There are quite a few cats at the Hemingway House in Key West. Some sleep on the bed, others on bookshelves in the small book/gift store. Others lounge around outside, seeking shelter from the heat in various shaded areas. Signs tell you that you can pet the cats at your own risk Many of them have six digits, but I didn’t quite feel brave enough to deal with six claws. Cats are notoriously fickle creatures, one minute friendly, the next a furry killing machine.

A couple of weeks ago I had two hours to kill in Key West. Seems like a strange thing to say, considering it’s a three and half hour drive from Miami along the coastal highway at reduced speeds. But, my son and I were on the road early Sunday morning, hoping to spend a few hours there sightseeing before heading to a Boy Scout camp on Islamorada. Apparently the first thing to do in Key West is to stand in line to get your photo taken next to a buoy proclaiming it the southernmost place in the continental US. Having spent 30 minutes on this venture we speed-walked along Whitehead Street over to the Hemingway House. Although they offered tours, as we were pressed for time as merely walked through all the rooms, then over to the gift shop. If I had more time and room in my luggage I probably would have spent more money, so I’ll have to save that for another time. Unfortunately I wasn’t familiar enough with the area to find a decent restaurant, so that’s another item on my list for a future trip.

It’s not hard to imagine Ernest Hemingway living there, across the street from the lighthouse, a short walk away from where he likely kept his boat, the Pilar. How he ended up in remote areas like Key West and Idaho are mysteries to me, considering his Chicago origins and many years in Paris. But the locale he picked and the house itself are remarkable, and probably were more remarkable almost a hundred years ago.

I consider myself a qualified fan of his writing. The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls are classics in American literature, even though neither takes place in America. His later novels I find disinteresting. His personal life overshadowed his fiction after the Spanish Civil War, and his political leanings were jejune and ignorant. His rift with John Dos Passos and his snippy treatment of his former friend I find abhorrent. Still, Hemingway is unique, and unlike the prevailing trend to cancel anything or anyone who has a scintilla of bad history, I sift through writers like Hemingway to keep what I like and ignore the rest.

As I write this, I have in front of me am ink drawing of the facade of the Hemingway House, a solitary cat in the foreground. A notebook from the gift shop sits beside me on the desk, yet I wonder if I’ll ever write in it, as it’s a memento, a souvenir, and maybe has more of a sentimental value if kept blank. Or not.

Key West and the keys are unique, much like Hemingway. These days most of the houses there are likely overpriced vacation homes. They’re used only part of the year, owned by people who can afford to keep multi-million dollar homes and not live there most of the time. It’s a risky place to live, with hurricanes an annual threat. With water all around, the people who live in the Keys likely also own boats. In some cases they own large boats.

I spent a week on and off a dive boat. Inside the shallow bay you need to know the channels and shallow areas, and out on the ocean you need to travel for miles before the water deepens. As a land-locked Texan, it felt strange to spend so much time on the ocean, as well as under the surface. There’s plenty of fish, yet also coral graveyards. There’s so much to see in the Keys. And, the Everglades are just a short distance away, yet from what little I know about the Everglades, it seems like a different world, with alligators, snakes, swamps, and a river of grass. And yet, my first thought when I returned home, was that I really needed to re-read Hemingway’s stories set in the Keys and Cuba. Having finally been in that area, would they read any differently from when I first read them? Does visiting a place that created those stories impart any other meaning? Maybe, maybe not. After all, Hemingway’s characters play as much a role in his stories as the settings, if not more. The characters in Sloppy Joe’s could exist in any place in the world, but there’s only one Florida Keys.

Ever since I bought the fourth book in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series in the new edition from Centipede Press, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the fifth one. Anticipation is a cruel mistress. I already had all the books in paperback, plus the final one in hardcover, but nothing beats the gorgeous editions produced by Centipede Press.

I learned just recently that the fifth book might be available to purchase in the next week or so, which only serves to heighten my expectations. Not only are the stories exciting to read again, but the bonus material is always a treat. This is one case where maybe I’m not a haphazard collector, although I stay with the unsigned versions, hoping to convince myself that this is a sane budgetary decision.

