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Yet another fanzine from Eric Mayer, August, 2012 mail: [email protected] finishing a new novel, set in rural Shropshire in 1941. It The Ink Stained Wraith combines mystery elements (residents gone missing) with a The cover this issue is "Cigarette Break" by Harry hint of the supernatural (a stone circle). Hard to say if Bell. Harry is one of our best fan artists but he's also an anyone will want it. I suppose we'd be better off accomplished professional painter, a vocation he's been professionally writing about vampires, werewolves or working at with great success since his retirement. Check zombies, but the very idea makes me shudder, and not in an out his website: enjoyable reading-a-ghost-story way. In the spring we completely rewrote our first book, http://www.harrybellart.com/ One for Sorrow, for publication by Head of Zeus in the UK and Europe in November. Our rewrite has now become the I love his stuff. I admit, figurative painting (which is version available on Kindle in the US. We've finished our what I would define as art anchored in reality but stressing detailed outline for the tenth Byzantine mystery and that design elements rather than realism) is my favorite sort and will probably be the next project. Harry's terrific at it. Writing continually maddens and frustrates me. I can Mary immediately guessed -- and Harry confirmed -- never quite seem to achieve what I want to, artistically, that "Cigarette Break" is based on The Hoppings, an annual although I continue to creep closer. And there seems to be fair held on the Town Moor in Newcastle. It reminded me of no way to reconcile the sorts of things we want to write with of going to the local amusement park when I was a kid, the sorts of things large publishers will pay you well to write. which I've written about for this issue. Nevertheless, when I am not agonizing over the Harry's decision to reboot and take up a new career writing I realize what a wonderful thing it is at sixty-two to instead of actually retiring is something Mary and I hope to be able to embark on a brand new adventure with every new emulate one day with our fiction writing. Maybe it's my book. It's like being in one's twenties again. Puritanical streak (or that I'm a workaholic) but collecting a A life devoted to art is a successful life even if you pension in order to put your feet up and watch television never make a cent off your work. seems a terrible waste of life. The major project here at Casa Maywrite has been 2 One of summer's biggest treats was when my parents took me to the amusement park. I don't know if amusement parks come so small these days, but it was big enough to thrill a nine-year old. No matter where you were you could hear the clatter, rush and shriek of coaster and riders, the miniature train's jingling bell, the cheerful, maddening tooting and thumping of the merry-go-round's mechanical drum and organ. The air smelled of cotton candy. My sneakers crunched on gravel, sawdust and discarded peanut shells. By the time I got home my soles were plastered with sun-heated, sticky chewing gum. Near the park entrance, a low cinder block building formed a dim, cool cave full of flashing lights and ringing bells. I never ventured into the pinball lair. The two machines at the entrance of the arcade were what interested me. One stamped the Lord's Prayer or the Gettysburg Address on a flattened penny. Behind the other contraption's glass face a crane with a mechanical grabber hung above an enticing mountain of trinkets. I managed to snag a treasure trove: a Lilliputian pinhole camera with film, a miniature hectograph and a trio of ceramic monkeys which GONE WITH puffed smoke rings from their little cigarettes even while they saw, heard and spoke no evil. I recall the atmosphere and anticipation more than the rides. I do remember my heart pounding as the roller coaster was ratcheted noisily up the impossibly steep incline THE WHIP until wooden platform and rails vanished and I looked straight up into nothing but blue sky before the bottom dropped out of the world. Then there was centrifugal terror 3 as the whip's long, steel arms threatened to fling my car start of the roller coaster remained, though sagging and through the railings. Pressed helplessly back against the probably as rickety and unsafe as I'd feared it was so many cushioned seat, I imaged a bolt coming loose, my car years before. Scattered humps of rotting wood were visible smashing through the flimsy railing and flying out over the between the tall trees that had grown up around the rest of passersby, over the popcorn stand to smash into the fun the coaster. One cinder block wall of the arcade still stood, house. The stifling dark of the fun house comes back to me, covered with graffiti. There was the platform where the whip the abrupt turns to avoid illuminated skeletons, the far more had spun, roofless, empty. At one end of the park small, scary touch of invisible cobwebs in the dark. Also vivid is rusted tracks vanished into an overgrown field. the feeling of delight when the miniature train train chugged At the entrance a faded sign remained, promising past the boundaries of the park proper and into a wilderness amusements which were now ghostly memories. I was of grass and picnic tables. grateful that as a child I had not known it would come to Not too many years ago, I passed by the place where this. the amusement park had been. The wooden mountain at the 4 Judith and I Judith and I had a long history. I was living in Brooklyn in the late seventies, going to law school. When you're in school, furnishing an apartment can be a challenge. You make do with an orange crate here and a couple of cinder blocks and boards there. If you find a wobbly table put out to the curb then suddenly you need to rearrange the whole decor. One afternoon I was walking back from the subway station on trash pickup day -- "shopping day" for students -- and there she was, leaning up against some beat up garbage cans, smiling in my direction. I guess I should have noticed the severed head she was holding but considering the way she was dressed... She, I must explain, was a four foot high reproduction of Klimt's Judith II (Judith with the head of Holofernes but often taken for Salome with the head of John the Baptist...I'm tempted to say those Biblical babes were buggers for beheadings but I shall resist) nicely mounted on a heavy backing. I put my arm around her and she didn't resist, so we went up to my apartment. There's nothing more depressing than bare walls. I put Judith in a prominent spot. I can tell you, a half naked,leering woman holding a dead man's head by its long hair really changed the whole atmosphere of the place. Now I've got to be honest and admit that I was 5 married at the time. My first marriage. And if I were writing point our three other ezines with a historical slant. a short story I guess I could make something of the fact that The first two actually are historical zines published the poster that turned up was Judith and not, say, the back in the winter of 1948, available as pdfs thanks to the Lovers, if you get my drift. Was Judith trying to tell me efforts of Robert Lichtman. I found these especially something? But I've got to get this entry up before the interesting because they aren't well known zines but, I Google logo changes so I don't have time to get all literary. suppose, good examples of the sort of thing fans were up to Suffice it to say that Judith (somehow, no matter how at the time. long I knew her, "Judy" just didn't seem to fit) moved There has been some discussion in Arnie Katz' around with us for years, although finally she ended up on Fanstuff about the merits of reprinting more examples of the wall of the basement office. That's where she was when fanzines from the past and I think these are exactly what Mary and I were married, if I recall rightly. One of my few people had in mind. possessions the Ex didn't take with her. At least she left me my head. H-1661 is 6 dittoed pages When we moved from that place Judith got left from Rusty Hevelin. It behind with the rest of the past. I wonder if someone else includes FAPA mailing invited her into his tent? comments but is largely devoted to a discussion of what ----------- fans should do to insure that the cosmic race survives a Three Zines possible nuclear war. A suggestion is made that fen ----------- chip in to buy some remote land and stock up on supplies, It's unclear to me how many people actually read the including weapons. In case of ezines Bill Burns continually posts to eFanzines. I suspect a Armageddon fans could gather lot of them go virtually unnoticed, in particular one-shots.

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