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Showing posts from 2016

Grandpa's Influence Continues

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My favourite Lovecraftian fiction series continues with ye newly-releas'd Black Wings V  from PS Publishing. Editor S. T. Joshi has selected a fascinating collection of weird tales that are original examples of how modern weird authors continue to pay homage to Ye Gentleman from Providence.  Contents Introduction, S. T. Joshi Plenty of Irem, Jonathan Thomas Diary of a Sane Man, Nicole Cushing The Woman in the Attic, Robert H. Waugh Far from Any Shore, Caitlin R. Kiernan In Blackness Etched, My Name, W. H. Pugmire Snakeladder, Cody Goodfellow The Walker in the Night, Jason C. Eckhardt In Bloom, Lynne Jamneck The Black Abbess, John Rippion The Quest, Mollie L Burleson A Question of Blood, David Hambling Red Walls, Mark Howard Jones The Organ of Chaos, Donald Tyson Seeds of the Gods, Donald R. Burleson Fire Breeders, Sunni K Brock Casting Fractals, Sam Gafford The Red Witch of Chorazin, Darrell Schweitzer The Oldies, Nancy Kilpatrick Voodoo, Stephen Woodworth

New from ye H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society!

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With audacious originality and absolute genius, The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society  has given us a new audio cd in their Dark Adventure Radio Theatre  series. Inspir'd by H. P. Lovecraft's classic tale, "The Call of Cthulhu", Sean Branney has created an outstanding original story and audio script, which is well-served by a cast of fifteen players. Sean himself portrays Inspector John Raymond Legrasse, a character from HPL's original tale. Now, the thing ye need to know about Sean Branney and Andrew Leman is that they are among the world's really superior Lovecraftians--by which I mean that they understand Lovecraft's art intimately and intellectually. Thus The White Tree  is authentic in every way, a product of pure Lovecraftian horror, a wondrous display of how H. P. Lovecraft's influence is still so potent in these latter-days, still relevant and still original.  The topic of Lovecraft's racism seems to be all over ye Internet these day

Get Yem While Ye Can!

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Ye vinyl from Cadabra Records with Andrew Leman's hypnotic reading of "The Hound" and "The Music of Erich Zann" is now sold out. Thus one is urged to visit ye Cadabra site and order their new diabolic offering before it, too, becomes unavailable.  Cadabra Records  www.cadabrarecords.com   Marking ye first time in history that The Lurking Fear  has been read for vinyl, this release of The Lurking Fear  features a dynamic reading by professional actor Andrew Leman, a co-founder of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, who delivers the terror, dread, suspense and madness that permeates Lovecraft's writing with by-the-throat conviction. Dark ambient/industrial outfit, Theologian, backs up Leman's conveyance of the awesome story, supplying an appropriately macabre and unsettling score. A segment of the liner notes for this edition of The Lurking Fear, written by literary horror scholar and expert, S. T. Joshi offers, "Reading Lovecraft can

HP Lovecraft - The Music of Erich Zann (Sample) [Vinyl]

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Ye Next LOVECRAFT ILLUSTRATED

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Some few changes are coming with ye next three volumes of PS Publishing's LOVECRAFT'S ILLUSTRATED series. The Mound  and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward  will each have their own single volumes. But it is ye Haunter of the Dark  volume that has me really excited. This third book will contain both "The Haunter of the Dark" and "The Thing on the Doorstep"; but it will also contain ye Robert Bloch story that inspir'd Lovecraft to pen "Haunter"--"The Shambler from the Stars"--and Bob's sequel to Lovecraft's tale, "The Shadow from the Steeple". August Derleth publish'd these three tales, in chronological order, in his Arkham House edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos . This volume will also contain some essays concerning ye two tales, so it shou'd have quite a few pages. It will be quite a while after these next three are publish'd that we will see further volumes, although one of them will be another co

Ye Beauty out of Time & Space

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I have many editions of ye fiction of H. P. Lovecraft; but because I return to those stories repeatedly, month after month, it's always nice to have them in an attractive new edition, especially a handsome hardcover volume. I had The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales  on pre-order at Amazon, but then to-day's poft brought a free review copy from ye publisher. Honey, this is one gorgeous  book. The colour design of ye boards is lovely--with solid black, shimmering gold & silver, & a moft peculiar shade of blue-green. The pages have a gilt edge of gold, and a pale golden book ribbon is attach'd, a wonderful service for keeping one's place while reading ye tome. The endpapers are in two shades of green and feature an image of "R'lyeh" by John  Coulhart. The book feels so solid, and although it is a wee bit weighty it is easy to hold and read while reclining in one's armchair.  This is a hardcover edition of a trade paperback that was originally

Unknown Gulf of Night

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Above is one of my favourite illustrations by Pete Von Sholly for ye forthcoming LOVECRAFT ILLUSTRATED edition of THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK  from PS Publishing.   www.pspublishing.co.uk/   I glanced over the tale before I wrote my essay for this particular volume, and was once again transported by the power of Lovecraft's imagination and the beauty of his perfect prose. One of my great loves in life is to see Lovecraft's weird fiction illustrated, and Pete Von Sholly's work continues to amaze me. There is an almoft simple perfection to ye piece above, and the tone of colour enhances ye foreboding mood of the art for me.  Returning as I do to Lovecraft's text, continually, it helps to have a variety of editions in which to dip. Every edition has something different that helps to enhance ye Lovecraftian experience. The Penguin Classics editions has those amazing Introductions and Notes; The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft  has that solid hardcover feel as one holds it,

