Discounting stories written before I graduated from college, “Slippage” was my eighth short story. At the time it was completed in July, 1979, only two of the previous seven stories had sold (though eventually four more would), and neither had yet been published. “Slippage” was bought by T.E.D. Klein at the new Twilight Zone Magazine in December, 1981, and appeared in the August, 1982 issue. Despite an egregious paste-up error which rendered a key passage nearly incomprehensible, Karl Edward Wagner selected the story for the 1983 edition of his Year’s Best Horror series–where it appeared with the paste-up error faithfully reproduced. From there, the story came to the attention of the producers of George Romero’s new horror-fantasy television series, Tales From the Darkside. They had a little trouble finding me, but purchased the teleplay rights and turned “Slippage” into an episode for the debut 1984-1985 season. I provided Darkside with an unmangled version of the story, but it did not appear that way in print until 1990, when Wagner collected his best-of-the-year anthologies in a series of deluxe hardcovers titled Horrorstory.

Story coming soon!