Imagine that you’re 16 and collapsed in the film room of an early ’70s Phil Seuling Comic-Con, dazed from a day storming the dealers room and attending panels. You’re with your friends enjoying Star Trek bloopers and installments of old Captain Marvel serials and maybe even Bambi Meets Godzilla—

—when all of a sudden you’re staring up at Berni Wrightson’s junk!

Not at all what any of us were expecting from the 1971 experimental short film The Orchid by Samuel R. Delany, now up on YouTube in a restored state thanks to filmmaker Eric Solstein. If you’re patient, in addition to a brief glimpse of Chip himself, you’ll also see such comic-book and SF names as Frank Brunner, George Alec Effinger, Alan Weiss, and Mary Skrenes.

I’m glad for the chance to see this again after all these years, because all my younger self took away from the film at the time was “WTF!” long before any of us ever thought “WTF!” There’s lots of intriguing imagery here beyond the junk of people I was trying to get sketches from back then. I just wasn’t ready to see it.

If you think you’re ready, click away!

(more…)

Like many of you, I’m planning to attend next year’s World Horror Convention in Brighton. I’m sure I’ll have fun, especially since my zombie collection from PS Publishing will launch there. But for extra insurance to make sure the trip goes well, I pulled out my favorite guidebook so I could brush up on the ways of those mysterious Brits.

Let’s flip through its pages together and see what sort of useful advice we can find!

Uh-oh! I see a problem right away. It seems that the convention, scheduled to run from March 25-28, won’t be held during the most fashionable time of year for a visit:

The ‘London Season’ is chiefly comprised within the months of May, June, and July, when Parliament is sitting, the aristocracy are at their town residences, the greatest artistes in the world are performing at the Opera, and the Picture Exhibitions open.

Ah, well. I’m sure I’ll manage to have a good time anyway. So what else do I need to know?

Passport: These documents are not necessary in England, though occasionally useful in procuring delivery of registered and poste restante letters. A visa is quite needless.

I’m glad to hear that England is such an open country! Anything more? (more…)

An original Frank Frazetta painting originally used as the cover to the Lancer paperback edition of Conan the Conqueror sold last week for $1,000,000.

I may not own a Frazetta painting, but I do have his autograph, as you can see below, obtained back in the early ’70s when I was an annoying kid with a sketchpad. The sheet below was signed either at the 1971 or 1972 July 4th weekend Phil Seuling Comic-Con. It couldn’t have been any earlier because I didn’t start doing this until after my first con, and it couldn’t have been later because Syd Shores passed away before the ’73 convention.

In addition to Shores and Frazetta, you can also see Bruce Jones, Harvey Kurtzman, Jeff Jones, John Putnam, and Jerry DeFuccio below

I know that without a painting attached, the Frazetta signature alone isn’t worth $1,000,000, so I’ll tell you what—feel free to knock off a zero. Heck, I’ll even knock off two.

So who wants to start the bidding?

I’m about to sit down and try to watch AMC’s Prisoner miniseries straight through. Which might not be the best idea.

I’m a huge fan of the original series. How huge? This huge:

Back in 1972, even though I was just a teenager, I tried to organize a Prisoner convention. I left out fliers on the freebie table at Phil Seuling’s July 4th weekend Comic-Con that year, hoping to pull off a Prisoner con the following year.

Here’s a scan of probably the only surviving copy of that flier, which I only own because one of them was mailed back to me attached to a long letter from a fellow Prisoner fan offering to help.

Why did I think a teenager could pull off running a con, dealing with a hotel, organizing guests, and fulfilling such outrageous promises as listed on the flier? Probably because Adam Malin and Gary Berman, who were even younger than I was, mere tadpoles, had already started running the first of their Creation cons.

I never went ahead with the con, I’m guessing because I realized how overwhelming the project would be. And also because though I desperately wanted to attend such a con, I didn’t really have the personality capable of running it.

In any case, that’s how much I loved the original Prisoner.

Excuse me now while I pop in that DVD. I hope it’s not as bad as everyone else says it is, but if you hear screaming coming from the East Coast … that could be me.

I did something a little bit obsessive this evening.

OK, a lot obsessive.

I went through the membership list for World Fantasy Con and counted the number of people with whom I shared a meal, plus the number with whom I chatted, some briefly, some extensively.

I had my reasons, though.

I’ve never taken the life I lead for granted. But two recent conversations with people not part of my convention-going life reinforced how lucky I am to have what I have.

In talking to one person, I tried to explain the experience of entering a crowded room, knowing everybody, and having to decide with whom to strike up a conversation first. (more…)

As I shared in July, Twitter changed Readercon for me. But who knew that it would affect the recent World Fantasy Con even more?

For those of you still thinking that Twitter is only about us all sharing what we had for breakfast, here are a few specific ways Twitter made my WFC better.

Live audience feedback

I’ve been on hundreds of panels over the years, and I’m used to judging the mood of the crowd by where it laughs, where it applauds, and where there’s just stupefied silence. When I was moderating a panel at the Stokers back in March, I used Twitter to poll the audience for questions and received suggestions from those on the floor as well as around the world.

