I don’t know how I missed this, but back on January 14, Peter Tennant had some extremely kind words to say about my zombie collection What Will Come After (which is now also available as an ebook).

Over at Black Static, Tennant wrote of the book:

A collection of zombie stories, with Edelman injecting new life into an old archetype and giving a kick in the pants to those who think zombies are good for nothing except shoot ’em ups (though those are fun too). What delighted me about this collection was the sheer variety, both thematically and in terms of technical virtuosity, with verse plays, stories within stories, grue playing off against a metaphysical dimension, and reifications of classic literature.

Thank you, Peter! Why, that’s almost enough to make my zombie heart start beating again.

Ad Astra 2011 was so overflowing with Guests of Honor (since it was the con’s 30th year, the committee attempted to bring back every previous Guest of Honor) that rather than have us give Guest of Honor speeches or be interviewed individually, the con doubled (and sometimes tripled) us up for low-key chats. Which ended up being fun and comfortable, because it was just like hanging out and catching up with a friend.

Here’s my final piece of Ad Astra video, as Kathryn Cramer and I ramble for what’s hopefully an entertaining hour.

(And please forgive the ambient noise seeping through from the hallway. It took awhile before an audience member thought to shut the doors. But I think you’ll be able to understand us throughout anyway.)

Two weeks ago, I told you that my collection of zombie short stories What Will Come After (now a Shirley Jackson Awards nominee!) was available as an ebook.

But that’s no longer my only ebook, for those of you who’d prefer reading me via pixels as opposed to dead trees. Because The Hunger of Empty Vessels, which was a 2009 Stoker Awards finalist in the category of Best Long Fiction, can now be purchased electronically, too.

Why should you buy my novella? If you don’t trust me, trust David Mack, who wrote:

“The Hunger of Empty Vessels is an unnerving work that peers into the darkest corner of the human soul and makes one fear what lurks at the bottom of that abyss—but also makes it impossible to look away. I dare you to try.”

Plus it’s only $2.99. Cheap! What a deal!

I’ve been thinking about exploding cows for the past couple of days, and of how I should finally share in some permanent way that long shaggy dog (shaggy cow?) story of mine. I’ve shared it several times to crowded rooms at conventions, but that’s as far as it’s gone.

What has me recalling those unfortunate bovines right now is The Collected Stores of Jack Williamson Volume Eight, which showed up in the mail this week.

When I began flipping through the book, what first caught my eye were the two Science Fiction Age covers printed on the inside front and back covers, which made me smile. Then, looking to see what was written about the stories reprinted from those issues, I got a little choked up, because I discovered that Jack had spoken to me from beyond the grave.

Since Jack died several years ago, I’d assumed that any story notes would have to be written by someone else, but no—Jack had known the contents of this volume so far in advance that he’d been able to write about them in 2005. And this is the final sentence of his passage about having “The Firefly Tree” published in Science Fiction Age:

It was the first of mine that Scott Edelman bought for Science Fiction Age, a great magazine while it lived.

Thank, Jack. That means a lot.

After reading that, I set the book aside for a bit, pleased by Jack’s kudos. When I picked it up again, it was to read Connie Willis’ introduction. I expected to see her love for Jack shining through, but what I didn’t expect to find were exploding cows.

Yes. Exploding cows. My exploding cows.

First Connie mentioned in passing that some of the difficulties those of us who visited Portales faced in getting there were “floods, blizzards, and exploding cows.” But in the next paragraph, discussing those of us who’d made multiple visits to the Jack Williamson Lectureship series, she got more explicit, saying that I personally had returned:

” … in spite of the fact that one time, he not only witnessed a wreck between a train and a truck full of cattle, but ended up on a smoke-filled plane which had to make an emergency landing.”

Which got me to thinking—I’ve told the tale of this adventure before crowds many times at cons, once with Connie on my lap as if she were a little girl being told a bedtime story. So isn’t it time I told it to you?

I think i should. But how? I can’t decide whether to simply write it out as a blog entry here, record a podcast, or create a YouTube video so you can see me as I recount that crazy day. I’m not sure when I’ll get the time to do any of those things, but when I finally do, which do you think it should be?

