If you’ve been wondering when you were going to get a chance to read for yourself the short story I real aloud at the 2012 Worldcon, that time is now!

The Monkey’s Other Paw: Revived Classic Stories of Dread and the Dead has begun to ship from NonStop Press, and for a limited time, the shipping cost is on them.

So if you’d like to read my semi-sequel to Saki’s “The Open Window,” plus other homages from the likes of Don Webb, Barry N. Malzberg, Paul Di Filippo, Damien Broderick, and Steve Rasnic Tem—and save on the postage as well—here’s how to get the trade paperback or the hardcover.

Or both!

The only time I ever met Paul Fung, Jr., who was the artist on the Blondie comic book for 40 years, he was younger than I am now, and I was 17.

I was attending the 1973 Reuben Awards banquet thanks to friend Bill Kresse, and clueless teen comics fan that I was, I wandered the ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria with a pad and magic markers and asked the artists there—who were far more interested in eating, drinking, dancing, and schmoozing with their friends—for sketches.

Which is how I ended up with drawings of Superman by Curt Swan, Beetle Bailey by Mort Walker, Zonker Harris by Garry Trudeau, and many others … including this one from Fung.

Here’s wishing Paul Fung, Jr., who took the time to be nice to a teen noodge long ago and far away, a happy 91st birthday. May there be many more!

A bunch of my New York pals have been posting selfies with perennially rumored-to-be-dead actor Abe Vigoda, all taken last night at an opening cocktail party for the exhibition of Drew Friedman’s Old Jewish Comedians. When I checked Wikipedia to learn how old Abe Vigoda was anyway—he turns out to be 93—I learned the even more startling fact that his brother was longtime Archie Comics artist Bill Vigoda!

After being wowed by that surprising bit of news—which I feel as if I should have known—I remembered … Hey, I’ve met Bill Vigoda!

Considering the fact Bill Vigoda died in 1973, it was a looooong time ago, when I was still but a comics fan, not yet having been hired to work at Marvel Comics. To alleviate my jealously over those friends having gotten to hang out with brother Abe, I thought I’d take my own selfie with brother Bill.

And so … (more…)

I’ve already shared about the major sites we saw while on Easter Island—Ahu Tongariki, Ranu Raraku, Orongo and Ranu Kau. If you happen to visit Easter Island as part of a cruise, that’s likely all you’ll get to see, because you’ll be ferried ashore (the cruise ships are too large to dock), rushed through those core sites in a single day without getting enough time at any of them, and then head back to sea.

But there’s so much more that the one-day visitor will overlook. Here’s what else we were lucky enough to visit during our time there.

During our first full day, our guide, in addition to taking us to Ahu Tongariki and Ranu Raraku, also drove us to …

Ahu Hanga Te’e

The eight moai which once stood upright here are now toppled, a few with broken necks, and their massive topknots have rolled forward off the platform. I could feel the weight of history, and inevitably thought of Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” (more…)

As I flipped through the March 2014 issue of Marvel Previews late last night—which I’d downloaded to my iPad, as that’s how I do most of my comics reading these days—I came across a listing for the upcoming Marvel Masterworks: Captain Marvel Volume 5, which will include my seven-issue run on that title.

Made my heart glad to see those comics getting renewed life. Back when I wrote them, I’d never have dreamed they’d be reprinted in a hardcover book.

If you ever wanted to get your hands on those issues without having to pore through the ’70s bins at your local comics shop, now’s your chance!

A new month has begun, so it’s time to corral all of the previous month’s dreams that I shared on Twitter and see what sense they make when placed in close proximity. There are far fewer dreams below than in any other month since I started doing this, for which I blame our recent vacation in Santiago and Easter Island. Due to exhaustion, many of my dreams effervesced upon waking and could not be recorded … which for someone with an active dream life like mine is unsettling.

In any case, check out last month’s dreams, which included guest appearances from Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Silverberg, Robert Blake, and many others …

February 2014


I dreamt I found Michael Swanwick, Gardner Dozois and others on a looong line, but never found the front, or learned why they were waiting. Feb 28 


I dreamt I arrived at a church where I was volunteering, saw others on hands and knees scrubbing the sidewalk, and thought, “this is bogus.”
 Feb 28 



I dream I bumped into Nancy Kress, who forced $20 on me, claimed it was payment for a photo, then ran off, leaving me totally baffled. 
Feb 28 



I dreamt (for no discernible reason) that Robert Blake was dressed like a bishop, and kept tripping as he walked down the street. Strange.
 Feb 27 



I dreamt I was Santa, but instead of riding ON the sleigh, I’d fallen off and was being dragged behind. And the damn reindeer wouldn’t stop!
 Feb 27 



I dreamt it was in the old timey days, and I was riding the rails with my boss, and there was foreshadowing that there’d be a train robbery.
 Feb 27 


