Emotional Aesthetic Expansion

Got a parcel from Hippocampus Press this morning.  One of many books included was ye above, whut I have been waiting for, waiting for impatiently.  I knew, instinctively, that the book wou'd have an effect on my Lovecraftian soul--I just couldn't comprehend the enormity of that effect.  H. P. Lovecraft is a passion on which I feed, and one that feeds me as an artist.  Indeed, more and more, I exist only as a writer who works in ye genre of Lovecraftian weird fiction.  That artistic focus does not ever fade, but burns more vividly, more outrageously, each year.  It is like some ecstasy of madness.  It makes me gasp, and turns my soul into a pit of aching that can only be eased by the writing of Lovecraftian weird fiction.

And mostly it is the result of my adoration for S. T. Joshi.  He is the fabulous fiend who forever feeds my frenzy.  It was not just chance, or luck, that brought S. T. to live in Seattle--it was my nameless fate.  I succumb to it absolutely.  I felt it just now, as I was reading Lovecraft and a World in Transition, this incredible creative ache to write Lovecraftian horror.  It's like being utterly in love and being unable to stop talking about my beloved--I need to babble more and more, through poetry & prose, of my adoration for H. P. Lovecraft.  It ain't normal.  And it's getting worse.

Another book included in ye parcel from Derrick was Joshi 200--a listing of S. T.'s first two-hundred books.  In the section of forthcoming book, I scanned ye titles of the tales that will be featured in the two volumes of The Madness of Cthulhu, to be publish'd by Titan Books.  Oh My Holy Yuggoth--what a wondrous anthology that will be!  And then I perused ye listing for The Variorum Lovecraft:

H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition.
New York: Hippocampus Press, 2014-15, 4 vols.
Notes. An entirely revised edition of my corrected texts of Lovecraft's fiction, based on a renewed examination of the textual status of the tales.  Texual variants in all significant appearances of each story are printed.  Volumes 1-3 (to appear later in 2014) will contain the original fiction; Volume 4 will include the revisions and collaborations along with an index of names and titles to all four volumes.

Oy, be still mine eldritch heart.....

and at around ye same time as those first three volumes slither forth, Liveright will publish ye beautiful hardcover edition of The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft.  So, you see, there can never be any lessening of my cosmic fever, because the food of ye gawgs, these wonderful editions, keep on coming and feeding my fanboy flame.  And the more than flame burns, the more I need to kindle it with ye writing of my own books of Lovecraftian weird fiction.  There will be no end, until my happy day o' death.

I go to-morrow to S. T. and Mary's Labor Day Cookout.  He hasn't yet received his own copies of Lovecraft and a World in Transition, so I'm gonna take mine and let him fondle it.  I will sit there, in his living room, and feed on the Lovecraftian aura that, try as he may, he can never shed ("I'm more than just a Lovecraft guy," he assures us, again & again...); and then I will spend the rest of ye week writing....feverishly...