I published my first short story collection, These Words Are Haunted, back in 2001. It was a hardcover aimed primarily at the collector market, and cost $37.95. I’ve long wished the book could be available as an inexpensive paperback, so those unfamiliar with my writing and therefore unwilling to drop that big a chunk of change on an unknown might be more likely to give me a try.

Come April, that will finally happen, thanks to Ian Randal Strock, who runs Fantastic Books, which also published my science fiction short story collection What We Still Talk About.

Also requiring thanks—Memo Angeles, who created a Zombie Alphabet that won my heart (and brains!), plus Chris Kalb, who used that alphabet to design this awesome cover.

Here’s the press release announcing the book’s upcoming publication.

The paperback of These Words Are Haunted will be 224 pages, cost $13.99, and come out on April 7, 2015. It can’t be ordered yet—I’ll let you know when links go live—but I couldn’t resist teasing you now with that beauty of a cover.

Finishing the February 20th issue of Entertainment Weekly, I glanced at the ad on the back cover, and was immediately puzzled. Wasn’t that a quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous speech delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910?

Cadillac wouldn’t just go ahead and use the quote without attribution, would it?

Cadillac would. (more…)

One reason Golden Age comics are so valuable is that many of them were pulped due to recycling efforts during World War II. And one reason so many of them were pulped in the first place might just be due to pleas in the comics themselves that readers salvage paper because “every scrap of paper you can collect goes into immediate war production!”

As you can see from a wartime run of Captain Marvel, Jr., each issue from June 1944 through March 1946 included a shout-out on page 3 from “the world’s mightiest boy” for readers to do their part to help win the war.

(Apologies for the culturally insensitive nature of that first such example, which unfortunately was not out of line with the standards of the ’40s.) (more…)

I always wince at those old-style comedians who joke about how much they hate their spouses and would rather be anywhere than with them. That “take my wife … please” kind of comedy has always rubbed me the wrong way, in part because I believe that if you really do have problems with your partner, it should stay between the two of you until it’s either solved or not. Mend it or end it, just don’t joke about it to me.

But it also bothers me because I think the reason some guys talk about their relationships that way—and this is sadder—is they’re afraid to make themselves seem vulnerable and weak by admitting, yes, they do love another person, and so instead joke about “the old ball and chain.”

Which is why I didn’t find the product advertised on the inside front cover of Top Love Stories #14 (1953) to be either funny or romantic. And yet the manufacturer thought it was both!

Jail-Jamas—with “genuine prison stripes” and a card that says “lose all hope ye who enter here”—are advertised as “romantic” and “sure to make a hit with love birds who have gone down the road to matrimony.”

For those who are slightly embarrassed that they’re in love, and so feel a need to mock that genuine emotion … perhaps. But for the rest of us, including the young women who probably made up most of the readers of that romance comic book … I don’t think so.

Not romantic. Not romantic at all.

Over on News From Me the other day, Mark Evanier posted an episode of The Abbott & Costello Show which is well worth watching, and not just for the classic bits. There’s also a scene during which Lou Costello is shown reading a comic book, one seen so briefly and so incompletely that we’ll likely never learn which comic book.

And you know how I get when I can’t identify a comic being used as a prop!

As you can see from the screen grab above, we never get a glimpse of the cover, just some blurry panels that would probably only be recognizable to someone who had completely memorized the interiors of every comic from that period.

That person isn’t me, and probably isn’t you either. But in the hope this might reach someone who does have such an eidetic memory, I’m putting the info out there.

Because if I don’t find out what comic book that was, how will I ever know peace?

The romance comic Top Love Stories #16 (February 1954) wants you to know that whatever your size, it’s the wrong size!

The first thing you see upon opening the issue is an ad on the inside front cover for Wate-On homogenized liquid, designed to make readers worry that they’re “skinny” and “scrawny” when instead they should have “firm, good-looking healthy flesh” and “extra pounds.”

Meanwhile, the last thing you see after reading the stories within is a back cover ad for Kelpidine chewing gum—with Hexitol—certain to make readers insecure that they have “ugly fatty bulges” rather than “that dreamed about silhouette.” (more…)

The Washington Post covered a controversy today concerning a long-dead fantasy icon whose legacy is being reconsidered due to racist opinions extreme even for his day—and no, this time I’m not talking about H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft’s views, as you’ve already heard if you’ve visited here before, have been the cause of uncomfortable but very necessary conversations within the fantasy community. And now another community is being forced to have similar uncomfortable conversations.

Because it seems the Oneida Indian Nation is about to open a $20 million casino which will pay homage to a fantasy writer who, in addition to entertaining millions, also called for genocide.

L. Frank Baum.

That’s right. The author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. (more…)

I was watching the opening of Annie Hall recently, and was immediately distracted by a comic book Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer is seen reading in a flashback. Distracted because, whenever I see a comic in a movie or on TV, I’m immediately overcome by a desire to know what that comic is, and whether it’s real or merely a prop mocked up for the screen.

Sometimes it’s the latter, as when a kid in a 1975 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was reading an issue of The Fantastic Blob. But often the comics are real, which I know because I’ve been able to track those issues down, such as The Eternals in a 2010 episode of Law & Order, Justice Society of America in a 2012 episode of Alcatraz, or Saga of the Human Torch in a 2013 episode of Revolution.

So when a comic book guest-starred in Annie Hall, I had to know—was the comic book real, and if so which comic was it? (Of course, the other question is, why hadn’t I noticed this before? But let’s set that one aside for another time.)

Here’s the issue spread open in a screen grab.

I can’t seem to find anyone else online who attempted to figure this out. I’m hoping now that I’m asking the question, perhaps you can figure it out. (more…)

I’ve been reading a lot of old timey romance comics lately thanks to the wonderful site Comic Book Plus, and previously shared three stories that dealt with the issue of weight—1950’s “Too Fat for Love,” 1949’s “Was I Too Fat to Be Loved?,” and 1952’s “Too Fat For Love” —only one of which didn’t demand that its heroine slim down in order to be seen as worthy of a happy ending. But I’ve now come across a fourth weight-themed story, this one so mean and nasty and insulting that it makes the flaws of those other stories seem minor by comparison.

“I Was a Fat Girl” appeared in Love Diary #13 (February 1951), and starred 18-year-old Nancy, who as drawn when the story begins, didn’t seem to have weight issues yet … well, except for on the splash page, which made sure to show her at her heaviest. (more…)