But this was the first time I ever witnessed ongoing chatter as to which panelist quips audience members felt worthy of sharing with their circles of friend, thanks to updating the #wfc2009 hashtag on my iPhone.

And no, it wasn’t distracting. It was fascinating, and made the panel a richer, more complex, more rewarding experience. (more…)

I arrived at the Fairmont and immediately had a powerful sense of deja vu, as this was the same hotel I spent much of the San Jose Worldcon partying at back in 2002. I missed yesterday’s opening ceremonies, and showed up too late to register, but I was immediately in a boisterous maelstrom of friends. No name badge was needed with this crowd.

I ended up going to dinner almost immediately with John Kessel, Paul Park, Kij Johnson, Leslie Howle, and Neile Graham. We ended up at a joint called Don Pedro’s, where I had a big bowl of goat soup—but only because they were all out of the fried pork skin!

Here I am on one side of the table with John and Kij:

You can see the rest of my few initial World Fantasy photos here.

I partied much too late—at least for this East Coast body&#8212and so by the time I crashed my internal clock was telling me it was 3:00 a.m. I’m sure I missed most of the fun. I look forward to being a more well-adjusted partier tonight!

I spent a long day at CapClave yesterday, taking part in three panels, reading one of my stories aloud, and just schmoozing and hanging out with friends. You wouldn’t know it by my camera, though. I only snapped a couple of pictures, and none had me in them. Guess I was too busy having a good time. So you’ve just have to take my word for it that I was there.

I consider CapClave to be a local con, so I didn’t spend the night. But it’s really only semi-local now that we live in West Virginia—it takes about about an hour and 45 minutes to get to the hotel. Because of that, I tend to only spend a single day there (same with Balticon). So I arrived in Rockville around 9:30 in the morning, and left around 11:30 in the evening.

My first panel, which started at 10:00 a.m., was titled “Character Management,” and we attacked the issue of whether writers control their characters or if characters ever go off on their own. My co-conspirators were Allen Wold, Brenda Clough, Virginia DeMarce, Larry Hodges, and Tom Mccabe.

My opinion? My characters are slaves to my themes, to the thoughts and emotions I want implanted in your head by the time you finish my stories. So if my characters won’t behave, I have to alter them until they can believably walk the paths I need while remaining living, breathing people.

Perhaps it’s apocryphal, but I once read that Isaac Bashevis Singer, when asked whether his characters ever took over his stories, responded with bafflement—”But … they’re just puppets!” I don’t go quite that far … but I come close. Sure, I want my readers to care about my characters, but if those characters don’t fulfill my themes—they’re outta there! (more…)

I received my program schedule from the gurus over at Capclave, which will be held two weeks from now. If you’ll be attending, here’s where you’ll be able to find me.

And if you’re looking for David Louis Edelman, remember—I’m not him, and he’s not me!

All of my panels will take place on Saturday, Oct. 16:

10:00 a.m.: Character Management
Do you control your characters or do they go off on their own? Do you collaborate with your characters or do they ignore your outline? What do you do when they seem to be diverting from the plot? What if a minor character wants to go off on her own? Who controls the ending?
(with Allen Wold, Brenda Clough, Virginia DeMarce, Larry Hodges, and Tom Mccabe)

1:00 p.m.: New writers
How did you get started in the field? How are you shaping your career? What advice would you give new writers?
(with Larry Hodges, John Joseph Adams, John Betancourt, Tad Daley, and Shelia Williams)

3:30 p.m.: Reading

10:00 p.m.: Works I Didn’t Write
What books or stories did you consider writing and decide against doing or start but not finish? Why did you discard them? Are there certain topics/areas you would not want to write even if you get an idea? Have you ever come back to a discarded idea?
(with Alan Smale, Diane Arrelle, and Lawrence Watt-Evans)

I’ve never done a Capclave panel as late at night as the last one. It will be interesting to see how many of you show up—and whether I’ll be still be coherent twelve hours after my first panel of the day!

Usually, my weekends are not that much different from my weekdays—it’s work, work, work, whether on SCI FI Wire, or my own writing, or the house and yard. After all, it’s almost time to start putting another batch of daffodils in the ground!

About half the months of the year, I’m off to a convention of some kind. During July, I’m usually off to two—Readercon and the San Diego Comic-Con. But it just occurred to me that I’ll be breaking some sort of record with October, because I’m scheduled to be making peregrinations four of the month’s five weekends!

The second weekend in October, I’ll be going to Edgar Allan Poe’s funeral. As much as I like hearing Ellen Datlow speak, I have to admit that I’m most looking forward to discovering what Alfred Hitchcock, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, H.P. Lovecraft, Jules Verne, and Alexander Dumas have to say.

The third weekend in October, I’ll be attending Capclave in Rockville, Maryland.

The fourth weekend in October, I’ll be accompanying Irene to the New Jersey Romance Writers Conference. I won’t be attending the actual con, but I’ll use the weekend to have another reunion with editors from my high-school newspaper. Plus, once Irene’s done with her con, we’ll be taking Marie Severin out to lunch.

And the fifth weekend in October, I’ll be heading off to San Jose for this year’s World Fantasy Convention.

Too bad there’s nothing going on the first weekend in October, or else I’d have a Grand Slam!

Let me know whether I can expect to see any of you at any of these events.