Staggering Forth

One of my great disappointments in life is my laziness and lack of self-discipline in regards to being a writer.  The past two months have seen me too weary, too stressed-out, too apathetic, to even want to work on fiction.  I envy my professional friends who are able to sit down and write every day.  I could never be so professional in attitude or behavior.  I write when I can, when I am in the mood.  That I have written so much over the past few years was a fluke, inspir'd by the fact that I went through this idiot madness where I thought I was doomed to die any day of congestive heart failure.  So I write like crazy.  My last few heart check-ups have convinc'd me that, although I still have heart disease, I am basically okay and in fairly good health, so I can stop being such a drama queen and relax.  The one good thing about not being able to write is that I have spent a lot of time doing yardwork.  Oy, how I hate yardwork--yet how good it feels to have trimmed the huge hedges in the front yard.  I just needed the right tools.

The hot weather has also kept me from being able to write--I usually write less during ye summer months.  I do have one new book forthcoming, SPECTRES OF LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR, written in collaboration with David Barker and to be publish'd by Dark Renaissance Books.  But other projects have been waiting and waiting for me to begin them, including the Enoch Coffin novel I want to write with Jeffrey Thomas and the sequel to THE REVENANT OF REBECCA PASCAL that I want to write with David Barker.  On my own I've been struggling with a story for BLACK WINGS V, and I have one other story that I've promised to an editor for her forthcoming Mythos anthology.  I was very happy to have had a spoken-word acceptance of a story while attending S. T. and Mary's wedding.  

The big project now is my second collection for Centipede Press.  This book will reprint lots of older things, such as stories that have appeared in various anthologies, three or four stories from BOHEMIANS OF SESQUA VALLEY, and the new 40,000 word version of SOME UNKNOWN GULF OF NIGHT.  I also plan on writing two new Enoch Coffin tales for the book, plus other things.  I'm working with S. T. as editor on ye book, and we are going to take our time on it.  After that, I am utterly clueless.  

I am firm in my decision to stop attending conventions and film festivals.  I just get too worn out and no longer enjoy such events.  People who know little of H. P. Lovecraft's life falsely claim that he was an "eccentric recluse" when in fact he was the complete opposite; I intend to become an authentic eccentric recluse.  Yuggoth knows I have ye eccentricity in full: