S. T. Joshi’s Blog
June 7, 2026 — The Road to 500
In my blog post of May 4 I announced that I was only thirteen books away from my 500th book. But, as I was preparing to publish a revised version of my bibliography (now titled 500 Books by S. T. Joshi), I realised that I had failed to take note of not one, not two, but three books I had published recently. This means that I was already at No. 490 at the time of that blog post; and now I have added two more books to that total.
One is Californian Tales (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H1WDFGVF), a book I had compiled decades ago but found no takers for at the time. I believe this is a splendid anthology of stories that are not only by Californian authors (or, at least, by authors who lived in California for at least a certain period of their lives) but also set in California. Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Jack London, and Mary Austin highlight the cast of authors, but Clark Ashton Smith, George Sterling, and the hard-boiled crime writers (Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain) are also represented, as well as a rare and (so far as I know) uncollected early crime/adventure tale by Erle Stanley Gardner. Go pick it up!
My second book—no. 492—is The Lovely Lady and Other Stories (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H394BZZQ), the first volume of my edition of George Sterling’s fiction. This contains not only his series of six “caveman” stories (“Babes in the Wood”), loosely based on Jack London’s Before Adam (1906), but the other tales that he published during his lifetime, as well as two short and very amusing prose plays. I have now, through the assistance of Andrea Grimes of the San Francisco Public Library, obtained as many as twenty unpublished stories by Sterling—stories that he submitted to magazines of the day but that were not accepted. I will issue this book later in the year, along with the bibliography of Sterling that Alan Gullette and I compiled years ago, and which has been brought up to date.
I may mention that later this year I will participate (remotely) in a round-table discussion of Sterling with Vince Emery and Ariana Garcia Carreño, to commemorate the centenary of Sterling’s death (he died on 17 November 1926). The event is being sponsored by the Bancroft Library. It should be a stimulating session, and I will provide more information as the time approaches.
I am in receipt of an audiobook of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, issued by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society (https://www.hplhs.org/completepoe.php)—a most interesting item, I daresay. For me personally the item is timely, for I have nearly finished my monograph on Poe and Lovecraft, tentatively titled Solitary Victims of Fate: Lovecraft’s Interactions with Poe. The work is only about 35,000 words and not likely to get much bigger; it will be issued by Hippocampus Press next year. I have had great fun writing it, and I think I have found some Poe influences on Lovecraft’s tales that have not been cited before.
My edition of Lovecraft’s Library has appeared in an Italian translation published by Yorick (https://www.anobii.com/it/books/lovecraft-s-library-il-catalogo/01b479e467040b33fd). This edition translates the fifth edition of 2024—although, incredibly, a few more titles from Lovecraft’s library have surfaced in recent months! The process never seems to end. I am grateful to Massimo Tassi, the director of Yorick, for supervising the translation.
Mark Howard Jones has compiled yet another anthology of Lovecraftian tales from Welsh writers, Cthulhu Cymraeg: The Night Country (https://www.amazon.com/Cthulhu-Cymraeg-Night-Country-Lovecraftian/dp/1637894031). I have not read the book, but I do not doubt that the stories are of a high literary order.
A most curious—and enormous—item is Japan Cthulhu, a 773-page hardcover book containing Lovecraftian stories by Japanese authors (https://www.mondadori.it/libri/japan-cthulhu-aa-vv/). The book was published in Italian by Mondadori, one of Italy’s leading publisher. As an item for the Lovecraft completist, it is definitely worth securing.
On the Derleth front, David E. Schultz and I have completed work on another volume of his Sac Prairie Journal, this one for 1940. There are a few interesting bits for Lovecraftians, perhaps the most significant being a passing reference in the entry for 16 August: “En route from Madison, Alice [Conger] told me that HPL’s Case of Charles Dexter Ward would make a book-length novel, whereupon I wrote at once to Bill Sloane offering the book to Holt for their ’41 list.” This must have happened at a time when Derleth had placed the autograph manuscript of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward into Conger’s hands for transcription. William Sloane (author of To Walk the Night and other weird works) was an editor at Henry Holt—and it would have been incredible if he had released the novel. We hear no more of this matter for the rest of 1940, and it clearly came to nothing. The first separate publication of the novel was the Gollancz edition of 1951.
