Update

In October of 2007, my friends took me on a three-week tour of New England and New York.  We spent four days in Providence, and they were the happiest four days of my life.  For the Lovecraftian, Providence can be a magick city.  And I felt this ache of desire:  I had to move to Providence, to dwell there in my final years and become a Providence writer of Lovecraftian weird fiction.  The ache to dwell in dark of Providence is still there, and I will be overjoy'd to visit the city in August for NecronomiCon 2013 ~~ but I am finding Seattle a rather good town in which to dwell during my years of fading away.  The above photo explains why, partially:  the Northwest has its share of awesome writers.  Seated is Greg Bear, and standing next to me, with his hand on Greg's shoulder, is William F. Nolan--who is still actively writing!  On the one end is Sunni Brock, and she and her husband Jason V Brock have added to the pure pleasure of my existence, and they are both doing amazing things in the genre.  We recently had a visit from our genre's finest editor, Ellen Datlow, who is standing next to Sunni.  Next to Sunni is horror author Nancy Holder, four-time winner of ye Bram Stoker Award--she and Ellen were in town for a convention with which HWA was involved. 

And there, next to Bill Nolan, is the man who has made living in Seattle a rare Lovecraftian treat--the world's foremost Lovecraft scholar and editor, S. T. Joshi.  I nearly fainted, years ago, when I learned that S. T. had moved to Seattle.  How could such a thing be real?  He was one of the very few people whom I come close to worshiping because of his work on Lovecraft's texts, Lovecraft's biography, &c &c.  He was the one critic whose opinion means anything to me--because I feel that, as one who is as intimate with Lovecraft as I am, he is one of the very few people who can completely "get" my fiction, and thus if he thought my work had validity, I was validated indeed as an author.  But now he is one of my most intimate friends, always a delight; and he is an editor for whom I love to write.  Landing a new story in his forthcoming anthology from Fedogan & Bremer, Searchers After Horror, made me moist with deep delight.

So, I think I'm going to stay in Seattle, in this house that my father had built when I was five years old.  I've turned mother's bedroom into my writing room.  It killed me to have the room so vacant (we moved mom's hospital bed with her to the rest home).  So when my buddy Nick came and assembled my new desk, it really helped to make this room feel like a room in which I can write.

My companion, Ghostboy, and I visited mother today, and she was more alert than usual.  She knew who he was and called him by his correct name, and she was fairly talkative, although much of what she utters makes no sense.  It's going to be a rough month, February.

 

But it is also going to be an amazing month, because one of my finest books will be publish'd on February 19th by Dark Regions Press.  Encounters with Enoch Coffin, by Jeffrey Thomas and W. H. Pug-wug, will have a special deluxe edition of 40 copies, selling at $99 per book.  Then there will be a signed and numbered edition of 150 copies.  Extra care is going to grace the creation of the book, the theme of which is a depraved, daemonic New England artist, Enoch Coffin, who is our own version of H. P. Lovecraft's wicked Richard Upton Pickman.  The book will have interior artwork for each individual tale by Clint R. Leduc.  The wrap-around jacket will feature the art of Santiago Caruso~~above is the back jacket portrait of our artist.  Jeff and I are scheduled to do a live chat thing on the day of the book's release.   I cannot help but be really excited about this book, because it is so over-the-top Lovecraftian.  I feel that some few of the novelettes that I have written for it are among the finest things I have ever penned.  So, even though next month is going to be profoundly wretched and sad--it will also be one of aesthetic creative delight.

ENCOUNTERS WITH ENOCH COFFIN

by

Jeffrey Thomas & W. H. Pugmire

Jacket art by Santiago Caruso

Interior Art by Clint R. Leduc

Dark Regions Press, February 2013

www.darkregions.com 

Contents

Ye Unkempt Thing

Matter of Truth and Death

Beneath Arkham

Spectral Evidence

They Smell of Thunder

Mystic Articulation

Every Exquisite Thing

Impossible Color

Ecstasy in Aberration

Shadow Puppets

Fearless Symmetry

Unto the Child of Woman