Dark Muse News: The Legend of Top-Shelf Books Open Mic
Ever hear of the legend of Top Shelf Books? Gene Wolfe did!
I first heard about the legendary Top Shelf Books from four people who had frequented that mythical venue. However, they were not together when they mentioned the place, and the interval between tellings was years and across many locations. What I eventually learned was that it was a used book shop that hosted open-mic readings for writers. The “open-mic” writer’s group ran from ~2007-2013, in Top Shelf Books in Palatine, Illinois. It was uncanny that Top Shelf kept creeping into conversations, so I had to find out the history and then share it! Here are those who introduced me to the legend.
2015: Author Joe Bonadonna was the first. Back in 2015, he had reviewed my first novel and, by serendipity, we both joined forces as Perseid Press contributors for Heroika and Heroes in Hell, sharing six volumes; we even jointly wrote a story for Monsters in Hell. I adore Joe’s Dorgo the Dowser (Mad Shadows) books and interviewed him in 2022. Several times over the last decade, he mentioned Top Shelf.
2016: Chief editor of Black Gate, John O’Neill, was another Top Shelfer. I met John in person at the 2016 World Fantasy Convention, the same year and event in which Black Gate won the World Fantasy Special Award. I began contributing to Black Gate in 2018, with one of my lead articles being coverage of Todd McAulty’s Robots of Gotham (spoiler alert: Todd McAulty is a pseudonym for John O’Neill). In 2019, at a Gen Con event with John and Howard Andrew Jones, I heard about the editing opportunity at Black Gate that led to becoming the Managing Editor.