My copy of Robert McCammon’s novel, Mister Slaughter, arrived today. I read his first book in the series, Speaks the Nightbird, in 2019 or 2020 – the pandemic and its lockdown messed with my sense of time. Next, and just this year, I read the latest novel, Cardinal Black, which I think is the seventh in his series of books set around 1700, from America to England and elsewhere. Between those two books there are five other novels, all long out of print, and also mostly from small press publishers in limited numbers. This means they now far exceed their original published price. Now, I have two of those five “in-between” novels and, naturally, as with many series I’ve stumbled across “late to the party,” I’ve read them out of order. I lack books two, five, and six. Number two is my main goal, I think, as I’d like to know how McCammon continued his series after the first book. The others, while intriguing, merely flesh out the story.

Of those three books that remain in the middle which I don’t have (and I’m not sure if I should add the word, “yet” to that sentence), I wonder where’s my threshold? Do I pay whatever price I find on the collector’s market? Do I try to wait and see, hoping for new editions? I do like the fact that I have them in their original editions (though not all are firsts, and at some point the publishers changed).

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I sometimes wonder when I pick up books in series, whether I should wait until I have the right sequence, and then start from the beginning. Or, should I just jump right in and read them, and the order be damned?

Then again, I’ve read many series in the right order, because I was able to buy the first book first, found it enthralling enough to continue, and that made the experience richer. Jack Vance’s Lyonesse books come to mind, as his Cadwal chronicles and Planet of Adventure novels. (Although, his five Demon Prince novels I likely ready out of order, but I found it didn’t matter as much.) There’s also F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack series, which spans more that a dozen books, and probably a few trilogies here and there.

Usually the first scenario happens; I read what I have at that moment, in sequence or not. That was the case with Julian May’s Adversary cycle, years ago. It was the case with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, several mystery series (Billy Boyle, Inspector Montalbano, Wahloo and Sjovall’s Swedish mystery novels, Jørn Lier Horst’s novels, Gunar Staalensen’s books, and many more), plus a few SF series and other interconnected novels. It’s also happened with TV shows, so I guess I’m just an impatient person. Today I finally watched the first episode of the Murdoch Mysteries, a TV show where I’ve seen almost all episodes from seasons one through eight. Did it seem like the first episode? Not really. Not like Castle, another TV show I liked for a few years.

Books often give a brief summary of what happened in earlier stories, although a few paragraphs as a summary never feels like the real thing. Now that I have Mister Slaughter, which is referenced in a later book that I already read, The Providence Rider, there’s a heightened sense of awareness, I think, which probably clouds my enjoyment of the novel. I just can’t help it, I guess, as I want to read the books that I have, regardless of where they fit into a series. After all, it’s not like I can order the earlier once from online book sellers at retail prices, or hop down to the nearest bookstore. Books are limited, and should be taken advantage of the moment one has them, unless you either have patience, or get in on the ground floor.

Maybe, I should delay my gratification. I could, with certain books like the Montalbano series, or Billy Boyle, have done just that, but as I’m a haphazard collector, I’m also a haphazard reader. Life is short; read what you have.

I’m sure there’s some long German word for when you’re eagerly awaiting a new book from a certain small press publisher, and checking their website each week you see nothing in the forthcoming books section from that publisher.

Around this time each year I’ve come to expect announcements of the latest installment in a certain series of books by a certain author, from a certain publisher. These are replacing my old and treasures paperback editions, but it looks like I need to wait a little longer.

I really hate buying books online. Even if I order from a major eCommerce site named after a river in South America, I don’t know what I’m getting. Is the book damaged? Is it scratched, or the cover bent? If I order from other online sites, such as auction places, is the book a first edition, or a second printing? The description is rarely clear on this.

When shopping in bookstores, the best bet is one that sells new books. Where I live we now only have one or two such books, at least ones that carry a decent amount of books. Otherwise, it’s used book stores. I never know what to say when cashiers at used book stores ask me whether I found what I was looking for. The easy answer is, “No.” I rarely find specific books in used book stores. I take a list with me of books I own, and check against this list if I find something of interest, but rarely will there be a book in the shelves there that match what I’m really looking for. But, at least I can hold the book in my hand and decide there and then whether I want to hand over money for that item. I’ve made a few mistakes, yes, missed remainder marks, or writing inside books, or thought I was getting a different edition. But, for the most part, if the book looks off, even though it’s one I don’t have, I’ll put it back in the shelf without a second thought.