I dreamt an old lady stopped me on the street and asked me to play “Good Night, Irene” on my ukulele. I said — Are you sure? It’s so SAD! 
Feb 27 



I dreamt I rowed furiously across a stormy ocean until I hit land. But I soon realized I’d come to rest on the back of a huge sea creature!
 Feb 26 



I dreamt Paul Witcover and I had discovered a cache of badly drawn Western comics from the ’50s, but were managing to enjoy them anyway. 
Feb 25 



I dreamt I was to receive a juggling trophy, but I was late for the ceremony because @IreneVartanoff had trouble getting through security.
 Feb 25 
 (more…)

I’ve been getting a lot of use out of my Sansaire Immersion Circulator since I received it … was it really only ten days ago?

The first things I tried to sous vide were short ribs, followed by eggs. Saturday night, I moved on to skinless chicken breasts, which I vacuum sealed and dropped into a 140-degree Fahrenheit bath for 90 minutes, the time and temperature recommended by Sansaire.

Result?

Extremely juicy chicken, seen here surrounded by broccoli fried with pecans and raisins. (more…)

My final meal in Santiago was one I’d been looking forward to for months, ever since Osaka made the list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants and I reached out for a reservation immediately. And as the time of our dinner approached, I grew even more excited, due to the additional wonderful things I’d been hearing about their food. Unfortunately, though the food at Osaka was indeed for the most part excellent, we ended up not feeling welcome there.

We arrived a few minutes before our 7:30 reservation and found that the door to the restaurant, inside the W Hotel, was closed. When it slid open exactly at 7:30, no one seemed ready to greet quests. The person who’d opened the door ignored us and walked off, and no one else even looked up. I had to interrupt the bartenders who were busy polishing glassware to get anyone to acknowledge or interact with us.

The servers seemed baffled we were even there, and questioned several times whether we actually had a reservation. I assured them that we did, but they didn’t believe me, and when one of them checked the computer screen at the maitre di’s station, he could not find we had one, even though I’d received a confirmation email way back in October. It was only because I remembered the name of the employee who’d emailed me that we were eventually allowed in to what was an empty restaurant, where none of the employees appeared eager to have us.

The food which followed was delicious, and the sushi was excellent, but the totally unexpected “who are you and why are you here” vibe instead of the warm, welcoming greeting we anticipated was a negative start to the meal. I’m aware that 7:30 is an early time for dining in Chile, but if Osaka hadn’t wanted us there at that time, they should never have accepted the reservation. So … a less than stellar experience.

After I returned home and contacted the restaurant, they apologized and explained that because our reservation had been taken in 2013, it failed for some reason to be transferred over in their system when the new year began, which is why no one expected us. While I can understand mistakes like that can happen, it sadly resulted in us feeling like intruders rather than customers.

Let’s hope you don’t have to go through anything like that, and can be free to focus solely on the food. (more…)

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but Irene and I managed to get one at Hetu’u restaurant on Easter Island.

As I mentioned in a few of my previous posts about our trip, we got to spend one more night on Easter Island than originally planned. As we were checking out of Chez Maria Goretti for our flight home that afternoon, we were told there wouldn’t be a flight that afternoon. We assumed it had something to do with the weather, which had been quite stormy the previous night, causing a cancellation of the Tapati festival, but once we arrived at the airport we learned that a passenger had experienced a heart attack on the lone inbound flight from Santiago, causing it to turn back.

As a result, LAN Airlines put us up at the Hotel Tupa at their expense, plus offered to pay for our lunch and dinner. Good on LAN. (Though we didn’t take them up on the dinner, as we spent the night at the festival.) What this all meant is that instead of being on a flight Friday afternoon, we were instead at Hetu’u restaurant, enjoying that free lunch.

Because our meal was paid for courtesy of a coupon handed us by the hotel, we didn’t get to choose from Hetu’u’s varied menu, some of which can be seen on the sandwich board out by the street, but were served a set menu, which ended up being a surprisingly good lunch anyway. (more…)

We initially avoided the Easter Island restaurant La Taverne du Pecheur because it seemed too … well … obvious.

It was in such a perfect spot—right by Caleta Hanga Roa, where the dive shops sent out their boats for scuba and snorkeling—that we figured they’d get a ton of walk-in traffic without a need to serve good food, and so would only have location on their side.

Besides, we preferred to find restaurants a little off the beaten track. (As if Easter Island wasn’t off the beaten track enough!) But then the Belgian family we befriended at Chez Maria Goretti told us we must go … so we went.

We sat on a second story patio outside beneath an umbrella (that may even be our table right above the restaurant’s sign), but soon the heavens opened, and the umbrella wasn’t enough to protect us. We moved to a table under an awning, but remained on the patio, so we could keep our view, which included moai who did not at all care that they were out in a storm. (more…)