We’ve been darned quiet recently, so today we mention a quick burst of illustrative genius, though not from us, but from that terrific Argentinian artist Sebastian Cabrol. Most of the quiet part was because old greydog has a new novel coming out very soon, and a revised collection – and one of anthologies he’s editing is also out. Which has sort of put a spike in some of the usual blethering. And we’ve been away at the coast a lot, running the longdogs. But autumn creeps in, and we are sliding back into action (we think).

(A quick catch up on the pups: Chilli, the Ghost Dog, has become addicted to Dentastix and now prefers them to her lamb bones. As for Django the Boy Wonder, he is much as always, except that we had to get rid of his favourite big red chair, as he had eaten too much of it. He’s sulking.)

Meanwhile, the author, greydog, has more bits dropping off him than usual, but has been slogging away. We’ll say more about his book ‘The Assassin’s Coin’, the larger project with artist/writer Alan M Clark of which it forms a part, and other stuff next week (audience falls unconscious). For now, we are delighted to say that the flagship anthology for Occult Detective Quarterly magazine is now available in print!

Edited by John Linwood Grant and Dave Brzeski, this is a massive 400 page anthology of new, longer supernatural fiction – novelettes and a novella – with everything from wild pulp adventure to subtle, almost Gothic hauntings. Plus grizzled PIs and serious occult detectives, an inventive rabbi in first century Palestine, an English country house mystery, street gangs of seventies New York and more:

• Her Silks and Fine Array – Amanda DeWees
• Farside – Willie Meikle
• A Shadow Against the Stars – Charles R. Rutledge
• Lazarus Come Forth – Robert Pohle
• Ed Erdelac – Conquer Comes Correct
• Mrs. Lillicrop Investigates – Bev Allen
• Ritual Killings – Sam Edwards
•  Adrian Cole – At Midnight All the Agents
• Fighters of Fear (a rare long essay on the subject from the nineties) – Mike Ashley

The book includes new commissioned b/w art, and the connection to today’s artist shout-out is that the cover is by Sebastian Cabrol…

SEBASTIAN CABROL

Fresh from an exhibition of his work in his home country, Sebastian provided us with a haunting image for the ODQP anthology, and one of the interior illustrations. Some of you may know that he also provided the memorable cover for Occult Detective Quarterly #4, and other interiors for the magazine.

Equally effective in colour and in black and white, Sebastian Cabrol’s art is possibly even more effective because he’s a genuine enthusiast of supernatural and horror literature – we’ve had a number of on-line chats with him which demonstrated this (and which also showed how crap our Spanish is compared to his command of English).

For those of you interested, we first interviewed him almost three years ago, discussing his work and his art, plus we ran a piece about working with Sebastian by another hugely creative talent from Argentina, Diego Arandojo:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/sebastian-cabrol-strange-secrets-of-south-america/

THE GATHERER

So we because we love both weird fiction and art, we had to have a quick mention on greydogtales of his latest project, which has a Kickstarter campaign running right now. ‘The Gatherer’ is an 80+ page graphic novel, drawn by Sebastian Cabrol, written by Emilia Pedrazzoli & Emiliano Pinto, and coloured and lettered by Omar Estévez. It looks fantastic.

“In the wee small hours of a cold winter’s night, a meteorite falls down on the dockland of a big city, bringing a dangerous alien parasite inside.

“Struggling to survive in an unknown and hostile environment, the sneaky visitor will take control of an eccentric tramp called Luis.

“The tramp will become the perfect vessel to give the despicable guest both power and body…”

‘The Gatherer’ has a strong film influence and an almost exclusively visual narrative resource is used to carry out the story. The intention is to pay tribute to cult genre movies both from the graphics and scripting standpoints. The book references horror and sci-fi films from the late seventies and the eighties, such as Prince of Darkness (Carpenter, 1987), The Thing (Carpenter, 1982), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978), Possession (Zulawski, 1981) The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986), Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981) and The Lords of Salem (Zombie, 2012).

There are tons of affordable rewards and extras, so go take a look now.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1267908785/the-gatherer-vol-1-for-80s-cult-horror-fans/

Meanwhile, the new anthology ‘ODQ Presents’ can be purchased at this very moment from Amazon UK and Amazon US.

US – http://a.co/d/iXrqZ3o

UK – http://amzn.eu/d/3d00qRZ

NEXT WEEK: Back in gear and updating you on all sorts, we hope…

In which we bring you the usual sort of reader news: a huge forthcoming collection of Sherlock Holmes cases (the detective bit) which includes the truth behind ‘The Musgrave Ritual’, the Kickstarter campaign for a terrific collection of dark stories (the scary bit) from some of the greats in weird fiction, and something in between – a most stimulating anthology of ‘Tales of Mesmerism and Mystery’ by classic writers (the mesmeric bit).

