Editing Robert Bloch (section)

=== Campaign manager for Carl Zeidler ===
In 1939, Bloch was contacted by James Doolittle, who was managing the campaign for [[List of mayors of Milwaukee|Mayor of Milwaukee]] of a little-known assistant city attorney named [[Carl Zeidler]]. He was asked to work on Zeidler's speechwriting, advertising, and photo ops, in collaboration with his long-time friend Harold Gauer. They created elaborate campaign shows; in Bloch's 1993 autobiography, ''Once Around the Bloch'', he gives an inside account of the campaign, and the innovations he and Gauer came up with – for instance, the original releasing-balloons-from-the-ceiling schtick. He comments bitterly on how, after Zeidler's victory, they were ignored and not even paid their promised salaries. He ends the story with a wryly philosophical point:

{{blockquote|If Carl Zeidler had not asked Jim Doolittle to manage his campaign, Doolittle would never have contacted me about it. And the only reason Doolittle knew me to begin with was because he read my yarn ("The Cloak") in ''Unknown''. Rattling this chain of circumstances, one may stretch it a bit further. If I had not written a little [[vampire]] story called "The Cloak", Carl Zeidler might never have become mayor of Milwaukee.}}

Also in 1939, two of Bloch's tales were published: "The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton" (''Amazing Stories,'' August) and "The Cloak" (''Unknown,'' March). Many of the stories Bloch published in ''Strange Stories'' in 1939 as by 'Tarleton Fiske' were fantasy/horror hybrids of the ''[[contes cruels]]'' type.