Really fast–go read this from my editor Michael Bailey.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

All right now?

Oh, this is fantastic, friends and neighbors.  I’ve been waiting for this 2nd edition since Written Backwards dissolved its relationship with Dark Regions Press, which had been in the works for a while.  And, now, it’s ready to drop next week, on the 24th?  Jesus Christ, guys.

The edition above, cover included, is how I initially envisioned the book, all the way back in the fall of 2015.  I wanted this type of cover–and illustrator Pat R. Steiner to this day will occasionally still message me new drafts of the cover as he gets inspired by something–with the material within.  Seeing it come out is immensely satisfying for me.  I wanted these stories, in this order, with these story notes and this price.

What happened?  Typical business stuff.  We had to cut spacing for price (which always struck me as odd, given that the book was always priced at the too-expensive $25, but that’s history now), so the story notes disappeared.  My publisher liked a different type of cover and it wasn’t offensive to me–it was the illustration for the story “In the Nothing-Space, I Am What You Made Me”–so we went for it.  The story notes (along with another story called “Grownups”) became part of the come-on for the ultra-fancy limited edition DRP put out and sold out of.

But now the notes are back for the ten people who like to read that sort of thing, the original cover is back, rocking the blurbs from the first round of reviewers, and my man Bracken MacLeod did me the absolute solid of writing an afterword for the book, bookending perfectly with the introduction Damien Angelica Walters had written.  Of the many excellent writers working today, I have a special affinity for Damien and Bracken–in the case of Bracken, it led to him and I writing a novella together (“How We Broke”) for the anthology Chiral M4d this fall.  Both are doing things I envy as a writer and adore as a reader.

And all of it for the much more reasonable price of $14.95 in paperback.  Thank goodness.  (I think the ebook’s also going to be reasonably priced, as well, but I can’t remember the exact number.)

I’m hoping the book does well.  With the first edition, it did all right and got some kind words from people I respect and reviewers I read regularly.  I’m hoping to build on that with this preferred edition.

Hey!

I was a shit for not posting this earlier, but Max Booth III & Lori Michelle, the hosts of Castle Rock Radio: A Stephen King Podcast (and the runners of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, who sometimes like me) invited me on to talk about one of the “lost” Stephen King stories, a vignette called “Squad D”.

I wound up not promoting the thing when it dropped not because it was a bad interview or a poor time for all involved, but we wound up talking about writer Harlan Ellison a fair amount because “Squad D” had been written for, and rejected from, the legendarily unpublished Last Dangerous Visions.  I had worked with Harlan on a few things and so Max and Lori brought me into discuss the story and Harlan.

And then Harlan died.  Like that day.  I had to take some time to unpack my thoughts on this man who…

…whatever.  I’ve got my thoughts in a well-enough order, but I’m not going to put them here.

If you want to hear us talking so much shit (I’m a kid who grew up in the 1980s/1990s; I can talk trash, sirs and madams), give it a listen here.

If you like what Max and Lori do, sign up for their Patreon.

If you want a good anthology, pre-order Lost Films here.  (I’m not in it, but was in the first entry of the “Lost” series, Lost Signals.  In spite of this, I’d be willing to put my own cred on the line and say Lost Films is a strong goddamned book.)