February’s begun, and you know what that means—it’s time to gather in one place all the dreams I tweeted about during the month of January.

As usual, plenty of members of the convention-going crowd are included, but this month you’ll also find Conan O’Brien, Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Richard Dreyfuss, and other unusual suspects.

Who knows? Maybe you’re in there, too!

JANUARY 2011

I dreamt I tried to help a drug addict on the subway by telling him how well rehab had worked for my sister-in-law. (Which is not true!) 30 Jan

I dreamt when I left the Syfy office, my elevator zoomed to a basement where I was tossed in a van because they suspected I was an alien. 30 Jan

I dreamt I visited American Idol, where Randy told me of the time he worked with my cousin Herb, and Ryan offered me a low-paying job. 30 Jan

I dreamt I was driven in a speeding car while trying not to spill an overfull bowl of matzoh ball soup delicately balanced on one knee. 30 Jan

I dreamt my father was upset because I visited FL on his birthday rather than my mother’s. (It didn’t bother me that he was suddenly alive.) 30 Jan

I dreamt I was woken by the rowdy singing of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and looked outside to see a group of mourning AA members. 30 Jan

I dreamt I was a doglike alien creature in a pixelated video game world, cheerfully exploring — opening doors, looking under things, etc. 29 Jan

I dreamt I bought three extremely large almond croissants at a bakery. Together, they were so HUGE no bag was large enough to hold them. 29 Jan

I dreamt I was researching apartments rather than hotels for a long trip to Australia, and the cheapest I could find cost $8,000 per month. 29 Jan

I dreamt I bumped into Eric Van and David Shaw at Readercon, and was surprised to see them wearing identical wild, blinding, garish shirts. 28 Jan (more…)

The Horror Writers Association has released this year’s preliminary Stoker ballot. You can probably guess why I’m sharing that bit of news with you. (And if you can’t guess, then you’ll just have to keep reading to find out … )

You can see the complete preliminary ballot here, but what’s made my day is this—my zombie collection What Will Come After has made that ballot in the category of Superior Achievement in a Collection!

Now this doesn’t mean I can call myself a Stoker nominee yet. First, the membership must whittle down the following ten collections to the five that will make up the final ballot. So I’ve got a 50/50 chance.

OCCULTATION by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books)
BLOOD AND GRISTLE by Michael Louis Calvillo (Bad Moon Books)
THIS WAY TO EGRESS by Lawrence C. Connolly (Ash-Tree Press)
WHAT WILL COME AFTER by Scott Edelman (PS Publishing)
FULL DARK, NO STARS by Stephen King (Simon and Schuster)
LITTLE THINGS by John R. Little (Bad Moon Books)
A HELL OF A JOB by Michael McCarty (Damnation Books)
A HOST OF SHADOWS by Harry Shannon (Dark Regions Press)
FUNGUS OF THE HEART by Jeremy Shipp (Raw Dog (Screaming Press)
HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION by Connie Corcoran Wilson (Sam’s Dot)

Of course, those are some damned fine collections I’m competing against, so it’s hard to tell what my true odds are of making it through to the final ballot. But if you happen to be a Stoker voter, and would like a PDF of the book for consideration (a book which contains three stories that did make the final Stoker ballot in previous years), please let me know at scott@scottedelman.com.

Last March, I shared with you a Phantom sketch I got from Sy Barry on September 26, 1971 at a 75th anniversary celebration for the comic strip which was co-sponsored by the Newspaper Comics Council of New York and the New York Daily News. You may remember I also managed to get a sketch of Joe Palooka by Tony DiPreta.

I promised I’d someday post the picture of the crowd that ran in the paper the following day. A picture that included me. Well, someday is now.

Check out the crowd below. Click on the image as many times as it takes to make it as large as possible.

Can you spot me?

Need a hint? I’m wearing the same jacket you see me in here. And in the first image here as well.

Did that help? If not, you might as well give up and content yourself with a look below at the true stars of the day. (more…)

Of all the original comic book art auctioned recently by my wife and sister-in-law, this page is the jewel in the crown—a classic Deadman splash page by Neal Adams from Strange Adventures #208 (1968). Ellen has owned it for four decades, but now it’s time to let it go.

I don’t expect it to go cheap, but hey, you’re not cheap, right?

The bidding begins Feb. 7 over at Heritage Auction Galleries, so head on over there and check it out—and remember to return Feb. 7 to place that bid!

If you weren’t one of the winners of the two Bruno Premiani pages of original art Irene sold last year to help fund our (still in the planning stages) trip to Machu Picchu, and are kicking yourself for missing out, you’re in luck. Irene has one final Premiani page which is being sold through Heritage Auction Galleries.

It’s page 9 from The Doom Patrol #119 (1968), featuring Negative Man, Robotman, Elasti-Girl and The Chief, and after you take a look at it below, you can visit Heritage to place a bid. Well, actually … not yet. Bidding doesn’t begin until February 7. But why not head over there now, read more about it, mark your calendars, and get yourself in the mood?

DC Comics announced today it was abandoning the Comics Code, which makes it seem as if the organization that has cast a pall over the industry since 1954 is on its way out.

