missing Providence

Ye above photo was taken on one of my happiest nights, when we gather'd in ye Providence Athenaeum on ye Thursday night when S. T. gave his magnificent speech at ye First Baptist Church.  This was the scene of ye unveiling of the Lovecraft Bronze Bust.  I'm seen here with S. T. and Donavan K. Loucks (who runs ye finest Lovecraft site of all time, The H. P. Lovecraft Archive www.hplovecraft.com).  This room had a display, on loan from Hay Library, of original Lovecraft manuscripts, sketches he made of Cthulhu and ye ghouls in "Pickman's Model," original artwork that Robert Bloch painted and sent to Lovecraft when Bloch was a teenager, rare books &c &c &c.

Although I am unable to concentrate on new writing at ye moment, when I first return'd from Providence and NecronomiCon I found myself overflowing with creative energy, and I wrote a number of new things.  One of the new tales, a new story set in mine beloved Kingsport, was accepted by S. T. for Black Wings IV, and that pleas'd me as I thought I wouldn't be able to contribute a yarn to that anthology.  I have an idea for a story I want to submit to the fifth volume in S. T.'s series, a sexy number that borrows influences from "The Picture in the House" and "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family."  This latter story is a good example of how some wee mention in a Lovecraft tale can set my imagination churning and inspire new weird fiction of my own.  In the story, as ye author relates the family history of the doom'd clan, he mentions:  "Sir Alfred Jermyn was a baronet before his fourth birthday, but his tastes never matched his title.  At twenty he joined a band of music-hall performers, and at thirty-six had deserted his wife and child to travel with an itinerant American circus."  Now there, in two sentences, is the plot germ for what could in itself be a fascinating story of the cursed Jermyn line.  Did the child of he and his deserted wife wear ye family stigmatic?  What happened to that child?  In my story idea, I have the great granddaughter of that union arrive in Arkham, during a bike tour of New England, and take shelter from a storm in a ramshackle barn adjacent to a strange old crumbling house, a house similar in aura to the one described in "The Picture in the House."  This is the way in which Lovecraft's fiction continues to inspire my own Lovecraftian weird fiction, and it is an example of what it means to be an obsess'd Lovecraft fanboy who cannot cease in ye writing of tales "in ye Lovecraft tradition."

I'm taking a wee break from writing, I think.  I want to dream about Providence, and then I will begin to write the new book, IN DARK OF PROVIDENCE, in which moft of ye tales will be set in Providence.  The book will be publish'd by Hippocampus Press, and we hope to have it out just in time for ye next NecronomiCon in 2015.  S. T. will be working with me as my editor.