S. T. Joshi’s Blog
February 8, 2012
I am at last in receipt of the new Hippocampus Press publications, all of which should have come out last year (they are in fact dated 2011) but were delayed for one reason or another. I have limited copies of these items and will be happy to sell them to interested customers at the prices indicated: H. P. Lovecraft, Letters to James F. Morton ($20.00); Ann K. Schwader, Twisted in Dream: Collected Weird Poetry ($10.00); Adam Niswander, The Nemesis of Night ($15.00); Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu ($15.00); Robert H. Waugh, A Monster of Voices: Speaking for H. P. Lovecraft ($15.00). They are all sensational books, so better get them soon!
Another slightly delayed book is a splendid anthology of original stories edited by Jason V Brock and William F. Nolan, The Devil’s Coattails (Cycatrix Press, 2011), to which I wrote the foreword. This book contains wonderful new stories by Ramsey Campbell, John Shirley, Melanie Tem, and all manner of other writers. It can be ordered here: http://jasunni.mybigcommerce.com/cycatrix-press-books/special-the-devils-coattails-more-dispatches-from-the-dark-frontier-trade-hardcover/. On a related note, I am happy to report that my short story “‘You’ll Reach There in Time’” will be included in Jason Brock’s next anthology, tentatively titled Dark Fantastic: Interfacing with the Weird. This story was actually written all the way back in 1974, when I was sixteen years old, and actually won honourable mention in a Purdue University short story contest for high school students. I printed the original version in an EOD zine, Ken Neily’s Lovecraftian Ramblings (February 1987). When Jason asked me to write a story for his new anthology, I was a bit stumped. I actually wrote exactly one sentence of a story I had had in mind for quite some time, but could progress no further on it. Then I decided to resurrect my old story and see if it could be salvaged. I felt it could be, so I pruned some of the more embarrassingly ludicrous portions of it and sent it in. I actually think it’s a reasonably good story. Imagine having written it 38 years ago!
Another recent bit of writing was an essay, “Master and Pupil: August Derleth and Ramsey Campbell’s First Book,” a detailed examination of the stories that Campbell submitted to Derleth in 1961–63, especially those constituting The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (Arkham House, 1964). I was aided in the task by my own edition of the letters of Campbell and Derleth (titled Letters to Arkham and due out this year—I hope—from PS Publishing) and Campbell’s The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants (PS Publishing, 2011), which includes all the stories in question and restores the title that Campbell had wished for his 1964 volume. My essay will appear in a volume of essays on Campbell. I am not sure who will be publishing this book, but I imagine it will be a good book.
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