Please forgive the long delay in the writing of this blog—I’ve been absurdly busy with all manner of projects. I can mention here that I now have in hand several spare copies of some magazines I’ve edited, and I’ll be happy to sell them to interested customers: The Weird Fiction Review #2 ($15), Dead Reckonings #10 ($5), and the American Rationalist (July/August, September/October, November/December 2011) ($5 each). The issue of Dead Reckonings is the last under my coeditorship, as I am handing the job over to the capable hands of Tony Fonseca and June Pulliam. I hope to continue as a reviewer, although I’m not sure how long I can keep my column, “The Weird Scholar,” going.
On November 29 I participated in a phone interview with station KQED in San Francisco. I was part of an hour-long discussion of Ambrose Bierce, triggered by the simultaneous appearance of my Library of America edition and the premiere of a one-man show about Bierce, written by one Bart Schneider, that was opening in San Francisco. Mr. Schneider, along with the actor who portrayed Bierce (name forgotten), appeared on the show, along with Bierce scholar Cathy N. Davidson. The talk was quite lively. I believe it has been “archived” on the radio station’s website, so that my golden words can be heard by all.
I have concluded several important book deals. First is an arrangement with Becker & Mayer, a book packager located nearby in Bellevue, WA, to write a short (30,000 words) but heavily illustrated biography of Lovecraft (the tentative title—which I don’t care for—is H. P. Lovecraft: Nightmare Countries), to be distributed exclusively in Barnes & Noble bookstores. I am to finish my work by the end of January, and the book will be released in the fall. I hope to suggest or supply numerous illustrative matter, including photographs of Lovecraft (probably drawing on the extensive collection assembled by Donovan Loucks), copies of letters or manuscripts, and so forth.
The other book deal is a two-book arrangement with Titan Books for all-original Lovecraftian stories. The first is one that I mentioned before—a volume of stories using At the Mountains of Madness as a springboard. The second is a more general Lovecraftian anthology. Aside from the usual suspects, I hope to entice a number of big-name authors, several of whom have not written Lovecraftian fiction before. All this will be done while I continue to assemble Black Wings III, which is due to PS Publishing next September. I am looking forward to the simultaneous appearance next March of Black Wings II (PS) and the paperback edition of Black Wings I (Titan).
I have begun work in earnest on my new edition of Lovecraft’s The Ancient Track: Complete Poetical Works for Night Shade Books. In addition to several “new” poems that have been discovered in recent years, I will provide two appendices: 1) poems that Lovecraft revised for other writers; and 2) poems by others that Lovecraft responded to in one manner or other, ranging from the originals of poems he translated (e.g., the first 88 lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Horace’s Odes 3.9) to poems that inspired some of his own poems (e.g., Rheinhart Kleiner’s “Ruth,” which triggered HPL’s “Grace”) to the originals (where they exist) of the poems he revised (e.g., a truly awful poem by Wilson Shepherd that HPL managed to get into something approaching decency). I was thinking of including another appendix reprinting HPL’s several noteworthy essays on poetry, but there is probably not room in the volume for that.
Derrick Hussey of Hippocampus Press notifies me that my extensively revised edition of Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature will be released early next year. The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature was Hippocampus’s maiden publication in the year 2000, but I have significantly updated the bibliography and other parts of the book, and David E. Schultz has refined the entire design of the book so that it looks considerably better than the original. I also understand that such books as Robert H. Waugh’s A Monster of Voices (his second collection of essays on Lovecraft), HPL’s Letters to James F. Morton, and Ann K. Schwader’s collected weird verse, Twisted in Dream, are either out or soon to be out. Oh, yes—also an impressive collection of essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Reflections in a Glass Darkly. This clears the decks for a busy 2012 publishing schedule that will include, among many other things, George Sterling’s Collected Poetry (3 vols.), the joint correspondence of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, and original story collections by W. H. Pugmire, John Langan, and Richard Gavin.
I returned a week ago from the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, which proved to be a most entertaining event. I was happy to renew my acquaintance with such friends and colleagues as Jason and Sunni Brock, William F. Nolan, Jerad Walters of Centipede Press, Paula Guran, Ellen Datlow, Tim Powers, Cody Goodfellow, and many others. I also met several new colleagues, including Nancy Kilpatrick, Stephen Haffner (of Haffner Press), and others. A number of important projects may come out of the event; some of these I am not at liberty to mention just yet, but I can discuss the following:
I talked with both Jason Williams and Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books, who appear keen on a new edition of Lovecraft’s The Ancient Track, with all the “new” (or, more precisely, recently discovered) poems or poem fragments included, and a thorough overhauling of my notes. I look forward to beginning work on this edition soon. I believe there are about 10 new poems that would be added, most of them couplets or quatrains found in letters, but also at least three complete and full-length poems (“An American to the British Flag,” “To the Recipient of This Volume,” and “Dirge of the Doomed”).
I held a long discussion with my agent (Cherry Weiner) and Stephen W. Saffel of Titan Books, who appears keen on establishing an entire line of Cthulhu Mythos volumes, although it is not entirely clear whether I shall be the “editor” or sponsor of this series. We made progress in our idea of an anthology of original stories based on At the Mountains of Madness, and the volume may include some names that will surprise you.
At the convention, I was pleased to see copies of the Weird Fiction Review #2 (Fall 2011) and my edition of the two Donald Wandrei novels, Dead Titans, Waken! and Invisible Sun, both from Centipede Press. I do not have any spare copies of these items as yet, and may in fact not get any that I can sell to my legions of fans. ... I have, incidentally, received two spare copies of the paperback edition of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (University of Tampa Press, 2009), which I will be happy to sell at $15 each (that includes postage to US customers). I was not aware that there even was a paperback edition. It ordinarily sells for $20.
My interview with Penguin Classics editor Elda Rotor appears to be part of a program called Penguin Classics on Air, launched on Facebook. Here is the URL: http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=60041007796. I myself have not seen this, but I hope it proves to be of interest.
My Library of America edition of Ambrose Bierce received a full-page review in the New York Times Book Review (October 31), although the reviewer (Terrence Rafferty, author of a very occasional “Horror” column in the Book Review) neglected to mention my name as editor. I am sorry to report that Mr. Rafferty is, in plain terms, an idiot (he refers to Lovecraft as a “ghost story writer”). But the coverage is nice. For a time the Bierce book was ranked an impressive #240 on Amazon.com, but I believe it has now sunk down to about #8,000—still not bad.