Titan Blur

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Above are ye jackets for ye first nine volumes in the LOVECRAFT LIBRARY from PS Publishing , featuring ye artwork of Pete Von Sholly, who is also ye editor for the series. The first nine volumes are already in print, and the last three are forthcoming. I have written new essays for these volumes: THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK; THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP;THE CALL OF CTHULHU; THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE; THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS;THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME; and an old fanzine essay of mine was reprinted in ye DUNWICH volume. I love these wee books more than I can say, and have a special place for their in a shelf right beside my writing table. I want to keep them close, to fondle and adore them. It's a delightful experience, to read again these wonderful stories by Lovecraft, and while reading to turn a page and find a colorful illustration portraying the scene one has just devour'd.  I love  reading critical essays. I think this came about from being such a Shakespeare nut since my high

An Eldritch Life

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I hold, above, my very favourite volume of S. T.'s Penguin Classics editions of Lovecraft's weird fiction. It contains so many of Lovecraft's very best tales, including the wee novels The Case of Charles Dexter Ward  and At the Mountains of Madness . It also includes one of my Lovecraftian obsessions--"Pickman's Model." That story has influenced me in a way I cannot quite understand, especially after I spent time haunting ye lanes of Boston with my chums and stumbled among ye tombstones of Copp's Hill Burying Ground. It was wonderfully weird, after having imagined the scenes of Lovecraft's fiction during my myriad readings of ye tales, to actual walk their ground  and drink in their aura with mine eyes. I felt a tremendous surge of unspeakable joy  when I walked up to 10 Barnes Street and touched my hand to the number 10 fastened to the house, while behind me S. T. Joshi was chanting all the masterpieces that Lovecraft had penned while living there

Thanx Penguin!

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So I got this huge box from Penguin just now, and I got all excited. I thought, wow, they must be sending me a bunch of cool books that I don't remember ordering! Did I order a big book on Amazon and forget about it? The last big tome I have purchas'd is ye handsome THE ANNOTATED POE, but that's already arriv'd. As I picked up ye box from the porch where ye UPS bloke dropped it, I was surprised to find it rather light, not weighty. So I gets me scissors and slice through the packaging tape, dig through the bubble packing and found-- one book.   Ah--but whut  a book! Of course, Titan's ridiculous decision to change ye original title, Black Wings , to BLACK WINGS OF CTHULHU still annoys me. I'm hoping that ye day comes soon when the hideous and alien word "Cthulhu" isn't such an advantage to selling books, such a  commercial gimmick. One of the editorial stances for this series is that cliche Cthulhu stories will not be consider'd. This is

MIDNIGHT DIN & OTHER WEIRD STORIES

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So, this is too typical of me. I totally  forgot about writing this book and recording this video! I found it again quite by accident, because of Bobby Derie's new posting regarding Henry S. Whitehead. Whitehead was buddies with H. P. Lovecraft and the author of a number of cool vodou stories, many of which were publish'd in Weird Tales . Such is my admiration for Whitehead and his weird fiction that, on a whim, I based a character on him for my story, "Ye Unkempt Thing," whut was included in my last book, Monstrous Aftermath . My character was named Reverend Henry St. Clair, author of ye book Midnight Din and other Weird Stories . Well, at ye moment I am trying to write new stories for a collection of Enoch Coffin stories that I'm doing with Jeffrey Thomas, and I thought, hmmm, let's write a story called "Midnight Din." So I went to Google to see if anyone had already used that title, because quite often I find that a character name I come up wit

Ye Lurking Fear

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Knowing that a second NEW ANNOTATED H. P. LOVECRAFT volume will be forthcoming next year or early 2018 has me contemplating what illustrations will be used for some of the stories; and that made me reflect on some of ye cool illustrations I have seen for "The Lurking Fear." I love that story and have an almoft-intimate relationship with it. When I was ask'd to write a story for the weird journal, Fungi , the editor told me he wanted a story of around 11,000 words, he wanted it in segments or chapters, and he wanted each chapter to have its own title. This made me think immediately of "The Lurking Fear," a story of 8,170 words that Lovecraft divided into four episodes, each with its own title. My fanboy juices began to bubble, and I knew that I was going to write my own Sesqua Valley version of "The Lurking fear." I had my own Martense mansion, located on Tempest Hill, near Sesqua Valley's monstrous Mount Selta. I had a doomed character named Ar

NEW ANNOTATED H. P. LOVECRAFT II: BEYOND YE MYTHOS

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Leslie Klinger had announc'd that, because NEW ANNOTATED H. P. LOVECRAFT is selling so extremely well, Liveright/Norton has ask'd him to do a second volume, tentatively titled New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond the Mythos . The focus of the first volume were those stories that Klinger felt were a part of the "Cthulhu Cycle"; so this 2nd volume will have tales that are not a part of that cycle. The selected stories are: The Tomb Polaris Transition of Juan Romero The Doom that Came to Sarnath Ex Oblivione The Terrible Old Man Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family The Cats of Ulthar Celephais The Temple The Outsider The Other Gods The Music of Erich Zann The Quest of Iranon The Lurking Fear The Rats in the Walls The Shunned House He Cool Air The Strange High House in the Mist Pickman's Model The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Klinger notes, "I'll be working with my friend S. T. Joshi to use the most accurate tex

LOVECRAFT ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 1 -- YE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH

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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

Rejected by Amazon...

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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

"FANE OF THE BLACK PHARAOH" by Robert Bloch (Audiobook)

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Ye Inescapable Influence

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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'

Good Year Thus Far . . .

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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

Ye Antique Critique

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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

H. P. LOVECRAFT'S "THE TOMB" -- a wee commentary

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Richard Lund

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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

A Good Year Thus Far

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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