Let me know.

[BTW –this is my first attempt to post here from my iPad as opposed to my laptop, so if you’re reading this — it worked!]

I was skimming Us Weekly today and—

Before I go any further, I guess I should stop there and explain why the heck I’ve got a copy of Us Weekly around. I had some expiring frequent flier miles a few months back, and rather than let them go to waste, I traded in miles for a subscription. (As well as subs to Wired and The New York Observer and Time and a few other magazines.)

But now that I see what Us Weekly really is, I realize I’d have been better off letting those miles expire … because it makes People seem like The Atlantic.

The latest issue contained a list on “25 Stars Who Are Authors,” and here’s who the editors chose:

Britney Spears
Brooke Shields
Carrie Fisher
Chelsea Handler
Ethan Hawke
Felicity Huffman
Howard Stern
Jay-Z
Jenny McCarthy
Julianne Moore
JWoww
Kendra Wilkinson
Kim Cattrall
Lauren Conrad
Madonna
Nicole Richie
Pamela Anderson
Paris Hilton
Rob Lowe
Rosie O’Donnell
Sammy Hagar
Snooki
Tommy Lee
Whitney Port
Whoopi Goldberg

That was the best they could come up with? Some of them are acceptable, but as for the rest, well, I doubt that a couple of these stars even read the books they were supposed to have written!

How about Steve Martin? Or Danica McKellar? Or James Franco? Anybody but Snookie and JWoww … please!

I know, I know. I’m expecting too much. But somehow I suspect Us Weekly would find a way to disappoint me even if I was expecting too little.

I’d thought enough time had passed that I could forgive Jack Kirby. But I just learned I was wrong.

I was on staff at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s when the King returned and tried to pick up where he’d left off. At the time, as I sat there in the Bullpen with my blue pencil and proofread the original art for some of his initial issues of titles such as Captain America, which he not only drew, but wrote and edited, I was horrified. The art could still be the stuff of dreams at times, but the words that came out of his characters’ mouths seemed more like a nightmare.

The buzz from us kids in the office wasn’t kind. I’ll admit it. Kirby was a god to us for what he did during the ’60s, but what he was doing at Marvel in the ’70s made us wince, and we didn’t have the tact or maturity to say it appropriately. So we acted like ungrateful punks. But now that the years have passed, as I read some of those issues of Captain America over again, I’m wincing still.

The reason I’m subjecting myself to them once more is because two of the backup stories I wrote at the time have been reprinted in The Essential Captain America Vol. 6, and after first rereading my own work (of course!), I decided to give Kirby’s another shot.

The powerful artwork still made me smile, and the frenetic pacing caused my childhood to rush back again, but as for the words on the page—Ouch!

Not only do none of the characters talk the way people actually talk—or even the hyperbolic, melodramatic way superheroes talk—but they are barely coherent. And what’s worse, in Captain America #207, old winghead, after discovering that a tyrannical dictator in a banana republic was torturing his people, decided to do NOTHING, basically declaring it none of his business!

Here’s that disturbing panel.

Until this rereading began, I was only offended by the crudeness and incomprehensibility of Kirby’s dialogue, but now, decades later, I’m also repulsed by Cap’s decision, no matter how well or poorly it was phrased.

Shame on you, Captain America!

If I ever needed a reminder of how much Stan Lee and Jack Kirby needed each other, neither ever creating separately at anywhere near the level they did when together, man oh man, this was certainly it.

I normally tweet my dreams, but this one turned out to be too intriguing to condense into 140 characters.

I dreamt I was nominated for a Hugo Award, and had entered an area by the side of the stage where a cocktail party was being held for the nominees. Once inside, I mingled with friends until I came upon one of my old Marvel bosses, the long-dead Archie Goodwin. While chatting with him, and wondering in what category the comic book writer/editor had been nominated, I was strangely unsurprised to see him there alive (in the waking world, he died in 1998), looking much as he had when I’d last known him in the early ’80s.

