If you haven’t read part one yet, scroll down. Then come back up here for the rest.

P.W. Sinclair’s Horrorstruck columns never drew many comments, but there were a few kind words here and there, which was nice. I had never expected those backpage essays to generate lots of attention. They were there to do a job, to be a little palate cleanser after a heavy meal, and at that I guess they mostly succeeded.

In the beginning, there were only three people who knew that I was P.W. I knew, of course. So did my wife. So did Dave Silva. But what happened as time went by? Did anyone else ever catch on? To the best of my knowledge, just one person – a good friend and Horrorstruck columnist (Hi, Shelia!) who revealed her suspicions in a brief note. “It’s funny how P.W. Sinclair sounds a lot like you do in your letters,” she wrote. And then the coup de grace: “I wonder what P.W. stands for? Pseudonymous Writer, perhaps?”

I was impressed with her deduction skills and her sense of humor. Maybe she should have been writing the magazine’s back page. I was also amused that she’d given me credit for being more clever than I was. I liked the idea of P.W. standing for “Pseudonymous Writer,” but hadn’t been sharp enough to think of it myself. For all I knew, the initials could have stood for Pendergast Wainwright or Psychological Warrior or Piggly Wiggly.

P.W. might have vanished along with Horrorstruck if I hadn’t made the unusual decision to use the penname on “Getting Back,” my contribution to the Post Mortem anthology that Dave and I were putting together. To this day, I can’t say with any real certainty why I did that. I was really proud of the story, and still am satisfied with it today, so it’s not as if I was trying to hide the authorship of a substandard work. Still, there was almost certainly a degree of hiding involved, since I was feeling a bit shy about putting my name on the cover of the book and on one of the longest stories inside. I also enjoyed the thought of people wondering who P.W. Sinclair was – the only writer in the anthology who didn’t come with any sort of “name” or reputation. And finally, there was some ego involved. At the time, my career was starting to take off, and I think I decided, way back in some dark recess of my mind, that it might be helpful some day to have a pseudonym ready to go, with an established name and a list of credits, all set to use when I had two stories appearing in the same issue of a magazine or four new books coming out in the same month. I was, in effect, trying to give P.W. a leg up in the business while preparing for my own eventual superstardom. I know. Go ahead. Laugh now. It’s all right.

As it turned out, the name P.W. Sinclair never appeared on another piece of writing. After Post Mortem came out, he simply disappeared from the radar screen, vanishing just as quickly as he’d been born on that day I needed a Horrorstruck column and couldn’t find anyone to write it.

If I had it to do over again, I’m sure I’d put my real name on “Getting Back.” If the story is ever republished somewhere, I will use my real name. In the meantime, subscribers to our mailing list will find both names on the tale. It seems only fitting. It seems fair. I’m happy to share credit with P.W. one last time, thanking him for the thankless services he provided me, and I hope you’ll think of him kindly as you read his words.

First things first. If you haven’t signed up for our mailing list and gotten your free copies of our Post Mortem stories, “Getting Back” and “Brothers,” why not do it right now? Go ahead … I’ll wait.

Okay, you’re back. All signed up for the list? Got the stories? Good.

The release of “Getting Back” to list members marks a first for me: the first time I’m officially revealing that I was P.W. Sinclair, under whose name that story appeared in Post Mortem. Now, I understand this isn’t exactly earthshaking news. It’s not as if there were hundreds of people, or even dozens, or (let’s be honest) even one, spending sleepless nights wondering about P.W. Sinclair’s true identity. But I still want to explain who P.W. was and how he came to be.