I was grateful to receive, from Johnny Mains, a copy of David Case’s unpublished story “Stranger Than You Know.” It is a very interesting 12,000-word tale that fuses humour and horror (it refers or alludes to such figures as Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Jones, Norman Mailer, and others), and I will be happy to include it in the omnibus of Case’s work that I am preparing for Centipde Press. That volume now comes to some 300,000 words.
John Pelan and I are beginning work on an omnibus of Carl Jacobi’s weird tales for Centipede Press’s “Masters of the Weird Tale” series. I will be honest and say that I do not hold Jacobi’s work in the highest regard, but I believe he is as worthy of inclusion in this series as anyone else.
I have come to an agreement with Peter Crowther of PS Publishing to issue both volumes of my history of supernatural fiction, Unutterable Horror, together in the fall of 2012—perhaps to debut at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto, which I hope to attend. I believe that the issuance of both volumes at the same time will have a greater impact than if the volumes appeared separately, especially if a full year intervenes between the two volumes. I am still hoping to find a publisher to issue a US edition (or a combined US/UK paperback edition), since the rights to the volume revert to me a year after the publication of the PS edition.
This just in: Here's a link to an interview of me by the Penguin Classics Editor, Elda Rotor, discussing Arthur Machen's The White People and Other Stories and the new “deluxe” edition of Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories: https://files.me.com/bskelley/8w2uxm.mp3.
I am pleased—perhaps more accurately, thunderstruck—by the response shown by the emergence of my edition of Maurice Level’s Tales of the Grand Guignol. My four spare copies were snapped up very quickly by readers of this blog, and I’m sorry to have to disappoint the several others who queried me on the matter. I think Jerad Walters of Centipede Press made an error in limiting the edition to only 100 copies, as I think those copies will sell out very quickly. I have also sold the last of my spares of the new Penguin edition of Arthur Machen (The White People and Other Weird Stories), and have only two copies left of the new Lovecraft edition (The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories).
Jerad informs me that copies of my edition of the two Donald Wandrei novels (Dead Titans, Waken! and Invisible Sun) are actually in his hands and should be officially released by mid-November. The listing on Amazon.com states that the edition won’t come out until April, but that is an error. I’ll let readers know when I get my own copies, although I’m sorry to report that I probably won’t have any spares to sell, as I need to give my copies to certain individuals who facilitated the publication.
I have in hand (and have had for some weeks) a copy of John C. Tibbetts’s The Gothic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), a substantial collection of interviews with past and current figures in the horror field. There is an interview with me in the first chapter, “The Lovecraft Circle,” along with interviews of Harry Beckwith, Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, and T. E. D. Klein. There are many other interesting interviews in the book. The copies recently sent out by the publisher to contributors inadvertently omitted the bibliography, and corrected copies will presumably be sent out soon; but I have not received one yet.
The “Lovecraft’s Visions” film program at the Seattle Art Museum (October 7–9) was a modest success, although we didn’t get quite the numbers we were expecting. (We were hampered by good weather! In the usual dreary fall season here in Seattle, any day that is sunny and mild sends people outdoors rather than into dark movie theatres!) But even though we probably lost money on the program, everyone seemed to have a good time. We expect to handle things a bit differently when we hold our cinematic retrospective of Edgar Allan Poe next year. (The timing of that event is going to be a bit tricky, as I have been invited to be the guest speaker at the Poe Society’s annual meeting, held around the first week of October in Baltimore.)
My Bierce edition from the Library of America continues to get good notices. A two-page review appeared in the October issue of Atlantic Monthly, written by Benjamin Schwarz, who had reviewed my H. L. Mencken on American Literature (2002) when it came out. A review will also appear (probably) in the October 30 issue of the New York Times Book Review, which I will see when I return from the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego (Oct. 27–30).
We are very close to completing our edition of Lovecraft’s letters to James F. Morton, which should appear from Hippocampus Press within the next few weeks. David E. Schultz and I will then get cracking on our two-volume edition of the joint correspondence of Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, which we hope to issue late next year. On a related note, I have made a concerted effort to persuade my Penguin Classics editor to issue a volume of Smith’s tales, prose poems, and poetry. I’m not at all sure whether such a volume will fly, but I figure there’s no harm in asking.
Dufour Editions has expressed interest in my edition of H. L. Mencken’s short stories. I believe I queried them ages ago, but they are only responding now. Well, better late than never! I now have to get cracking on an introduction, which I hope I can write before I leave for the World Fantasy Convention. At that event, my agent is going to make a strong pitch to Titan Books for my novel (The Assaults of Chaos) and the idea (which Titan itself made) for an anthology of original stories based on At the Mountains of Madness.
I have received copies of several of my books lately. Jerad Walters has issued a beautiful edition of Maurice Level’s Tales of the Grand Guigol. This hardcover edition is limited to 100 copies, so you’d better get them quickly! I have a few copies that I will be happy to dispose of for $40 (a considerable savings from the list price of $75), so feel free to drop me a line on the matter.
I also received a sheaf of Hippocampus Press books, including my edition of Barry Pain’s The Undying Thing and Others, the long-awaited reprint of An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H. P. Lovecraft, and the Lovecraft Annual No. 5 (2011). The last is a particularly fat issue of nearly 250 pages. Again, I have several copies of each title (along with Massimo Berruti’s Dim-Remembered Stories, a study of R. H. Barlow) that I would be happy to peddle to interested readers.
The “Toward a Reasonable World” conference in San Diego (Sept. 16–18) was a most stimulating affair, and my interest in the history of atheism and freethought has been renewed to such a degree that I may postpone my proposed biography of George Sterling and plunge right into my (probably) two-volume history of atheism right after I complete my history of supernatural fiction. All the papers were incisive and perspicacious, and my own—on the progress of freethought in the Anglo-American world in the twentieth century—appears to have been received with favour, although there was no time for a question-and-answer session. All the participants will be submitting expanded versions of their papers for a book that will apparently be edited by J. Gordon Melton (whose vampire encyclopedia is well known to enthusiasts of the weird).