While wandering the room and continuing to schmooze, I suddenly noticed that I wasn’t wearing the suit I usually would for such an event—I was instead In a tie-dyed t-shirt and a pair of jeans shorts.

What I found so interesting about the dream is this—here is where it could all have veered into anxiety dream territory, with me stumbling about, crying “Oh, no,” and wondering how the heck I could get back to my hotel room and change into a suit in time. I could have felt embarrassed over my state, or started to worry about how silly I’d look if I won that night and had to take the stage dressed that way.

Instead, I immediately found it funny.

I told a seated George R.R. Martin that this oversight might be a good omen, that I’d lost the Hugo all four times I’d previously been nominated and showed up wearing a suit, and so perhaps this time, dressed like that, the universe was playing a joke on me and would have me win so I’d have to go up in front of thousands of people that way. That turned the whole dream around, banishing any anxiety that might have arisen, and I found it all hilarious, instantly thinking of how much fun I could have laying it out that way in my acceptance speech.

And as I went around the room sharing this silliness with friends, I woke happy, not just because of that dreamworld realization, but also because of the real-world realization that I’d turned what could have been an anxiety dream inside out. I was glad that, even unconscious, I could look on the bright side of life.

No idea what category I was nominated in, though.

I attended Derwin Mak’s reading on the final day of Ad Astra 2011 intending to record it all, but sadly, the battery on my Flip camcorder died 10 minutes in. When I told this to Derwin, feeling sheepish about it, he said he didn’t mind if I went ahead and posted the clip of his reading anyway.

So I have.

Apologies to all for the way this cuts off in the middle of a sentence … but a little Derwin Mak is better than no Derwin Mak at all.

I’ve been so busy since Ad Astra two weekends back that with this post I’m breaking one of my rules. What rule is that? I call it Edelman’s Schadenfreude Rule of Convention Reporting. Which means …

I consider it insufficient to wait until getting home to write up how much fun I’m having. All convention reporting must occur while that convention is actually occurring. It’s not enough that I have a wonderful time—YOU have to KNOW that I’m having a wonderful time and be miserable because you’re not there having a wonderful time, too. You’ve got to be agonizing, thinking, “If only I jumped on a plane RIGHT NOW, I could be at the con ALSO having a wonderful time! Why aren’t I?”

Then, and only then, can I be truly joyful. But—the day job has demands I can’t ignore, and so you’ve had to wait nine days for this particular piece of video.

Ad Astra paired up writers to share an hour, and on April 10, 2011, after I read my short story “The Only Wish Ever to Come True,” Matthew Johnson read “Holdfast.”

And here he is!

Unfortunately, I’ll be continuing to break Edelman’s Schadenfreude Rule of Convention Reporting in the coming weeks, because I still have a few more clips to share …

Irene and I hosted our 5th annual daffodil party Saturday, and while we had lots of beautiful daffodils, lots of fun people, and lots of good food, the weather didn’t cooperate, scaring some friends away. We reportedly had between 2.6 and 3.1 inches of rain that day, depending on whom you trust.

Those who’ve been to our house know we warn against using MapQuest directions or paying attention to a GPS, because those sources always advise using Tuscarora Pike to get to us, a road which can be scary even under the best of circumstances.

After breakfast Sunday morning (Irene whipped up biscuits from scratch!), our out-of-town friends asked to see exactly how bad Tuscarora Pike really is, so we hopped into our Jeep and bombed a mile north to get to Shanghai. Once we hung a right, we were confronted with the view you can see the first image below. Thanks to the rain, Tuscarora Pike was unreachable.

We studied the scene for awhile, then retraced our steps, went over the ridge via a different route, and came back down to look at the same flooding from the other side of the road. So each photo shows in the distance the spot from which the other photo was taken.

And if you’ve ever wanted to drive through standing water, here’s a reminder of why you shouldn’t—someone apparently attempted it, and ended up having to abandon their car in a flooded field.

Next year there’ll be better weather for our daffodil party. We promise!

How can we possibly make this promise? Because for it to be any worse, it would have to rain toads!