“A Great Book, but Please Don’t Read It” (by W. Edward Blain)

“A Great Book, but Please Don’t Read It” (by W. Edward Blain) | SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN: Ted Blain (whose fiction byline is W. Edward Blain) has been a contributor to EQMM for twenty years this month, having debuted for our magazine with December 1995’s “The Director’s Notes.” “The All-Nighter,” his latest EQMM tale and his first locked-room story, will appear in our March/April 2016 double issue. Though Ted is primarily a short-story writer, he is the author of two mystery novels, the first of which, Passion Play (Putnam, 1990) was nominated for a best first novel Edgar Allan Poe Award in a year when the competition included the first novels of Walter Mosley and Patricia Cornwell. For twenty-five years Ted has been the chairman of the English department at Woodberry Forest School, in Madison County, Virginia. When he isn’t teaching or writing fiction, he’s often directing plays. His post paints a vivid picture of how literature first got hold of him.—Janet Hutchings