On a visit to New York at the end of the year, Derleth met some of Lovecraft’s colleagues, as reported in an entry of 9 December:
“So home to prepare for the evening’s party, a meeting of the Kalem Klub, of which Frank Long came first, unchanged, still as cherubic as always, and with ideas a little unformed and spotty, Dr. Jim Morton next, venerable but still faithful to HPL’s memory, and then others, including Catherine Moore Kuttner and Henry. Catherine, with her lore of palmistry, read much into my palm, the head line ruling the heart, a long prosperous life. Jim, Frank, Don and I sat together to settle further plans for the Lovecraft volume, and soon thereafter food was served, and the party disbanded at midnight..”
How “long [and] prosperous” Derleth’s life was—he died five months after his sixty-second birthday, and his immense literary output was necessitated by his extensive expenses in maintaining Arkham House, his family, and paying off debts associated with the building of his home, Place of Hawks—is open to question.
To engage in a bit of nostalgia, I am deeply indebted to Charles Schneider for unearthing some incredible photographs of the Providence Pals. Charles believes that the following photos date to 1981 or 1982. Here is the first:
From right to left, these are: Jason C. Eckhardt, Robert M. Price, Peter Cannon, STJ, and Marc A. Michaud. Here is a close-up of Jason and Peter:
And, most poignant of all (given his current state of ill health), Marc A. Michaud:
Oh, to be young and in Providence! I myself have any number of photographs that I intend to scan and disseminate to the public whenever I can find the time.
Finally, as a definitive indication that I have become a fictional character, I offer the following from a comic book, supplied to me by my colleague Ryan Grulich:
As research by my webmaster has determined, this turns out to be not a recent work at all, but an adaptation of The Lurking Fear published in 1991 by Adventure Comics (an imprint of Malibu Graphics). The writer is Steve Jones (i.e., Steven Philip Jones, with whom I collaborated on a volume of Lovecraft’s Early Stories [2016]), with artwork by Octavio Cariello. I suppose I should procure this item for my ever-growing array of Joshiana!
May 19, 2026 — The Friends of August Derleth
I am happy to make the momentous announcement that a new organization to promote the life and work of August Derleth has now been established: The Friends of August Derleth, Inc. This venture has been undertaken by Derrick Belanger (proprietor of Belanger Books, which has issued numerous volumes of Derleth’s Solar Pons stories and related material), Dwayne Olson (former associate editor of Fedogan & Bremer and longtime scholar of Derleth and Donald Wandrei), and myself. The organization has been established in the State of Colorado by Derrick, who is the president. I am the vice president, and Dwayne is the treasurer.
The August Derleth Society, established in 1978, is officially defunct. The society’s 501(c)(3) status was revoked in 2025 and its state charter was cancelled in January 2026. These developments made it imperative that we establish a new organization, with a new board of directors and new bylaws. We have now done that.
We are in the process of setting up a new website to provide information on the Friends. We hope to begin the process of soliciting new members shortly, but we are not quite ready to do that yet. We also hope to augment the current board of directors with additional members.
With this new organization, we hope to continue publishing Derleth’s work and to promote his literary standing in other ways. I myself, after having worked closely with Derleth’s regional and historical writing over the past three years, have gained a renewed admiration for his overall literary output and believe that much more work needs to be done in re-establishing him as a significant writer, editor, and publisher.
We hope that others will join us in this endeavor.
May 4, 2026 — A Trip to New York
Mary and I had occasion to go to New York City recently (April 19–25). Our chief purpose was to take our friend Belinda Elmer to the major sites, since she had never been to that megalopolis and was (properly) afraid to go there by herself. We had a great, if exhausting, time. One of the highlights was a thorough canvass of the American Museum of Natural History—which, of course, I had visited on numerous other occasions, but which I always find fresh and inspiring. How can you not enjoy the dinosaur skeletons, not to mention that great gem, the Star of India? The caption for this photo might be: “Why S. T. Joshi Is Subject to Headaches.”
