December

I do not celebrate holidays, but used to love them as a kid.  My annual holiday event now is going to S. T. Joshi's choral group concerts.  Been feeling very ill of late, and I wasn't planning on attending last night's concert; but I like to support S. T. in every way that I can, so I attended the first half and sat with his wife, Mary.  The music was gloriously beautiful, but I just couldn't get comfortable and left after the first half.

Haven't been able to write at all, such a boring situation.  One reason I love writing is because I love the grace and beauty of language, and I love how I can express myself with words.  I try'd for two months to write a story for S. T.'s forthcoming anthology, Gothic Lovecraft, but every idea I had never got beyond two pages and always seemed so lifeless.  I've tried to behave in a professional manner and force the writing--but that always produces false art, which I abhor.  I have so many ideas I want to work on, especially a book of weird fiction inspired by Wilde and another inspired by Clark Ashton Smith; but I cannot get to work on either.  I've decided that writing a novel with Jeffrey Thomas concerning our Enoch Coffin is something I cannot accomplish, so Jeff and I have agreed to work on another collection of stories, each writing 40,000.  I have a feeling the book will be a long time in coming.  I usually snap out of these funks and suddenly find myself writing as of old, furiously and happily; but this funk feels different from all others.

I have lots of stuff forthcoming.  My new chapbook, These Black Winged Ones, has just been publish'd.  An Enoch Coffin story has been selected for a reprint anthology.  I will have new tales in volumes 4 and 5 of S. T.'s Black Wings series, and the story I co-wrote with Jessica for Black Wings III will soon be reprinted when Titan Books brings that book out in paperback (as Black Wings of Cthulhu III).  PS Publishing will soon release The Starry Wisdom Library, for which I wrote a wee thing about a Sesqua Valley grimoire.  PS will also soon release Darrell Schweitzer's book of historical Cthulhu Mythos stories, That Is Not Dead, for which I wrote a story concerning the great Seattle fire of 1889.  And I have written "The Imps of Innsmouth" for Lois Gresh's book for PS Publishing, Innsmouth Nightmares.  I may have things for other anthologies that escape my mind.  I wrote a new thing some months ago for a forthcoming mythos anthology, no word yet from ye editor.  And, of course, there is ye new collection with David Barker, Spectres of Lovecraftian Horror, for which Dave and I have written two substantial new novelettes; and next summer, in time for NecronomiCon 2015 in Providence, Hippocampus Press will publish Monstrous Aftermath--& ye book will not only include the full 40,000 word revision/rewrite of Some Unknown Gulf of Night, but will conclude with the entire of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, so that ye may compare Lovecraft's original sonnets with my prose-poem "take" on them..

Dang, that's a lot of stuff!  Maybe I really do deserve a long break from work.  I have become deeply intrigued with Mormon history and scripture study, and have returned to the study of Jewish scripture as well as the Book of Mormon.  I am studying the latter in its Penguin Classics edition, which reprints Joseph Smith's original 1830 version.  Out of boredom, I have even started a new blog, Mormon Journal, in which to discuss religious mania (not wanting to bore ye with it here).  My new blog has no followers as of yet, but what ye hell...???

Oh yeah, sometime within ye next fortnight Chris from Dark Regions Press will be driving down from Portland with two boxes of the deluxe slipcased edition of World War Cthulhu for me to sign.  I love the illustration (pictured here) for my story therein, "To Hold ye White Husk."  I hope to talk Chris into doing a YouTube vlog with me during which we will shew ye book.

And, of course, I will have critical essays in four of the six volumes of ye Lovecraft Illustrated series being published by PS Publishing.  Volume four will be The Shadow out of Time, for which I have written a wee essay, and for which S. T. has written a new Introduction.  I will also have essays for the volumes The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour out of Space, and The Whisperer in Darkness.  Dang, I have been a productive wee Lovecraftian!  Ia! Ia!!