Time To Get Things Started . . .
The First of Many Hundreds of Posts to Entertain, Inform, Inspire, and All That Other Stuff
Okay, after three previous posts attempting to purge my mailing list of all the seething masses of people who have no interest in reading even a single word from me, this will be my LAST admonition to please UNsubcribe or send me an email demanding to be removed. I promise to do everything in my power to make you happy.
But if I don’t hear from you, I gotta figure you’re here for the duration.
So here we go:
About two (or maybe three) years ago, my good buddy and brother from another mother, F. Paul Wilson, and I were driving through upstate New York to do a gig as instructors in a two-day writers’ workshop being held at Seton Catholic High School in Binghamton. At one point Paul mentioned he was compiling an eBook of all his non-fiction he’d written over the years, and added that he was positively amazed at the massive amount of wordage the project comprised. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, he said.
Initially, I was a bit surprised to hear this because Paulie has been such a prolific writer of fiction, I’d never really considered the idea he’d produced even a modicum of non-fiction. I said as much to him and he said: “Yeah, either did I until I started digging up all the reviews, and articles, and essays, and introductions, and appreciations, and afterwords . . . right?”
And that’s when I realized he was dead on—when your writing and publishing career spans fifty years, if you keep at your craft, you’re going to write a lot of things to which you barely gave a second thought. Such as the litany of stuff he’d rattled off to me.
Our conversation prompted me to look back into my own files and folders and see if they held a similar trove of oddments. It was one of those projects that never seemed to get onto a front burner, and I spent time on it sporadically over the next few years without really getting things into shape. One of the reasons for this was the huge number of non-fiction pieces I realized I’d written over the course of my career—and it hammered home this truth: getting all the decades of wordage organized into a coherent book would require my full attention.
And so, in the fullness of time, I divided the book into the following sections: Introductions and Forewords, Afterwords, Appreciations, Articles and Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Autobiography.
Some of the earlier pieces written in the Typewriter Era needed to be scanned and cleaned up. Some of the publications in which articles, essays, and reviews had appeared were in such a deteriorated state my scanner had trouble pulling the letters out of the faded backgrounds of the cheesy pulp paper of the magazines. And then there were the cases where I had the entries in my bibliography, but couldn’t even find a typescript copy or the original publication. Searches for stuff became time-consuming.
As I read over some of the articles and introductions and even some book reviews, I was astounded that some of it had been written by me. Especially in the earlier material, the tone and the voice were so stiff and formal (albeit erudite) and not much like my style that has since evolved and case-hardened into an accessible, conversational voice.
But as the work piled up, I realized I had more than enough material (almost 220,000 words!) to pull together a comprehensive gestalt of my interests, attitudes, and professional knowledge—as well as more than few glimpses into my personality and my life experiences. And, hey, this does not count my 90-plus M.A.F.I.A.1 columns.
Will any of you find this stuff of sufficient interest to keep you reading?
I have no idea.
My plan is to put it out there in a bunch of Substack post, and see what happens. These will be part of your Free Subscription. I welcome comments and observations and you can reach me here: tfmbp@borderlandspress.com.
At some point, I’ll probably pour them into an eBook format, and I’ll let everyone know when it will be available for download.
I’ve been tinkering with a new novel, but I have to confess I just don’t have the energy I enjoyed in past years, and the writing is slow and sometimes irritating because it is so slow. In addition, I did a novella for the latest iteration of Weird Tales, and also sold it to Journalstone Press.
The other project I just completed was the pulling together of my sixth and final short story collection. Entitled Memos from the Abyss, it’s all the stories I’ve published since 2000. Twenty-two stories and a novella. And it will be my final one because, like many of my generational contemporaries, I don’t write much short fiction any more. Fifty years and six collections is more than enough, I think.
I will however, keep up the good fight for the time being. I would like to hear from you regarding topics and issues in publishing that are of interest to you, and I will comment on them in the manner in which you are accustomed. You can reach me at the email address above.
That said, the many posts to follow will feature Introductions I’ve done for other writers’ book, Appreciations for writers, Afterwords for worthy tomes, and other stuff
Thanks for tuning in.
A column I have been writing since 1976 entitled The Mothers And Fathers Italian Association. (an omnibus collection of the first 50 columns won a Stoker Award for Non-Fiction)
Thanks for supportive words re MAFIA (send Chizmar a letter telling him his mag isn't half what it was with me in it!)
As far as an RJ collection, Gauntlet is pulling together all the RJ short fiction--called QUICK FIXES--check it out
Tom, MAFIA was the highlight of the Cemetery Dance magazine during my subscription period. In addition, Paul Wilson’s Adversary Cycle collection occupies a place of honor on my bookshelf next to the Coffin Edition of The Stand. I’d be interested in a Repairman Jack collection if Borderlands decided to publish it. Any hope?
Steve Adelman