Foreign Editions

Gordon Van Gelder and Ellen Datlow are great editors, that goes without saying. But the two of them were also the only two that made certain  received copies of any foreign editions my work appeared in. In between the German and French editions, you'll see both Danish and Croatian anthologies. The first three are Dutch volumes of Year's Best Horror and I picked them up from Kees Buis, from his own personal collection, in exchange for some signed books from me. Google Images has its good and bad sides. I can latch onto copies of foreign editions (when I can), but I can also see where certain editors neglected me badly.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...

Well, in The Netherlands it was, and actually I should have posted this a few days ago, so that my post heading would be correct. I just got through mentioning Kees Buis yesterday, and in today's mail comes the Dutch reprint of my very first appearance in a paperback. It still wouldn't be until 1990, when I had a story in NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET: FREDDY KRUGER'S SEVEN SWEETEST DREAMS that I truly made my jump from small press magazines, although I still support and submit to them today (and still get rejected, as well). This cover is the exact artwork from YBH:XIV, but I do really like the garish colors of the Dutch edition. I also enjoyed "reading" the intro to my story, because I quite obviously had little to say about my so-called career, and I see listings for poetry magazines long gone, one published by a professor at Richard J. Daley College who is most likely retired the better part of this century. This time around, I am going to send Kees one of the books Robert Bloch did not personally sign to me, since he is actually sending me books from his personal library and scouring bookstores for books I might be in. Nice guy, he is. Would other not to be named bastards simply have the common decency to let us know when a book is being reprinted overseas that we could purchase a copy direct. Ah, well. Karma and all. Some editors will die and come back as trees that will be destroyed in their infancy, not for paper but to make way for some new subdivision...Wayne

New Year's Ghosts of Block 37, circa 1988

I've learned long ago that I'm happier to be by myself, at least in the sense that I am not as tormented inside as I am when I'm around others. And, through this diabolical and dastardly computer, I have made friends in all corners of the world, Etain in Johannesburg, Steve in Christchurch,Kees in The Netherlands, Jaime in Tasmania (he's the guy who found a copy of my novel in a used bookstore in Sydney), and have ended the year with a comic book deal through a publisher in New Delhi. I even traveled outside of the United States for the first time in my life, going to a convention in Toronto in April. That said, as much as I'd like to visit any and all of my new friends and witness their cities and towns through their eyes and not their text, I fear that I shall always be anchored to Chicago. One block in particular, the one I centered on in the novel that Jaime bought. Block 37 is bustling these days, the Oriental building across the street displaying signs for WICKED, the studios for our CBS afilliate Channel 2 being built on the northern side of Randolph Street, where the Treasure Chest and the Burger King and my make-believe Marclinn Rainey Home For The Handicapped stood in the center of the block, where that abandoned building appears in the photos and the homeless slept atop steam vents in the winter months. The entire block was torn down in the summer of 1989 and remained empty for almost twenty years. I've yet to come up with a dedication page for the anniversary edition of THE HOLY TERROR, but I think that I'll likely have to dedicate the book to The Ghosts of Block 37.

De Beste Horror, Wayne In Dutch

Kees Buis is one cool guy. I came across Dutch editions of Year's Best Horror while Googling images one night, and after waiting a few days to contact Kees, not certain if he was a collector or bookseller, I emailed him about the two books above and he found them in his inventory. I received them in the mail on Thursday, it was kind of neat getting mail from The Netherlands. I put together a box of signed books for Kees to mail during the coming week. I have other books I am in, French, German, and quite oddly, Danish. It is strange seeing familiar words and names. These books, the table of contents in particular, make me melancholy, as they are editions from very early in my career, 1987 and 1988. The stories were "Bleeding Between The Lines" and "The Touch." I see names of people recently dead, several gone for over a decade. Thinking about how young I was when these stories came out almost twenty years ago. Anyone who can pick up a copy of ANY edition of Year's Best Horror (published in the US by DAW) can expect to find some of the finest writing of the late twentieth century. And time goes on, keyboards clacking away, those of us who still can and still have stories to tell...Wayne