yule

I no longer celebrate Christmas, but when I was a kid I loved having a Christmas tree--a real one, that smelled like the woods. So it was very pleasant, last night, when Mary and S. T. had me over for din-din, & they had just put up their tree. The first Sesqua Valley tale that I wrote so many decades ago was called "O, Christmas Tree," and although that early first version wasn't very good, my sweet chum Jessica Amanda Salmonson rewrote it and published it in one of her anthologies. It was the first time I saw my byline in a gosh-darn for-real book, & it was exhilarating. 

In ye photo here I am holding ye newest volume in S. T.'s magnificent BLACK WINGS series. I am especially pleas'd with this new volume because it contains a story of mine own that was rejected from another Mythos anthology. I consider the tale, "To Move Beneath Autumnal Oaks," rather good and was surpris'd when it got rejected; so it was very pleasant when S. T. accepted it for a handsome hardcover edition; and now he has accepted it for a reprint anthology to be called THE BEST OF BLACK WINGS, so the story has an extended life. (It will also be reprinted in the trade pb volume, BLACK WINGS OF CTHULHU 6, sometime next year. )

S. T. will be taking a break from editing this series of Mythos fiction, as he is busy writing his memoirs  (!!) and working on several other books, among them a new anthology to be called APOSTLES OF THE WEIRD. For this new anthology, S. T. has accepted a new, major rewrite of one of my more popular stories, "The Tangled Muse." 

Not much else going on. My life is a happy existence of books, books, books. My wild days of being a queer punk exhibitionist are far behind me--I almoft never dress up these days, and have actually tossed out moft of my lipsticks (and, honey, I had a lot of lipstick, addicted as I was of buying any new shade that caught my fancy). Now in my antique years, my one personal identity is that of a writer of Lovecraftian weird fiction--that is the title etched into my soul. 

wishing all of ye who celebrate a Merry Christmas.