Lovecraftian Mail Day!


You know that H. P. Lovecraft has rather "taken over" your life when all four pieces of ye day's mail are Lovecraftian in nature. I am especially happy to see my cont. copy of Cthulhu Fhtagn!, ye new all-original anthology edited by Ross E. Lockhart. My story therein is set in Providence, R. I., and was inspir'd by my last visit to that city in 2013, when I attended NecronomiCon

To-day's poft brought two new titles from PS Publishing. H. P. Lovecraft: Weird Poems--The Complete Poems from Weird Tales, edited by Stephen Jones, with illustrations by Pete Von Sholly. It's a wee item, aye (71 pages), but it collects all of ye poems by E'ch-Pi-El that I admire, including many of ye Fungi from Yuggoth sonnets, with which I am obsess'd. There is, however, one grotesque note in editor Stephen's Introduction. He writes:
"...Rejecting the old-fashioned monsters of Gothic horror, he [Lovecraft]made his ancient gods sentient creatures from distant worlds, other dimensions or divergent planes of existence.
"As he explained: 'All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practising Black Magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again.'"
The is known as the "Black Magic quote", and it has been determined that it is not by Lovecraft at all, that he never wrote such a thing and that it is probably a mis-remembering of an actual quote from one of HPL's letters. That a modern editor of H. P. Lovecraft should use this fake quotation as if it has any authenticity at this time is utterly absurd.

  Ye other book is a new collection by David Hambling, The Dulwich Horror & Others, with a Foreword by S. T. Joshi. I don't bother reading much new Mythos fiction, unless it's in an anthology for which I have also penned a wee tale; but I am looking forward to reading this book, as I've heard good things about ye author's work. And I always enjoy Lovecraftian fiction set in Great Britain.

I also got, in to-day's mail, the newest mailing of Ye Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association. Ye E.O.D. is an apa made up of Lovecraftians. Our Official Editor is S. T. Joshi, who mails us four parcels a year. As members, we pay a wee membership fee, and then must sent a printed contribute amounting to six pages every six months. Some contributions are actual fanzines of several pages; some are wee things of but one or two pages. I didn't contribute anything to this mailing, but am working on a bigger-than-usual offering for next time, of which I already have four pages printed.

Okay, I need to return to work on the dreamlands novel that I am writing with David Barker, a novel to be publish'd next year by Dark Renaissance Books. Shalom, my ducks.






Comments

  1. ...still on tenterhooks waiting for your reaction to Dulwich Horror...!

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