Naturally, we retain our fondness for occult detectives, those doomed meddlers who combine both the weird and the detection aspects, so we will note that the also fairly huge anthology Occult Detective Quarterly Presents is due out very soon from Ulthar Press, and we’ll bring you the full low-down on that when it’s available.

For today, let us wander into other waters, starting backwards as usual…

Mesmeric Meddling

Just released is a new anthology by writer/editor and erudite scholar-about-town Tim Prasil. Mesmerism and spiritualism were rather entwined in the nineteenth century, with mediums often described as being in a mesmeric or hypnotic trance. Stage shows might combine elements of both ‘disciplines’, though some considered mesmerism to be a scientific fact whilst viewing spiritualism as hokum or an unproven venture.

Figures with impressive scientific credentials or cultural influence lined up on all sides to espouse their favourite interpretations, one of these being Arthur Conan Doyle, who grew to consider both as genuine practices. The following was published in the The Evening News (Portsmouth) on 9 February 1889

“A gathering between twenty thirty medical and scientific men and journalists of Portsmouth last night assembled by invitation in the small hall of the Portland Hall, Southsea, on the occasion of a séance given by professor Milo de Meyer, whose experiments in hypnotism have lately attracted much attention on the Continent and in London and Brighton. As was explained by the gentleman who acted as M. De Meyer’s interpreter, the Professor treats the subject of animal magnetism on a scientific basis, and claims that its practice would be beneficial in the case of many surgical operations. Ten young men were introduced as “subjects,” is being explained that they were Portsmouth residents, who had been selected beforehand in order to save time, the Professor having found that only about twenty-five per cent. of people in general were susceptible of hypnotism at the first attempt. Dr. Conan Doyle having volunteered to swell the number of would-be subjects, the experiments began.”

A more detailed account can be found here:

https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Hypnotism_at_Southsea

In Monsieur Prasil’s new book, although he is is indeed familiar with early spiritualism and tales of hauntings, he rings a welcome change by focussing on the mesmeric theme in fiction. It deserves a more in-depth review, but for the moment we shall give you the basics:

Entranced by Eyes of Evil: Tales of Mesmerism and Mystery (Phantom Traditions Library) (Volume 1)

Edited by Tim Prasil

“More than one name has been applied to the phenomenon of one person putting another into a deep trance–and into a deep state of submission. But how far does this power truly go? Can a devious hypnotist entrance an unknowing subject from across a room? Can a mesmerized person be compelled to commit murder? Can a hypnotic spell extend beyond death?

“In the 1800s, such questions had no certain answers, and the extreme possibilities were explored by fiction writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Ambrose Bierce. These and fourteen more authors spin tales about unbounded hypnotism in Entranced by Eyes of Evil: Tales of Mesmerism and Mystery.”

This enterprising volume brings together stories from 1814 (‘Der Magnetiseur’ by E T A Hoffman) to 1900 (‘Love’s Counter-Spell’ by C Wynn Williams).

http://a.co/cFXCzT4

http://amzn.eu/7xPvyV5

from Brom Bones Books

(E T A Hoffman is someone we should talk about at some future date – a most interesting early weird fiction author perhaps best known for The Golden Pot and his Devil’s Elixir.)

Ashes or Entropy?

Our second mention is for a Kickstarter campaign which is currently underway:

“Nightscape Press is proud to present ASHES AND ENTROPY edited by Robert S. Wilson, an anthology of cosmic horror and noir/neo-noir. ASHES AND ENTROPY will include brand new stories by Laird Barron, Damien Angelica Walters, John Langan, Kristi DeMeester, Jon Padgett, Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, Lucy A. Snyder, Tim Waggoner, Jessica McHugh, Paul Michael Anderson, Max Booth III, Lynne Jamneck, Greg Sisco, Lisa Mannetti, Nate Southard, Erinn Kemper, Matthew M. Bartlett, Autumn Christian, and will be published in December of 2018.”

A terrific line-up, you’ll agree, with some of the hottest names in weird fiction. You can find out all about Ashes and Entropy, which has a wide range of options and rewards, by checking out the campaign link below. Go do that thing!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/875540908/ashes-and-entropy/description

Sherlock Holmes: Adventures Beyond the Canon

Finally, a project dear to our hearts, possibly because old greydog happens to have a story in it. So no conflict of interest there, then. We return to dear Sherlock Holmes, this time in a rather magnificent three volume set exploring the truth behind some canonical cases and the consequences of others.

