Dreams & Madness

I have completed the rewrite of "Into the Depths of Dreams and Madness," the original version of which had its one printing in Weird Inhabitants of Sesqua Valley last year. More and more the original version displeased me and I knew it had to be revised and expanded. It is perhaps a mistake to use an actual character from Lovecraft's fiction -- Richard Upton Pickman, with whom I am just as obsess'd as I am with Nyarlathotep. (But I don't think we'll be seeing a wee collection of my Pickman tales.) I was hoping this rewrite would be a novelette of at least 10,000 words, & thus was disappointed when the tale ended at merely 6,364 words; but the tale was told, and any addition to it would be superfluous. I cannot call this new version a success, for various reasons, but I find it a vast improvement over the paltry first version. I confess that the writing of it has given me serious second thoughts about my idea of writing a novel next year, with Maryanne, concerning the early years of Pickman. I think it would be wise to invent my own character inspir'd by Lovecraft's character, but set in the modern era, or maybe have him (or her) live in my city of exiles. One must listen to these inner voices and heed their council -- to ignore them is to be damned.

Oh, I've just seen that I can add images and videos. Let me try one as an experiment. Wow! It works! That is an illustration by Virgil Finlay that will appear in my next book, The Tangled Muse, so as to illustrate the story (inspir'd by "Pickman's Model") "Born in Strange Shadow," in which one of Pickman's paintings appears in Sesqua Valley, a painted of a hanged witch surrounded by her brood of dog-faced ghouls. Oh, that was fun. Let's see if I can do it again!
FUN!!! There's me in Brooklyn, in the churchyard that inspir'd H. P. Lovecraft to write "The Hound" -- to which I have penned my own sequel, "Some Distant Baying Sound."

Oh boy, this is cool. Now I gotta do another blog and find a cool image to talk about!