This is out on Wednesday:

I wrote the first draft of this story – it’s a standalone titled “Beyond Repair” – as part of HEAD GAMES, but when I hit the last page, I realized I was going to have to put it aside for a while. Because when you get to the last page, it’s pretty clear that we’ve reached the halfway point of the overarching story, and I didn’t think it had been properly prepared for way back in HEAD GAMES. So this one has been waiting for about a year and a half. Oh, and also, it’s the first and only time I’ve ever had to make a chart to write a story.

I just wanted to thank Chris Ryall, Robbie Robbins, Jay Fotos, Ted Adams and all the IDW crew for their hard work on CROWN OF SHADOWS… and I want to especially thank Gabriel Rodriguez, who turned in some of his best work ever, while battling through a series of personal setbacks that would’ve kicked the legs out from under most people (including his whole fucking country falling down around his ears). I can’t imagine a more fun collaboration.

Thanks as well to everyone who’s been reading these stories. At the time of this writing, I’m about midway through the fourth storyline, KEYS TO THE KINGDOM, and for the first time I have more of LOCKE & KEY behind me than I have ahead of me. I hope you stick around for the end. I’m gonna try real hard not to screw it up.

(UPDATED 6/14)

Next Tuesday, Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio are out with STORIES: All-New Tales, a collection of genre-fuzzing fictions from an eclectic mix of great writers. I consider myself fortunate to have a story of my own in there, “The Devil on the Staircase” (my current favorite thing to do at readings).

On the same day STORIES is released, Tuesday the 15th, Neil Gaiman and Al will be in New York City, at Columbia University, to talk about the imagination and the increasingly scuffed line between genre and mainstream fiction. Several contributors will be on stage with him, including Kurt Andersen, Jeffrey Ford, Walter Mosley, Lawrence Block, Kat Howard, and yours truly; ace editor Ellen Datlow will also be a part of the panel.* Here are the gory details:

Horace Mann Auditorium

Teachers College

Columbia University

7:00 PM

Hope to see you there.

In other news, as of this morning, Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2, edited by William Schafer, is up for preorder here. I’ve got a story in that one, too, “Wolverton Station,” which is about a corporate hatchet-man who climbs onto a train in London and finds himself carried away into the sort of country that lies at the heart of the darkest sort of fairy tales. Dark Fantasy 2 is set to feature cover art by Dave McKean, and will be out in January 2011.

* ace editor Ellen Datlow will be in attendance, but not actually on the panel; my bad.