My first short story publication of 2015 is now available for your reading pleasure. Well … it’s available for you to purchase anyway. As to whether there’ll be any pleasure involved … that’s something you’ll have to decide later.

I’m pleased to see this story in print for a number of reasons. One is that not only was it the first story I wrote in 2014, it was also the first story I’d managed to write in several years, ending a fiction drought caused by the demands of my day job. Another is that it’s a 13,000-word story, not the easiest length to place, but I managed to place it anyway. And of course, Dark Discoveries is a great horror magazine, which makes the fact that my story, “Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen,” is the lead story this issue all the more sweet.

And, hey—who doesn’t like to see their name first on the cover list of contributors?

“Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen” is a dark but (hopefully) uplifting horror story of love and obsession, and you can read it by ordering a copy here. If not for me, then how about for Storm Constantine, Cecilia Tan, Ray Garton, and all the other wonderful writers you’ll find there?

Jarrod Buttery, who’s interviewed me many times for Back Issue magazine on the comics I wrote in the ’70s, is now doing a piece on comics editing—specifically, the editing of Marvel’s reprint books. Which has sent me back to the vault in which I keep all the memos I sent and received during my days in the Bullpen. And the half dozen I’ve chosen to scan and share below prove one important thing—if you were pissed back then that the reprint books weren’t complete, I’m the guy responsible.

The fact I was even involved with those reprints is a thing for which I later felt a need to apologize to my wife—check out this column I wrote for The Comics Journal to learn why.

When cobbling together the reprint annuals, the number of pages from 3-4 old stories added together rarely matched the exact number of pages we had to fill, which meant cuts usually had to be made. Some of my memos reveal the number of pages that needed to be slashed, but not the specific cuts that would get us there …

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I told you this day would come—and now it’s finally here. My first short story collection, These Words Are Haunted, long available only in an expensive hardcover edition, is finally out in paperback.

If you’ve held off since 2001 from buying the $37.95 hardcover, you can now pick up a paperback version for only $13.99.

What’s in it? Well, according to the back-cover blurb …

Zombies spar with humans for dominance of a post-apocalyptic Manhattan in the Stoker-nominated “A Plague on Both Your Houses.” The King returns to prove that rock ‘n’ roll will never die in “The Elvis Syndrome.” And a dying boy is the catalyst for a deal with a decidedly different devil in “Making Peace with the Leader.” These and ten other nightmarish tales form a bizarre baker’s dozen in Scott Edelman’s acclaimed horror collection.

Check out a few further details here.

If those words make you want to buy a copy, head on over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, depending on your vendor preference.

And thanks as always for your support!

Back in January, I told you how I’d tried and failed to get a dinner reservation at Noma—currently rated the #1 restaurant in the world—for a celebration of this year’s milestone birthday, and then how I inexplicably succeeded. Now that I’m home from my trip to Copenhagen, it’s time to fill you in on how the night went.

Short version:

It was amazing.

Longer version:

First off, there didn’t seem to be anyone in the city who wasn’t aware of both Noma’s culinary reputation and the difficulty of getting in. Whenever I’d mention how I was going to spend (or had just spent) my birthday, eyes would go wide, and whatever was said in response could easily be boiled down to “Whoa.” People took pride in the way Chef Rene Redzepi and his introduction of new Nordic cuisine had made the rest of the world take notice of their country.

Our reservation was on March 31 for 7:30 p.m., and when we arrived a few minutes before then, an employee opened the front door and we were greeted before we were even out of the taxi. And when we stepped through that front door, I was stunned to see there were several dozen members of the staff assembled to greet me, with Redzepi front and center, reaching out to shake my hand and wish me a happy birthday. It was totally unexpected, because, well, didn’t these people have food to cook and other customers to serve? But even so, they somehow found the time to circle us and make us feel welcome.

I once more asked Redzepi—why am I even here? How is it that in the midst of his Tokyo pop-up, he would pick me, out of the thousands of hopefuls wishing to dine at Noma, to get one of the rare tables for two? He had no specific reason for having made a dream come true, other than that every once in a while, he’ll notice such a request, and try to help out if he can. I expressed my gratitude again (after all, they do get 20,000 reservation requests per month), and we continued chatting en masse, answering their questions about our time in Copenhagen so far, and what we’d planned for the rest of the trip. After what seemed like at least 10 minutes (but surely it couldn’t have been, right, not with other customers already seated and needing attention?), we were led to our table, and dinner began.

