Allo Mr. Riley, Upon reading your story "Inside the Labyrinth," I searched out more of your work and unfortunately no collection -- at that time -- was available and none of the anthologies in my possession had any more of your work; as such, reading that you had a collection coming out with, at the time, Midnight House was eagerly received by me. My next order with Amazon will include your two collections, but I am somewhat disappointed that stories that I had long read about in researching your work -- such as "The Farmhouse" and "The Satyr's Head" -- which seem so well received would no longer be included. Will anything come of those works and the other dropped stories ("A Bottle of Spirits, The Urn, Retribution, Gwargens, No Sense in Being Hungry, She Thought," and 'Hoody")? Is it that you feel them dated and inferior to your later work? Thank you.
Hi E.S. Many thanks for your comments and questions. I'm sorry there are a number of stories you wanted to read that aren't included in either of the two collections. Although they were originally going to be in the newer one, I deliberately took out The Satyr's Head, The Farmhouse and A Bottle of Spirits because all three have only been reprinted by Shadow Publishing this year in reissues of the anthologies in which they were first published. As for the other stories, it was a case of picking out which I thought were best for the collection. Also, Gwargens is a humorous SF story - which I didn't feel fit well with the rest of it. Hopefully, these and quite a few other stories will fit into a future collection. When finalising details for The Lurkers in the Abyss I did have to make space for the one previously unpublished story, Lurkers, which is a sequel to The Lurkers in the Abyss which Johnny Mains finally persuaded me to write - and which I thought nicely rounded the collection out. I hope you will agree it was worth making space for. And thank you for intending to order the two collections. I hope you enjoy them both! Best wishes David
Allo Mr. Riley,
ReplyDeleteUpon reading your story "Inside the Labyrinth," I searched out more of your work and unfortunately no collection -- at that time -- was available and none of the anthologies in my possession had any more of your work; as such, reading that you had a collection coming out with, at the time, Midnight House was eagerly received by me. My next order with Amazon will include your two collections, but I am somewhat disappointed that stories that I had long read about in researching your work -- such as "The Farmhouse" and "The Satyr's Head" -- which seem so well received would no longer be included. Will anything come of those works and the other dropped stories ("A Bottle of Spirits, The Urn, Retribution, Gwargens, No Sense in Being Hungry, She Thought," and 'Hoody")? Is it that you feel them dated and inferior to your later work? Thank you.
-E.S.-
Hi E.S.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your comments and questions. I'm sorry there are a number of stories you wanted to read that aren't included in either of the two collections. Although they were originally going to be in the newer one, I deliberately took out The Satyr's Head, The Farmhouse and A Bottle of Spirits because all three have only been reprinted by Shadow Publishing this year in reissues of the anthologies in which they were first published. As for the other stories, it was a case of picking out which I thought were best for the collection. Also, Gwargens is a humorous SF story - which I didn't feel fit well with the rest of it. Hopefully, these and quite a few other stories will fit into a future collection. When finalising details for The Lurkers in the Abyss I did have to make space for the one previously unpublished story, Lurkers, which is a sequel to The Lurkers in the Abyss which Johnny Mains finally persuaded me to write - and which I thought nicely rounded the collection out. I hope you will agree it was worth making space for.
And thank you for intending to order the two collections. I hope you enjoy them both!
Best wishes
David