Slowing Down

That's me walking past a church in Marblehead that may have inspired the church mention'd by Lovecraft in "The Festival."  I am carefully studying all of Lovecraft's Kingsport stories as I prepare to write a new Kingsport novelette for my forthcoming book from Miskatonic River Press, Gathered Dust and Others.  One of the real joys of working on a book set in "Lovecraft country" is that I can completely escape from modern time and prosaic reality, and I can sink my psyche into the realms created by H. P. Lovecraft.  It's a world I need more than ever.  This month has been a pathetic waste of time.  I've been lazy, but it's mostly a product of lack of sleep.  Insomnia has become a huge dilemma.  I simply cannot sleep, there is too much on my mind.  I recline in bed and my mind won't stop whirling and buzzing.  Without sleep, my brain cannot function as a writer's brain must, with clarity and rest.  Honey, it sucks.  Part of the problem is that I've taken on too many projects, for there are so many cool books that I want to write for -- but I need to concentrate on my collections.  I have three collaborative projects ahead of me, and collaboration is really difficult because you have to please the person with whom you are working, not just yourself.  So I've told some of the editors that I was gonna write for, "sorry, I need to bow out," and just concentrate on the books that really mater to me, my collections.

I am so ready to have a new book published.  This is another source of frustration.  I still have no idea when The Tangled Muse will see print from Centipede Press.  I may have to wait until early Spring to see a new book out, and that seems a long ways away.  I am now trying to complete two collaborative stories.  I am writing a story for Arkham Nightmares with Maryanne, and she has very definite ideas about what makes a story work.  I am also working with a new collaborator, Jacob Orloff, who has written a fine collection of weird fiction that he allowed me to read.  He is a very young writer but already has a fairly solid style and a rich imagination, and I am determined to have the story I am writing with him completed by this month.

I hope to find my energy again.  I think I became too over-confident at the end of last year, when I wrote Some Unknown Gulf of Night in six weeks -- it made me feel like I can do anything, when in truth the writing of that wee book was a freakish incident of amazing inspiration.  It's not the kind of thing one can replicate at will.

Arcane Wisdom has announced and are taking pre-orders for the first volume of S. T. Joshi's two-volume set of Lovecraft's revisions and collaborations.  It is going to be a fabulous set!  You may place pre-orders at Horrormall.