The Metropolitan Museum was of course on the agenda, was were the spectacular Cloisters (formerly the George Grey Barnard Cloisters, which I believe Lovecraft saw as early as 1922). It was not so much the mediaeval piety of the site as the exquisite gardens (in full floom) that overwhelmed us. This photo doesn’t give any indication of that, but it is a nice photo anyway:
Throughout the trip we met numerous friends old and new. One of our most engaging dinners was with Debra K. Every, author of the spectacular novel Deena Undone, which every devotee of the weird should read. She has also written numerous short stories, which I hope can be gathered into a Hippocampus Press collection someday. We also met my old college friend Linda Aro, and her husband Chris, sharing with them an excellent Italian dinner. Another meeting was a lunch at the Yale Club, as we were ushered into that prestigious venue by a member, Gabriel Mesa:
I was tempted to mention to the forbidding concierge that I was merely a Brown and Princeton man, therefore clearly of an inferior race; but I held my tongue. The lunch was superb and fortified us for the rest of the afternoon.
Derrick Hussey arranged two dinners in my honour, attended by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Peter Cannon, Fred Phillips (who remains ageless as he approaches the completion of his ninth decade of life), Steve Mariconda, and others.
Upon my return, I hit the ground running. I have now issued the first of a projected three-volume edition of the Collected Stories of W. C. Morrow (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ4WBG86). Over the past several months I have unearthed dozens of previously unknown stories by Morrow published in magazines and newspapers, mostly on the West Coast. Few of these are weird, but a great many are crime and mystery stories that strike me as being quite innovative for their time. I believe the totality of Morrow’s short fiction now numbers in excess of 100. I shall issue the two other volumes later this year.
The August Derleth Society has published a distinctive volume, Derleth’s Unquiet Heart: Poems for Marcia Lee Masters (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYS3XKWQ). This book, edited by David E. Schultz, is based on a book-length poetry manuscript that Derleth assembled, probably in the later 1940s, after his brief engagement to Marcia (the daughter of the poet Edgar Lee Masters) fell apart after being announced in newspapers in 1943. Many of the poems appeared in later collections, but they have never been gathered together in one place before. Schultz has added an incisive afterword providing background on the poems and on Derleth’s relationship to Marcia.
Speaking of Derleth, I have found numerous discussions in the Capital Times (Madison, WI) of his engagement and marriage to Sandra Winters in the spring of 1953. Here is a wedding announcement that was reproduced in the paper on 24 March 1953:
In regard to Sarnath Press, I was delighted to hear that the eminent T. E. D. Klein has endorsed Pumpkin Seeds, the collection of weird tales by John Carter Tibbetts that I recently published. Ted has given permission to disseminate the following blurb: “Good to see these tales again, between covers; with Bradbury out of the way, you have definitely cornered the market on Halloween!” Very nice!
I may mention that I am on track to publish my 500th book as early as late this year. With the publication of the W. C. Morrow book mentioned above, I am at 487. The following is a list of the books that are likely to appear this year. (“HP” = Hippocampus Press; “SP” = Sarnath Press; ADS = August Derleth Society.)
- The Star-Treader: A Life of Clark Ashton Smith [HP]
- [Editor] W. C. Morrow, Collected Stories, Volumes 2 and 3 [SP]
- [Editor] Californian Tales [SP]
- [Editor] George Sterling, The Lovely Lady and Others [SP]
- [Editor] George Sterling, The Old Devil and Others [unpublished stories] [SP]
- Bibliography of George Sterling (with Alan Gullette) [SP]
- [Editor] Collected Essays of George Sterling [HP]
- [Editor, with David E. Schultz] The Letters of Ambrose Bierce and George Sterling [HP]
- [Editor] Clark Ashton Smith, From the Crypts of Memory [HP]
- [Editor] Clark Ashton Smith, Miscellaneous Letters [HP]
- [Editor] Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Olivia Howard Dunbar [HP]
- [Editor] August Derleth, Sac Prairie Journal 1940 [ADS]
- [Editor] Lovers of Darkness: New Stories Inspired by Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book [HP]
But I am beginning to think that, after this wave of books, it is time for me to shut up.
April 15, 2026 — Two New Sarnath Press Books
I am happy to announce the publication of two new books from Sarnath Press. The first is Donald R. Burleson’s fifth short story collection, Seed of the Gods (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GVQCLVV1). This slim but substantial collection contains a number of his recent Lovecraftian tales, including stories in Black Wings III, V, and VII, in Gothic Lovecraft, and elsewhere. Other stories are taken from Eldritch Tales, Weird Fiction Review, and Inhuman Magazine. A rich feast of weird fiction!
