In a way, this book is one that I’ve been writing for many years.
My family is from Rhode Island, and the city of Providence is surprisingly rich for being the residence of masters of supernatural fiction; among them Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. My much older aunt Lillian and Uncle Bert lived midway between the residences of both men, and they knew the latter author briefly in his last years. Whenever I stayed with them during childhood summers in the early 1950’s I would read volumes of both author’s works, both at their home and at the local library on College Hill.
Poe of course is a classic, although in truth he is rather spottily known. Some of his best work is not the half dozen poems and tales he’s known by, but instead longer works like The Gold Bug, The Adventure of Hans Pfall, and the utterly mad The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym. Those were the tales that stuck with me, and rereading them recently proved them to be wonderfully subversive and ga-ga.
Unlike today, at that time, Lovecraft had virtually no reputation as a writer outside of faithful readers of Weird Tales magazine in the 1920’s and 1930’s. That he does today is partly thanks to the staunch and persistent efforts of Arkham House imprint in Sauk City, Michigan which reprinted everything, even the poetry, in editions usually limited to a few thousand copies. But also thanks to the San Francisco Hippie Rock group , H.P. Lovecraft, and their eerie hit song “The White Ship.”
Today his books are fittingly part of the huge Library of America series. Rereading them I’m always surprised how fittingly he uses the odd geography of Rhode Island – half water, half land: and of the latter, half city and half rural -- in his stories and novels. At that time, however, most of Lovecraft’s titles were out of print and unobtainable. By the way, a handful of movies were made out of Lovecraft’s works in the ‘70’s based on his books, too. Most are odd and bad but some are very surprisingly true to the source and even watchable.
Later in life, once I was writing fiction myself, I was fortunate enough to come into contact with two master authors of Science Fiction, Arthur C. Clarke and Harlan Ellison. Individually, and entirely unprompted, they reviewed my books, praised them, and encouraged me -- and so unwittingly they set me on the path that would end up at this volume, and with my Sci-Fi trilogy, City on a Star, still being written.
In a way Twelve O’Clock Tales is an homage to those unique and astonishing talents. Poe, Lovecraft, Clarke and Ellison. As well as to M.R. James, Walter de La Mare, Ambrose Bierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Saki, Algernon Blackwood, etc. all of whom I’ve read and still read today.
For people who keep track of things, Twelve O’Clock Tales is my fourth collection of short stories, following Slashed To Ribbons in Defense of Love in 1983 (reprinted as The New York Years in 2003), Tales From a Distant Planet in 2005 and Contemporary Gay Romances in 2011 (also Bold Strokes Books). The 2005 title was published by French Connection Press in Paris, France and had a very limited distribution, although the book is still available for sale in the U.S. and I’m including two of its most praised stories here.
Although I am primarily known as a novelist (and lately also as a memoirist) stories are my favorite way of writing fiction: whether it is a 1,750 word “amusement in prose” (the second story here), a 35,000 word novella, or anything in between.
When I can know, sense, or even merely get a hint about an ending while I’m writing, I think I’m simply a better writer, certainly a tighter one. Doing that with a novel usually means a five to ten year period of gestation before I even begin, and equal years of commitment on the other end. With stories I can start and end in a few sessions, or in the case of longer works do so within a month. Any more time than that and it becomes something else.
My first story was written when I was twelve, and my first published story (collected in Slashed to Ribbons) was written as far back as 1972. I’ve now written almost fifty shorter stories, of which (with this volume) now 47 have been published in one form, format, place or another, from magazines and newspapers to anthologies to on-line magazines. Very early on I wrote “strange” stories: My second “finished, adult” story, in fact, could have easily fit into this collection.
Among the stories here, a few included here were popular: “Absolute Ebony,” has been published several times in mainstream magazines and other people’s collections, ditto with “Spices of the World,” and “One Way Out” and it’s amazing that readers find them fresh and relevant. Another tale, “Love and the She-Lion” was second runner up as “story of the year” for the late, lamented Story magazine
The other tales are recently written: from 1995 to 2011: and brand new. Most of the stories here are strange, a few comical, and others rather sinister. They came from different places and times –a Hebrew backwater in B.C.E. Israel; a California highway some fifteen years from now; an unnamed New England rural area, time unknown; East London around 1950; New York City etc, in as far as I can determine the 1970’s. Other places are difficult to determine: the Midwest for two of them, for one, the British Midlands. One takes place in Venezuela, a country I’ve never visited, was never in any way interested in, and maybe thought of three a total of times in my life.
Reviewing my recent non-fiction collection, True Stories: Portraits from My Past, Thom Nickels pointed out that among those relationships were several which dealt with experiences that cannot be explained, and that I dealt with them as objectively and honestly as I could. He was surprised; saying it’s seldom done and mostly frowned upon in “literature.”
Since I—and people around me -- have actually had such unexplainable experiences, I believe they are valid loci and foci for writing as well as discussion. Anyone who denies to my face that the “unseen world is all around us” is usually met with a laugh—if not a giggle -- I know better. And the more it is written of and discussed, the less it will be demonized; the more it might be understood.
Unfazed, my intrepid publisher, Bold Strokes Press, has issued Twelve O’Clock Tales, so named because around midnight is when I sat down to write most of the tales, and it’s a good time for you to read them too. ….Boo!

Felice Picano