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OTHER WRITING Okay, this is a rather self-indulgent list of mostly minor or unpublished work, so don't expect too much. FICTION I wrote a fair amount of fantasy in my teen years, most of it quite derivative of Tolkien and other favorite authors. Some stories were published in school magazines, but I'll spare you a list of those, the ones I still have copies of. There are several unfinished children's novels, the furthest along called "The Xobcigam" about a house that's larger on the inside than the outside, again derivative of authors like Nesbit and Edward Eager. In the 1980s I wrote a children's novel called "Sixteen Spells, with Genie." This is a complete manuscript that made the rounds of at least half a dozen publishers, collecting rejection letters, until I gave up on it. Someday I'd like to have another go at it. POETRY I wrote of lot of poems and song lyrics from my teen years into the 1980s. A few appeared in small press magazines. Here's one that appeared on the back cover of ONE magazine #6, 1974, published by my friend Paul Freeman.
Certainly nothing great, but I still kind of like the illustration I did for it. In 1979 I put together a Xeroxed collection of 24 favorite poems titled "By Moonlight" that I mailed out to friends and people I worked with, so not really published, but close. Looking through these, I still like most of them, and have put some excerpts HERE. For sample recordings of some of my song lyrics, click on the MUSIC tab at the top of the page. NON-FICTION From my teen years through the 1980s I was a prolific letter writer, and had a group of close friends who were also prolific and quite entertaining in this now mostly lost art. Around 1979 or so I decided to compile a collection of these letters, and laboriously typed them out on my manual typewriter. Then I Xeroxed all 455 pages and sent copies to everyone involved. The collection is called "Growing Together, the Story of a Friendship". I mention it here because someday I'd like to put excerpts on this site, after getting permission from the people involved. I think it's an interesting chronicle of the people and the time (1968 to 1978), but whether others would, I don't know. In the 1970s I was doing illustrations for fantasy, science fiction and comics fanzines (click the ART tab at the top of the page for more about this) and one fanzine editor, Ken Amos, commissioned an illustrated article from me, "Laughter of the Spirit: the Mysticism of George MacDonald". It appeared in NIGHTSHADE #4, October 1977. The illustrations are in the ART section as well.
Okay, this one's really self-indulgent. In 1988 I compiled and edited a collection of favorite family recipes called, oddly enough "Favorite Family Recipes". There were 14 contributors from several generations of my family and extended family, and it's still being used today in our family, and others. I Xeroxed about 100 copies of this, so they're out there around the country. Hardly literature, but a fun project. In 1993 I wrote an article called "Dream Assignment: Lettering Sandman" for the first issue of Steve Tice's MUSINGS fanzine, May 1993. I covered much of the same ground in the Sandman section of this site, under LETTERING. I wrote a "how-to-letter" article for Wizard Magazine #54, February 1996. The title is "Letter Perfect: how to letter a comic book in seven easy steps". The book I co-wrote on the subject goes into much more detail, (see the HOW TO section of this site), but I have to hand it to Wizard for one aspect: they sent a professional photographer to my home to take pictures, and he did a fine job. In the late 1990s I started participating in a Children's Literature forum on Compuserve. I'm a lifelong of fan and reader of children's novels, and I was motivated to put a list and description of some of my favorites into a lengthy text article that I posted there. I don't imagine it's still available, but who knows? The title is "Recommended Children's Books - Novels". Parts also appeared in the back of Linda Medley's CASTLE WAITING comics, and in the CASTLE WAITING: THE CURSE OF BRAMBLY HEDGE graphic novel, the 2002 edition. In 2003, two very brief articles I wrote about Alan Moore and his ABC line of comics saw print. COMIC BOOK ARTIST #25, June 2003 had "The ABCs of Design", and the book "The Extraordinary Works of ALAN MOORE" by George Khoury (TwoMorrows) had "Collaborating With Alan". From 1995 to 2000 I ran a lettering chat room once a month online, and I saved the transcripts from those chats. In 2004 I put together an article of edited excerpts from those chats, mostly on the subject of hand-lettering, for Mike Manley's DRAW magazine, published in issue 10, Spring 2005 (TwoMorrows). Of course, much of the content is by the other letterers I was chatting with, but I'm glad I had a chance to do the article, as I felt it preserved some historic anecdotes and memories of the way comics lettering used to be done. I'm sure I've forgotten a few things, but that's all I can come up with on this topic. All text and images © Todd Klein, except as noted. All rights reserved. |
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