I just found out that our Wolfe-brother Joe Mayhew died on June 10th after a month long illness.
Joe was a close friend of Gene Wolfe, which is pretty much how I met him. I shared a room with him at the World Fantasy Con in Baltimore (which is where I first met Patrick O'Leary). His health was failing and we thought he was going to die years ago--I even made a promise to "see him at World Con in Los Angeles," and then he actually survived so I had to go (I saw Patrick there, too).
He was a writer, a cartoonist, a carver of canes (Gene Wolfe has at least one; his wife Rosemary has one too). He was funny, he was sharp, he was fast and free with his wit. He could argue! It seemed to me that there was always music going on in his head, and often as we walked and talked, the most surprising things would burst out of him: Latin church songs, sure, but so often it was something or other from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
That he has finally passed away comes as no surprise to me, since I've had plenty of time to prepare; two or three cases that turned out to be merely close calls. Still, I shed a tear at his going.
Goodbye Joe!
=Michael=