The other volume is my anthology One of Cleopatra’s Nights: Tales and Poems of Egyptian Horror (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX23X1ST). This is a book I have long wished to compile—and, in fact, I am not aware of very many other ones on this precise subject. Along with classic stories by Poe, Conan Doyle, Sax Rohmer, Frank Belknap Long, and numerous others (I omitted Lovecraft’s “Under the Pyramids,” as being too well known), I include original poems by Ann K. Schwader, Scott J. Couturier, Wade German, and other leading poets.
On the Derleth front, I have prepared a reprint of the late novel The Wind Leans West (1969) (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GVT83QZD). This is a most engaging historical novel about the early history of Milwauee, focusing on Alexander Mitchell, who operates an insurance company in the 1840s onward. This does not sound like a particularly prepossessing premise for a novel, but it is in fact a fine read and maintains interest to the end. Later books to be issued will be a previously unpublishd volume of poems about Marcia Lee Masters (whom Derleth almost married in the early 1940s) and his rare detective novel Death by Design (1953).
I am in receipt of a volume, New Weird & Decadent, edited by TL Wissell and published by the London Lovecraft Review (https://www.amazon.com/dp/180605101X). I have not read the book, but it appears to contain a wealth of interesting Lovecraftian fiction by Bobby Derie, Darrell Schweitzer, David Barker, Scott J. Couturier, and others, with lavish colour illustrations. There are also several articles.
I have also received a German book, Schatten über Eüropa (Shadows over Europe), edited by N. Horvath and C. Hantsch (https://www.fantasy-schreibforum.com/t8441-auf-den-spuren-h-p-lovecrafts-schatten-uber-europa-nina-horvath-eric-hantsch), a volume of Lovecraftian stories by German writers. I daresay their “take” on Lovecraft is quite different from ours, so those who can read German are urged to pick up this book.
I continue to work on various fronts, including the preparation of two volumes of stories by George Sterling (the second of which will contain a sheaf of unpublished tales), a three-volume collection of W. C. Morrow’s collected short fiction (the first volume of which should appear around May 1), and numerous other projects that I shall elaborate upon in due course of time.
Because of the apparent lack of interest for the book I have been offering for sale, I shall no longer be selling any books through this blog. I am offering some choice items via Biblio.com, at https://www.biblio.com/search.php?order=iddesc&dealer_id=6150904.
March 20, 2026 — Still More Books!
I have published the newest volume in my series of books by Weird Tales authors. This one is a second collection of Arlton Eadie’s writings, entitled The Devil’s Tower and Others (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GSMVQQXY), containing his writings from the 1930s. Among other items, it contains a four-part short novel, The Carnival of Death, that fuses Egyptian horror with domestic conflict in an English family. Another story, “The Wolf-Girl of Josselin” (Weird Tales, August 1938), is a highly accomplished werewolf tale set in Brittany. (I did not include the serialised novel The Trail of the Cloven Hoof [Weird Tales, July 1934–January 1935], as a version of this work—published as a book in 1935—is already available in a reprint edition.)
I am pretty much done with my reprints of material from Weird Tales, unless interested readers can suggest other authors I might wish to consider.
Hippocampus Press has been slowly but surely issuing books and other items over the past few months. A recent book is Cody Goodfellow’s The Greedy Grave (https://www.hippocampuspress.com/other-authors/fiction/the-greedy-grave-by-cody-goodfellow), a slim but powerful collection of five tales set in the Old West, focusing on a bounty hunter, Inigo Hull, as he stumbles upon terrors both natural and supernatural, some of them of a Lovecraftian cast. Goodfellow’s prose is always engaging and vibrant, and his portrayal of Hull and other figures is compelling. I have a few copies for sale at $10.
Also in is Darrell Schweitzer’s superb poetry collection Dancing Before Azathoth (https://www.hippocampuspress.com/other-authors/poetry/dancing-before-azathoth-by-darrell-schweitzer), a generous sampling of Schweitzer’s weird poetry old and new, much of it with a Lovecraftian tinge. Copies are available for $10.