On Saturday, October 1, I attended a reception at the Science Fiction Museum here in Seattle to commemorate the opening of a new exhibit, “Can’t Look Away,” on horror film. I briefly met Roger Corman and John Landis, and was pleased to meet again with Greg Bear and Marc Laidlaw, as well as Jason and Sunni Brock, who were up for the event. I don’t know that much will come of these encounters, although Jason is planning to send several books—including my recent annotated edition of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (University of Tampa Press, 2009)—to Roger Corman as an incitement for him to appear at a Poe film festival at the Seattle Art Museum that Jason and I are in the process of planning.
Our Lovecraft film festival, “Lovecraft’s Visions,” is of course planned for October 7–9 at the Seattle Art Museum, and I hope it will be well attended. Greg Bear and Marc Laidlaw will be on panels, as well as Sean Branney and Andrew Leman of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. I am pleased to hear that Scott Connors will be coming up from the Sacramento area. Scott will be coming along with Charles Schneider, whom I knew long ago during my college days at Brown, but whom I have probably not seen in thirty years or more. I still have vivid memories of his Maggotzine that he published around 1980. I am not sure what Charles has been doing in the intervening years, but I believe he has been working in the film industry.
My appearance on the San Francisco NPR station, scheduled for September 24, has been postponed, since the station decided not to make an appearance in this area—at Port Townsend, on the Olympic Peninsula—on that date. Someone at the station did inform me that the San Francisco Examiner was planning to review my Library of America Bierce volume, but so far as I know the review has not appeared. I am, however, scheduled to appear at the University of Washington bookstore on October 17 to discuss my Penguin Machen book (The White People and Other Weird Stories). Several others have apparently purchased the volume, but my own copies have not arrived. There is also a de luxe edition of Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, but I have not received this either.
I am now in receipt of The Crawling Chaos, the first volume of my Annotated Revisions and Collaborations of H. P. Lovecraft, just out from Arcane Wisdom. It looks splendid! Copies are going fast: Larry Roberts, the publisher, informs me that 120 of the 150 copies of the hardcover edition have already been sold. But a paperback edition will follow in due time. My friend Martin Andersson has informed me of a good website to order the book from: https://www.horror-mall.com/THE-CRAWLING-CHAOS-AND-OTHERS-Vol-I-edited-by-S.-T.-Joshi-Signed-Limited-Edition-p-21986.html.
Jerad Walters informs me that my edition of Donald Wandrei’s two novels (Dead Titans, Waken! and Invisible Sun) is nearly ready. I’m sure it will be a beautiful book, as all Centipede Press books are. I believe the book is scheduled for release in early September. My edition of Maurice Level’s Tales of the Grand Guignol will, I think, come out from Centipede Press in late September.
I see that Hippocampus Press has released my edition of Barry Pain’s The Undying Thing and Others as well as the Lovecraft Annual No. 5, although I don’t have copies yet. I believe the Hippocampus Press reprint of An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays on H. P. Lovecraft (1991) is also ready or close to ready—a 20th anniversary reissue, as it happens. I am at this moment diligently working on the index to Lovecraft’s Letters to James F. Morton, another book long in the making but well worth while.
Penguin has set up a reading/discussion of Arthur Machen (timed for the release of my edition of Machen’s The White People and Other Weird Stories) at the University of Washington Bookstore on October 17 at 7 p.m. I hope to round up at least my usual array of friends and colleagues for the event, even if no one else shows up. I may also be called to Port Angeles, on the Olympic Peninsula, on September 24 to speak on Ambrose Bierce for the San Francisco NPR station. This is not definitive yet. At the moment, however, I’m thinking of little but my upcoming performance of Mozart’s Requiem on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, to take place at the University Christian Church at 3 p.m. (see http://www.nwchorale.org/concerts.htm). Shortly after that event, I will head down to San Diego for the “Toward a Reasonable World” conference at San Diego State University, for which I have written a 20-minute lecture on atheism in the Anglo-American world of the 20th century. I will have to expand it for a book of the conference papers to be published later that year.
I’ve just been notified of two nice reviews of my Library of America edition of Bierce: one in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576518383976558422.html?mod=googlenews_wsj) and one in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/newswatch/128670418.html). There is a certain irony in the latter, since Milwaukee is the home of David E. Schultz, my coeditor on many Bierce projects, and who ought to have been a coeditor of the volume.
I have signed a contract with Scarecrow Press to edit a volume of H. L. Mencken’s plays. Mencken wrote about six or seven short plays in his lifetime, culminating with the three-act play Heliogabalus: A Buffoonery (1920), cowritten with George Jean Nathan. The volume will be augmented by a dozen or so articles and reviews by Mencken on the drama, covering such authors as Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, and several lesser-known European dramatists (Hauptmann, Sudermann, Brieux) who were well-known at the time. I am to submit the camera-ready copy (which David E. Schultz will graciously prepare for me) by November 1, so I believe the book will be out as early as next summer.
I am in receipt of a bound galley of Arthur Machen’s The White People and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Classics). The book is due out in October and clocks in at a substantial 377 pages. It is graced by a splendid foreword (“The Ecstasy of St. Arthur”) by Guillermo del Toro. My edition of Ambrose Bierce’s selected works is due out on September 1 from the Library of America; to commemorate that event, the publisher’s most recent newsletter features an interview of me (http://blog.loa.org/2011/07/s-t-joshi-on-ambrose-bierce-and-civil.html).
Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Press informs me that copies of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Crawling Chaos: The Annotated Revisions and Collaborations, Volume 1 have been printed and will be delivered to the publisher late next week. So now is the time to order! The only web page I can find is the following: http://miskatonicbooks.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/arcane-wisdom-press-announces-the-crawling-chaos-and-others-by-h-p-lovecraft/.
I have heard from Jerad Walters that David Case has agreed to an omnibus of his tales from Centipede Press (in the Masters of the Weird Tale series), so I have begun working on assembling the book. It will include the complete contents of The Cell: Three Tales of Horror (1969), Fengriffen and Other Stories (1971), and Brotherly Love and Other Stories of Faith and Knowledge (1999), along with a few unpublished stories as well as, perhaps, an unpublished novella (about 40,000 words) that is apparently in Case’s files.
My agent has at last read my Lovecraftian novel, The Assaults of Chaos, and proposes to pitch it to Titan Books, which has finally signed the contract for its proposed reprint of Black Wings I and II. So let’s hope for the best! I see that, although Black Wings I received a nomination for best anthology from the Shirley Jackson Awards, it did not win; but it has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the same category (http://www.locusmag.com/News/2011/07/world-fantasy-nominees-and-lifetime-achievement-winners/). Let’s hope for better success in San Diego, where I will be in attendance.
