My Modern Miracle

I'm having din-din with S. T. Joshi this week-end.  The magick of this situation has yet to dull.  I have worshiped the man and his Lovecraftian labors for so many years--and so the idea that he would meet a Seattle girl and move to my hometown is -- it's incredible.  My ego loves it when people dig my books--but as far as real criticism goes, the only critic whose opinion means anything to me is S. T.'s; because he is as obsess'd with Lovecraft as I am, and far more intimate with Lovecraft's fiction; & I feel that to truly "get" my weird fiction, one has to be familiar with Lovecraft.  S. T. "gets" me like no other.

It is no coincidence that, since he has moved to Seattle, my output as an author has increased daemonically.  Working with him as my editor has been a complete and utter joy.  It began when I began to compile and then write new material for The Fungal Stain and other Dreams.  I wanted to give that book a smooth narrative tone, and thus I went back and revised all of the old material, bringing it up to my current fictive voice.  And then I worked so as to write new stories that were lengthier than the thing I usually did.  I wanted to write "real" stories that wou'd impress my fabulous editor.  This then reached its height when Jerad invited me to compile an omnibus of my work for Centipede Press.  With Fungal Stain, I had typed the entire book on an electric typewriter--I had no computer and thus could not use Microsoft Word &c.  I then sent the entire thing to S. T., who had to scan the entire book!  When Jerad agreed to publish The Tangled Muse, S. T. said, "We're not doing it your old way any longer.  Get online and get email."  Thus commanded, I obey'd--and thus my writing life took on new vitality.  It was so much easier to write using my keyboard and Microsoft Word!  I began to type my rough drafts right into ye laptop, whereas before I always wrote them out in longhand.  And then I would print them out and revise, and revising was so easy!  No more typing correction fluid!

My production increased.  I was no longer content with writing story after story--I now began to visualize books.  I no longer wanted my books to be thrown together, a compilation of old things.  I wanted books planned, I wanted them to have themes and smooth narrative flow.  It has become intoxicating, this writing of books.  I love that my next book will have as its theme ye Crawling Chaos--Nyarlathotep.  I love that my next book after that will be a book of entirely new fiction, Encounters with Enoch Coffin, for which I wrote six stories and Jeffrey Thomas wrote the other six.  None of this would have happen'd were it not for S. T. coming to Seattle, becoming my main editor and my homie.  It's a miracle, and I consider myself the luckiest queen in ye world because of it.