That’s my fourth fiction sale in the past 13 months, following sales to Dark Discoveries (which has already been published) plus Genius Loci and Postscripts (still upcoming).

You can see the tentative cover below. Though a few tweaks and some additional text is still to come, this will give you a basic idea of what to expect.

As for the rest of the contents of Chiral Mad 3, Michael has announced all but seven of the stories, as well as twenty poems from 10 poets. Here’s what we know so far—

Fiction (11 of 20):

Gene O’Neill – “3-Dot People”
Ramsey Campbell – “Know Your Code”
Jessica May Lin – “Red Runner vs. The Surgeon, Issue 18”
Paul Michael Anderson – “The Agonizing Guilt of Relief (Last Days of a Ready-Made Victim)”
Stephen King – “The Last Rung on the Ladder”
Richard Thomas – “The Offering on the Hill”
Jason V Brock – “Windows, Mirrors, Doors”
Mercedes Murdock Yardley – “The Dead Collection”
Damien Angelica Walters – “The Whipping Girls”
Scott Edelman – “That Perilous Stuff” (novelette)
Erinn L. Kemper – “A Flash of Red”

Poetry (20 of 20):

Elizabeth Massie – “Black River #1” and “Black River #2”
Bruce Boston – “Beyond Symmetry” and “Reflecting on Reflections”
Erik T. Johnson – “Whisper #1 (A Warning)” and “Whisper #2 (A Prophecy)”
Marge Simon – “Mirror Image” and “Reflections through the Raven’s Eye”
Stephanie M. Wytovich – “Put Me to Dream” and “Welcome Home, Darling”
Ciarán Parkes – “The Speed of Sound” and “Recognizing Trees”
Jonathan Balog – “Insomnia in Reverse” and “Fail-safe”
P. Gardner Goldsmith – “Fair” and “Promise”
Rose Blackthorn – “Arbitration” and “Prescience”
Sydney Leigh – “Folie à Deux” and “Folie à Plusieurs”

To find out who’s lucky enough to fill those final seven slots, keep checking in over at the Written Backwards blog .

Thanks to the recent audio interview of me I told you about that appeared over at The Horror Show podcast—which was picked up by Bleeding Cool and The Outhousers (who knew anything I had to say would be that newsworthy?)—traffic here has spiked.

But since I see that most of the traffic is for the front page of my blog, which as I type these words reveals more stories about food anything else, I’ve decided it would be useful to provide links where those curious listeners can find exactly what they’re looking for without having to dig through thousands of pages.

So after the embed below, where my interview begins at 41:10, are direct links to some of the things discussed.

The seven Ethics columns I published in The Comics Journal can be found here, in reverse chronological order.

Read about the years I spent writing Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins pages and see the original draft of a Stan’s Soapbox here.

Want to read more about the Scarecrow story meant to have appeared in Monsters Unleashed, and why it didn’t? Go here.

Learn more about the artists who never handed in art for various back-ups stories of mine here.

Jack Kirby’s Captain America panel that so ticked me off? You can see it here.

Want to see photos of me skydiving with Jim Shooter? Of course you do!

Find out more about my issue of Omega the Unknown and the work of Jim Mooney here.

Learn more than you probably want to know about the Jack Kirby letters pages controversy here.

All of my posts relating to Captain Marvel can be found here.

My butchering of Marvel’s ’70s reprint comics? Here’s why I’m the guy to hate.

More about my Space Stars episode for Hanna-Barbera can be found here.

Find out about my two unauthorized biographies of pro wrestlers here and here.

Here’s where that new story of mine was just published.

Finally, this will go into detail about why I’m not rewriting an unpublished novel of mine.

That should do it!

If there’s anything else I referred to in the interview for which you’d like a direct link, just let me know.

I’d never expected to return to Alinea. It’s not that repeat visits aren’t worth it, but I don’t get to Chicago often, and even though I had an amazing time there during the 2012 Worldcon, when I do get to that city I only have so many free nights, and there are many other intriguing restaurants which I’ve yet to try—Grace, Elizabeth, Moto, Schwa … the list goes on.

But Ellen Datlow desperately wanted dinner there during this year’s Nebula Awards weekend, and asked me to use my good karma and Internet-fu to get her a table. I’d assumed that once I snagged the reservation, I’d simply turn the table over to her, but after I had us on the books (within seconds of when reservations began to be taken for the month of June), the temptation of eating again at one of the world’s top restaurants was too great.

Which is how I found myself stepping through the unmarked front door of Alinea last Thursday night with Ellen, Barry Goldblatt, Sam Miller, Cat Rambo, and Sheila Williams. (Yes, unmarked door. Unless you know it’s there, you don’t know it’s there.)

And here’s what, for the next four hours or so, we ate. (And you’ll have to forgive me for not going into detail on each course, but rather relying on the text from Alinea’s own menu, handed to each diner at the end of the meal. After having posted five other food reports from the Nebula Awards weekend over the past few days, I’m all out of superlatives. Simply assume that everything was wonderful.)

Surf Clam
sunchoke, cucumber, lilac

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