I dreamt that I was in a cookie-cutter mall bookstore of the Borders or Barnes and Noble variety—long, narrow, and badly lit. I was reading a (non-existent in real life) beautifully designed three-volume collection of Michael Chabon’s essays and short stories. I’d pick up a book, settle in a comfy chair, skim through it, note a particularly fascinating sentence here and there, and then return it to the shelf in exchange for the next volume to enjoy in that comfy chair.

When I returned with the third volume, who should be sitting in the comfy chair next to mine but Jonathan Lethem. For some reason, we got into a discussion about whether or not he really existed. Not sure how we got on that topic, but in the dream, the discussion of his possible status as imaginary seemed entirely rational. We were discussing this situation both as if it was happening to us, but also as if we were just characters in someone else’s story.

Perhaps, I suggested, when the workers in the bookstore looked at me, all they saw was a guy talking to himself, gesticulating toward a empty chair. Talking about myself as if I was but a fictional character, I continued by saying that when they looked at me, they probably thought of me as harmless. Jonathan corrected me, as if taking about a story we would write, saying that, no, they’d instead see the character as a user.

With this, Jonathan stood up and said he was hungry. As I considered where we might head off to have dinner, I woke, and was, of course, hungry in reality.

One of the reasons I love living where I do is that Spring seems to come with more omens than it does in cities. (Who knows? Maybe it’s just that when I used to live in them, I wasn’t playing as close attention.) In any case, today I saw another sign.

I always look forward to the moss starting to green up, and the bulbs blooming, each in turn. I’ve already seen the first toad. New bamboo shoots won’t start coming up for several weeks, and the first turtles likely won’t appear until May or June. But today, while clearing wood from the swale, I noticed this little guy leaping around:

And about a half an hour later, distant enough so that we knew it wasn’t just the same creature, Irene spotted this guy: (more…)

As those of you who’ve been reading my meanderings already know, my father passed away in January. Dad was an accomplished artist, and many of his paintings hang in our house. This week we added one more.

A couple of weeks ago, I’d happened to mention to my mother that my wife and I loved a particular painting of his, and she surprised us by packaging it up and shipping it north from Florida. She told me that she did this partially because it was my birthday, and partially because she felt that since Irene and I liked it so much we should have it to enjoy.

Here’s the fanciful fish I’ve admired for years:

When I unpacked the painting and prepared to hang it, I saw that there was a second, secret painting hidden on the back. Dad usually stretched his own canvas rather than purchase it prestretched, and if he didn’t like a particular piece, he’s remove it from its frame and use the reverse side.

Here’s the image I discovered on the back:

Not a painting I’d choose to look at every day—it seems a bit too melancholy for my taste—but it’s certainly beautiful in its own way. Sadly, I’ll never get the chance to find out what caused him to abandon it.

We hung it at the top of the stairs, where we’ll see it every day. After doing so, I took a step back, admiring it. I wanted to tell Dad how beautiful I thought it was and how happy it made me to see it hanging there, and in that moment it hit me once more how there’s no longer a way for me to tell him those things. I got choked up remembering yet again that our conversation has now turned into a monologue.

I miss him.

While wandering through our daffodils, I came across another sign of Spring. The moss, having greened up nicely over the past week or so, has now begun to sprout.

Here’s a worm’s eye view of the mossy forest:

I woke at 4:30 in the morning from a dream in which I was attending some convention so large it could have been the San Diego Comic-Con, only it wasn’t exactly the San Diego Comic-Con. I enter an auditorium in which a film is about to be played and find the room half full. I see Neal Adams in the audience, only not the Neal Adams of today, but rather the Neal Adams of the 1970s, even though it was today in the dream. He has a huge bucket of popcorn in his lap, as if he’s about to watch a blockbuster in his local theater instead of the documentary about Harlan Ellison which is about to begin.

I step outside for a moment—to get my own bucket of popcorn perhaps?—and when I return the theater is more populated, and I can no longer sit next to Neal the way I’d planned to. So I sit somewhere else. And then the film begins, but I can remember none of it. Not because I’ve forgotten what was playing out onscreen, but because the dream jump cuts to after the lights come back on.

And guess what? Someone has been murdered. I think. My memory is vague on that now. But I do remember that some horrible crime has been committed, which could have been murder, but it also could have been something else equally heinous, whatever that might be. (more…)

As reported by the New York Times, the winner of the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year is—

The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais

This year’s finalists included:

Curbside Consultation of the Colon
The Large Sieve and Its Applications
Strip and Knit With Style
Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring

My favorite of all past nominees mentioned in the article, however, was the 2005 winner:

People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.