Much progress has been made in our film program, “Lovecraft’s Visions,” at the Seattle Art Museum. Jason Brock has set up a Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/LovecraftsVisionsSAM), and tickets can be purchased through Brown Paper Tickets (http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/188192). Arrangements are also being made to sell tickets through Scarecrow Video here in Seattle. The program, set for October 7–9, should be a great success, and we are already planning subsequent programs focusing on Rod Serling and Edgar Allan Poe.
The other day I had a very bizarre dream. Someone had sent to Stefan Dziemianowicz and to me a long handwritten letter (did he write it out twice??) supplying rare and valuable information on a rather arcane subject...the early history of professional basketball! My package contained a photo of Clark Ashton Smith (!) standing on the deck of a boat (!!) with a basketball player on either side of him...both of them were so tall that their heads did not appear in the picture. Although we were our current ages, Stefan and I were both residing at Brown University’s graduate dorms (where I actually resided as an undergraduate, 1977–80). When I related this dream to Stefan, that clever fellow replied: “Your dream doesn’t sound too peculiar. I thought everyone knew of CAS’s passionate interest in basketball. You can tell just by looking at the titles of his stories: ‘The Double-Dribble Shadow,’ ‘The Rebound of the Sorcerer,’ ‘The Slam-Dunk from the Sepulchre,’ ‘The Hunters from Beyond the Free-Throw Line,’ ‘The Half-Court of Azédarac.’” Yuk-yuk! On a more serious note, it’s obvious that the dream indicates several things: (a) my continuing desire for scholarly research; (b) my longing to return to Providence to live; and (c) my worry that the professional basketball season of 2011–12 may be curtailed or cancelled altogether because of the current contract dispute!! (I breathed a great sigh of relief when the NFL and its players came to an agreement recently, ending more than 4 months of a lockout.)
I am now inclined—once my history of supernatural fiction is finished this year—to undertake a biography of George Sterling. I was planning to plunge into a history of atheism, but I’m not sure I’m up for another huge project of that scale. My erstwhile colleague Richard Hughey had written several chapters of a biography of Sterling, but it appears he will not finish it. I appear to be in a good position to write such a work, especially since my edition of Sterling’s collected poems and verse plays will appear at the end of this year from Hippocampus Press.
In the category of Lost Joshiana I can report some interesting discoveries. In the volume American History through Literature, 1870–1920, Volume 1, edited by Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006), there appear two articles by me, one on “Agnosticism and Atheism” (pp. 31–35) and one on “Ghost Stories” (pp. 417–24). I think these are rather good, if I do say so myself. I may draw upon the first one for my 20-minute talk at the conference “Toward a Reasonable World” at San Diego State University (Sept. 16–18), where I am to talk about the history of 20th-century atheism. Possibly I’ll reprint the articles somewhere, although in actual fact I probably don’t own reprint rights to them.
I have heard through my agent that Titan Books has finally countersigned the contract it had offered for the reprint of Black Wings I and II—a matter that had been held up for weeks because of Titan’s (needless) concern about e-book rights controlled by the original publisher, PS Publishing. I expect the reprint of Black Wings I to appear in the spring of 2012.
I was pleased to make the acquaintance of Greg Bear, his wife Astrid, and their son Erik, when I had dinner with them (in the company of Jason and Sunni Brock and my girlfriend Mary) at their charming lakeside house in Lynnwood. Greg has an extensive library, as one can imagine, including a certain number of Joshi titles, which I was happy to inscribe. I am hopeful that Greg will appear on one of the two panels (or maybe both panels) of the “Lovecraft’s Visions” film program at the Seattle Art Museum (Oct. 7–9). I understand that Jason has set up a Facebook page for that enterprise.
I am in receipt of a “Howard Phillips Lovecraft Commemorative Coin” issued by Dagon Industries—one of a limited edition of 100 coins. This coin features an image of Lovecraft against the backdrop of Thomas Street in Providence (the setting of part of “The Call of Cthulhu”), with the inscription “Howard Phillips Lovecraft / ‘I Am Providence’” on the outer edge. I am not entirely sure who Dagon Industries is or how (or whether) the coin is available for purchase. Perhaps a Google search will be of help.
I have lately been working on preparing two works of fiction by noted Lovecraftians—Peter Cannon and Kenneth W. Faig, Jr.—for publication by Hippocampus Press. Peter’s book Forever Azathoth: Pastiches and Parodies has just appeared in a limited hardcover edition from Subterranean Press, and Hippocampus will release an augmented paperback version (adding the novella “The Madness out of Space”), probably in 2012. Hippocampus may also reissue Peter’s moving memoir of Frank Belknap Long, Long Memories (British Fantasy Society, 1997), along with the several pastiches/parodies of Long that Peter has written. Ken has just released his volume Lovecraft’s Pillow and Other Strange Stories through his small press, Moshassuck Press. This edition can be ordered from the author (2311 Swainwood Drive, Glenview, IL 60025-2741) for $15 for delivery in the US, $22 for delivery in Canada or Mexico, and $24 for delivery elsewhere. (Orders are restricted to one per customer.) A selection from this book, adding the stories in Tales of the Lovecraft Collectors (Necronomicon Press, 1995), will appear from Hippocampus Press in 2013, to commemorate Ken’s 65th birthday.
I am actually winding down the second volume of my history of supernatural fiction; I am working on the antepenultimate chapter, which deals with the bestselling writers of the 1970s and 1980s. I have been compelled to read a fearsome amount of rubbish for this chapter, including dreadful works by Charles L. Grant (Hour of the Oxrun Dead, etc.), James Herbert (The Fog, The Rats), Brian Lumley (Necroscope), John Skipp & Craig Spector (The Scream), George R. R. Martin (Fevre Dream), Richard Laymon (The Cellar), Dean R. Koontz (Phantoms), John Farris (The Fury), Ray Garton (Live Girls), and so on and so forth. Whitley Strieber’s The Hunger and Nancy A. Collins’s Sunglasses After Dark aren’t quite so dreadful, but they are nothing to write home about. I will be glad to be rid of this chapter and move on to the next one (discussing the genuinely literate writers of the same period—Campbell, Klein, Etchison, Ligotti, etc.). The final chapter will focus on the prominent writers, good and bad, of the past twenty years.