When it comes to new book stores, I often as not walk out empty handed, for even the big stores don’t have the books I want. The exception is speciality stores. I was in Houston earlier this year, and stopped by Murder by the Book. I’d never been there, but I walked out with 10-15 books, and could easily have doubled or tripled that number, but I had to stop somewhere. On occasions where I visit San Francisco – over every few years – I’ll drop by Borderlands Books and find stuff that I like. Still, it’s as much the act of being in a book store, browsing the aisles, that makes it interesting. Online purchases aren’t quite as fun.

In Austin, when I lived there, I’d make regular trip to a corner of 6th Street and spend hours in Adventures in Crime and Space (Rest in Peace). Back then I couldn’t afford many books, but I always found books from new authors and old favorites. It felt like a community.

Here in the town where I live, there used to be a book store that specialized in mysteries – Remember the Alibi. This was before I really got back into mysteries, and it’s now long gone. A book store opened in my neighborhood last year, during COVID. Well, it didn’t really open, as you can’t go inside. This makes me sad, if not a little bitter. I’d read about the new place before COVID, and was excited that a book store would exist one mile from where I lived. I could walk there, browse, buy, and maybe get a snack or drink. In fact, I often walk past the closed doors. But, it remains closed to the public. Other bookstores in many cities are open. I visited one in Durango last summer. Mysterious Books in New York City is open, as are the ones that weren’t burned down in Minneapolis. I’ve been in a few others since the panic and lockdowns. Will this one near me ever open? I don’t know. I know that I miss visiting stores and reading the covers of books, or discovering new authors. I’d even planned to take a few hundred dollar bills I’d saved up over the years and plonk them down on the counter, then walk off with a bag full of books.

Instead, I bought a guitar.

Here’s another entry in the “haphazard collector” diaries. A few years ago I picked up a massive hardcover by Robert R. McCammon at a local used book store. I’d read read several McCammon books in the 1990s, both in paperback and hardback, from mass-market to small press editions. I have Swan Song in the Dark Harvest edition, signed by McCammon, some early paperbacks like The Night Boat, The Wolf’s Hour, Stinger, and Blue World, and as well as his mainstream hardcovers. Then he seemed to disappear.

The massive hardcover in question (700+ pages) is the novel, Speaks the Nightbird, a work of historical fiction set in the late 1600s in colonial America. The book was enjoyable, with young Matthew Corbett an innocent man struggling to find his place in the world, and fighting impossible odds. Probably a few years after I read the book I learned he’d continued the main character into a series of novels. At first these were published by Subterranean Press, and then Cemetery Dance picked up the baton. Those books are devilishly hard to find, at least at decent prices. A few of them have appeared in second printings, which means they’re expensive, but not insanely so. I bought a couple of these, one from each publisher. They’re out of sequence, of course, but I’m not sure I’ll ever find the others at prices I’m willing to spend.

The Providence Rider is the fourth book in the series, so I lack books two and three. I read this after Cardinal Black, which I think is the seventh book, meaning another gap. More are in the works, and maybe now I’ll be able to pick them up as they get published. If I’m lucky enough to find older copies, I’ll be able to fill in pieces of the overall story.

Matthew Corbett, the main character, is in early twenties. He comes across as a lucky, plucky, but not always very bright person. At times he fades into the background, overshadowed by more interesting characters. In some blurbs he’s compared to an early James Bond. Bond, at least in the movies, was lucky to escape many dastardly traps due to his enemies not just killing him outright. The same seems to the case with Corbett. The historical aspect lends flavor this the novels. There’s a slight aspect of the supernatural, but mostly it deals with the darker aspects of humanity.

