INTRODUCTION

This isn't really a story. Call it "fictional ephemera."

A little background: I’m not sure when—I think it was back in 1990—and I’m not sure where—maybe at one of Gary Lovisi’s annual paperback collector conventions in Manhattan. Anyway, I was listening to the late Michael Avallone discuss his favorite subject (Michael Avallone) and about how he once wrote an entire novel in a day and a half, and how he used to write the entire contents of magazines issue after issue, and so on, all of which I knew. But here’s what got me: The hero of these exploits isn’t “I” or “me”...it’s “the Avo.” I listened in awe. Not only is this man referring to himself in the third person, but he’s given himself a nickname.

Maybe it was the fumes, but later that day as I was crawling through the Lincoln Tunnel on my way home I began imagining the grandiose exploits of a wildly prolific writer known to one and all (including himself) as the Effster. I typed up a short piece about him for my own amusement, then sent it to Ed Gorman to see if he recognized the inspiration for the character. He not only recognized the Avo immediately, he wanted to publish it in Mystery Scene. I said go ahead, figuring no one would read it. To my amazement (and consternation), I show up at the 1991 NECon and people are calling me “Effster.”

I did a second “memoir” a year or so later, planned others but never got to them. So here they are, the complete memoirs of the Effster to date. I’ve put them in internal chronological order (“Summer ‘73” was written first). I toyed with the idea of writing a third memoir for inclusion but decided not to subject you to too much of this guy at once.

The Effster is nothing if not empathetic.