H. P. Lovecraft and His Influence

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...

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!...

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 origina...

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...

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...