Now here's a fun way to spend a few pleasant hours: Finished Clive Barker's Everville, and now I'm in the middle of Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard.

An accident of timing in the to-be-read pile, certainly, but an interesting one, nonetheless.

Everville was very fun; it wasn't one of the new editions, I found an older paperback at Half-Price on my last trip there. I haven't read Great And Secret Show, something I didn't know was even necessary until I cracked the binding and found "Second Book of the Art" listed.

Fortunately, I dug through it anyway, and Clive hooked me as he almost always does, and gave me the groundwork I needed as I went along.

I say almost always because I bounced off Imajica. A big part was me, at the time Imajica came out, I just wasn't much in a place for it to catch me.

Damnation Game, Coldheart Canyon, those I caught but somehow I missed Great and Secret Show and Everville. The Books of Blood, I think I'm on my third or fourth copy of the first collection, I got that one the first edition, and this may be the first time I've had them stay in my house for longer than a year. All my other copies I loaned out to spread the word, and they never came back. Not that I mind. Sort of like Tad Williams and my copies of his first three novels, there are some stories I share widely.

Stress of Her Regard, well; mostly I had a hard time finding a copy, but the newest trade paper edition came out and I jumped on it as soon as I noticed. Tim, I started with The Anubis Gates, and return to the various other novels as I find them. Last one I read was Three Days to Never, which is a fun discussion all by itself.

Farewell, Stan Lee. Excelsior!

X-Men, in case you were wondering. Spider-Man, early, but the ones that I bought with my own money were the X-Men. I moved on from there; my comics habit these days is fitful. When I'm in a shop I'm guaranteed to walk out with a fistful. But there are few that hold my interest so much as they did back then.

Dark Phoenix. Wolverine's history. There was a time where my afternoons, evenings, were the comic shop. A guy opened up a shop in the mall across the parking lot from the music store I worked at. The shop, and the owner, folded a group of misfits into the fold.

We went in, where we could smoke in the back room, hang out talking about comics, and these new card games coming into vogue. Play games, shoot the shit.

Read the comics. Always. Pour over the bins, hiding the good ones until the next pay check. Arguing over how much to price this and that.

Laughing at Stan. Laughing with Stan. None of us would have taken the other side of the bet that Stan did. That comics would have meaning to any besides ourselves.

Oh, sure, a good movie; Tim Burton showed it could be done.

I would never had dared hope we'd get more than a handful. Like Stan did. His imagination.

His longevity. Long after the others passed, or gave up and moved on, there was Stan, fighting the good fight. Holding onto the faith long after it might have turned to madness. That this little four-color art had, not just meaning, but something more than that. Appeal, for the normies and the geeks alike.

Who'd have thunk it? Onward. Upward. Write the stories I want to read, you want to read, always write the next story. And keep the faith.

(this is the post where my story Like I Ought To was originally published; look for it April 2020 in M. K. Dreysen - Collected Volume 2, coming soon to retailers near you.)

The past week has been the end of the marching season; our daughter has a few more committments yet that way, football season continues, but at least we are through the contests and extra rehearsals. The work beckons me; the voices that come from not writing and working as much as I'd hoped are building up. I've a backlog to work through, and I can't wait to get to it.

In minor celebration, here's a new story. About? Who knows, it jumped into my head and wouldn't let me go. Herein a story of a particular book, and the stories that go with it.