I dreamt this morning that I visited Harlan Ellison. Not in the playhouse he and Susan occupy in the real world, though. In my dreamland, they were living in an urban area in one of the storefronts of a strip mall. I never got inside, however, as Harlan came outside to greet me and talk. There was a dry cleaning shop immediately next door, and the owner stood in his doorway and watched us as we had our conversation.

We showed off signature sheets of our future projects to each other, and cooed over the illustrations we had gotten. Now that I’m awake, I can no longer identify the artists or the books in which the drawings were meant to appear, but the intricate color artwork was amazing. It was a pleasant, warm, friendly conversation.

One of Harlan’s publishers arrived to discuss his next book, so I said goodbye. We made plans to meet again before I left, though.

As I took off, I noted a large sign in the parking lot which contained a giant comic-book word balloon the size of a car, meant to be filled in by old-style movie theater letters, or the kind you see used in church signs. Beneath it was a note to Harlan’s visitors which seemed aimed more at those fans he wouldn’t come out to see. They were invited to fill in the balloon with quotations, and if Harlan liked the saying he would leave it until the next visitor came along to change it.

As I crossed the street, I had to leap to avoid getting hit by a bus. Then, walking back to the train station so I could head home, I got lost. I woke as I wandered.

It was 6:15, and I would have liked to roll over and get another hour of sleep, but could not. I had Harlan on my mind.

I learned yesterday that my short story, “Petrified,” which was published last year in Desolate Souls, the souvenir program book for the 2008 World Horror Convention, made HWA’s final Stoker ballot in the category Superior Achievement in Short Fiction.

This marks my fourth such nomination—my first was back in 1998 for 1997’s story “A Plague on Both Your Houses”—but this nod differs from all the rest in that it’s my first Stoker-nominated piece not to contain zombies. So all of you haters of the shambling undead can finally relax.

Here are the finalists in my category:

“Petrified” by Scott Edelman (Desolate Souls)
“The Lost” by Sarah Langan (Cemetery Dance Publications)
“The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft” by Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt (Chizine)
“Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment” by M. Rickert (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)
“Turtle” by Lee Thomas (Doorways)

You’ll note that this is the second consecutive year I’m competing against Lee Thomas, and we all know what happened last year in Salt Lake City … (more…)

Among my dreams last night were two which related to writing and publishing, one set in the world of science fiction and horror, the other in comics.

In the first, at about 3:00 a.m., I was at a convention in a packed room. I was sitting next to my old pal Gene O’Neill in an audience of several hundred. We were there because he was about to give a talk and reading, and I was supposed to introduce him. We each held manuscripts in our hands. As I was being called to the podium to say a few words to lead into his presentation, Gene slipped me a page containing a description of his latest novel, which I assume had to be this one, though in the dream it remained unidentified. I waved him off, telling him that if I used his words instead of my own, people would sense me parroting him, and never believe all the good things I was about to say about it. I woke before the talk began, but with the mood happy and us both enjoying ourselves.

I assume that this dream came about because of that new book, Lost Tribe, showing up in the mail last week, but also because we were both on HWA’s preliminary Stoker ballot, and the final ballot should be announced any moment—in fact, I was expecting to hear yea or nay over the weekend—so it’s very much on my mind. My fingers are crossed that we get to see each other in June as nominees. (more…)

Back around 1978-1980, if my memory for dates is functioning properly, I did some acting as part of a local community theater group in Brooklyn, the Greenpoint Repertory Company. Over the course of about two years, when life seemed to hold more spare time, I played Mookie Maguggins in “Dirty Works at the Crossroads,” Boris Kolenkhov in “You Can’t Take It With You,” Lennie Small in “Of Mice and Men,” and the Creature in “Frankenstein.”

Of these performances, very little evidence survives, which, after all, is one of the beautiful and poignant things about theater. You had to be there. I only have a couple of photographs from any of those productions, since it was a pre-digital time. But thanks to my brother, Lee, who was attending film school in 1979, something more remains of “Frankenstein.”

Whether for homework or just for the heck of it, he made a Super 8 film which captures a few snippets of performance, plus a sped-up sequence as I applied my make-up. Lee just found that film and transferred it to DVD, and watching it took me way back. (Thanks, Lee!) So now I’m inflicting it on you. (more…)