Letters to Robert Bloch and Others
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
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