I was flattered and moved by W. H. Pugmire’s essay on me on the Centipede Press website (http://www.centipedepress.com/opinions.html). This site has recently been revamped, and there is also a powerful essay by Laird Barron on his upbringing in Alaska. I am also currently working on an interview of me that the Library of America plans to issue in its e-newsletter to coincide with the appearance of my edition of Ambrose Bierce’s selected writings, to be published on September 1. I will have further information on this interview when it appears.
On June 18 the local weird fiction gang (Greg Lowney, Maryanne Snyder, and my girlfriend Mary K. Wilson) ambled over to Wilum Pugmire’s house to have a wonderful take-out Thai dinner with Wilum and his gracious mother. We commemorated the event with an amusing video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzfMkaMkI5Y). Wilum declared that a number of my fans are interested in hearing me sing. I refused to oblige on this current video, but it occurred to me later that I might belt out a few Christmas carols later in the year. For all my devout atheism, I love singing Christmas carols! So stay tuned!
The first issue of the American Rationalist under my editorship (July/August 2011) will be appearing shortly from the Center for Inquiry. This issue will have several contributors familiar to weird fiction fans, including Donald R. Burleson (who has written a thoughtful piece on why God has too many attributes to exist), Robert M. Price (who has written a pungent review of Pope Benedict’s recent book on Jesus), and Jason V Brock (who has written a devastating review of the recent film Priest). I hope that some of you will be interested in subscribing; subscriptions are quite inexpensive ($15.00 for a year, $26.00 for two years, $36.00 for three years). Send checks to the Center for Inquiry, P.O. Box 741, Amherst, NY 14226-0741.
On June 24–27, Mary and I will be heading down to Portland (Oregon) for a weekend, where we will meet Jason and Sunni Brock, William F. Nolan, and perhaps others. (There is apparently a Lovecraft Bar in Portland that may or may not be worth patronising.) I recently came up with the idea of assembling Nolan’s collected writings on Ray Bradbury, and the project has already resulted in a book of about 60,000 words, with a bit more to come. Nolan’s actual essays on Bradbury don’t quite fill a book, so we have decided to include several short stories—either stories on which Bradbury lent advice or assistance (such as “The Joy of Living,” Nolan’s first professionally published story) or some hilarious parodies of Bradbury (from the early “Mr. B. Goes to Hollywood” [1953] to the more recent “The Dandelion Chronicles” [1984]). The publisher has yet to be determined, but I imagine there are a number of small presses that may be interested.
My webmaster, Greg Lowney, has suggested that I prepare a new page on this site supplying a list of my forthcoming projects. I have done so—and am appalled at the length of the list! I have listed only works that are actually completed and/or are with publishers; a number of books that are only in the planning stages have not been listed. Even so, I fear for the havoc this list will wreak on the wallets of my devoted fans!
On that note, the Hippocampus Press website seems to announce that two of my titles—Barry Pain’s The Undying Thing and Others and the reprint of An Epicure in the Terrible—are out, but I have yet to receive copies. But I do believe they are imminent, and at worst they should appear by next month. I’m champing at the bit to finish our edition of Lovecraft’s Letters to James F. Morton—because that will mean that our next project in the Lovecraft Letters series is nothing less than the joint correspondence of HPL and Clark Ashton Smith!
I am happy to announce that Titan Books, a leading US/UK publisher, has agreed to a reprint of the first two volumes of Black Wings (and, presumably, any subsequent volumes that may appear). These reprints will occur in hardcover, trade paperback, and/or mass-market paperback, and will occur anywhere from 12 to 18 months following the UK edition from PS Publishing. I believe Black Wings I will be released in the spring of 2012, with Black Wings II following in the fall of 2013. Pete Crowther of PS already wants a Black Wings III to be ready for release at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, England, in 2013, an event I hope to attend. Titan also speaks of “merchandising,” although I cannot imagine exactly what forms this might take. I am also in discussion with Titan about other projects of a Lovecraftian nature.
An interview of me conducted by Donal Buckley, chiefly concerning Lovecraft and weird fiction, has appeared on the following website: http://www.reddit.com/r/Lovecraft/comments/hagc5/part_1_of_worlds_foremost_lovecraft_scholar_st/. It had to appear in two parts because I babbled on at such length that it could not appear in one instalment because of a word-limit on the site.
My choir’s performance of Haydn’s Creation (May 14) went quite well, although I am sorry to report that a few members of the Northwest Symphony made some bad blunders at certain critical moments. I believe the performance was recorded, and I will make inquiries about obtaining a CD of it. I was pleased to note that my girlfriend Mary K. Wilson, along with Phil Haldeman and Jason and Sunni Brock, were in attendance.
Not long after the concert, Mary and I took off for an extended tour of the East Coast (May 17–26). The nominal excuse for the trip was to attend the graduation of my niece (Anne Joshi Gieseker, the daughter of my sister Ragini) from Clark University in Worcester, MA. We arrived in Newark late on the 17th and spent the next three days in a very full exploration of New York City, taking in the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum, and other customary tourist sites. I was happy to meet many members of the New York gang at two separate dinners—the attendees including Derrick Hussey, Scott Briggs and his mother Barbara Silbert, Tom Lynch of Miskatonic River Press, Fred and Dee Phillips, Steve Mariconda, and Peter Cannon. I was, however, sorry not to have seen such regulars as Stefan Dziemianowicz, Miroslaw Lipinski, and Gabriel Mesa.
On the 19th Mary and I ventured down to Princeton, where I was delighted to meet for the first time my protégé (if I may call him such—at this point he hardly needs any advice or guidance from me), Michael Aronovitz, who has published one story collection (Seven Deadly Pleasures), had one novel (Alice Walks) accepted by Bad Moon Books, and who is at work on a second collection that promises to be grimly powerful. At lunch on the 20th I met not only Ted Klein and Peter Cannon at the Condé Nast building (4 Times Squre), where Ted works, but also John Tibbetts, who was visiting from Kansas. John is about to release a fascinating volume, The Gothic Imagination, from Palgrave Macmillan, which contains an interview of me about Lovecraft.
