SHORT STORIES AND OTHER WHITE LIES/IT'S HARLAN ELLISON'S FAULT (And he didn't even know me): The foreword and introduction to my eventual book of short stories GUITARS VS. RAYGUNS!!

Earlier this month, I posted about my plan to publish a collection of my short stories. That book will be called GUITARS VS. RAYGUNS!! Short Stories And Other White Lies, and it's a book that I will complete and publish, probably in 2026. 

That's not quite as immediate as I had intended a few weeks ago, but there are two main factors prompting my decision to postpone this book. First, there is the matter of my forthcoming nonfiction book Make Something Happen! The Story Of A DIY Power Pop Band Called THE FLASHCUBES. There is a lot of work still to be done for this book, and that needs to be a priority. Second, the good folks at AHOY Comics recently bought another one of my short stories. "Bullets From The Copperhead Detective" was never intended to be part of GUITARS VS. RAYGUNS!!, but its sale led me to take one of the new stories written for GvsR!! and submit it to AHOY instead. AHOY might buy it, or AHOY might decline the option, but either way the short story is now off the market for the immediate future. With all of that, postponing GUITARS VS. RAYGUNS!! was the only real choice.

But MEANWHILE...!

Here's a sneak peek at the introduction to an eventual short story collection called GUITARS VS. RAYGUNS!! Short Stories And Other White Lies. It serves today as twin manifestations of both Batman and Irwin Shaw alike: Who I am and how I came to be, and where I think I am and what this place looks like today. It's followed by the tribute I wrote in memory of Harlan Ellison when he died in 2018. This is how my book of short stories will begin, when it finally gets around to becoming a book.

Foreword

SHORT STORIES AND OTHER WHITE LIES

I was thirteen, maybe fourteen years old when I decided I wanted to be a writer. Looking back, I can't understand why it took so long for me to reach such an obvious decision.

But no: 1973 or '74. I was thirteen or fourteen. The inevitability of my path prior to that moment is only clear in retrospect. I had always been an imaginative kid, often to my detriment. My wide-eyed love of TV, books, and comic books--especially superhero comic books--fueled flights of fancy, manifesting in creative play. When I was six, I concocted my first of many crayon-crafted DIY comic books. As the 1960s wore on, I scribbled constantly in notebooks, jotting down sketches and notions of my own imaginary comic book line, with its own collection of derivative superstars.

In 1968 or thereabouts, I responded to a local newspaper's open call for kids to write and tell its readers how we imagined the Easter Bunny's mode of travel. An excerpt of my paragraph detailing the Easter Bunny's use of the Bunnymobile (with a Bird 'Copter for a presumed avian sidekick) was my first published work. I was writing and writing and writing from an early age, with undefined ambition to be...something. The next Stan Lee. The next Jack Kirby. The next Adam West. The next...well, something.

In fourth grade, I was bugged that I didn't have a role in my class's dramatic presentation for our parents, so I made up my own role, horned in with ad-libbed lines, and was added to the cast. That's writing, right? In sixth grade I joined the school newspaper, scripting cartoons that were plagiarized from Peanuts. In seventh grade, group projects in social studies (during our segment on the American Revolution) and English classes (as we delved into Bram Stoker's Dracula) found me taking over, writing and scripting a video play about traveling back in time to participate in the Boston Tea Party and writing and scripting an audio presentation of my original [sic] horror story Laviska. In eighth grade I wrote and drew my own superhero comic strip Jack Mystery in art class--we'll talk about that later in this book--and started writing superhero short stories for extra credit in English.

The moment of specific revelation came at my cousin's wedding reception. I can't quite pinpoint whether that occurred in 1973 or '74. I remember sitting at the table, sipping soda, scribbling in my notebook as I always did. Another wedding guest asked me what I was working on, and I said that I was writing a Batman story.

"Ah," the guest replied. "Are you thinking of writing comic books professionally?"

Holy Lightbulb!

I finished the story. I mailed it to DC Comics. The fact that the story was simply terrible was presumably a large factor in DC's decision to politely ignore my submission. No matter. I'd made my decision. Writer. I was going to be a writer.

I've never made a living at it, nor even made much money at all. But I did have a decades-long side career as a freelance rock journalist, an experience which led to my first two books, Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones and The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I started a daily blog. In 2019 I made my first-ever fiction sale when the good folks at AHOY Comics bought my prose short story "Guitars Vs Rayguns." Money for my lies! BWA-HA-HA-HAAAA!

As a teen wannabe writer in the '70s, my hero was Harlan Ellison. I was particularly taken with Ellison's short stories, eagerly consumed in Ellison anthologies like Paingod And Other Delusions, No Doors, No Windows, Gentleman Junkie, and Love Ain't Nothin' But Sex Misspelled. With that model in mind, I have long held a goal of publishing an anthology of my own short stories.

