PAUL DALE ANDERSON RIP OLD CHUM

Paul died last night around 7:30PM.  I would have been walking home around then, it had stopped raining and it wasn't that cold out at all. I knew Paul longer than I did most writers in the area, because I first met him when he and his late wife Gretta were editing and publishing 2AM, which I've always considered to be the best small press magazine to have been published in. So we're talking 1985, 1986 here. I'm still living in Rogers Park. Paul published "Bleeding Between The Lines" (which was illustrated by Douglas C. Klauba) and was the last part of the Dennis Cassady trilogy. Paul had read both "Rapid Transit" and "Take The 'A' Train" when they were reprinted in YEAR'S BEST HORROR over two respective years and was willing to look at the third piece.

Three years ago, he did a reading at UIC, part of Bad Grammar Theater, and I had the pleasure to meet Elizabeth Aisling Flygare, who was with Paul at the end, at his home in Rockford. They had met at the Rockford Library, surrounded by books. If you were in Paul's house, you were surrounded by books.

He also wrote many novels, the first was CLAW HAMMER, and I lost my unsigned paperback copy from the 80s  to someone who borrowed it and lost it. Thankfully, he had found a home with Crossroad Press and they have a whole stack of his work in their catalogue.The one pictured was signed to me by Paul last year before we headed to St. Paul with Roger Trexler, the designated driver since it was his car, for Arcana 47. We were able to meet William F. Nolan, who is best known for LOGAN'S RUN, but we were all glad to see artist and actor Rodger Gerberding again. That's him holding up his beard soon after we first arrived. Within an hour we would be watching Jack Palance in his only role as Dracula. Roger, by the way, published FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT and I CAN'T COME CLEAN.

I'll miss you Paul. A lot of people are talking about you right now. Know peace.

25 YEARS AGO, MAIL TO WILLIAM J. RALEY, PUBLISHER OF AFTER HOURS

I really have been meaning to post these for awhile. I appeared in one of the best of the not-quite-large press magazines of the last two decades of the last century, AFTER HOURS, which ran for a very impressive 25 issues. Photos, interviews, great stories. After there being a Best of CEMETERY DANCE and Best of DEATHREALM, and with a Best of THE SCREAM FACTORY coming soon, I think a Best of AFTER HOURS is needed (perhaps the only other magazine that should also consider this would be Paul Dale Anderson, who published 2AM with his late wife Gretta.)

Anyhow, I thank William for allowing me to repost what had been a private letter. Think of a time with no emails. I typed my stories on a word processor and, as seen in the second image, I'd love to click the wheel and have everything be one or two keys on the keyboard off. You see, if you had a Smith-Corona word processor, you typed the entire page and then click print and everything would clack out. Very 90s. This wasn't too long after I was free of the bonds from the March 1989 car accident and was always showing off the one scar (out of two) on my left arm I could photocopy, and all the broken pieces of hardware inside that arm.

Enjoy the letter in the sense of perhaps overhearing two guys jabbering in a hallway at  a convention, and maybe decipher the second page. I'd guess everything is one letter off, so good luck with that. I guess the one good thing about a personal website that hardly anybody sees is that I can put up images that are even better than just scanning them into my computer. My thanks again to William.