Wish I Was Going to Salt Lake City

That's me with Scott Edelman at the signing session for World Horror Convention, held in Salt Lake City in 2008.  It was one of the finest cons I've ever attended, small and intimate but very worthwhile.  It was my first time back in Salt Lake City since returning from my Mormon mission in 1972.  My pa was from Midvale, Utah, and we used to drive to Utah every summer, when I was a kid, and stay for two weeks.  My grandparents worked in the Salt Lake LDS Temple.  I used to take the bus from Midvale to Temple Square every summer and bask in the wonder of Utah Mormonism, so different from what was offered to an LDS kid in Seattle.  I loved being back in Salt Lake for WHC, spent a day with my relatives, bought a new set of LDS scriptures at Deseret Books, went to Temple Square every day.   It was a magick week for me, not only because I had returned to my religion, but because I felt that I had truly "found myself" as a genre writer, felt that I was doing exactly what I needed to do as an author of Lovecraftian horror. 

I doubt that I shall be attending any future conventions or HPL film festivals, due to the situation at home (having to take care of mom, who is crippled and suffering from intense dementia) and my own bad health and lack of $$$.  I don't mind, really, I have so little energy these days, and my life now should be dedicated to staying home and writing my final books.  I've always prided myself that, unlike H. P. Lovecraft, I am an authentic Lovecraftian recluse.  But I do painfully regret having to miss WHC this year, as it is being held once again in Salt Lake City, and its theme is "At the Mountains of Madness"!!  Two of my publishers (Centipede Press and Hippocampus Press) will be there, and Derrick of Hippocampus will receive an award during the Bram Stoker banquet.  (I am hopeful that the next book from Hippocampus, my own UNCOMMON PLACES, will be out in time for the convention.....)  And I haven't seen Jerad since the official release of THE TANGLED MUSE from Centipede early last year.  (The book has just gone out of print.)  So, this year's WHC is an event that I really should be attending. 

But I have things to do.  I thought I would be content with not having a new book out next year; but that year is 2013, such a delicious date!  How can I not try to have a book out in 2013??  Nay, the more I brooded upon it, ye more I knew that I would not be able to rest unless I try'd, at least try'd, to write a new book this year for publication next.  And so I am trying, in earnest, to write another book inspir'd by Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, but this time a collection of actual stories rather than prose-poems and vignettes.  I plan on calling the book Monstrous Aftermath, & we'll see if I can actually write ye damn'd thing this year and then offer it to a publisher for release next year.  To the task of that writing, I nigh return.

ye Queen of Eldritch Horror at MythosCon, wearing me Miskatonic River Press hat