New Inspiration

I was unhappy with one segment of Some Unknown Gulf of Night -- the one that was inspir'd by Lovecraft's sonnet, "The Window" -- feeling it was too wee (around 300-hundred words) and not very interesting.  My goal with this new work was to try and make it at least 35,000 words, a good size for a chapbook -- & thus I was let down that I arriv'd a mere 33,000 words.  Then yesterday I got this new idea for a different weird tale based on :The Window," so I spent the morning writing ye rough and it came to around 2,000 words!  I was up until one in ye morning typing the polish.  I brought in a bunch of Lovecraftian tidbits, stolen from his Life & Works and blended into an eldrtich mix.  I have the woman who appears on ye mound from "The Mound," aspects of "The Unnamable" and "The Statement of Randolph Carter" and "Nyarlathotep."  My narrator is named Howard, and his buddies are Samuel and Maurice.  One thing I neglected to do in Gulf was to include a new sonnet of mine own, so I used this new segment for that.  It's a very strange and decadent mix and it has brought the work up to 35,000 words.

So now I have one more wee weird tale to write, and then I begin work with Maryanne K. Snyder on my first novel.  We are going to set the novel in my invented city of exile, Gershom.  The first two tales of Gershom, "Some Buried Memory" and "The Tangled Muse," will see their initial publication on my omnibus from Centipede Press next month.  Gershom was to be my "urban" Sesqua Valley.  I got the idea after reading an anthology of tales of the New Weird.  I decided I needed to try and write some more modern stuff, try and be more up-to-date and cutting edge.  I invented my town of exiles, Gershom -- a modern yet strange city.  But when I think of exiles I immediately think of Oscar Wilde -- so one of my recurring characters in the Gershom tales is the poet/playwright, Sebastian Melmoth -- who is none other than Oscar Wilde.  Then I brought in others from ye Victorian fin-de-siecle -- and thus my "modern" city became more of a blend of Wilde's London of ye 1890's and Baudelaire's Paris -- not very modern after all.  The spirit of Oscar Wilde (to whom I paid homage in ye photograph above) is prevalent.  So, write the novel with Maryanne, who inspires me in a magical way, will be interesting, and the book will be totally non-Lovecraftian.

But I do have a Lovecraftian-to-ye-core project for next year as well.  Miskatonic River Press has asked me to write them a new collection of pure Mythos fiction.  My idea is to set each tale in one of Lovecraft's mythical towns such as Arkham or Duwich or Kingsport, &c.  And I want to make these weird tales very Mythos indeed.  We shall see if I can do so.

Next year may have a lot of my books see print: The Tangled Muse from Centipede Press, The Strange Dark One--Tales of Nyarlathotep  from Mythos Books, Uncommon Places from Hippocampus Press -- and, who knows, maybe Some Unknown Gulf of Night from Arcane Wisdom Press.  I think I can slow down a bit now.  I've been so ferociously busy because of my bad health, my congestive heart failure.  My good friend, Joyce Ring, died unexpectedly last Summer from heart failure -- she was my age, 59.  I was totally shocked and freaked-out by her death.  My own heart complications have me convinc'd that I may not have long to live, so I became obsess'd with writing as many books as possible before I kick off.  Silly, the things we dread.  But look at the work it has gotten out of me!  And now, the next challenge will be the writing of Lovecraftian novels.  I have always wanted to try and write novels and ye attmepts have always floundered, but of late I am feeling such a bravado of confidence -- who knows?  As soon as I return from MythosCon I begin work on a novel with Maryanne K. Snyder (that is her in ye photo below, where we sit in ye hilltop burying ground in Marblehead, and ye view outspread before us is that which so moved Lovecraft to ecstasy).