Songs for Christmas

I honestly don't know which of these two I prefer most. Damn it, I like 'em both!

Cthulhu Statues

These replicas of the Cthulhu statue or idol mentioned in Lovecraft's story The Call of Cthulhu, are highly tempting. They're advertised in the Lovecraft eZine and are not too expensive - $65 plus shipping. Standing almost 8 inches tall they are the same size as the one in the story too.

I Am Providence by S. T. Joshi

I am enjoying Joshi's I Am Providence, which is perhaps the most detailed biography of Lovecraft you could ever hope to come across, but I wish he would resist just now and then from giving his evaluation on every story, travelogue, poem, etc that Lovecraft wrote. And on many stories that other people wrote as well. I like a biography to be factual, not littered with critical comments unless there is some genuine reason for it. I have my own opinion on the merits or otherwise of these stories and I really don't need to have them all compared to how closely they fit in with Joshi's preference for cosmicism. My only gripe so far, mind. Other than this it's a great book and I have learned a lot from it.

"Death May Die" Lovecraft Scary Solstice New Year's carol

Whispers From The Abyss

Starting to read this Lovecraftian anthology on my kindle tonight. Looks like a great lineup of writers:

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Alasdair Stuart.
“Iden-Inshi” by Greg Stolze
“Pushing Back” by J.C. Hemphill
“Nation of Disease: The Rise & Fall of a Canadian Legend” by Jonathan Sharp
“When We Change” by Mason Ian Bundschuh
“Nutmeat” by Martin Hill Ortiz
“The Last Tweet” by Charles Black
“Secrets In Storage” by Tim Pratt & Greg Van Eekhout
“The Well” by Tim Jeffreys
“The Neon Morgue” by Nathan Wunner
“The Deep” by Corissa Baker
“Fear And Loathing In Innsmouth: Richard Nixon’s Revenge” by Jason Andrew
“My Friend Fishfinger By Daisy, Age 7″ by David Tallerman
“Chasing Sunset” by A.C. Wise
“The Thing With Onyx Eyes” by Stephen Brown
“I Do The Work Of The Bone Queen” by John R. Fultz
“Suck It Up, Get It Done” by Brandon Barrows
“The Substance In The Sound” by W.B. Stickel
“Stone City, Old As Immeasurable Time” by Kelda Crich
“Hideous Interview With Brief Man” by Nick Mamatas
“The Sea, Like Glass Unbroken” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“The Decorative Water Feature Of Nameless Dread” by James Brogden
“Henry” by Lance Axt
“My Stalk” by Aaron J. French
“Give Me That Old Time Religion” by Lee Finney
“Afraid Of Dobermans” by Chad Fifer
“Leviathan” by Nicholas Almand
“Horrorscope” by Charles Black
“The Jar Of Aten-Hor” by Kat Rocha
“The Floor” by Jeff Provine
“Waiting” by Dennis Detwiller
“Other People’s Houses” by Sarena Ulibarri
“You Will Never Be The Same” by Erica Satifka
“Death Wore Greasepaint” by Josh Finney

The Dunwich Horror - Remake

I haven't watched this yet so I have no idea how good it is, but the fact it's based on H. P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror should make it interesting. At least I hope so!

S. T. Joshi and August Derleth

The noted Lovecraftian scholar S. T. Joshi recently wrote an in depth review of John D. Haeffele's  A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos: Origins of the Cthulhu Mythos (Odense, Denmark: H. Harksen Productions, 2012).

The review is a fascinating critique of Derleth's interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos and his involvement in developing it along his own lines. When I first became involved in reading Lovecraft back in the 1960s Derleth was the final word on everything Lovecraftian. Or so it seemed to me at the time. And I must admit I swallowed hook, line and sinker everything he wrote about the Mythos, even though I was never, even then, enthusiastic about his own Lovecraftian pastiches, which I thought pretty dull and formulaic. I did enjoy many of Derleth's non Lovecratian supernatural tales and was - and am - a great admirer of his skills as an editor. A Derleth anthology, usually reprinted in the UK by Four Square (later NEL) was always something to look forward to wading into. We don't seem to get anthologies of that calibre very often these days, and more's the pity.

