To be a horror writer or publisher - or for that matter, a writer or publisher of any kind - one always needs to have a sense of humor. That's because, as John Steinbeck wrote, "The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business."

So, to start this column off, here are a few humorous things that have happened to me and to others in the field along the way.

When Marty Greenberg was soliciting stories for his anthology Vampire Detectives were vampires!

When I was designing my edited and published anthology Voices from the Night (Maclay & Associates, 1994), I became strangely enamored with the color scheme of brown and black for the cover. Seemed good, cozy, comforting. It was only when the books were delivered that my wife looked at them and across the room, and said, "You matched your brown and black dog!"

Not to mention that when I published Masques II with a silver mylar cover, one reviewer commented that at least it made a good sun reflector for the beach. (I'll take praise in any form.)

Then there were the times when editors did theme anthologies, and many writers took an existing story or outline and injected that theme. If Pollyanna had to be rewritten as a hooker, well, all's fair in love, war, and writing!

And then, of course, there were (always are) the stories that were sent out time and time again, to be finally, improbably accepted. (A lesson for beginning writers who don't stick it out.) Such as one of mine, which had ten scathing rejections, but then was called one of the best the accepting editor had ever read.

And there's the humor at horror occasions, and all along.

For example, Doug Winter saying as toastmaster at a banquet that publishers were served first because they didn't require their meat to be cooked. (I laughed, though I was a publisher myself then.)

Or my longtime friend Bill Nolan somewhere characterizing the less-intelligent variety of horror fiction as "Slime-Boy."

Or the time, at the World Fantasy Convention in Tucson in 1985, when horror novelist Jim Kisner took Nolan, Jerry (J. N.) Williamson and his wife, and myself and my wife, on an excursion to the Desert Museum. We were in a wide rental car of the day, and Jim may have taken a wrong turn, because we suddenly found ourselves on a narrow dirt road, with a cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the other. It was like in the movies - the car scraping on the left, and its wheels almost falling off on the right. We made it - but when we alighted from the car, Jim, in his laconic, Midwestern way, finally broke the anxious silence by saying, "Uh, horror?"

But my favorite anecdote of all does concern my late, sainted friend Jerry (prolific horror novelist and editor of the Masques series), whose custom it was every Holiday Season to write a short-short story and send copies to friends and acquaintances as his free, personal greeting. Imagine his consternation when a copy came back to him from an editor, with the note: "Sorry, rejected. And please include a self-addressed stamped envelope next time!"

And to wind this all up, another couple of quotes from my reading over maybe too many years:

"The only real thing about a writer is what he has written, and not his so-called life." - William S. Burroughs. (So let's indeed be humorous about the attendant bullshit.)

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork!" - Peter De Vries

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John Maclay was a publisher of horror fiction (such as the acclaimed Masques anthology series) from 1984 to 1995, and has been a much-published author of horror and supernatural short stories from 1984 to the present. His most recent collections are A Little Red Book of Vampire Stories (Borderlands, 2003) and Dreadful Delineations (Delirium, 2004; to be reissued November 2007). Upcoming is Divagations (Delirium).