So here we have Guitars Vs Rayguns!! Short Stories And Other White Lies, gathering tales of a rock 'n' roll guitarist hijacked into space, a film noir gun moll who longs to be in a musical, a humorous fill-in superhero suddenly called to greatness, a former boy band star turned record company fix-it man, a would-be painter, an obsessed collector, a fated swordswoman, a fallen giant, a frustrated time traveler, and other untruths detailing love, loss, disappointment, a fascination with shiny objects, and--occasionally--a juvenile sense of humor. Maybe you'll see Harlan Ellison's influence here and there, or maybe the inspiration didn't quite translate in the execution.

But the stories are mine. It's what I've wanted to do since I was thirteen or fourteen years old, or maybe since I was six. From crayons to the Bunnymobile, Jack Mystery to AHOY Comics and beyond: Writer. I hope you'll enjoy this collection of a few of my white lies.

But first, these words about my inspiration....

Introduction

IT'S HARLAN ELLISON'S FAULY (And he didn't even know me)

I wrote this when Harlan Ellison died in 2018. Given the importance of Ellison’s impact upon me, especially the impact of his short story collections, it feels imperative to open my own debut short story anthology with this reminiscence. 

"DEPART, HARLEQUIN!" SAID THE TICKTOCKWORLD

"Hitler Painted Roses." "Jeffty Is Five." "Daniel White For The Greater Good." "The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs." "Lonelyache." "All The Lies That Are My Life." "The City On The Edge Of Forever." "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman."

I cannot eulogize Harlan Ellison. I can't.

It's not that I've been reading up on his work lately, nor that I've forgotten what I've already read. Ellison's importance to me is beyond measure, beyond my meager ability to detail, to chronicle...to just fucking write. His work was everything to me. I can't believe he's gone.

As much as the Beatles have meant to me, the fact that I was never a musician placed a limit on how directly they could influence what I was capable of creating. As a writer, Harlan Ellison was my Beatles.

In 1975, when I was a fifteen year old suburban misfit, lonely and out of place, I read my first Harlan Ellison book, a short story collection called Paingod And Other Delusions. I already knew I wanted to become a writer. But everything--everydamnedthing--I wrote from that point forward has been affected by Ellison. I can say that without exaggeration, because that's the nonpareil impact his stuff had on me immediately. Fiction, nonfiction, all of it. It was a model for whatever I might be able to do, in any imagined, fantastical circumstance. It wasn't even just the writing (though that would have been plenty, believe thee me); it was his attitude, his self-confidence, his sneering faith in the uncompromising power of standing ground, fighting back, remaining true to a dangerous vision that the blind fools cannot see, because they're chuckleheads. In high school, I wrote an Ellison-inspired poem to a girl I wanted to ask out; she turned me down, sure, but I couldn't even have taken that step before Ellison lit a goddamned spark deep in my soul. Soon, there were girls who didn't turn me down anymore, as I heeded Ellison's advice to think pretty, as action followed belief, as I wrote myself into a better storyline than the tired script I'd been handed.

I tried to be Harlan Ellison. I failed at it, but I failed with distinction, with style! I took apart Ellison's short story "Lonelyache," reconfigured it as a suicide note disguised as a short story of my own, and found the experience cathartic (and not quite plagiaristic). My failures built all the lies that are my life...but in a good way. I couldn't be Harlan Ellison. I couldn't write as well--no one could--and I couldn't write as quickly nor as off-the-cuff. But the act of trying made me a better writer, a faster thinker, a more adventurous craftsmen, a more precise dreamer.

I wrote. I wanted to be a writer, and Ellison said you ain't no writer if you don't write, ya shiftless crazy fuckhead. So I wrote. And I read. And I wrote more. I immersed myself in Ellison's work, especially the Pyramid Books paperbacks I purchased brand-new and whatever older tomes I could pry out of the dusty recesses of the dingy basement at Economy Bookstore. I saw him speak at Syracuse University while I was still in high school, and he autographed my copy of No Doors, No Windows.

I copied Ellison, and tried to make his inspiration into my own. Of all my favorite writers, from Steinbeck to Spillane, Dashiell Hammett to John Irving, the combination of all of them could not match the sheer enormity of Ellison's effect on whatever I hoped to become. As a writer. As a person. As a harlequin, bedeviling a Ticktockman.

Harlan Ellison often quoted Irwin Shaw's description of the writer's job: to report "where I think I am, and what this place looks like today." This place looks like hell, people, and the smell is some unholy mix of sulfur and month-old lox. But we're still here, so we're still going to tell you about it. It's what Harlan Ellison did. Repent? Get stuffed. Stick that in your ticktock, man. Approaching oblivion, alone against tomorrow, but to hell with all of that. Harlan Ellison says we have work to do. Are you a writer? Then write, God damn you. Write!

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My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. Recent shows are archived at Westcott Radio. You can read about our history here.