But the big news is that A Sense of Proportion—the collected correspondence of H. P. Lovecraft and Frank Belknap Long—is at last out, in a beautiful hardcover edition (https://www.hippocampuspress.com/h.-p.-lovecraft/collected-letters/a-sense-of-proportion-the-letters-of-h.-p.-lovecraft-and-frank-belknap-long). The publisher, Derrick Hussey, received his copies on March 2; my copies have not arrived yet, but they will soon. I am happy to offer them at a slight discount from the list price: $80. I have only four copies to sell, so put in your order soon!
Another item that has come in is the Chiroptera Press edition of the fourth volume of the Lovecraft variorum edition, containing the revisions and collaborations (also a complete index of names and titles). Curiously enough, there is no page for this book on the publisher’s website, and all I have been able to find is this: https://www.psilowave.com/product/h-p-lovecraft-collected-fiction-volume-4-chiroptera-press. The price given here is apparently somewhat inflated, and I understand that the list price is $95. I have exactly one copy for sale, which I will offer for $90.
I also have some copies of the newest issue of Spectral Realms (January 2026), which I can offer free to any customer who buys any of the above volumes.
But enough of crude huckstering. Other interesting items have drifted in here of late, among them Will Murray’s novel Secret Agent X vs. Doctor Death (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GNSV4CS3). I have not read this book, but the author describes it as follows: “Supernatural horror. Pulp mystery man. Zombies. Mythological monsters etc.” In short, something for everyone! Murray’s work is always entertaining, and there is no reason to think this book is otherwise.
On a more scholarly note, the ever industrious Donovan K. Loucks, scouring Providence newspapers for Lovecraft-related material, has found what is almost certainly the earliest mention of Lovecraft’s name in print. It occurs in the course of an article in the Providence Evening News (3 April 1903), entitled “List of Thefts Is Long,” and recounts a dismaying event in the life of the future master of weird fiction:
How provoking! This mention predates, by well over two years, the mention in several New York newspapers of Lovecraft’s participation in a weather-predicting contest, dating to September 1905. Bravo, Donovan!
Another notable contribution to scholarship takes the form of a book entitled The Father’s Silence, written by the late John L. McInnis III and edited by his son, Dennard McInnis (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQZ6H91S). McInnis, aside from writing a lengthy Ph.D. thesis on Lovecraft in 1975 (“H. P. Lovecraft: The Maze and the Minotaur”), wrote a number of valuable papers in the 1980s and 1990s, and Dennard has unearthed them and collected them in this timely volume.
Let me end on a personal note. I had noticed that our two lovely cats, Dante and Renzo, seemed to be getting a tad stir-crazy being confined to the house. But we were reluctant to let them roam free in the outdoors, as we have experienced too many tragedies to our felines in such circumstances. So the obvious solution was to build a catio—an enclosed outdoor space for cats. There are numerous prefabricated kits one can purchase, but the space around our house did not allow for good placement of any of these; so we hired an engagingly eccentric fellow named Don (owner of Don’s Custom Catios) to build one specifically tailored to our needs. He did a wonderful job, and the cats took to it immediately:
It is a pity that it has been been raining pretty constantly in the week or more after the catio was built; but even so, the cats venture out there frequently. And when the weather turns nice, you can bet they will find many hours of entertainment there!
March 9, 2026 — Two Important New Books (and a Book Sale)
I am proud to announce the publication of two important books. The first is John Carter Tibbetts’s first short story collection, Pumpkin Seeds, issued through my Sarnath Press imprint (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQSYTQ4J). Tibbetts is well known as a leading critic and interviewer in the horror field (as well as in the fields of film and music), but his short fiction—much of it, in this volume, focused on Halloween and its inherent weirdness—has not been widely circulated and has never been collected. It is a treat for all devotees of the weird, reflecting John’s extensive familiarity with the classics of the genre. The volume concludes with a previously unpublished interview with Gahan Wilson.
The other book is the first complete edition of the collaborations between August Derleth and Mark Schorer, issued by the August Derleth Society (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQJXB8T1). The book contains nearly thirty stories, some written as early as 1926 (when Derleth was only seventeen and Schorer eighteen), and includes a number of Lovecraftian narratives along with weird tales of many other sorts. There are nearly a dozen stories in this book that Derleth himself failed to collect in Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People (Arkham House, 1963).
