A few minutes ago, the Horror Writers Association announced the preliminary ballot for the 2015 Bram Stoker Awards, and guess who’s on it in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction? Me!

Check out the ten stories which made the cut.

Braunbeck, Gary A. – Paper Cuts (Seize the Night) (Gallery Books)

Eads, Ben – Cracked Sky (Omnium Gatherum)

Edelman, Scott – Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen (Dark Discoveries #30)

Gunhus, Jeff – The Torment of Rachel Ames (Seven Guns Press)

Mannetti, Lisa – The Box Jumper (Smart Rhino Publications)

McGuire, Seanan – Resistance (The End Has Come) (Broad Reach Publishing)

O’Neill, Gene – At the Lazy K (Written Backwards)

Parent, Jason – Dia de los Muertos (Bad Apples 2) (Corpus Press)

Partridge, Norman – Special Collections (The Library of the Dead) (Written Backwards)

Yardley, Mercedes M. – Little Dead Red (Grimm Mistresses) (Ragnarok Publications)

Fingers crossed that enough HWA members enjoy my story to vote it on to the final ballot.

If “Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen” should make it there, that would be the sixth time a story of mine will be a Stoker Awards finalist. I’ve previously been there for “The Hunger of Empty Vessels” (on the 2009 ballot), “Petrified” (2008), “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” (2007), “The Last Supper” (2003), and “A Plague on Both Your Houses” (1997).

One reason I’d love to move on to the next stage, aside from what fun it is to spend a few months being a nominee, is that according to Locus, even if I get there only to lose, I’d still win!

Because I’d then be tied for the most nominations without a win ever!

Voting on the preliminary ballot will occur from February 1 through February 15, and the final ballot will be announced on February 23. If you’re an Active or Lifetime members of the HWA and would like a PDF of “Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen,” let me know!

A few days ago, I teased a new sale, but was unable tell you to which anthology I’d sold that short story until the editor went public with the news. Well, Michael Bailey’s done that now over on Facebook, so I’m free to share that next year, I’ll be in the anthology You, Human from Dark Regions Press, along with a few other writers whose names you might find familiar—

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—such as Stephen King, Mort Castle, and Darren Speegle.

Ours are the only four names announced and visible on the cover so far, because for his anthologies, Michael likes to spill a new name every few days so as to bring as much drama as possible to his table of contents reveal. He promises to reveal the names of two more writers over on his Facebook page Thursday.

As for the title of the 5,850-word tale—which happens to be my fourth short fiction sale of 2015 (yay, me!)—Michael is holding off on posting all of those until his full roster is complete, so I’ll keep it to myself, too. But I will say one thing about it—I like this title so much I’m considering it as the title story for a future collection.

What Will Come After, my Stoker Award-nominated collection of zombie short stories which PS Publishing put out in 2010, is currently available only as an ebook, so if you’re the kind of reader who prefers dead trees to pixels, you’re out of luck. Sadly, the hardcover’s been out of print for a few years.

But that’s about to change.

The latest PS Publishing email newsletter, which mentioned my recent zombification on an episode of Z Nation, took me by surprise with an announcement my collection will soon be out in paperback.

I knew such an edition might be in the offing, but until now, I wasn’t sure.

So for those with an aversion to ebooks … watch out! What Will Come After will be shambling your way soon …

Since all the cool kids seem to be doing this, I figured—why not me? So here are details on the two stories of mine published in 2015, so you can, if you’re a voting member of certain organizations, nominate them if so moved … but only after you’ve read them and judged them worthy, of course.

First up—

Back in March, my 13,000-word zombie story “Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen” was published in Dark Discoveries #31.

It’s a dark but (hopefully) uplifting horror story of love and obsession, and if you’re a voting member of a group for which that sort of thing seems a good fit, drop me a line, and I’ll be glad to send along a PDF. (more…)

Since I told you I’d sold a 10,000-word story to the anthology Chiral Mad 3, a lot has happened. Eight more authors—Josh Malerman, Gary A. Braunbeck, Hal Bodner, Emily Cataneo, Lisa Morton, Max Booth III, Meghan Arcuri-Moran, and Richard Chizmar—joined the table of contents, plus artist Glenn Chadbourne delivered his illustration for my story, “That Perilous Stuff.”

As you can see, someone’s hoarding problem has gotten a little out of hand …

According to editor Michael Bailey, there are a few more short story purchases still to be announced.

This looks to be an amazing anthology, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

You’ve heard plenty from me in the past about what it was like to edit Marvel’s British reprint books, which was the job that started my professional career in comics, but what you really need to complete the picture is a few other voices.

For the latest issue of Back Issue magazine, Dewey Cassell, who’d previously interviewed me about the Scarecrow and a variety of other topics, not only got me to chat about those early days at 575 Madison Avenue, but also tracked down old pal Howard Bender and recent Hugo Award nominee Steve Stiles, two artists who drew some of the covers and extra splash pages that were needed. (more…)

I learned an interesting data point about the new paperback edition of my short story collection These Words Are Haunted from Fantastic Books publisher Ian Randal Strock, who was selling copies of same at Readercon as well as my science fiction collection What We Still Talk About.

