I’d intended to make daily reports during my week-long trip to the UK as I usually do while traveling, filling you in on my doings at the World Horror Con and the Stokers in Brighton, plus my few days in London after, but this time I failed. Oh, you could have found short bursts of news if you were following me on Twitter or at Facebook, but there were none of my usual meaty write-ups.

Was it that I was having more fun than I normally do? Or that the time difference exhausted me more than usual, leaving nothing left over for blogging? We’ll never know, since now that I’m back in the real world once more there’s no way I’ll be able to catch up here. But I should at least take a moment to say …

Nope, I didn’t win a Stoker this year, my fifth such loss. (I did take the stage to accept Gene O’Neill’s Stoker for Best Collection, though.) But how could I feel sad when the weekend also handed me a prize more important than any award—the publication of What Will Come After, my zombie collection from PS Publishing?

Here I am in the WHC art show, coming face to rotting face with Les Edwards’ original drawing for the cover.

You can find other photos from the weekend over at flickr. I hope that each of those pictures is worth the proverbial thousand words, because now that I’m in the thick of things, that’s all I have the time to share.

What Will Come After, my zombie collection from PS Publishing, was just reviewed by Publishers Weekly, and the anonymous reviewer absolutely hated, hated, hated the book, as can see below.

I don’t present it here to argue with the opinion—those of you who attended my presentation “How to Respond to a Critique of Your Writing” at the Montreal Worldcon know I believe a writer should never do that, because after all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity—but rather in the interests of full disclosure.

After all, if I share my glowing reviews, shouldn’t I also let you know when I get slammed?

In any case, here’s PW‘s verdict:

SF news industry veteran Edelman collects nine zombie-themed short stories, but the content falls short of its promise. Les Edwards’s cover illustration, which depicts the author as one of the undead, hints at Edelman’s fondness for self-insertion; alas, the title story, in which he narrates his own rise from the grave and rampage through suburbia, goes on rather longer than the thousand words that might match the picture. Even the Stoker-nominated “A Plague on Both Your Houses” and “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” fall a little flat. Edelman’s prose is strong, but each story, regardless of perspective, seems to have been written in the same voice, creating a monotony that undermines any excitement.

Luckily, even if I didn’t find negative reviews as interesting as positive ones, the piece appears when my spirit is at its most impervious, because I head for the airport later today for the World Horror Convention in Brighton, where I’ll a) get to hold the final book in my hands for the first time, and b) possibly win a Stoker Award.

How can anyone possibly be down when facing that?

I’ve always loved reading obituaries, and not just those of the famous, but of the rest of us, too. So in addition to reading the lengthy write-ups newspaper editors assemble, I always scan the pages of smaller paid ads families insert to remember the deceased. Which is why I found myself reading the obituaries from yesterday’s Washington Post while eating lunch today.

I like to see the photos that have been chosen (sometimes of the memorialized both young and old), the nicknames (this issue included Gigi, Duke, and Cootie), and the odd facts (Edward Ramond Seibert “participated in field tests on the rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald used to assassinate President Kennedy”).

As I scanned the obits today, I noticed a photo that was quite … unusual. How odd, I thought, that someone had chosen, in the midst of page after page of dignified photos, to be remembered dressed up like a pro wrestler. But when I looked more closely, I saw that—Hey! That’s not just someone dressed like a pro wrestler—that is a pro wrestler!

Don’t know who Big John Studd was? Then you’d better check out both parts of this classic match! (more…)

I’ve been so busy working on Wire this week I had no time left over to blog, so I thought I’d come up for air to post this quickie. (Well, maybe I had some time, but after a long day’s work, I often had no brain left over!)

Al Williamson, one of the great EC Comics artists, whose drawing style is extremely romantic and lyrical, turned 79 today, which means it’s once more time for me to dig into the portfolio I carried at comic-book conventions when I was an annoying kid with a sketchpad.

If you’re not familiar with Williamson’s work, these classic EC Comics tales will easily convince you of his greatness.

I wrangled the drawing below out of Williamson at the EC Fan Addict Convention in 1972. (Click if you’d like to see the lizard a little larger.)

Happy Birthday, Al!

Irene and I moved from Maryland to West Virginia in June 2004, though because the state required a notarized copy of my birth certificate, I wasn’t able to get a WV drivers license until July. It was to expire on my birthday at the end of this month, but since I’ll be in London at the World Horror Con then—actually, I’ll be in the air on my actual birthday of March 31, so I can celebrate on two continents—I figured I’d better get the renewal out of the way. So I headed in last week to make sure my eyes still worked and to sign up for another five years of West Virginia.

