WHAT YOU FIND WHILE CLEANING UP YOUR OFFICE....

First pathetic attempt at a fantasy world map while writing my "South Haven" fantasy series as a sixth grader. Abandoned when I realized I was doing an pastiche of Lord of the Rings. (Click on any of these for a much larger version.)

Much more sophisticated attempt at a map near the end of my attempts at heroic fantasy as a teen. You'll note that the place names aren't things like "Desolation Mountains". This was from my Thranjader series of novels, abandoned when I realized they were pastiches of McKillip's Riddlemaster of Hed books. The last maps I did are too big to scan--for a novel in which a huge dead white rabbit is found on the footstep of Mt. Kilimanjaro by a detective in the near-future. Man, that one even had topography lines!

The fake disease guide contributors at a ReaderCon panel, in character. I can't remember who took the photo. This is one of my favorite photos of all time--they all look so serious it's like right out of American Gothic: Stepan Chapman, Paul Di Filippo, Jeffrey Thomas, Robert Wexler, John Klima, and Michael Cisco. What a rogue's gallery! And then the alien baby (see: vanderworld.org, photos) near the Atlas Mountains and in Marrakesh. (Both taken by Liz Williams. Still need to get the whole set up on the alien baby photo subsite...)

Me mum with a toucan, my stepdaughter Erin and me in like 1999 or something creating a new Jewish tradition of burning peeps on Easter--and laughing insanely while doing it (another of my favorite photos, I think). And then me, the writer Sherry Decker, and Ann at Norwescon, where the Ministry of Whimsy was publisher guest of honor back in, I think 1998 or 2000 or something. I was wearing my Suit of Fat.

Me as a junior in high school, Ann and her publishing partner Amy, in front of the Silver Web booth at either the first or second World Horror Con (the photos got some punctures in it from being on my bulletin board for awhile)--I gotta say, Ann's hot in that outfit. Then my sister in a glamour shot in the 1990s for some event. And then my dad's photo of me and Elizabeth climbing a tree in Fiji as kids, along with a friend.

This is why when you clean your office, you never just clean your damn office. Instead, you go off into nostalgia-ville, and it takes forever...

Jeff