Eldritch Revelation!

The above recording gets a bit garbled at times, but I love this reading of one of my favourite tales by HPL.  Mike Davis, of ye Lovecraft eZine, alerted me to this video on YouTube--& it shocked me to remember that I had this record in the 1960's--& thus it served as my introduction to the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft!   I had always thought that my real interest in Lovecraft's weird fiction began while I was in Ireland as a Mormon missionary and corresponding with Robert Bloch.  I was obsessed with horror films when I was a kid, and determined that my career would be that of horror film actor.  I had no interest in reading.  My horror film buddy, Brian Wise, was a huge reader of horror, and I remember he once shew'd me a jacketless edition of the Arkham House edition, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, which he assured me was very rare and for which he had paid the outstanding sum of $65.  Then one of my favourite horror film fanzines, Gore Creatures, did an issue which was almost entirely devoted to a huge article by editor Gary Svehla on HPL.  So, I have to now adjust my memory of my first acquaintance with H. P. Lovecraft, which came in the 1960's in the form of this recording by Roddy McDowall.

It is cool and strange, the effect of listening to a reading of a Lovecraft tale.  It immediately fills me with a deep creative ache, the need to write Lovecraftian weird fiction.  And it makes me want to write stories that are intimately wed to Lovecraft's works, as I recently did by writing my own version of "The Lurking Fear."  Lovecraft is such a drug to me--pumping my blood with ye fire of creativity.  That makes times like this, when I am unable to write, really dull & gloomy.  The only time I feel absolutely alive is when I'm writing.

I've written my own sequel to "The Hound," and a delightful reading of my tale may be found in ye audio offerings of the Lovecraft eZine.