According to Ian, people walking by his table would be attracted to the cover of These Words Are Haunted and pause to pick it up—those monstrous green letters really pop, don’t they?—only to then put it down again and instead buy a copy of What We Still Talk About. By the time the con was over, he’d sold only a single copy of the former, but he’d sold out of the latter!

This does not totally disappoint me. The cover did its job, getting copies of the book into the hands of potential readers. That this time around, those potential readers were more interested in science fiction than horror doesn’t mean it wasn’t a success. A sale is a sale. At a different sort of convention, those figures will likely be reversed.

Coincidentally, while I was at Readercon, I received a photo from the artist who’d provided the zombie font which appeared on the cover of the book as part of Chris Kalb’s final design—Memo Angeles.

Memo lives in Veracruz, Mexico, and I worried that the copy I’d sent him might not survive the vagaries of international mail, but as you can see, it did. Noting Memo’s expression as he holds the book, however, I’m not entire sure he did!

Good news! Michael Bailey has accepted my 10,000-word dark fantasy “That Perilous Stuff” for the third installment of his Chiral Mad anthology series, currently scheduled to be published during the first quarter of 2016.

That’s my fourth fiction sale in the past 13 months, following sales to Dark Discoveries (which has already been published) plus Genius Loci and Postscripts (still upcoming).

You can see the tentative cover below. Though a few tweaks and some additional text is still to come, this will give you a basic idea of what to expect.

As for the rest of the contents of Chiral Mad 3, Michael has announced all but seven of the stories, as well as twenty poems from 10 poets. Here’s what we know so far—

Fiction (11 of 20):

Gene O’Neill – “3-Dot People”
Ramsey Campbell – “Know Your Code”
Jessica May Lin – “Red Runner vs. The Surgeon, Issue 18”
Paul Michael Anderson – “The Agonizing Guilt of Relief (Last Days of a Ready-Made Victim)”
Stephen King – “The Last Rung on the Ladder”
Richard Thomas – “The Offering on the Hill”
Jason V Brock – “Windows, Mirrors, Doors”
Mercedes Murdock Yardley – “The Dead Collection”
Damien Angelica Walters – “The Whipping Girls”
Scott Edelman – “That Perilous Stuff” (novelette)
Erinn L. Kemper – “A Flash of Red”

Poetry (20 of 20):

Elizabeth Massie – “Black River #1” and “Black River #2”
Bruce Boston – “Beyond Symmetry” and “Reflecting on Reflections”
Erik T. Johnson – “Whisper #1 (A Warning)” and “Whisper #2 (A Prophecy)”
Marge Simon – “Mirror Image” and “Reflections through the Raven’s Eye”
Stephanie M. Wytovich – “Put Me to Dream” and “Welcome Home, Darling”
Ciarán Parkes – “The Speed of Sound” and “Recognizing Trees”
Jonathan Balog – “Insomnia in Reverse” and “Fail-safe”
P. Gardner Goldsmith – “Fair” and “Promise”
Rose Blackthorn – “Arbitration” and “Prescience”
Sydney Leigh – “Folie à Deux” and “Folie à Plusieurs”

To find out who’s lucky enough to fill those final seven slots, keep checking in over at the Written Backwards blog .

As Balticon wound down last month, I was interviewed by Dave Thomas and Brian Keene for their podcast, The Horror Show, an experience which left us smiling (well, grimacing maniacally anyway) once it was all over.

That episode is now available for your listening … dare I call it … pleasure?

Click on the embed below to hear me (at least according to their write-up) yammer on about —

… his work at Marvel and DC Comics in the 70s and 80s, his memories of creators such as Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Gerber, how today’s diversity discussion echoes the past, his work for The Syfy Channel, Hanna-Barbera, and Tales From the Darkside much more.

And it seems before I could even get this post live, others have already given it a listen and found it interesting.

Perhaps you’ll find it interesting, too.

When I was interviewed by Dewey Cassell about the origins of Marvel’s Scarecrow for an article which was to appear in Back Issue magazine #60 (October 2012), one of the things he wanted to know was—who was originally intended to be that character’s first artist?

The reason that even came up was because back in the the pages of Dead of Night #11 (August 1975), I’d mentioned in an essay that “the artist who the assignment was given to had since disappeared into the wilds of the city.” So Dewey asked … which artist?

It had been more than three decades since he had vanished, but I had a pretty good idea who that artist had been—Bill Draut. After a little research, though, I began to doubt my gut, and as you can see in an excerpt below from Dewey’s published article, I’d decided I must have been wrong.

But thanks to the latest installment of Comic Book Legends: Revealed, I learned today that I’d been right all along! (more…)