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Showing posts from 2015

Another Revision

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I am ending this year with a month of rewrites. As I explain'd in my other blog, I spent some time earlier this month completely revising and partially rewriting "The Zanies of Sorrow," a non-Lovecraftian story. Now I have completely a complete revision of the story I consider my finest, "Inhabitants of Wraithwood," after discovering that I didn't have my own personal doc of the story. I did find an old file with a bunch of stories, one of which was "Wraithwood"; but it was a "read only" file, and being utterly computer-clueless I didn't know how to save it as a single file, my computer wouldn't let me. I was, however, able to print out that version, & so I did and used that copy while typing up a new doc. As I began to type, I was dismay'd to discover how much of the writing of that original version displeas'd me, how clumsy some of the writing was; & so, of course, I began to revise as I typed, and by the end

S. T. Joshi Sings For Your Holidays!

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H. P. LOVECRAFT'S "THE OUTSIDER"

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UNCLE FORRY

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AN ECSTASY OF FEAR AND OTHERS, Centipede Press 2017

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I confess that I love what I suppose wou'd be describ'd as "traditional Lovecraftian horror", stories that paint imagery such as we have in ye illustration beside this text: the full moon, the abandoned necropolis with its overgrown grass and twisted tress, the hoary antient sarcophagus nestled in its lonesome mausoleum, & ye solitary haunter of ye dark. Just as there are motifs and moods and such that I love to paint in my stories, there are tales and settings by H. P. Lovecraft that continually draw me to them as I seek his texts for inspiration, from which I sup as if the story was some unholy fount. One setting that I continue to visit in my own work is Kingsport, the city in mist. I have a vague fancy to eventually write some handful more tales set there and then collect all of my Kingsport stories in a single book, as I collected my tales of Nyarlathotep in The Strange Dark One . A wee few months ago I finalized ye Contents for my forthcoming second omnib

Edgar Allan Poe's THE RAVEN

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A MOUNTAIN WALKED trade paperback edition

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Trade pb edition is Popular!

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Ye trade pb edition of A MOUNTAIN WALKED is #3 in ye Amazon charts of best-selling horror anthologies! The Contents is slightly different from the hardcover edition, missing the two stories by H. P. Lovecraft (they were added to ye hardcover by the publisher, and S. T. wasn't entirely happy with their inclusion in ye tome), and some few other items. Ye Contents of the trade pb and Kindle edition from Dark Regions Press follows: Introduction, S. T. Joshi The House of the Worm, Mearl Prout Far Below, Robert Barbour Johnson Spawn of the Green Abyss, C. Hall Thompson The Deep Ones, James Wade The Franklyn Paragraph, Ramsey Campbell Where Yidhra Walks, Walter C. DeBill, Jr. Black Man with a Horn, T.E.D. Klein The Last Feast of harlequin, Thomas Ligotti Only the End of the World Again, Neil Gaiman Mandelbrot Moldrot, Lois H, Gresh Black Brat of Dunwich, Stanley C. Sargent The Phantom of Beguilement, W. H. Pugmire ...Hungry...Rats, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. Virgin's Is

rereading S. T. Joshi, yep

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Ask Lovecraft - Fungi From Yuggoth, The Book

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Where Once Poe Walked by H P Lovecraft - Poem - animation

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H. P. Lovecraft Virtualy reads from "The Nameless City" Literary discuss...

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Lovecraft Part 1: A Christian Minister & H.P. Lovecraft Fan explores his...

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Divers Hands

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One of August Derleth's finest ideas was ye publication of a series of marginalia-themed books that not only included rare items from H. P. Lovecraft's pen but also, importantly, memoirs of E'ch-Pi-El by still-living members of ye Lovecraft Circle. The vile aspect of these books is that they "inspir'd" Derleth to pen one or two new collaborations "with" Lovecraft, and Augie's ego then allow'd that ye new fake collaboration serve as book title. The book's inner-flap perpetuates the myth that Derleth was completing stories that Lovecraft left unfinish'd: "In the novella which is the title story of this collection of Lovecraftiana, August Derleth develops an incompleted Lovecraft story linking the Innsmouth and Dunwich themes, achieving a typical Lovecraftian horror." There are so many things about that statement that are horribly false. Lovecraft wrote one  story about Innsmouth and one  story about Dunwich--he wou'