It’s too bad McCammon faded out of the mainstream publishing market. He’s a talented writer who knows how to weave a tale, how to keep the reader’s interest. I’ve since gone back and tried to get a few hardcovers of the books I read as paperbacks. I’ve not read all his books, which I guess that’s why I call myself a haphazard collector, as I get ’em when I find ’em.

In our new virtual reality (isn’t that a joke from twenty years ago?), I was on a video conference call recently when someone asked whether I sorted my books by color. In the foremost shelf in the background there were two or three rows of books from Soho Crime, a publisher specializing in mystery and crime fiction from across the world. This publisher gives each author a unique color for their books, and I happened to be in the midst of buying any such books that I found (not all bookstore display their books, so it’s a random act). Although my books were sorted alphabetically by author, they appeared visually as color-themed.

Since then, I’ve reflected a lot more about how I shelve my books, and why I do it that way. Sadly, I am limited in shelf space, and often find myself either resorting to double-stacking books, or sacrificing them to the used-book market (only the ones I don’t care about, as at best you get pennies on the dollar compared to what you spent for them). I don’t buy as many books these days. A few years ago, when I had lots of shelves, or the ability to add more shelves, or felt the rush of discovery more often, or lived in a city with a genre bookstore, I bought many more books than these days.

Currently, I have an island of bookshelves dedicated only to SF paperbacks, and these are alphabetical by author. Along my main wall I have three tall bookcases dedicated to SF, fantasy, horror hardbacks, many of them first editions or limited editions, mixed in with a few trade paperbacks that are associated with special authors. I’ve a near complete set of Golden Gryphon Press books (I’m missing two), and these are grouped together by that publisher, then sorted by author. There’s one shelf within a bookcase dedicated to Arkham House editions; collecting older works from this publisher is not for the faint of heart, as some prices are astronomical. Other than this, the rest of the books in those bookcases are generally grouped by author, but not alphabetically. I considered grouping my Subterranean Press books together, but for the most part these are with their respective authors.

At eye-level in this core set of bookcases are my favorite authors—Jack Vance takes up two whole shelves (many Underwood-Miller editions) and are books that I’ll always treasure; F. Paul Wilson takes up two shelves (his Gauntlet Press and Dark Harvest editions grouped together); James P. Blaylock fills ones shelf, including ones from Subterranean Press, Morrigan, some regular hardcovers, his Arkham House collection; Tim Powers takes up another shelf by himself, from a mix of publishers. As for the rest, there’s a scattering of others, such as Ray Bradbury, Michael Shea, Fritz Leiber, Robert R. McCammon, Neal Barrett, Jr., Lewis Shiner, K.W. Jeter, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson (authors I encountered in the 1990s and stuck with). Occasionally I move these around as space dictates, but unlike someone I know who has far more books and bookcases available, I don’t organize them solely by author.

To the side of this section of bookcases, I have some other hardcover SF editions, the B-team, so to speak. These are double-shelved, stacked haphazardly, and I never remember what’s in the hidden layer of books. I feel bad for these books and authors, as I’ve read most of the books, and I keep them around for a reason. If my study had more space, I’m sure it all would be different, though I don’t think I’ll ever separate my Golden Gryphon books.

In another corner of my study I generally have non-fiction books, though some fiction books end up there anyway. I’m not sure why my Harlan Ellison books are over there, as he’s a hugely important author in my life. (I do wish some publisher would re-print a nice, somewhat uniform set of his books. I think White Wolf tried, and ran into issues that ended the series.) Also, all my Haruki Murakami books are over there, and Jack Williamson (an incomplete set of his short stories). One day, I’ll organize all my mystery books into some coherent space, and maybe I’ll put my Murakami books more centrally located.

This all makes me wonder, how do people who own several thousand books across multiple genres organize their books? By author? By genre? By their own internal rules, like mine? How do they find their books? For the most part, I know where they are, aside from a few exceptions. I don’t know whether I would separate my Golden Gryphon books, or the Arkham House ones (there are two exceptions: Blaylock and Shea, whose Arkham House editions reside with the author, not publisher).