On the 21st we ambled up to Massachusetts, where we met some friends of Mary’s in Framingham; on the 22nd we did all the graduation stuff in Worcester, meeting my sisters (Ragini and Nalini) and Ragini’s husband, David Gieseker, along of course with Annie herself. On the 23rd we spent most of the day in Boston (where I had not been in more than 20 years—not since the World Science Fiction Convention of 1991), meeting more friends of Mary’s. The 24th and 25th we spent in Providence, meeting Jonathan Thomas and his wife Angel Dean, Caitlín R. Kiernan and her partner Kathryn, Brian Evenson, and Sam Gafford and his wife Carol. I was thrilled to be taken into the Fleur-de-Lys building (7 Thomas Street) by Angel Dean, who has worked at the Providence Art Club for years. The building is still a series of artists’ studios, and I explored the place thoroughly, including the studio on the third floor where, presumably, Henry Anthony Wilcox fashioned the statue of Cthulhu in his dreams.
I was sorry not to meet Jason Eckhardt and his wife, but the latter was recovering from a serious illness. I am urging Sam to finish what promises to be a richly detailed two-volume novel about Jack the Ripper, which will have supernatural elements. ... Photos of this trip may appear somewhere online.
Back home, I am working on finishing the 2011 issue of the Lovecraft Annual as well as the first issue (July/August 2011) of the American Rationalist, along with sundry other projects. No rest for the weary!
I appear to have lapsed into something approaching (for me) quiscence after the completion of three major projects—my novel, The Assaults of Chaos (which my agent has not yet had the time to read, apparently); my anthology of essays about the Cthulhu Mythos, titled Dissecting Cthulhu, for Miskatonic River Press; and my original anthology, Black Wings II, for PS Publishing. But I putter on various projects and have lately done more work on the Ray Bradbury bibliography, which remains far from completion.
Speaking of bibliographies, I have resumed work in earnest on the Horror Fiction Index, a presumably comprehensive listing and index of all single-author horror collections ever published. I have something like 2500 titles listed (already more than the number of anthologies indexed by Mike Ashley in The Supernatural Index), and expect the complete list not to exceed 4000 titles. I have lately received valuable assistance from William G. Contento, who has made available to me a preliminary list of collections published in the years 2008–10. I will need more assistance from various colleagues to bring this project to a successful conclusion.
I have just examined final proofs of the Centipede Press edition of Donald Wandrei's two novels, Dead Titans, Waken! and Invisible Sun, and can declare with certainty that the book will be one of the most beautiful books of mine ever published—and on a par with the average run of Centipede Press titles. The book is graced with splendid illustrations by Rodger Geberding, Jon Arfstrom, and Zdzisław Beksiński. I believe its appearance is imminent.
I have also looked at proofs of The Crawling Chaos, the first volume of my edition of The Annotated Revisions and Collaborations of H. P. Lovecraft, to be issued later this year by Arcane Wisdom, a division of Bloodletting Press. This book also looks highly attractive and will feature cover art by Zach McCain. Initially the book will be printed in a signed/limited edition of 150 hardcover copies, but I believe a paperback edition will follow sometime thereafter.
For my history of supernatural fiction I have recently been reading the work of David Case (b. 1937), which I find highly impressive. Case wrote several weird works beginning in the late 1960s, including The Cell: Three Tales of Horror (1969) and Fengriffen and Other Stories (1971), but they apparently did not garner much attention either from readers or critics. Case turned to other kinds of writing, but of late he has returned to horror with Brotherly Love and Other Stories (1999) and Pelican Cay and Other Disquieting Tales (2010). I have proposed to Jerad Walters of Centipede Press to reprint the collections of 1969, 1971, and 1999, if Case is agreeable, and Ramsey Campbell is helping me to get in touch with the author, who lives in England. Case also wrote two horror novels in the early 1980s, one of them published by Arkham House, but I do not think it would be feasible to reprint these.
I understand that the paperback reprint of A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard is now available from Hippocampus Press. I believe paperback reprints of the letters of Lovecraft and August Derleth and of Clark Ashton Smith's Complete Poetry and Translations are forthcoming, although no date has been set for these. Derrick Hussey of Hippocampus has just informed me that the press has won something called the Nightmare Award (see http://sheneverslept.com/newsandreviews/archives/4379), always welcome, whatever it may be.
Well, I have completed my novel about Lovecraft—The Assaults of Chaos—at 75,600 words. I myself am unable to assess its quality, although my girlfriend, Mary K. Wilson, has kindly expressed approbation of the first several chapters, which take place in the weeks before the outbreak of World War I in 1914. I have sent the novel to my agent in the hope that she can find a reasonably major publisher for it; she has reported that such publishers require a minimum of 75,000 words for a novel, and I have barely reached that figure.
I may have mentioned that I will be in San Diego twice this year, once for a freethought conference and the other for the World Fantasy Convention (October 27–30). The former event is titled “Toward a Reasonable World” and will take place at San Diego State University on September 14–16. Here is the URL for the event: http://reason.sdsu.edu/. I will be giving a talk on Sunday, September 16.
I am thrilled to have coaxed Ann K. Schwader to assemble her collected weird verse for Hippocampus Press. Titled Twisted in Dream: The Collected Weird Poetry of Ann K. Schwader, the book will contain the complete contents of The Worms Remember (2001) and In the Yaddith Time (2007), plus much other matter. It should appear this fall.
I was sorry to hear of the passing, at the age of 95, of Harry Glickman, a relative of my devoted webmaster, Greg Lowney, and the author of a fascinating memoir, Jeannette and I, which I assisted him in preparing for publication. This book—available, I believe, on lulu.com—is a fascinating account of Harry's life with his wife, Jeannette, both in the US and on a kibbutz in Israel. Harry was also a fiery political leftist, and the book contains pungent screeds on current political issues. I am also assisting my ex-mother-in-law, Elizabeth Boba, in preparing family memoirs by her father, H. Gary Hudson, and uncle, Ellis Herndon Hudson, for private publication. The former document is in excess of 225,000 words, but will be slightly abridged. I hope this book will be ready later this year.
I have just finished reading proofs of my edition of Arthur Machen for Penguin Classics, titled The White People and Other Weird Stories, and containing a brilliant foreword by Guillermo del Toro. This foreword richly displays both del Toro's knowledge of the field of weird fiction and his gift for language. Here's hoping that his recent setback in obtaining funding for his film of At the Mountains of Madness is a temporary one! I also read final proofs of my edition of the two Donald Wandrei novels, Dead Titans, Waken! and Invisible Sun, due out later this year from Centipede Press.
