H. P. Lovecraft and His Influence

When I was a young Lovecraftian, I cou'd not "get into" this novella. I was obsess'd with pure Lovecraftian horror, and ye idea of a fantasy novel lack'd appeal. Trying to read Dream-Quest  at that young age, I became impatient with many of ye fabulous creatures that Carter encountered, finding them silly, absurd, and boring. The one allure the novella had was that it featured Richard Upton Pickman in his ghoul state; but ye dreamland ghouls rather disappointed me, because they meep. What the hell is meeping? However, over time, as I return'd to "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," I found more therein that charmed me; and now, last year, my collaborator, David Barker, and I have written an entire novel set in Lovecraft's dreamlands--, or rather, our own version of it.  Because of ye novel's length, this edition in ye PS Publishing LOVECRAFT ILLUSTRATED series contains just the wee novel, plus a new Introduction by S. T. Joshi, and a ch...

For some strange reason--perhaps because I have quoted sections from the book in review--Amazon won't post my new review of MEDUSA'S COIL AND OTHERS. This is quite annoying, because I spent a nice wee while typing up that review. However, I was able to print out ye review, and so I am going to share it here, with ye. I think it requires a nice purple typeface. Medusa's Coil and Others. Volume 2 of THE ANNOTATED REVISIONS AND COLLABORATIONS OF H. P. LOVECRAFT. Arcane Wisdom, 2012. Editing and Annotated by S. T. Joshi. I keep returning to this wonderful tome, and to its companion volume, THE CRAWLING CHAOS AND OTHERS , for a number of reasons. I feel a close kinship with H. P. Lovecraft because I have been an obsess'd fan since ye early 1970s, at which time I also began my hobby of writing weird fiction that is heavily tainted by Lovecraft's oeuvre. I think my initial reading of many of these revisions fueled my desire to write Lovecraftian horror; I began to ...

I have started working on a new story for a second collection of Enoch Coffin tales that I am writing with Jeffrey Thomas. Jeff and I initially agreed that, unlike our first book, this second collection would not  be Lovecraftian. So what am I doing to-night? I'm rereading "Out of the Aeons" in S. T.'s edition of Medusa's Coil and Others: The Annotated Revisions and Collaborations of H. P. Lovecraft  (Arcane Wisdom, 2012). First, I want to set ye tale in Boston, and "Out of the Aeons" has that city as its setting. Second, I wanted a sexy beginning for the story, & ye idea came to me to have two or three persons wrapping moist gauze around Enoch's naked body as part of a bizarre "art project" in which they replicate in living form the mummy of ye Cabot Museum. Such is my wonky memory that--although I have read ye tale numerous times--I cannot now remember how the story ends or the fate of the mummy. Anyway, that's as far as I'...

Above is me in Boston, at ye gates adjacent to Harvard. My friends Maryanne and Greg took me on a three-week tour of New England and New York, and those were the moft magical three weeks of my life, never surpass'd. To be a Lovecraftian on his first visit to Lovecraft Country--Great Yuggoth, what an experience! I've been musing about Boston because I am preparing to begin work on a second collection of Enoch Coffin stories, and I want the first tale to be set in Boston. My memory of ye city is now so poor, however, that I fear making a lot of mistakes in describing it, &c. Well, I write fantasy fiction, so I guess it's semi-okay if ye Boston I evoke is more phantasy than reality. With this second collection of Enoch Coffin tales, I am going to evoke the spirit of Poe rather than Lovecraft--at least that's my intention. Poe had a bit of an attitude regarding some of Boston's authors, but ye city seems to have embrac'd ye poet, as ye pictur'd stat...

I couldn't find my copy of Carter's book on ye Mythos (a friend in Australia sent me ye Panther Horror pb edition some few decades ago), so I order'd an inexpensive copy on Amazon; but to-day, while trying to read ye damn thing, I grew more annoy'd at Lin Carter's critiques of Lovecraft than ever before. Now I know that the book, written in ye early 1970's, was the first full book about  Lovecraft to be publish'd, and it was written at a time when so much rancid misinformation concerning HPL was being hurled by clueless idiots; yet, still, so much of Carter's criticism is so harsh that one wonders why he felt compell'd to write the book. Of course, the book is much more than a volume about  Lovecraft, being an investigation of the thing we have come to call "the Cthulhu Mythos". The Mythos can put a person into a state of fannish fever--and when I first read this book, I caught that fever big-time. I knew that I had  to try and become o...

Richard Lund, Esq. Have ye ever created a character who, after killing him off in a tale, continues to haunt your imagination, to ye point where you regret having destroy'd him? This has been ye case with my character of Richard Lund, ye central character in my story "Born in Strange Shadow." Perhaps ye reason this character so "lives" for me is that, when I had my wee cassette recorded and used to record "living letters" on cassette tape to send to various correspondents, "Born in Strange Shadow" was the story that I read into ye tape recorder the moft often; & I had a special deep "sepulchral" voice that I used when speaking the dialogue of Richard Lund; and in thus presenting him in those recordings, I grew strangely fond of him.  Well, of late I have been revising some few of my older tales. This is a habit I have been trying to resist, wanting to concentrate fully on creating new work; but this evening, as I w...

It has indeed been an excellent year for this writer of weird fiction. I've already had two new things accepted. In an attempt to clean ye chaos that are ye piles of papers in various rooms, I came upon a print-out of a wee sonnet sequence, "The Ghoul's Dilemma," of which I have no memory. I cannot now recall if I consider'd the thing finish'd with ye three sonnets of which it consists, or if I meant to add further sonnets; nor can I recall submitting it as is to any publication. S. T. has just accepted it for his way cool poetry journal, Spectral Realms . I am hoping to make 2016 a year of poetry--I want to write lots of it.I'm a little shy, however, about trying my hand at any form other than sonnets. I think my ghoul sonnets will be publish'd in ye 4th issue. S. T. has a new blog up to-day  www.stjoshi.org/news.html in which he announc'd: " I am also compiling a volume entitled The Red Brain: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos  for Dark ...