Is this a trivial exercise? Probably. Then again, things don’t stay that way forever. These days I buy mostly mysteries, though now and then I add a few limited editions to the “special section.” I’m halfway through collecting Centipede Press’ re-issue of Fritz Leiber, with four more planned. Today I added the Gauntlet edition of F. Paul Wilson’s Conspiracies (I probably won’t look for the two trilogies added later, the ones about the younger and young Repairman Jack, as I have these in other hardcover editions). I’d like to buy more Arkham House books, but not at some of the inflated prices I see listed. I’d like to find more Robert R. McCammon books, which I’d stopped reading for many years, and then recently re-discovered. Powers and Blaylock, when they publish new books, and instant additions, regardless of publisher. For new authors, it’s only in crime and mysteries that I venture there these days. Science fiction and fantasy these days has become boring and repetitive. I do wonder, if I magically added some empty bookcases, how would I fill these? Gone are the days I went to SF conventions, where I could browse the dealers’ room. Gone are the days of specialty bookstores, as least where I live. I could buy off the internet, but paying high prices for something you see only in an image isn’t my cup of tea. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t buy a ton of books these days, anyway. Who has the time to read them all? Maybe that’s a thought for another day.

Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean is one of the best fantasy books ever written. Sadly, you won’t see it on many so-called “best of ” lists. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1983, though it was unfamiliar to me until a few years later. I encountered Shea via Jack Vance, whose works I first read in 1985. I can’t remember if I bought the DAW edition of Nifft in Norway, as I lived there between 1983 and 1988. I know I bought at least two or three Shea books in Norway, including the Jack Vance-inspired novel, A Quest for Simbilis. I likely also bought In Yana, the Touch of Undying, and The Color out of Time there, but the rest of them I probably found in the US after I moved there in 1988. A book published in 1982 likely then either lingered on a shelf in specialty book stores, or in the many used paperback book stores found in Austin in the 1980s and 1990s (most of those bookstores probably died off after 9/11, as they’ve now all vanished, only Half Price Books remaining, at least the last time I checked).

The first Arkham House book I bought was Shea’s Polyphemus, which at $16.95 when I found it at Austin Books in 1988 or 1989 seemed an extravagance far beyond my means. At once point I tried to find every short story published, thinking I’d try my hand at publishing a book: the complete collection of Michael Shea stories. Of course, nothing happened as I had no experience in that field. Besides, Centipede Press beat me to that task (almost; not all published Shea stories were included in The Autopsy and Other Tales, a massive edition published in 2008; only 500 copies were printed, and I own # 106.)

I wrote a few reviews of Shea books over the years, and I know at least one of those reviews received a comment to the magazine editor from the author himself. I never got to meet Shea, as I didn’t attend many conventions outside Central Texas. It was truly a sad day for me when I learned of Shea’s death in 2014. What surprises me to this day is that at least two of his novels remain unpublished, as well as the nearly finished fourth volume in the Nifft series. This is according to Shea’s Facebook site, from a mention by his wife, Linda Shea. Publishers: please consider bringing these books to the world!

In 1994, Wildside Press published a limited edition of Nifft the Lean, a rare book to find even in the 1990s. BAEN Books reprinted it in a paperback edition along with The Mines of Behemoth, but that was years ago.

Then, in 2020, Centipede Press issued a new edition of Nifft the Lean. This edition has a foreword by Tim Powers (though an old one), as well as an afterword by Michael’s wife, Linda Shea. The book, as with all Centipede Press books, is a wonder to behold and hold. I’ve read the DAW edition from 1982 many times, each time holding it carefully as I turned the now-brittle and fading pages. Although the new book is a welcome edition (and addition) to my small library, it’s still sad that such a book only appears in limited numbers. Then again, maybe Shea’s an acquired taste. The prose is somewhat purple, the setting maybe to dark for some readers. Years ago a publisher called Pyr Books brought out SF and Fantasy books in trade paperback editions. I immediately knew which books were fantasy, as there always was a sword somewhere on the cover. Shea’s characters don’t always wield swords, yet there are other, more vivid (in my mind) elements of the fantastic within his stories, than in many “modern” fantasy tales.

The CP edition has the number “1” on the spine. I take it to mean there will be more hardcover editions to follow. I eagerly look forward to those; my wallet, not so much.