We didn’t end up leaving until nearly four hours later. (more…)

For those who weren’t around in 1983 … a history lesson. Because, as I’ve said before, science fiction’s culture wars have been with us always.

The Sad Puppies, who have successfully campaigned their slate onto the ballot, hope they can break the Hugo Awards in order to rebuild them—a sentiment which has, I’m afraid, a bit too much of a “we had to destroy the village in order to save it” ring for my comfort. But note this isn’t the first time such a concept has been put forward.

“If you too are unhappy with the Hugo system, it’s time to do your bit,” wrote Charles Platt in his editorial to the March-May issue of The Patchin Review. He didn’t put a full slate forward back then, just a single novel, written by … well … you can see the name of the author in a box at the bottom of the front cover.

That’s right—L. Ron Hubbard, whose novel Battlefield Earth had been published in 1982. (more…)

I know that what you’re really waiting for is my write-up on dinner at Noma, but I came back from Copenhagen under the weather, and my brain’s not ready for it yet. So instead, while I wait for my strength to return, here are the dreams I had last month, as originally shared over on Twitter.

Last month, I dreamt of Paul Newman, Stan Lee, Walter White, Fritz Leiber, and many others …

March 2015

I dreamt that while I was having dinner at @NextRestaurant, @Gachatz wandered through, recording us all for a documentary project of his. Mar 29

I dreamt that after helping Stan Lee sift through movie pitches in Brooklyn, I stepped out onto a dark McDonald Avenue and headed home. Mar 29

I dreamt my mother and I had an intense argument, only ending when she put out a lit cigarette on my arm. But she doesn’t smoke any more! Mar 27

I dreamt my father — long dead in real life — dug up all the plants in our garden and rearranged them, much to the annoyance of my wife. Mar 27

I dreamt I was in Italy with my grandmother — long dead in real life — who told me that my mother — still alive in real life — was dead. Mar 27

I dreamt old Paul Newman, natty in a three-piece suit, got all choked up while telling me he thought my mother, his friend, would die soon. Mar 26

I dreamt I picked up an old woman who was hitchhiking, and got completely lost while trying to get her to her destination. Apologies ensued. Mar 26

I dreamt that while tutoring a kid in a preschool I spotted stacks of extremely well-read early Marvels and ACGs. Made it hard to focus! Mar 26

I dreamt I was both a character on Walking Dead AND me at home watching it, reliving Rick dying over and over again as I kept rewinding. Mar 22

I dreamt I was wandering the perimeter of a vast pool, trying to find the clubhouse and then the exit so I could go home. I never did. Mar 22 (more…)

I arrived home from my Copenhagen birthday celebration early yesterday morning to find several people had been talking about me and a panda. That’s because Ellen Datlow, Eileen Gunn, and several others are heading to China, and as part of the trip will travel to Chengdu to visit with Chinese science fictions writers and editors, something I did back in 2001.

But I didn’t just meet with writers and editors—I met with a panda as well, and even though it’s said that what gets onto the Internet lives there forever, the photo of me from that day seems to have vanished. Well, thanks to the Wayback Machine, it’s back.

That photo original appeared in issue 242 of Science Fiction Weekly, as part of my December 10, 2001 editorial. And since others have asked to see it, you’re going to see it, too.

So let’s step back 13+ years, and relive my trip to China …

It Really Is a Small World After All

Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” but Kipling was contradicted last week when East and West did get a chance to meet. This get-together occurred in the city of Chengdu in the People’s Republic of China, where I visited for nine days with the warm and welcoming staff of Science Fiction World, the 370,000 monthly circulation of which just happens to make it the most-read SF magazine on the planet.

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A few days ago, I shared an ancient diary entry in an attempt to solve a comics mystery, and I can’t resist sharing another, this time to give some insight into one of our great fantasy artists—Roy Krenkel, who won the Hugo Award in 1963 and is perhaps best known for his Edgar Rice Burroughs-related work.

I knew Roy from the convention circuit, but one day in 1980, my wife and I had a revealing encounter with him in a Brooklyn mall. In the interests of giving some insight into the man, here’s an excerpt from a entry made on January 20 of that year.