Joshi's thoroughgoing demolition of Haeffele's defense of Derleth's version of the Cthulhu Mythos is ruthless, effective and convincing. Derleth's attempt to turn it into a warped version of the Christian creed always struck me as strange, given Lovecraft's atheism. Thankfully, this interpretation, though significant at the time, seems to have waned in influence over the years and it is good to see that Haeffele's attempt to give it renewed legitimacy has been cut short by someone as erudite and eloquent as Joshi  I still admire Derleth the editor and have fond memories of some of his non-Lovecraftian stories, but with so many writers using Lovecraft's creation today the last thing we need is for it to be warped into the Miltonic version Derleth seemed intent on foisting on us. The cosmic horror of a vast, indifferent universe that Lovecraft created is HPL's legacy to the weird tale and one that should not be softened with the safety net of benign Elder beings.

The Lurkers in the Abyss & Other Tales of Terror - update

Things are moving along quite smoothly for the publication of my short story collection in October by Shadow Publishing. Cover artwork has been commission by Dave Sutton for my artist of choice, Paul Mudie, whose fantastic paintings have graced the covers of all the Black Books of Horror.

After some discussion it now looks as if Paul will be basing his painting on my story Fish-Eye, which is possibly the most Lovecraftian one in the book (it was first published in the Lovecraft eZine) with my own turn on the Deep Ones.

Lovecraft eZine No 16 - online now

The latest issue of The Lovecraft eZine is online now.

It contains:

In the Tank by Scott Nicolay
The Thing In the Depths by Pete Rawlik
Fish Eye by David A. Riley
Fade to Black by Robert Borski
The Visitor From Outside by A. J. French

And this is the illustration for my story:

Lovecraft eZine issue 16

While we're still waiting for this issue to be made available online, its cover has been revealed:

Illustration for Fish Eye

The Lovecraft eZine have made available a Youtube video of the creation of the illustration for my story Fish Eye.

Lovecraft eZine

Just found out that my long story Fish Eye will be in the July issue of Lovecraft eZine, which is to be a special Deep Ones issue.

This will be the first story I've ever had published which will also have an audio version.

Lovecraft eZine

Just received an email from the editor of Lovecraft eZine accepting my 10,000 word story Fish Eye.

First Day Back At Work

Today's my first day back at work after a bout of flu, even though my wife said I should stay off a bit longer till I'm fully okay.

Sometimes, though, I feel that you start to get better that bit quicker when you try and get back to normalacy again. I'll see if this theory holds by how I feel tonight when I get back home!

I've done no writing since the flu started, but I have done quite a bit of reading, including Simon Scarrow's The Legion and a good bit of H. P. Lovecraft's Arkham House collection from the 60s, The Dunwich Horror. It's decades since I last read most of these tales, and it was a bit of a revelation to reread them again, especially The Colour Out of Space. In fact, rereading this particular story made me wonder at times whether I had ever even read it at all! Fabulous tale, and even better than I remembered. I have just reached the final pages of the title story, which is an outstanding tale that could make you question why anyone even bothers to try and copy his mythos stories. Like most movie sequels, they're doomed to failure.

Talking of which, I watched a DVD of Iron Man 2 last night. I remember enjoying this when I saw it at the cinema last year, but how it pales on the small screen. Not a patch on the first movie. Robert Downie Jnr was still the best thing in it, but the story sags in the middle and Mickey Rourke is underused.

Lovecraft - Fear of the Unknown - Documentary

This is a fascinating 90 minute documentary about H. P. Lovecraft, with contributions by people like Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, John Carpenter, Neil Gaiman, S. T. Joshi, etc. Not to be missed!


Watch more free documentaries

If Lovecraft Had Lived into the 1960s

I came across a fascinating thread on ChthulhuWho1's Blog in which downloads of a discussion on this subject was made in 1978 at the 36th World Science Fiction Convention in Phoenix. On the panel were Fritz Leiber Jnr, Professor Dirk W. Mosig, Professor Donald R. Burleson, J. Vernon Shea, and S.T. Joshi. I have never had the chance to hear the late Fritz Leiber before, and it is great that someone has been able to make decent recordings of this available online, especially when the subject under discussion was HPL.

These are links to the downloads:

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