On a certain day deep in the Mission District in the city of San Francisco, a pair of free-range Tor authors were spotted spinning tales of the fantastical and the absurd in a certain bookstore.

The day was March 28th; the authors were Ken Scholes and Jay Lake; the bookstore was Borderlands Books.

And the stories . . . they were a small breath of magic in the air.

As Lake says, “Watching writers write is like watching paint dry.” Yet a respectable gathering of people were there from the start, growing to a room-filling crowd by the time the stories were read aloud. Who would give up the heart of a lovely Saturday afternoon in our fair city to huddle indoors, gathered around the sound of keyboards clacking, punctuated only by the occasional random question — “How much space does a billion gallons of water take up?” “Where are the ghost ships?” “What’s your middle initial, Jude?” — and the mad dash of kitten-feet across a hardwood floor?

Those who wanted to see the magic at work, of course. Fellow lovers of fine absurdist–sci-fi–fantasy literature yearning to witness the process up close and deeply, sweatily personal.

The madness began, as these things so often do, with clowns in space. Lake and Scholes, who have been inseparable pals for nearly a decade, had always spoken of writing together. But other than a stalled effort about a space-faring colony of homicidal clowns, it had never come to fruition. Each had their own projects, their own increasing successes, coupled with the more usual full schedules and life distractions. The poor clowns languished, their story half-told, where it remains still. (Upon sober reflection, one can only hope the story never sees the light of day.)