Not much else to report at the moment, except a little book sale. In my eternal quest to get some books out of here, I am offering a few choice items from my collection that I don’t have much need for, so I hope I can find good homes for them. Here they are:
- L. Frank Baum, Tik-Tok of Oz (Reilly & Lee, 1914) [first edition] [$200]
- William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland & Others (Conversation Tree Press) [deluxe edition] ($400)
- Carl Jacobi (Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction) [$75]
- Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan and Other Weird Stories (Arcane Wisdom) [hardcover] [$200]
- William Hope Hodgson (Centipede Press Library of Weird Fiction) [$350]
I will cover shipping costs. Because of the outrageous expense of shipping books overseas, I am obliged to restrict the above sale to US customers, unless overseas customers are prepared to pay international postage rates.
February 25, 2026 — Downfall of God Wins an Award!
I was pleased to learn that volume 2 of The Downfall of God has received the 2025 Morris D. Frokosch Award for the best book published in 2025 relating to humanism. In a notice about the award that will appear in the April/May issue of Free Inquiry, it is stated that “Joshi’s magisterial, highly readable account of the rise of atheism in the West should become the standard reference on this topic.” Most flattering! I still have one or two copies of the book available for purchase (at $40), so I hope at least a few of my “enthusiasts”—who, of course, are predominantly interested in my work in weird fiction—might find this book of interest. To my mind it is the most notable intellectual achievement of my career.
Descending from the sublime to the (not entirely) ridiculous, I have just released another Sarnath Press book: an edition of the uncollected stories and essays of the detective writer S. S. Van Dine, The Scarlet Nemesis and Other Mystery Stories (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GNMGZ88L). Van Dine was the pseudonym of the literary and art critic Willard Huntington Wright, whose turbulent life is chronicled in a biography by John Loughery, Alias S. S. Van Dine (1992). Van Dine’s twelve detective novels (1926–39), featuring the detective Philo Vance (whose rather irritating mannerisms led Ogden Nash to write a memorable couplet: “Philo Vance / Needs a kick in the pance”), are engaging in their way; but the material I gather in this book is actually more distinctive. Eight stories date all the way back to 1916, long before Wright created Philo Vance; while other items in the book include true crime stories he wrote in 1929–30 as well as an array of essays on the detective story. Sarnath Press will increasingly turn toward the crime/mystery/detective story, especially as work by John Dickson Carr, Philip Macdonald, and other writers goes into the public domain.
My book The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Cthulhu Mythos has now appeared in a Russian translation. My contact, Bojan Ji, tells me that the book has already been well received; he has passed on a link to some initial (and favourable) readers’ reviews of the work: https://www.chitai-gorod.ru/product/mify-ktulhu-voshod-zakat-i-novyj-rassvet-3136236. I don’t imagine many of my readers can read Russian (I can’t either), but their response is certainly encouraging—and another sign of Lovecraft’s worldwide influence.
One form of entertainment that Mary and I are particularly fond of is crime films and television shows. Lately, Netflix has been offering a splendid array of such works, and we find them quite addictive. One of them, The Following (2013–15), is a show that ran for three seasons. The entire first season focused on the battle between a troubled FBI agent, Ryan Hardy (played by Kevin Bacon), and a serial killer, Joe Carroll (played by James Purefoy), who as a professor of English was obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and used Poe’s work as some sort of motivation for committing his crimes. (Please be aware that the following discussion contains spoilers.) That was entertaining enough; but Episode 10 of Season 3 had a surprising twist. Here, another serial killer who is following in Carroll’s footsteps is trying to crack a document in cipher written by Carroll’s mentor, a psychiatrist named Dr. Arthur Strauss (played by Gregg Henry). What did these two have in common, aside from a mutual love of Poe? The killer determines that these gentlemen had another author they were fond of: “Lovecraft.” That’s all he says; not “H. P. Lovecraft,” just “Lovecraft.” And what is the passage from Lovecraft that will solve the cipher? “That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die.” The character utters these words with due solemnity. I nearly fell off my couch as I heard this! The moment passes quickly, and Lovecraft is not mentioned in the remaining episodes; but it is one more indication that Lovecraft and his work are now common currency in popular culture!