A Nice Lovecraftian Visit

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It remains a kind of miracle to me that S. T. Joshi, ye world's leading Lovecraft scholar & editor, came to dwell in my home town and is nigh one of my best buddies. For an obsess'd H. P. Lovecraft fan-boy, that is sweeter than ice cream. We spoke of many things, and S. T. encourag'd me to write a story for one of his forthcoming anthologies after I had determined I was unable to come up with anything original or interesting. H. P. Lovecraft is the source of my need to write, and S. T. is the potent alchemist who fuels my creative machine. S. T. went to visit his mother and came home with some of his books that were in her possession, and he made these titles available for purchase. I snatch'd up ye moft sought-after prize, H. P. LOVECRAFT: FOUR DECADES OF CRITICISM , publish'd by ye Ohio University Press in 1980. And I was rather struck by ye opening essay, "H. P. Lovecraft: His Life and Work", by S. T. and Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. Here's that p

I, too, have had my influence . . .

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Lovecraft isn't ye onlie one who has had a nefarious influence  on weird fiction. When I became a total Cthulhu Mythos nut in ye early 1970s, one of my all-time favourite writers was Brian Lumley. My ghod, I thought he was magnificent. I cannot now recall how I obtain'd his address--probably from Jim Turner of Arkham House--but I began to write Lumley ferver'd fan letters, and then I wrote foam-at-ye-mouth articles about how excellent his fiction was in my Lovecraft fanzine. Honey, I was young and clueless, and utterly obsess'd with ye Mythos. Indeed, to my shame these days, I wrote a rather disapproving review of one of Ramsey Campbell's collections in an early issue of Nyctalops --disappointing because I found the stories lacking in wondrous Cthulhu Mythos elements!! How dense  ye young can be!  So ye can imagine my utter delight when Lumley (I addressed him as "Briantus" in my letters to him) sent me the follow missive: O My Holy Yuggoth!!!!!

Re: 21 Fungi from Yuggoth - Nyarlathotep - H. P. Lovecraft read by Willi...

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still cool, bitches

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I was sent ye ARC of The Annotated Fungi from Yuggoth ---& I cannot speak too much about ye book because it is still a work in progress and not yet available for pre-order from ye publisher. But--Great Yuggoth!--it is such  a cool edition, utterly sublime & definitive. Hippocampus Press will probably publish it in handsome hardcover format early next year.  One of ye highlights of ye book, for me, is that each page of Lovecraft's holograph manuscript has been photograph'd & printed; and, once again, I am rather happy that I never had ye yearning to be an editor of Lovecraft's texts. I mean, check it out: Lovecraft wrote Fungi from Yuggoth  in the week between December 27 and January 4, 1928--so that had me imagining that he sat down at his desk and easily spill'd forth his sonnets onto paper, that the entire thing was a simple and fast affair. But as ye can see above, he freaking slaved  over ye writing of ye poem--for each handwritten original d

Letters to Robert Bloch and Others

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Above is a letter Bob wrote me in 1985. I first began to write to Bloch in 1969, when I asked him to write a wee tribute to Forry Ackerman for my horror film fanzine, Fantasia . I was deeply into horror films at the time and had little interest in reading fiction. When, in 1971, I was stationed in Northern Ireland as a Mormon missionary, I wasn't allowed to attend horror films (they were deemed a bad influence); and so, because I was pen pals with Bob, I began to go to wee used book shops and find anthologies wherein Bloch was one of many writers. That's how I got hooked on reading horror fiction, which became my main addiction over the new few years. I was stationed in Omagh, County Tyrone, when I found a used copy of a book that had but recently been republished in paperback: THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK AND OTHER by H. P. Lovecraft ( Panther Horror, 1970). I knew of Lovecraft because of some films that had been made based on his stories, and because one entire issue of an old

Hullo, ducks!

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Here is my new blog, in which I want to discuss Lovecraft's art and perhaps portions of his biography. The blog's title reflects my obsession with HPL and my long practice of writing short stories "in ye Lovecraft tradition"--I have now publish'd around twenty books of my own fannish Lovecraftian tales. My mania for this author does not diminish over time--just ye opposite. It has reach'd a new height with ye publication from Hippocampus Press of H. P. Lovecraft - Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition   in three handsome hardcover volumes.  There has been more and more online chatter concerning Lovecraft, but very little of it seems to concern his actual writing. Usually, the people who are chatting about Lovecraft confess that they haven't read much of his fiction or they haven't read his work for a long time. These critics seem more concern'd with prattling on about what they see as Lovecraft's personal inadequacies and abnormalities. Y