He was never quite satisfied with or confident enough to submit his stories to the editors of the professional genre magazines of the era, despite encouragement from friends and others who felt he had talent; Reamy continued to hone his writing for many years, while exploring other expressions for his growing creativity.

Longtime science fiction fan personality, collector, and literary agent Forrest J Ackerman came from Los Angeles and served at the convention's banquet as toastmaster.

In the late 1960s, Reamy also organized and became chairman of Dallas fandom's long-running "Big D in '73" bid to host the 31st World Science Fiction Convention.

Ultimately, the long-running Dallascon bid collapsed for complex reasons unrelated to this controversy, several months before 1973's site-selection vote was taken at Noreascon, the 1971 Worldcon in Boston.

Reamy joined the KC bid at chairman Ken Keller's request, shortly before their victory in 1974, filling two key department head positions on the convention committee.

Reamy immediately established a strong editorial style and modern graphic design approach to the convention's progress reports and other publications.

Reamy's only novel Blind Voices, published posthumously in both hardcover and mass-market paperback editions, earned critical comparisons with the works of Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, and Harlan Ellison.

[citation needed] The novel deals with the arrival of a strange and wonderful “freak show” at a rural town in Kansas during the 1920s and its effects on the lives of the residents.

Other than Blind Voices, the only other Tom Reamy book is a posthumous collection of his shorter fiction, San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories, also published in both hardcover and mass-market paperback.

The volume has an insightful and passionate introduction, "Embrace the Departing Shadow," by Harlan Ellison, surveying Reamy's stories and his short career before his untimely death).

He was found dead from a heart attack, slumped over his typewriter seven pages into a new, untitled story for editor Edward L. Ferman at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.