The Writing Begins to Flow --- :-}

The leatherbound-with-slipcase edition of Gathered Dust and Others has sold out in pre-order, and the regular $40 hardcover editions seem to be selling quickly.  My thanks to all who have order'd it!  Ooo, how I love that cover painting by Wayne Miller.  It captures the atmosphere of the book's title story exactly.

I completed, at 8,256 words, what I consider my definitive tale of Lovecraft's Dunwich, "They Smell of Thunder."  I have finally taught myself how to write in this new environment of being upstairs in the dining room, where I need to be to keep a closer watch on me mum.  This new tale is for another book I am writing for Dark Regions Press, a collaborative book with the amazing Jeffrey Thomas.  (Oh, wow, I just figur'd out how to do colour'd text....)  The book consists of stories concerning a sinister New England artist, Enoch Coffin, and his encounters with ye supernatural, with which he communes so as to aid his art.  I have now penned two tales and have started work on the next, set in Kingsport and tentatively entitled "Mystic Articulation."  Jeff has written a number of excellent stories, and this is gonna be one rad book.  His tales are set in the real New England while mine are set in Lovecraft's invented mythic cities.

I have also been trying to work on an interplanetary tale in the tradition of Clark Ashton Smith, for a collection of CAS-inspired stories that I am writing with Maryanne K. Snyder.  Thus far this new idea has not worked out, and I am probably going to abandon it and find something more to my liking.  I am, perhaps, not capable of finding the interest needed for the writing of tales set on other worlds.    I do have an idea for another tale, inspir'd by my reading of Clark's translations of Baudelaire and his story, "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros."  My initial concern with writing this book with Maryanne was that the works not be in any way Lovecraftian but rather try to evoke the spirit (although not the language) of Clark Ashton Smith.  But now I'm just gonna go ahead and write whatever comes our way.  Our influences are legion.

Still have no word on the release of Some Unknown Gulf of Night..  I hope that the book will be in our hot hands soon.  It's weird:  I'll have that book released this month, the Dark Regions book next month, and the Miskatonic River Press book the following month.  How utterly insane, to have one book each for ye next three months.  Who can afford to buy yem all?  My books must needs compete with each other.  Utter lunacy.  I vow never to have more than two books out per year from now on.  Preferably one book a year, but I keep writing them so quickly that, well............

That's me in the Davy Crockett get-up with the Jimmy Durante glasses, next to my older sister, Linda.  Must have been 1956 or 1957.  How strange to have grown so antient.  Hmmmmm, it looks like my sis is holding a copy of ye Necronomicon!!!