My program of Lovecraft films at the Seattle Art Museum—tentatively titled “Lovecraft's Visions”—has been set for October 7, 8, and 9, and should be a most entertaining affair. I will have films ranging from The Haunted Palace (1963) to The Whisperer in Darkness (2011), which the proprietors of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, have said they will not only show but will discuss in person on a panel discussion. There will also be another panel discussion on Lovecraft's life, writings, and disciples, at which I hope to see such luminaries as W. H. Pugmire, Jason V Brock, Marc Laidlaw, and other local writers.
My choir, the Northwest Chorale, is set to perform Haydn's Creation with the Northwest Symphony on May 14 at the Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle. I believe this will be a splendid event, with full orchestra and soloists, so locals are encouraged to attend. Tickets need to be procured from the Northwest Symphony (http://www.northwestsymphonyorchestra.org/). I believe they cost $14.00 (less for students and seniors). A short time after the concert, Mary and I will take a trip to the East Coast, visiting New York and Providence and seeing as many of my friends in that area as time will allow.
I am happy to announce that my novel about H. P. Lovecraft has now reached nearly 68,000 words and is one or two chapters from completion. I am aiming for about 75,000 words, since that appears to be the minimum length for a novel that has any hope of publication by a major publisher. Frankly, I think this stipulation is quite artificial, and any number of splendid novels of shorter length could be cited; but one must abide by the current rules of publishing. The novel is entitled The Assaults of Chaos (from the memorable phrase in "Supernatural Horror in Literature"). In all frankness, I am by no means convinced of its abstract literary quality, but as a literary experiment it has been engaging enough.
I am only a few weeks away from the completion of Black Wings II. The volume currently includes original stories by Jason V Brock, Rick Dakan, Tom Fletcher, Richard Gavin, Caitlín R. Kiernan, John Langan, Nick Mamatas, Darrell Schweitzer, John Shirley, Melanie Tem, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jonathan Thomas, Donald Tyson, Don Webb, and Chet Williamson. Laird Barron has promised me a story, and a few other writers are perhaps still working on submissions. I am intrigued to see the number of tales that use Lovecraft as a literary character in one way or another.
I was thrilled to receive a copy of W. H. Pugmire's The Tangled Muse (Centipede Press, 2011), a large anthology of Wilum's short fiction edited by myself. There is an amusing photograph of the two of us standing in front of the H. P. Lovecraft Memorial Plaque at Brown University. Only 150 copies have been printed, so readers are urged to secure a copy without delay.
I was pleased to see a nice review in the Washington Post (March 16) of my Unbelievers (Prometheus Books), along with two other books about atheism. The URL is as follows: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-reviews-3-books-about-atheism/2011/02/21/ABfsQaa_story.html.
On an analogous note, I have been officially named the new editor of the American Rationalist, a long-running atheist/freethought journal published by the Center for Inquiry. The magazine appears every two months, and the first issue under my editorship will be the July/August issue. I welcome submissions on atheism, freethought, the intersection of religion and science, politics, and society, and related subjects. I also intend to have an extensive review section covering books on the subject, including critical reviews of religious or apologetic books. I am also thinking of starting an amusing column of my own called "The Stupidity Watch"—whose title, I trust, explains itself.
I have been working with Greg Olson of the Seattle Art Museum to put on a weekend of films relating to H. P. Lovecraft. Ironically, this presentation—tentatively titled "Lovecraft's Visions"—may be held in early to mid-October, exactly when the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival would have been held in Portland this year, except that the powers-that-be of that event have decided postpone it until next May. I am pleased that Sean Branney and Andrew Leman of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society have expressed a willingness to show their completed Whisperer in Darkness film, and might also come up to Seattle to be on a panel discussion on Lovecraft-related films. This program is not quite definitive yet, but it is beginning to look more and more certain. More details later.
Just as my last column contained some (insignificant) tokens of my rising fame, this one may have to start with some pointed indications that I'm not quite the hot-shot I thought I was. First, my Black Wings was NOT selected among the finalists for the Stoker Awards (HWA), but I still hope that it might be so selected by the World Fantasy Convention. Second, my new book, The Unbelievers, got a mixed review by someone named Whatley (not Whateley) on the website of the Christian Science Monitor. But then, what do you expect? There was also a rather lukewarm brief review of the book in Booklist (this can be found on the Amazon.com page for the book).
Incredibly, I have now written more than 41,000 words of my novel about Lovecraft—but, in all frankness, I don't think the book is very good. It is really a series of in-jokes rather than a compelling narrative. However, it is providing me with some entertainment, so that may be enough. I will mention that it features significant appearances by such figures as Ambrose Bierce, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, and William Hope Hodgson! If I keep writing at this rate, the first draft should be finished in a month.
My anthology Black Wings II is approaching completion, and lately I have received stories from Steve Rasnic Tem, John Langan, Rick Dakan, and Nick Mamatas. They are all magnificent (well, I haven't read Nick's story, but I'm sure it is splendid). Meanwhile, I am very, very close to finalising a US/UK paperback deal for the Black Wings series and other Lovecraft-related projects. I'll relate them as soon as the contracts are signed.
I am regaling myself with the proofs of Donald Wandrei's Dead Titans, Waken! and Invisible Sun—a 540-page book due out later this year from Centipede Press. These two novels by Wandrei are flawed but have some wonderful stuff in them, and I will be happy to see them finally available readers, more than 11 years after I initially prepared them for publication.
I soon expect to read proofs of the first volume of my annotated edition of Lovecraft's revisions, The Crawling Chaos, due out this year from Larry Roberts's Arcane Wisdom. I have seen preliminary proofs, and they also look splendid.
A colleague has pointed out that my Library of America edition of Ambrose Bierce is scheduled to be released on September 1. I have not read proofs yet, and am not sure I will actually do so. My Penguin edition of Machen moves along, and I believe it will be released sometime in the fall, probably October. I have proposed to my Penguin editor a volume of Clark Ashton Smith's writings, but frankly I do not expect that to fly.
I fear this column may be nothing but a trumpeting of the tokens of my increasing fame…I can take heart in the fact that most of these tokens amount to relatively little in the wider scheme of things.
