Starman Month came and went -- quite successfully, thank you -- and Derek faced the task of sifting through his e-mail. So many requests and demands; so many voices! Then on that fateful day last week, Derek e-mailed me, saying:

"Ah, write it anyway."

And so it goes.

The tale behind these trade covers is actually a lot more exciting than you might think! It involves potatoes. Not very exciting at first. Then it involves aliens! Okay! Now more exciting!! But it all begins with Tony Harris' deep and abiding love for his art, as expressed through potato carving.

He first buys a bag of potatoes from the supermarket -- big baking potatoes. After cutting them in two, he lovingly carves the elements of the cover into the "stump" ends. For instance, for this second trade cover, Nash is quite prominent. She took a BIG potato.

Tony then pats the carvings into paint, and presses them onto a big sheet of paper. At this stage, the art looks sorta like a Rorschach inkblot test. After they've all dried, Tony ships the paper to me, because I know how to contact . . . Them. The Truth is Out There, and They can't be reached through AT&T.

So I make contact, and the ship is coming. (No, not from out behind a comet. That's loony.) I take the paper to a field and wait. A beam erupts down, setting the night ablaze! At the last instant, I leap out of the tractor beam but toss in the paper, and watch as the craft hummmm-Zips up, up and away. I find a comfortable place to sit.

After about an hour, that hummmm returns. I glance up and am blinded by the Departure beam, which leaves behind, naked and dazed and rather different-looking, the Artwork. It gets a capital "A" because the side-effects of the aliens' experiments are evidently what DC Comics wants. I box it up and mail it to Bob Kahan, the trade editor, and so far he's liked what Tony and I have done. End of story.

Don't try this at home, kids. Except maybe the part about potato art.

Thank you! Next month: Welsh Poetry (the REAL STORY)! I promise!