I was recently regaled by the arrival of two different guests to this fair city. The first was Steven J. Mariconda, whom I have known for a total of forty-three years (since 1983). Over several days we had nonstop yakking sessions, and I showed him my personal library (including the books in my shed in the back yard) while Mary cooked a toothsome chicken dinner for us. (She wanted to make a salmon dish, but Steve informed us of his Lovecraftian aversion to seafood.) On one day I took Steve on a miniature tour of the city—the University of Washington campus (including the Suzzallo-Allen Library, where I do so much of my research these days), the three houses I’ve lived in prior to this one (actually I’ve lived in four previous houses, the fourth being my former mother-in-law’s house; but I didn’t take Steve to that edifice), and other points of interest from a Joshian perspective. Here is a photograph of the two ageing scholars:
A few days later a new colleague, Russell Williams, came to dinner. Russell is from Wales but is currently living in Paris (lucky devil!). He was here for a conference but wished to look me up because he is writing a book on French weird fiction. More power to him! It is a subject that needs a thorough investigation. Russell has actually had dinner with Michael Houellebecq, who will no doubt figure in his book. On the occasion of his visit Mary did make her patented salmon dinner, since Russell expressed a fondness for that comestible. I told him of my minimal efforts in studying and editing French weird fiction (my editions of Gautier, Maupassant, and others), my translation of Maurice Lévy’s book on Lovecraft, and other matters of interest. Mary took a nice picture of the two of us:
Since I don’t travel to conventions very often these days, it appears that those who wish to meet me in person are obliged to beard me in my own den. I’m beginning to feel like Clark Ashton Smith, many of whose colleagues made the arduous trek to Auburn to meet him. But I hope Seattle isn’t quite as out-of-the-way as Auburn!
February 2, 2026 — Downfall of God Has Arrived
I am happy to report that several copies of The Downfall of God, volume 2, have reached me, and I can offer them to interested customers for $40, a slight discount from the retail price. The book is a whopping 605 pages and deals with all manner of issues relating to atheism, freethought, secularism, and other issues (including a section on religious or anti-religious elements in the work of Lovecraft, Dunsany, and other weird writers). I regard this two-volume work as the pinnacle of my work as a scholar and public intellectual.
Another book I am tremendously pleased to announce—one that I myself have published through my Sarnath Press imprint—is Pierre Déléage’s Transmigrations: Lovecraft, Barlow, Burroughs (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GKXWNBDV). This slender but substantial monograph is one of the most penetrating studies of R. H. Barlow ever written, examining not only his weird fiction but also his anthropological work in Mexico to paint a much fuller portrait of Barlow than has been available elsewhere. Along the way, Déléage examines Barlow’s relations with both his mentor, H. P. Lovecraft, as well as William S. Burroughs, who briefly studied with him in Mexico.
On the Derleth front, the August Derleth Society is proud to have reissued Walden West (1961), one of his best and most beloved books (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GHT54B7G). Our edition presents the full text of the original work—a luminous autobiographical account of the individuals and locales that shaped his character and writings during his early years (including a section on Lovecraft)—along with additional texts. Some of the sections of the book were originally serialised in various magazines, but Derleth did not reprint all these sections in the book; we (i.e., David E. Schultz, who should have received editorial credit for his work but declined it) have included these missing portions, to augment the overall effect of the book.
I am putting the finishing touches on the Clark Ashton Smith biography, reading the work from beginning to end and making numerous revisions and additions. In addition, we have finalised a fine set of photographs that will be scattered here and there throughout the book; some of these have rarely if ever been seen by the general public. The book is on schedule to be published in hardcover this summer.
Speaking of Smith, I see that videos of the first two panels of the Clark Ashton Smith conference on January 10 have now been posted online. The page for the conference on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@TheCASmithCircleConference) provides links to the two panels, along with links to other videos of interest. I trust the remaining three panels will be uploaded soon.
