Despite my strenuous efforts to keep up, not only checking the death notices in The Plain Dealer but also the addictive BlogofDeath.com, one fatality got past me. John Steakley, dead at 59 last November (my despised birth month, during which no good happens) in McKinney, Texas. Cause was cited as a longstanding liver condition.
Why should you care? Steakley was a science-fiction and fantasy author of something less than prolific output. He only wrote a handful of short stories and finished two novels. Even with that, I can't claim to have read anythying more by him than the one of those novels that made a whimpering dent in Hollywood history, Vampire$.