For those of you who’ve been wondering what West Virginia does to a man, check it out below. (And just in case you can’t tell, that’s July ’04 to the left, March ’10 to the right.)

I guess owning a shotgun and a chainsaw changes you more than I thought.

Sy Barry, who drew the comic strip The Phantom for 33 years, from 1962 to 1994, turned 82 today. That wasn’t the only classic comic strip he was involved with—he also worked on Tarzan and Flash Gordon.

I only ever met him once that I can recall. (Though I guess I shouldn’t say it quite that way, as it makes it sound as if he’s no longer with us—but he’s still quite alive!) It was on September 26, 1971 in Central Park.

The Newspaper Comics Council of New York and the New York Daily News co-sponsored a 75th anniversary celebration for the comic strip. (I assume they were counting from the year Richard F. Outcault’s Yellow Kid first appeared in the New York Journal American.) It took place at the Bandshell, and many other cartoonists were there in addition to Barry, including Mort Walker, Tex Blaisdell, Irwin Hasen, and Bill Kresse.

I (you know me) tried to finagle as many sketches as I could. Here’s Barry’s, which you can click to view at a larger size.

The event was covered in the Daily News, which devoted its center spread to it the following day. No picture of Barry there, I’m afraid, though I can be spotted in the crowd. I’ll naturally (what did you expect?) inflict that photo on you someday.

But meanwhile—happy 82nd birthday, Sy Barry!

That’s me below at a party being hosted by Marvel Comics, circa 1975.

Why was Marvel Comics hosting this party? I have no idea. Nor does my wife, who was also working at Marvel then. Though when this picture was taken, she was not yet my wife.

To get to this party, I took an elevator to the top floor of a tall building. There was an amazing view. Could the party have taken place at the Rainbow Room? Yes, it could. But I can’t be sure.

Why were we there? I told you, I can’t remember.

Could it have been a Christmas party? Hmmm … I don’t think so. But, again, I can’t be sure.

Why was a life-sized Doctor Strange cutout there? I can’t remember that either.

Why am I sticking my head through the hole where Doctor Strange’s face should be? Because that’s what you do when you see a superhero without a face.

Why was there someone on hand snapping our pictures? I may never know.

Of course, if anyone reading this happens to have been there back in the old days of the Marvel Bullpen and has any memories of this event … maybe I have a chance of knowing after all.

Anyone?

(And BTW—the reason this photo came to mind today? Because Stan Lee wants an Oscar.)

As you may have already heard, the hirsute Jay Lake today became the … well … the not so hirsute Jay Lake.

And looking at Jay’s newly shaven dome brought to mind another rather determined individual with whom he shares the same initials and even an almost identical last name.

Suddenly, a very confusing TV series is starting to make a heck of a lot more sense.

After all—have you ever seen Jay Lake and John Locke together?

I have faith that you’ll be able to guess the year this photo of me was taken without the need for any hints.

You won’t require any knowledge of French to guess, just the ability to recognize one classic logo and a handful of iconic characters.

And if you can’t figure it out, well … then I’m not sure what you’re doing here.

If you’d like to view a larger version, you can find one over at flickr.

I read the Roger Ebert interview in the new Esquire and was moved. I watched Oprah today and was moved even more. Seeing him speechless, but with eyes still bright, was heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. When asked how he was doing, he said he was terrific, and I believed him. Life, for him, even with all he’s been through, is still worth living.

I’ve always felt a connection with Ebert. The rest of the world may only know him as a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, the movie reviewer with the biggest thumb in the business, but you and I know that deep inside, he’s one of us—a hardcore science-fiction fan.

He founded the science-fiction club in his high school. He read Astounding. He published a mimeographed fanzine. And he loved fandom. So when I interviewed him for Sci-Fi Entertainment back in 1997, I wasn’t speaking to some bigshot, but to just another fan, Rog Ebert.

Since Ebert’s condition has become more public the past few weeks, and everybody’s been showing their love for him, I thought I’d do the same. Here’s that interview from the July 1997 issue of Sci-Fi Entertainment. We only got to meet in the flesh once, two years later, at a NY screening for The Phantom Menace. I sat in the row behind him, and as I watched it, I couldn’t help but occasionally watch him watching it.

He loved it. More than me, because I certainly wouldn’t have given it 3 1/2 stars the way he did. But that was the science-fiction fanboy in him talking. It was there then. I’m sure it’s there still.

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