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.

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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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Last Friday was National Doughnut Day. Last Friday was also a part of SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend. Surely there had to be some way to celebrate both?

There was!

Since there was no programming that morning I felt like witnessing, I took off—with Wayne Rambo, husband of incoming SFWA president Cat Rambo—in search of some of Chicago’s best donuts to bring back to for several hundred of my closest friends. And to see some of the city at the same time, of course. It was a walk meant to be around 2-1/2 miles, but thanks to the vagaries of National Doughnut Day, by the time we were done, we’d hiked nearly five.

First stop—Firecakes, at which my favorite donut has always been their butterscotch-praline variety.

But, this being National Doughnut Day, they were sold out of them. Still, I bought as many donuts as could fit into one of their boxes, and then it was off to our second stop—the Doughnut Vault.

Which is where the weirdness began. (more…)

The first reservation I made for dinner during the Nebula Awards weekend way back when I started planning my trip to Chicago has a science fictional connection of which you’re probably not aware—because Beverly Kim, co-owner of Parachute with husband Johnny Clark, is the sister-in-law of Wesley Chu, author of The Lives of Tao.

So a John W. Campbell Award-nominated writer is related to a James Beard Award-nominated chef. See, the Venn diagram of food and science fiction overlaps even more than you thought!

So last Friday night, Barry Goldblatt, Kate Milford, Fran Wilde and I headed over to Parachute—a Korean American restaurant named Restaurant of the Year by Eater Chicago in 2014 which recently celebrated its one-year anniversary—to find out what all the fuss was about. That’s Fran Wilde and me (and a little bit of lens flare) above. I wish Wes could have joined us, but he had to head off to the Cayman Islands with his wife so they could celebrate their anniversary. What kind of priorities are those?

And the meal was pretty much perfect, with but a single flaw—due to competition from that night’s mass autographing (the early part of which I skipped in order to be able to make this dinner), our party dropped from six to four at the last minute, which meant we couldn’t eat ALL the food on the menu! I guess that will have to be our goal when the Nebulas return to Chicago again in 2016. (more…)

As Balticon wound down last month, I was interviewed by Dave Thomas and Brian Keene for their podcast, The Horror Show, an experience which left us smiling (well, grimacing maniacally anyway) once it was all over.

That episode is now available for your listening … dare I call it … pleasure?

Click on the embed below to hear me (at least according to their write-up) yammer on about —

… his work at Marvel and DC Comics in the 70s and 80s, his memories of creators such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Gerber, how today’s diversity discussion echoes the past, his work for The Syfy Channel, Hanna-Barbera, and Tales From the Darkside much more.

And it seems before I could even get this post live, others have already given it a listen and found it interesting.

Perhaps you’ll find it interesting, too.