January 20, 2026 — The Clark Ashton Smith Circle
I was delighted to participate in the one-day conference on Clark Ashton Smith, entitled “The Clark Ashton Smith Circle,” held at the Carnegie Library in Auburn, California—the very building that Smith haunted as a child, where (in the opinion of some scholars) he read every book that the library owned at the time. The conference, on January 10, featured five substantial panels. I was on two of them. The first, “Smith’s Poetry,” was a lively discussion of the entirety of Smith’s verse, from early to late. One panelist, John R. Fultz, was ill, so the conference’s organiser, Nils Hedglin, ably filled his role as moderator. Here is a photo of the panel, featuring (from left to right) Nils, myself, and Ron Hilger:
After lunch, I was on a panel on “Smith’s Science Fiction.” I had told Nils that, in the course of rereading Smith’s tales for my biography, I had gained a renewed appreciation for these stories. Cody Goodfellow and Ron Hilger joined me on this panel.
Other panels were also lively. However, another no-show (because of illness) was Charles Schneider, who was to have made a “special presentation” at the end of the day. Instead, Dwayne Olson and Todd Warren recounted their quest for rare and obscure items of Smithiana.
The conference featured a dealer’s room as well as a display room where examples of Smith’s books, magazine appearances, and artwork were presented. I supplied a small number of items from my collection, including the “Unexpurgated Clark Ashton Smith” pamphlets issued by Necronomicon Press. And, of course, I had in hand a provisional copy of my biography (The Star-Treader: A Life of Clark Ashton Smith), which attracted some attention.
All in all, the conference was a rousing success. The panels were videotaped, and I imagine they will be uploaded onto YouTube or some other such platform in due course of time. We hope to reprise the event—and make it span two days rather than just one—in two years’ time.
Outside of the conference, Mary and I enjoyed several wonderful meals. We spent January 11–12 in Sacramento, where one evening we had dinner with my sister Nalini (who flew up from Carmel Valley) and Dwayne Olson at a place called Crawdad:
At this place, and also at a restaurant called Virgin Sturgeon, I silently begged HPL’s apology for devouring seafood!
I have been busy otherwise. As soon after January 1 as possible, I uploaded my reprint of John Dickson Carr’s first novel, It Walks by Night (1930), as a Sarnath Press publication (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GDQ6WTB3). It is a scintillating work—an expansion of the novella “Grand Guignol,” which appeared in the Haverfordian (the student-run literary magazine of Haverford College), which I reprinted (along with other works from this periodical) in a previous volume. I shall now set about reprinting Carr’s novels one by one as they go into the public domain. By the mid-1930s he was publishing four books a year—which will keep me hopping!
Another book from Sarnath Press is the fiftieth—yes, fiftieth—volume of my edition of H. L. Mencken’s Collected Essays and Journalism, this one titled Magazine and Newspaper Work, 1930 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GH7DMHWH). The material is, as always, engaging reading, as Mencken’s wit and humour remain vibrant and lively.
I forgot to mention previously that one of the most distinctive gifts I received for Christmas was Olivia Luna Eldritch’s book Recipes from the World of H. P. Lovecraft (Thunder Bay Press, 2023) (https://www.thunderbaybooks.com/books/recipes-from-the-world-of-h-p-lovecraft-9781667202327/). How could this book have escaped my attention until now? No one had brought it to my notice. It looks like a delightful book, and is printed in a sturdy hardcover edition with lavish colour images in the interior. In spite of the whimsical titles of some recipes (e.g., “Silver Key Chili Con Carne”), it does appear as if the recipes are actually meant to be prepared by the adventurous chef; and indeed, many of them look most toothsome.
Work on other fronts proceeds apace. One of the largest projects I have (almost inadvertently) become enmeshed in is a complete edition of the short stories of W. C. Morrow (1854–1923), the friend and colleague of Ambrose Bierce, who wrote one of the most piquantly titled books ever published: The Ape, the Idiot and Other People (1897). But this volume is only the tip of the iceberg of his contributions to short fiction, relatively little of which is weird. Indeed, a substantial number of tales are in the crime or mystery genre, and Morrow could well be regarded as something of a pioneer in this genre, given that most of these stories were published in the later nineteenth century. It is likely that my edition will fill a solid three volumes, the first of which I hope to publish in a few months.
But numerous other Sarnath Press publications are also in the offing, and I plan to issue one book every two weeks! Stay tuned.