So it’s the perfect time to dig into my vault and pull out a 1976 letter written by Gerry Conway (during his brief reign as Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics) to Len Darvin (then the head of the Comics Code Authority). Gerry was asking for a requested edit to The Inhumans to be reconsidered, and while the particulars aren’t as controversial as the Blue Valentine brouhaha, it does make for an interesting peek behind the curtain at a custom that has long outlived its usefulness.

Archie and Bongo are apparently the last Comics Code holdouts.

With any luck, soon there’ll be none.

Over on Facebook recently, Steve Niles posted the front and back covers to the 1975 album Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero, the rock opera which, unlike Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, never got any of its performers injured. (Well … as far as I know.) It brought back many memories, because I was on staff at Marvel then, and one of my assignments was to act as an advisor to the creators of the project, making sure they correctly understood the finer points of Spider lore.

Steve’s post sent me scurrying to find my personal copy of the album. Here’s the way most people saw the back cover.

But the copy I was given looks quite different.

I can remember long talks at a recording studio on Park Avenue during which I’m sure I was overly passionate about who the characters were and how their lives intersected. Though I never got album credit for my work, as you can see, the creators did thank me profusely for my efforts.

Terence P. Minogue wrote, “Thank you for your help with this album. You gave us an insight to Comic Art that was crucial and invaluable to completing this project.” And Tommy West and Terry Cashman also signed the album.

Who were these guys? To be honest, I wasn’t that musically inclined, so their names meant little to me, and I hadn’t realized the level of musician that was involved in the project. But by doing a search on their names now, I see that Cashman and West were producers of, and Minogue was a musician and vocalist on, the Jim Croce album I Got a Name.

If I’d realized that at the time, I would have been very impressed, and maybe in too much awe of them to propound so self-righteously about Marvel minutiae. Better that I didn’t know!

If you want a sample of how it all turned out, give a listen to a couple of cuts.

Last night, Irene and I got to talking about our history with original comic book art. The subject came up because she and her sister are about to sell a few more pieces through Heritage, some of which are amazing. (How does a 1968 Neal Adams Deadman splash page sound? I can’t recall when I last saw one of those go up for sale!) I’ll tell you more about them later as the auction dates approach, but it got me thinking about, not the best, but the first pieces of art I ever bought.

It was 1970. I was 15, attending my first comic convention—one of Phil Seuling’s July 4th weekend cons, of course. And while wandering the dealers room, I came across the following pages being sold for next to nothing.

First, a Gil Kane page from All-Star Western #104 (December-January 1958-1959), part of the Johnny Thunder story “The Gauntlet of Thunder.”

You can see it larger here if you’d like.

And the second purchase that long-ago weekend was this Joe Kubert page from G.I. Combat #64 (September 1958), part of the story “The Silent Jet.”

You can check out a larger version of that page here as well.

So what do I mean when I say I bought these two pages for next to nothing? Well, I picked up one for $1.00 and the other for $2.00, though I no longer remember which was the more (comparatively) expensive piece. (Please don’t hate me.)

So what was the best thing you bought at your first con?

Little more than a week remains for members of the Horror Writers Association to make recommendations for the Bram Stoker Awards, so I thought I’d point out to those voting members who happen to drop by here that a PDF of my zombie collection What Will Come After can be obtained for consideration by sending a request to scott@scottedelman.com.

What Will Come After, which was issued by PS Publishing early last year, collects all of my zombie fiction, including three stories which previously made the final Stoker ballot when originally published—”A Plague on Both Your Houses” (1997), “The Last Supper” (2003), and “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” (2007). In addition to the reprints, the collection also contains one original short story, “What Will Come After.”

Recs must be received by midnight January 15th, so if you’d like a chance to consider What Will Come After, please let me know!

Until yesterday, I was a goose virgin. Even though I’ve eaten some pretty peculiar things over the years—including guinea pig—I’d never eaten goose before, and I’d certainly never cooked one. But it occupies a romantic place in my imagination. Perhaps because I’ve read too much Dickens?

So this year, when I spotted a goose at my supermarket, I thought—it’s about time. I bought it and then waited until yesterday to cook it for our New Year’s Day feast.

I put out a call online for goose recipes, and the one that intrigued me the most came from David Shaw, who recommended multiple approaches. What caught my eye was the Spiced Roast Goose with Dried-Fruit Pan Sauce. I think it was the fig, apricot, and prune stuffing that tempted me more than anything else.

Here’s what the goose looked liked before the cooking began.

What I hadn’t realized when embarking upon cooking a goose was how labor intensive the process was. Oh, prepping it for the oven was comparatively fast and easy, but a goose gives off so much fat that I was required to check on it every thirty minutes to skim off the excess to a) reserve it for later use, and b) make sure the oven didn’t burst into flame. Unlike other types of roasts, which can be fairly effortless save for occasional basting, the goose required my constant attention.

But it was worth it. Here’s what the bird looked like about four hours after it went into the oven.

Those skewers tucked under its wings contain the figs, apricots, and prunes that didn’t fit inside the bird.

I had another helping of goose for lunch today, and will probably do the same for dinner and then lunch tomorrow. I can’t see cooking a goose often, both due to the cost and the effort, but next time Christmas and New Year’s rolls around, I could see trying again.

Though come to think of it … there’s always a suckling pig.