First on the agenda is the Polish translation of H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, titled H. P. Lovecraft: Biografia and published by Zysk i S-ka (Poznan). This immense tome 1179 pages and has been edited by Robert Cichowlas; oddly enough, a translator is not indicated, although I believe the work was mostly done by my colleague Mateusz Kopacz. It is a splendid-looking hardcover volume with a fine illustration on the cover by Vincent Chong; there is no dust jacket. For further information, see the publisher's website (www.zysk.com.pl). I believe a French translation of the abridged version, A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time (Liverpool University Press, 2001), is in progress.
The Believer, an entertaining and offbeat magazine published in San Francisco, has published a "micro-interview" of me in its 78th issue (February 11, 2011). The interview occupies bits of pages 35, 62, 69, 74, and 78, and chiefly discusses Lovecraft and my other literary interests, with a nod to my philosophical and atheistic work.
A brief interview I gave about the difficulty of adapting Lovecraft to the screen has now appeared on a website entitled The Void (http://the-void.co.uk/cinema/can-anyone-do-justice-to-hp-lovecraft-085/). I make mention of such things as Peter Weir's The Last Wave and the challenge of adapting At the Mountains of Madness to film, along with notes on Lovecraft's critical recognition.
Hold on to your hats, folks…for I have begun my long-planned novel featuring Lovecraft as a character! I have no title for it as yet, but I have already written the better part of four chapters (nearly 11,000 words). Quite frankly, I do not know if I can pull this off—at least, pull it off successfully. I am not sure that the concept is capable of extending to a full-length novel. My plan is to depict Lovecraft's life fairly realistically as of 1914 (with flashbacks going back to his early childhood), but to introduce a supernatural element later on…and also certain other elements that may surprise readers. Well, it's providing me with some entertainment, so I suppose that's good enough for now.
I'm excited to announce that Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Press and I are teaming up to launch a new series, the Modern Mythos Library, to be issued by one of Larry's sub-imprints, Arcane Wisdom. This series will publish vital and significant contemporary works of Cthulhu Mythos fiction by leading authors. Our first two selections have been chosen: Rick Dakan's splendid novel The Cult of Cthulhu and Jonathan Thomas's novel The Color over Occam. The latter is a loose sequel to "The Colour out of Space" and is one of the finest supernatural novels I have read in many years. I don't know the schedule of publication for these titles, but I hope they can appear this year.
My work on the Modern Mythos Library coincides with my withdrawal from the New Millennium Mythos published by Perilous Press. I hope that Perilous continues this worthy series.
Jerad Walters of Centipede Press has been kind enough to express interest in a major collection of the weird writings of British supernaturalist John Metcalfe. This volume, currently being assembled by David E. Schultz and myself, will contain all of Metcalfe's supernatural writings, both from his early collections, The Smoking Leg and Other Stories (1925) and Judas and Other Stories (1931), and uncollected stories, including the short novel The Feasting Dead (1954). Jerad has also expressed interest in a major omnibus of Sax Rohmer's weird writings, which will include the novel Brood of the Witch-Queen, which Lovecraft enjoyed.
Tom Lynch of Miskatonic River Press has commissioned me to assemble a volume of essays on the Cthulhu Mythos, which will include well-known essays by Richard L. Tierney, Dirk W. Mosig, David E. Schultz, Robert M. Price, Will Murray, Robert D. Marten, Steven J. Mariconda, and others. I am again not certain of the schedule of publication, but the volume is already nearly assembled.
I see that I am working on four bibliographies simultaneously—on Clark Ashton Smith, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Machen, and Ramsey Campbell. I hope that all can be finished in the near future; they are all very close to completion already. Readers will be aware that I have already compiled bibliographies of H. P. Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and Gore Vidal. The first edition of the Ramsey Campbell bibliography was issued as The Core of Ramsey Campbell (Necronomicon Press, 1995).
Well, MythosCon (Phoenix, January 6-9) was as spectacular as advertised—and more so. I have rarely been so energised by a convention. It was a kind of combination of the H. P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference (with its many panels devoted to all aspects of Lovecraft's life and work) and the NecronomiCon, with its heavy emphasis on contemporary writers of Lovecraftian fiction. I cannot even begin to mention all the interesting people with whom I renewed my acquaintance or met for the first time. The list includes Richard Gavin, Simon Strantzas, Chris Jarocha-Ernst (a last-minute and welcome addition), Dan Clore, Michael Cisco, Dennis and Kristina Etchison, Charles Hoffman, Danny and Margaret Lovecraft from Australia, J.-M. Rajala from Finland, Martin Andersson from Sweden, and many others—not to mention such familiar faces as Jason V Brock, Wilum Pugmire, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Thomas, W. Paul Ganley, Robert M. Price, Steven J. Mariconda, Donovan and Pam Loucks, Derrick Hussey, Fred Phillips, and on and on and on. The last-minute cancellations—Michael Shea, Don and Mollie Burleson, John Langan, and others—were sorely missed. But they may have a chance to redeem themselves, as Adam Niswander vows to hold another convention next year, although perhaps a little later in the year.
One of the more interesting people I met at the convention was Tom Lynch, director of Miskatonic River Press. I hope that I might find projects, either of my own or from my colleagues, that Tom will wish to publish. His press deserves our support.
I was mightily pleased to see the appearance of the second book in my New Millennium Mythos series from Perilous Press, Brian Stableford's The Womb of Time. This book contains the title short novel along with a novella, "The Legacy of Erich Zann." Together, they comprise two of the cleverest and most powerful Lovecraftian tales written in recent years.
I have quickly come to agreement with Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Press to compile a two-volume anthology, H. P. Lovecraft's Favorite Horror Stories, which will feature not only those stories he happened to enjoy (e.g., H. G. Wells's "The Ghost of Fear") but those that demonstrably influenced his own tales (e.g., Fiona Macleod's "The Sin-Eater"). I am aware that a few previous anthologies of this sort have appeared, but I believe mine is a bit more comprehensive. I will add introductory notes to each story detailing Lovecraft's appreciation of them and their possible influence on his work.
On a personal note, I may state that my divorce from Leslie Gary Boba became final on December 17. In the interim, I have met a wonderful woman named Mary K. Wilson, with whom I hope to share a good portion of the rest of my life.