I invented P.W. many years ago, when I was publishing my magazine, Horrorstruck. He was born of necessity. From the very first days of the magazine, I had wanted to conclude each issue with a lighthearted backpage column – not humor, necessarily, but something a little lighter and fluffier for loyal readers who had just worked their way through 50 or 60 pages of horror analysis, news, critiques, and articles about the hardships of being a freelance writer. The problem was, I couldn’t find anyone willing to take on the task. I had plenty of people who wanted to write for me, but they all wanted to be Tom Monteleone, whose MAFIA columns were making waves and drawing lots of attention. I tried to explain. I said, “I already have a Tom Monteleone in the magazine, and as luck would have it, he’s not just a Tom Monteleone, he’s the Tom Monteleone. I don’t need another one.” To no avail. Everyone wanted to be the next disseminator of controversial opinions. Nobody wanted to write a few hundred words of goofiness to wrap up each issue of the magazine.

So I did it myself.

As for the decision to use a pseudonym … I honestly didn’t think about it very much. I just did it. Part of it, I suppose, was wanting to avoid yet another page of Paul F. Olson in a magazine that already had a lot of Paul F. Olson. Part of it may have been embarrassment or self-protection: wanting to hide behind another identity in case my attempts at humor fell flat, as they sometimes (often?) did.

I chose the name quickly and easily. In an early unpublished novel, written just after high school, I had a character named Louis St. Onge, a DJ who went by the radio name Pat Sinclair. I thought about that novel one day, and decided it would be fun to fall back on that particular character – an inside joke that was so far inside I was the only person in the world to know about it. For some reason, “Pat” seemed a little too definitive for Horrorstruck, so I added a bit of mystery by using initials instead, and P.W. Sinclair was born.

To be continued …

I had two items on the agenda today. The first was to tell you about a new anthology by Delirium Press called In Delirium. It was a clever idea … get together a group of writers that had been published by Delirium, have each of them contribute a short story, put all the stories together and offer the book to Delirium’s Shane Ryan Staley as a gift of appreciation from all the writers. I wish the idea had been mine, but it was the brainchild of Brian Keene, who also edited the anthology.

The story I submitted to Brian was called “Watershed.” It was a reprint from many years ago, but I thought it still held up well. And apparently it held up well enough to make it into the book.

So I was going to tell you how you could pick up a copy if you were interested. Unfortunately, when I went to Delirium’s website (http://www.deliriumbooks.com/) to check out the price, etc. I discovered that the book had sold out in pre-publication. Still, if you get a moment, you might want to pop in over there and check out some of their other titles. Shane tends to publish material that’s a little more gruesome than I generally write, but there’s a good selection to sift through if you enjoy the horror genre.

The second item I wanted to tell you about is called A Little White Book of Lies. It’s published by Borderlands Press, as part of their Little Book Series. The concept is simple … pick a color, create a theme around that color, then add in some stories that fit the theme. White lies quickly became my theme, since it runs through so many of my stories, and these are the stories that I selected to be reprinted: “Fade In/Fade Out,” “Brothers,” “The Hollow,” and “Where The Past Lay Buried.” Sandwiched in between these is a new short story, titled “Never Far From Mind,” which fits right into the theme since it’s all about lying and self-deception.

Now, let me be perfectly honest with you … I’m quite pleased with the theme and the collection of stories that were built around it. However, the Little Book Series is unique in that the books are quite literally little. They measure 4 3/4″ by 6 1/4″. Some readers may find this off-putting. Others may find it intriguing.

A Little White Book of Lies comes numbered and signed, and sells for $20.00. You can learn more by dropping by the Borderlands Press site here: http://www.borderlandspress.com/white.html

Welcome to olsonandsilva.com, the new Web home of writers and editors Paul F. Olson and David B. Silva. Whether old friend or new, we’re glad to have you with us!

There’s not much here right now, but be patient. Good things are coming. In the days and weeks ahead, you’ll see more and more content being added to this site. You’ll be able to learn a little more about who we are, what we’ve done in the past, and what we’re going to be doing in the future. There will also be lots of goodies here to feed your fiction addiction — stories and serials and … well, just wait and see. You won’t be disappointed.

While you’re here, please take a moment to join our mailing list, and be sure to subscribe to the feed for this blog so that you can be the first to know when new items are posted and new material is available.

Paul and Dave