My zombie stories have been getting reprinted a LOT lately, so much so that I’m losing track of them the same way a zombie loses track of how many fingers it has left. Well … not exactly in that same way. But I had forgotten that one of my stories was going to be reprinted this October in Z: Zombie Stories until the cover started popping up online.

Though you can’t necessarily tell by that cover, the book—edited by Jeremy Lassen and to be published by Night Shade Books—is meant to be a YA title, as the following blurb explains:

When the zombie apocalypse comes, it’s not just the crusty old folks who must struggle against the undead. It’s the young people. What happens when you come of age during the zombie apocalypse?

And just to show I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d forgotten all about this—I only think, but I’m not 100% sure, that the tale being reprinted here is “The Human Race.” I wouldn’t be able say for sure unless I went to the trouble of digging out my contract. But since I don’t really have time for that, I think I’ll just wait for my contributor’s copy to show up and fill you in on the details then …

How much did I love Robert Shearman’s short story collection Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical? So much so that I took my time reading it. You might think that if you really love a writer’s work you’d gobble down all his stories as quickly as possible, but no, I wanted this to last. Now it’s done and I’m wishing the book had been longer. Much longer.

You often hear people say that a certain book seems to have been written for them alone, and though that’s a cliché, in this case, it felt very much the truth, because all of the stories in the collection dealt with love in one form or another, and I feel that all of my stories (yes, even my zombie ones) are love stories, too. As Ted Sturgeon wrote in his essay “Why So Much Syzygy?” (and as I quoted in the introduction to my own collection What We Still Talk About):

I think what I have been trying to do all these years is to investigate the matter of love, sexual and asexual. I investigate it by writing about it because …I don’t know what the hell I think until I tell somebody about it.

And so Shearman writes touching and funny and whimsical tales like the one about a couple who literally gave each other their hearts, and the one about a world in which the percentage of the love that you feel for each person you know can be measured, and then there’s the one about a man who heads off on a cruise to dispose of his late wife’s ashes only to learn, well, you’ll find out when you read it … and more.

And after all of these already amazing stories, one of which even got me verklempt, there comes a tour de force (I know, I feel that word is overused, too, but this time it truly is a tour de force) in which Shearman critiques all those other stories that came before. In the collection’s penultimate story, “Not About Love,” Shearman (yes, it’s a metafictional story is about Shearman himself) arrives at an awards ceremony where he is nominated for the very book you’re reading, and is assailed by the elderly patron after whom the award is named. (more…)

My zombie play “A Plague on Both Your Houses“—think Night of the Living Dead crossed with Romeo and Juliet—has never been performed, save for a star-studded reading during the 1998 Stoker Awards weekend. And by performed, I simply mean that since the work was on the final ballot that year, and all nominees got a chance to read a chunk of their work, and my play wouldn’t have been understood if multiple characters had been read in my voice alone, I dragooned a bunch of my friends on stage to read along with me.

Had you been there, you’d have seen Michael Marano, David Honigsberg, Ed Bryant, Nina Kirki Hoffman, Gordon van Gelder, and others (including me!) as zombies. Well, some of us anyway. Some were the last surviving humans on Manhattan Island in a post-apocalyptic future. But I’ve always wanted something more.

And while discussing the piece at Readercon last month—because people have been reading and talking about it again due to its inclusion in my all-zombie collection What Will Come After—I’ve decided to finally make that something more happen.

Here’s where you come in. I’m announcing the creation of the Blow the Top of Scott Edelman’s Head Off Really Cool Zombie Filmmaking Competition to encourage the creation of short videos based on sections of the play, with the winner (as judged by me) receiving $200 and my undying awe. (Zombie awe should always be undying, shouldn’t it?)

Here are the rules: (more…)

I wrote “These Words Are Haunted” in 1983, and by the time I sent it off to Fantasy Tales in 1987, it had already been rejected 13 times.

Luckily, the story was eventually accepted by Weirdbook and was published in its Spring 1992 issue. I loved that title so much I also used it as the title of my first collection.

Gee, I wonder whatever happened to that Steve Jones guy?

It’s that time again, when I gather together the previous month’s dream tweets and let them rub up against each other to see how surreal they look when that happens.

In July, I dreamt of Pete Seeger, Cee Lo Green, Joe Pesci, Sol Brodsky, James Patrick Kelly … and maybe even you. Let’s see, shall we?

