Lucius Shepard

I don't have much to say about Lucius Shepard except that he was always nice to me and I was sad to hear of his passing. He'd been ill for quite a while, and certainly didn't appear to be in the physical shape needed to bounce back from his illnesses. We met a couple of times, but mostly our acquaintanceship was online—he was a holy terror on the old Night Shade Books bulletin boards, back when bboards were a thing. (There was an early infestation of disgruntled would-be right-wing SF writers who just couldn't stand that Lucius a. was published frequently and b. knew a lot about Central American politics. Conspiracy! Bitches! Communism! You know the type...) I was very pleased to review his novel A Handbook of American Prayer during that brief time I was reviewing books for Spex, a German music magazine. It turned out that my review was the German review.

A few years later, I was very pleased when he agreed to look at my book Sensation, which he was happy to blurb. I was flipping through it yesterday in preparation for last night's event and thought to myself that I'd better get on FB to see how Lucius was doing as I hadn't seen an update lately. When I did get on, there was a private message from Robert Urell telling me that he had some news he didn't want me to find out from Locus...

One very interesting thing he wrote, which I've not seen mentioned in obits yet, is what would now be called a #longread—he had a great piece of reportage in Spin back when that magazine existed on paper, about the FTRA and hobo life in general. It was collected along with some rail fiction in Two Trains Running, which is is well worth seeking out. So get seeking if you can.