Irene and I went over to Kings Plaza yesterday afternoon, visited the bank, bought cheese, cookies, etc. As we were leaving we ran into Roy Krenkel, who was just hanging around a first floor fountain wasting time because he didn’t want to go home. The three of us had a very pleasant conversation. Roy spoke of his incredible bad luck, and how it had enabled him to devise a plan to overthrow the Ayatollah Khomeini. Simply get a group of people to sign documents which committed them to paying Roy a monthly sum as long as Khomeini were alive, claimed Roy, and the Ayatollah would live two more months at the most. The Fates were allied against him, said Roy, and no way would they allow him any good luck. He’s frequently told friends that the way to make sure that they survive when flying is to make him beneficiary of their insurance; their plane could crash into the side of a mountain, everyone else would die, but THEY would walk away unscathed because there was no way that Roy would ever be allowed the good fortune of collecting. We also spoke of making out wills for our collectible items (he figures he’s worth half a mil, but that he’s never going to see it because he couldn’t bear parting with his etching collection), of the pettiness of comics, of convention fatigue, of the love of books. I tried to look up his age in one of my science fiction encyclopedias after we arrived home as we were interested because he hasn’t appeared to age in the past fifteen years, but no luck … the info was unavailable, unlisted. Irene owns a drawing of Red Sonya by him which is hanging in the hallway downstairs, and afterwards Irene realized that she should have mentioned it (he might have appreciated knowing one of his piece was enjoyed daily), but she forgot. Roy gives the good impression of a wonderful eccentric, something I imagine I shall work at cultivating later in life.

So 35 years later, how am I doing with cultivating that eccentricity?

BTW—at the time, Roy, born July 11, 1918, would have been 61.

Once I learned, only a few days before the event, that Jeffery Ford was going to give a reading at Frostburg State University as part of the Spring 2015 Reading Series at the Center for Creative Writing, I knew I had to be there.

Hey, it’s only 80 miles each way from the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia where I live, and seeing Jeff only once or twice a year at cons is (as those who know Jeff know) definitely not enough. So on Thursday, I jumped in the Jeep and headed over to meet him at the home of Andy and Sydney Duncan, where we caught up for an hour or so before heading to dinner, and then on to the Lewis J. Ort Library, located on the campus of Frostburg State University.

Poet Gerry LaFemina, the Director of the Frostburg Center for Creative Writing (who’d joined us for dinner), introduced Andy …

… who then introduced Jeff, who read his story “Word Doll,” from the anthology The Doll Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow. (more…)

I was skimming through my old diaries in search of what I’d had to say about an incident which I remembered occurring in the early ’80s (an incident I’m not going to tell you about, so there), and in the course of that search came across something completely different—a mysterious job opportunity mentioned in an entry from November 16, 1979—

I responded to this ad in the Village Voice yesterday: “WRITER—Gag writer needed to collaborate w/cartoonist for cartoon strip. Call Richard Maneely [phone numbers redacted].” Well, I did, and gave my name and phone number to an answering service. Maneely called back this morning, and it turns out he is the AGENT for a cartoonist who tried to do a strip years ago with a writer. The strip failed to sell, the writer quit, and the cartoonist has been doing work in advertising the past years. He’d like to revive the project with a different writer now. Maneely is mailing me copies of the strip to look at. If I like it I’m supposed to call Maneely back and then we can work out a deal and the artist (whoever it is) and I can start working together.

I’d completely that this had ever happened.

Also forgotten? What happened next.

Why exactly did I never get get involved in this comic strip?

Did I see take one look at the samples and decide the collaboration would never work? Or did I, on the other hand, like the strip and want to move forward, only to get shot down by the artist?

In fact—did the samples ever show up the mail for us to even get that far?

No idea.

I looked carefully through my diaries—in which I’ve written on a near-daily basis since November 2, 1978—and found that I never referenced this project again. Whatever happened to it is a total mystery.

So I’m going to toss out these very thin facts to the comic strip gurus and ask—do you know of a strip growing out of this kind of relationship during that time period? Perhaps some other writer got the chance to script a strip I don’t think I even got a chance to see.

What say you, experts?