July 2011

I lost one of my dreams due to illegible handwriting. I have no idea what “went under [illegible] several [illegible] not get away” means. 31 July

I dreamt I was about to interview Sarah Palin, only my office door was locked, and I couldn’t get in with her to retrieve my recorder. 31 July

I dreamt I sat in a chair next to my father, who was in bed watching bullfighting and episodes of I Love Lucy on TV and getting paid for it. 31 July

I dreamt I wandered at Clarion with James Patrick Kelly, engaged in an intense debate over which local restaurant served the best pancakes. 31 July

I dreamt I was the Matt Smith Doctor Who, shouting for a subway platform to be evacuated while demanding someone bring me an arc welder. 31 July

I dreamt I was still editing SF Age and interviewing a teenager to be my assistant. He surprised me by knowing secrets about Martin Goodman. 30 July

I dreamt I was slowly and carefully counting out and eating gummi bears one by one, but I lost count when I had to rescue a runaway train. 29 July

I dreamt I slid the paper sleeves containing lyrics off my LPs and stapled them together to research a singer … but I can’t remember who. 28 July

I dreamt I saw an old timey steam engine far in the distance which was suddenly here pulling out, and I rushed to say farewell to friends. 27 July

I dreamt I learned what Chris Meloni’s been up to since quitting L&O: SVU. I ordered a corned beef sandwich at a deli and he was my waiter! 26 July (more…)

I’ve always prided myself on knowing in my bones that it’s Spider-Man (with a hyphen) and Superman (without), and I recently gave somebody I know a smackdown for leaving out that all-important hyphen. But I see now that even Marvel itself got mixed up at first, as this page from Amazing Fantasy #15 (Spidey’s debut, remember?) proves.

The third paragraph refers to the web-slinger not just as “Spiderman,” but as “The Spiderman”—something that as a former Marvel Comics proofreader makes my skin crawl!

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the last time Marvel messed up … but at least now I understand why others might get it wrong, too.

I’d love to tell you details about The Asymptotical World, but I have no memory of the magazine at all … other than that I sent its editor/publisher Michael Gerardi half a dozen stories during the mid-’80s, selling him none of them.

Which means you won’t be learning anything today other than what I hope you’re learning with each installment in this series—to take some small comfort in the fact you’re still around … while these magazines that may have rejected you aren’t.

I’ve been attending Readercon since it began in 1987. I haven’t missed one yet. It’s my favorite convention weekend of the year, the place where I hang with my tribe and recharge my creative batteries.

I’ve been attending the San Diego Comic-Con since 2007. It’s the most important pop culture gathering of the year, and since I’m the editor of Blastr, there’s no way I can miss it. It’s a must-see event.

During most Julys, Readercon has been two weeks prior to Comic-Con. Last month, it was one week before Comic-Con. In 2012 … well … see for yourself, via screen grabs from the two cons’ sites.

To say that I’m heartbroken is an understatement. But I don’t see any way around it. I’ve got to cover Comic-Con. My unbroken string of Readercons … has come to an end.

If I’m wearing black the next time you see me, it won’t be because I’m channeling Neil Gaiman. It’ll be because I’m in mourning.

Pelmanism? What’s Pelmanism? Evidently, a big deal … once upon a time.

The UK paperback edition of Agatha Christie’s One, Two, Buckle My Shoe contained the following advertisement on page 8, tucked between the poem referenced in the title and the first page of novel text. (I’m sorry I couldn’t provide a clear scan of this, but I hesitate to press the inside of a ’50s paperback flat against a scanner, and so instead snapped as clear a pic as I could.)

I’m chagrined to admit that until I encountered this ad, I’d never heard of Pelmanism, which promised here to cure me of Depression, Forgetfulness, Weakness of Will, Worry, Indecision, Mind-Wandering, Procrastination, Inferiority Feelings, and Lack of Confidence.

Apparently, this system of training was created in the 1890s, was studied by millions, including writer H. Rider Haggard and Boy Scouts founder Sir Robert Baden-Powell, and has since been mostly forgotten … though according to one of the descendants of its creator, you can find the full 15-lesson course for free online.

Is there anything to it? Will Pelmanism truly “clear [my] mind of its difficulties and weaknesses”? I have no idea. (And the word “clear” in relation to my mind when it comes to self-help movements like these kind of scares me.) I’m just surprised that something like this, once so popular, could have for the most part vanished.

And here I thought I knew everything.

Am I the only one who’s never heard of Pelmanism?

One lesson about the writing life I had to learn was that just because you’ve sold a story to a magazine, you haven’t left its rejection slips behind you. One example was The Twilight Zone.

I’d published “Fifth Dimension” in its April 1983 issue, back when Ted Klein was the editor, but when I sent “The Man Who Lost His Music”—originally written as a Clarion student in 1979—to then-editor Tappan King in 1987, here’s what I got back in the mail.

For what it’s worth, that judgement on “The Man Who Lost His Music” appears to have been correct. None of the 27 editors to whom it had been submitted wanted it, and it has gone mercifully unpublished.

It hasn’t been submitted in more than 20 years, and if I’m lucky, the manuscript no even longer exists.