It’s been far too long since I last gave you an opportunity to feel some healthy schadenfreude by letting you lord it over a magazine that’s no longer with us. So here’s a new installment in my series of rejection slips from dead magazines, focused on a title from an editor whose name has become somewhat infamous since this slip was sent to me twenty years ago.

Back in 1991, I sent off a story titled “Apartment 6-D” to The Quarterly, edited by Gordon Lish. (Yes, Gordon Lish.) I haven’t reread that story in years, but as I think back on it, it seems from this vantage point that Lish was entirely right to reject it, showing far better judgment than the editor who eventually published it.

At the time, I was unaware (we were all unaware) of Lish’s heavy-handed editing of the early works of Raymond Carver. Now that the details are out, I’m no longer quite the fan I once was.

This remains, however, a masterful rejection slip.

Back in August, I announced a competition inviting people to create movies of at least three minutes in length from any section of my Shakespearean zombie play “A Plague on Both Your Houses.” The clip could be in any style—live action, claymation, puppets, whatever. The winner of the Blow the Top of Scott Edelman’s Head Off Really Cool Zombie Filmmaking Competition would get $200, plus a signed hardcover copy of my zombie collection What Will Come After.

I’d planned to announce the winner during the World Fantasy Convention, but the all day/all night schmoozing took so much out of me that I didn’t have the brain left to draft this announcement. Now that I’ve recovered (sort of), I’m pleased to share the news that the winning entry was submitted by Drake Tucker of Phase2Films.

That entry, embedded below, was far more ambitious than I expected. Tucker and gang chose to film a populous and complex scene—the masked ball at which Carlo, the living son of the Mayor of New York City, first meets Dolores, the daughter of the King of the Zombies. The submitted piece has a post-apocalyptic Road Warrior vibe to it, yet also made me laugh in places. Plus I loved the choice of how they conveyed Dolores’ undead manner of speaking.

My hat—or should I say, the top of my head—is off to you! Congrats!

A couple of months ago, I announced a competition to blow the top of my head off by creating a short clip based on my Stoker-nominated zombie play “A Plague on Both Your Houses,” with three winners to be unveiled at World Fantasy Con at the end of this month. The clip of no less than three minutes in length can be in any format—live action, animation, marionettes, claymation, kinetic typography, sock puppets—and it’s not too late to submit yours.

So if you’ve been thinking of picking up a Flip cam and giving it a try, check out all the info here. You’ll note that I said entries had to be submitted by this Saturday the 15th, but as I’m the only judge, and it won’t be necessary to coordinate extensive debate, I’ve decided to extend that another 10 days to October 25th, the Tuesday before World Fantasy. So if you’ve been thinking of entering, there’s still time! What else do you have to do the next two weekends?

And just to give you an idea of your competition, check out this ambitious entry from Drake Tucker and his frightening friends.

What are you waiting for?

Just in case you didn’t read my short story “What Will Come After” in my collection of the same name, you’ve got another chance, because it’s now the lead story in Best New Horror 22 from the perceptive editor Stephen Jones. And if the thought of reading me isn’t enough of an impetus to get you to pick up a copy, you’d also get to read my betters, writers like Ramsey Campbell, Joe Lansdale, and Robert Shearman.

This is my third appearance in one of Jones’ annual roundups, as I was also reprinted in Best New Horror 4 and Best New Horror 8.

The UK edition from Robinson (with cover art by Vincent Chong) is on the left, while the U.S. edition from Running Press (with cover art by Joe Roberts) is on the right.

I love both images equally, but I’ve got to admit that the freaky pumpkin is weirding me out …

It’s been about a month since I last shared a rejection slip from a dead magazine with you, and I think it’s time you once more had a chance to … well … gloat.

Fantasy Book was good to me—I published two short stories with them (“Guinea Pigs” and “You Ain’t Just Whistlin’ Dixie“), though obviously not the one that got me this slip. (That story, “There Will Be No Miracles Today,” was eventually withdrawn from circulation, and has never never been—and never will be —published). In addition to those two acceptances, I was rejected 27 times, so I’d submited a total of 29 stories there, which meant that as I approached submission 30, it seemed like a magical number.

Why?

See, my first sale to Fantasy Book was the 10th story I submitted. I then thought I understood what the editor wanted, as we all do the first time we click, but no, I was rejected nine more times after that, only to sell them my 20th submission. (See the pattern?)

And then I was again rejected nine more times.

Back then, I thought—I get it—the editor will only buy every 10th submission from me. (Writers have strange superstitions.) So I was hopeful as I considered which story to shove in a manilla envelope for my 30th shot at a sale. But, alas, the magazine stopped publication, so I never had a chance to learn whether my superstition had any basis in truth.

By the way, if you think 29 a high number of submissions to any one market, far from it. Someday, when I have the time, I’ll do an exact count, but I’m pretty sure that there are a couple of magazines that I’ve submitted to 75 or more times … without a single sale.

Hope springs eternal.

If you weren’t in Reno for Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, you missed my reading of a new short story. Heck, even if you WERE in Reno for Renovation, you STILL probably missed it, because it was scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, August 21, when many attendees were already packing up and getting ready to leave.

Whichever of those categories you might happen to fall under, I’ve got your solution right here.

Thanks to the video below, you can see me read my as-yet-unpublished short story “In a Strange City Lying Alone,” which is due to come out on 9/11/11 in the anthology Why New Yorkers Smoke from Nonstop Press.

The anthology is edited by Luis Ortiz, and contains short stories from Carol Emshwiller, Barry Malzberg, Paul Di Filippo, and a bunch of other writers before whose talent I fall back in awe.

Hope you enjoy it!

If you’ve been wanting to read a new story of mine, but skipped my last four stories because, oh, I don’t know, you HATE zombies, it’s time for you to head over to Daily Science Fiction and read my fantasy, “How Amraphel, the Assistant to Dream, Became a Thief, Lost His Job, and Found His Way.”

It’s been live over there since last Friday, August 19, but I was too busy living Worldcon and then recovering from it to let you know that here. (See why Twitter is so valuable? You’d have learned about it immediately!)

Amazingly, this is my first publication in an online magazine. Which might also mean—since you can read it right now for free—that it could also be my most widely-read story to date.

So why not read it right now?

Trying to stay as clutter-free as I can, I picked up a stack of back issues of Brooklyn Magazine, and put them to the “How many of these things do I really need?” test.

First off, let me explain that I mean the Brooklyn Magazine which started publishing in 1978, and as far as I know ended in 1979, not the Brooklyn Magazine that’s currently alive and publishing.

As you can see from the first cover of the earlier Brooklyn Magazine and the most current cover I could find for the more recent incarnation, the new publication is a far classier production than we were ever able to put out.

Saying “we” implies I had a lot to do with the mag, but I didn’t. I wrote a book review for each issue, and did an interview with Fred Pohl, since The Way the Future Was was, after all, about growing up in Brooklyn. But other than that, all I ever had to do with the publishing of the magazine was when I’d pop in to say hello while walking from my apartment off Dahill Road in Bensonhurst to my favorite Chinese restaurant on 65th Street, which is how I discovered the magazine existed in the first place.

Yes, that’s right—as I walked from my apartment to pick up Chinese food one day, I noticed a storefront with the Brooklyn Magazine logo, went in and introduced myself to the editor before the first issue was published, and convinced him that he really needed my book reviews to be a part of it all. (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?