Belanger Books have amassed a wealth of brand new stories from some of the most talented Holmes pastiche writers today, in order to fill out the world of Baker Street. As a bonus, these volumes are edited by David Marcum,  the most experienced and well-read editor of canonical Holmes stories in captivity.

“Sherlock Holmes himself would have us believe that, once a case was finished, it – or the people involved – never crossed his mind again. “A client is to me a mere unit,” he once told Watson, “a factor in a problem.” And yet, in a career spanning multiple decades and thousands of cases, he must have occasionally re-crossed paths with previous clients – and the occasional villain as well!!!

“This anthology, with twenty-nine brand new stories spread over three volumes, reveals some of those sequel investigations. There are stories ranging from Holmes’s early days in Montague Street, through the legendary Baker Street years, and well into his retirement. We meet former clients with new problems, and former adversaries too. Sometimes we find that the published Canonical version of a story was only the beginning, while other tales in this collection reveal what was really going on during the original narratives.”

Repeat-offender John Linwood Grant chose to re-examine the evidence in the popular story ‘The Musgrave Ritual’, due to the fatal flaws in the original. In doing so, he claims to have come up with an entirely different interpretation which resolves the case with finality. Loose ends and logical conundrums are explained in a spiffing yarn of a family that has survived centuries of in-fighting to end with the daughter of Sir Reginald Musgrave discovering out the grisly truth…

“It is time,” said Holmes, “To mend the utter folly of youth, the crass enthusiasm which I once displayed for the puzzle alone, and not the people involved.”

“There was more to the affair than you deduced?”

“More? In some ways far more, and also less. The fact is, Watson, that I deluded myself, and were I a detective inspector, I would dismiss myself from the Force as a fool, a nincompoop. Twenty years have passed, and it was only in the last fortnight, bereft of stimulation, that I made certain vital connections. Twenty years! The news of Musgrave’s illness was the spur, and I the lumpen beast of burden who finally understood.”

I frowned. “Surely, it was only your third or fourth case. You were young–”

“And should have been needle-sharp. No, there are no excuses. When I finally told you of the business, I was pricked by doubts, but once again I dismissed them. Now I cannot.”

“And the Scottish borders, the works by Sir Walter Scott – there is some connection, I presume.”

“Certainly. His notes on ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ were a most useful reminder, accompanied by a few days’ reading of certain other, more ancient texts. There is much to do, my friend, and possibly an injustice to set right.”

At which he drew on his pipe and sank into contemplation.

John Linwood Grant 2018

This campaign was fully funded very early on, but you still have an excellent opportunity to sign up and grab those rewards. We’re so excited that we actually want to read these, and we would use our mesmeric powers to encourage you to join in (if we had any).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1306925656/sherlock-holmes-adventures-beyond-the-canon/description

We’ve ended up in a lot of discussions about classic authors of the supernatural recently. Which is nice. And we do love them, dear listener. Here at greydogtales we especially like to dig out (no, NOT dig up) some of the lesser known ghost and weird story writers. However, we often can’t find our own articles on these folk, due to the appalling lack of proper indexing and tagging on the site.

So here’s a reminder of what we’ve said about some of these fascinating authors. We hope that you might be tempted by some, if you don’t already know them, and enjoy the styles, peculiarities and occasional bizarrities of the past…

(Oh, yeah – we owe everyone some lurcher and longdog stuff, but during August we spend more time walking and running them than writing about those little donkeys. They will return soon.)

Key writers covered in the articles linked below, in alphabetical order:

• Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Sir Andrew Caldecott
• F Marion Crawford
• Amelia B Edwards
• Mary E Wilkins Freeman
• Katharine Fullerton Gerould
• E and H Heron
• Jerome K Jerome
• Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
• Sheridan Le Fanu
• E Nesbit
• Mrs. Oliphant
• Ella M Scrymsour
• E G Swain
• Everil Worrell

That covers a few Victorians and other oldies from our vaults. As for the third bit…

The Shy Violet

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

Mark Twain

If you want violet water, which was splashed over many a classic complexion, we suggest that you:

1. Fill a large jar with sweet violet flowers
2. Boil a pint of water, let it come off the boil and tip it in the jar
3. Cover the jar
4. Wait a couple of hours and filter the flowers out to leave the infusion
5. Add a large cup of gin, cider vinegar or similar preserving spirits
6. Bottle it

Voila, violet water! Good for the skin, apparently, and possibly for children in the early stages of the falling sickness – but we wouldn’t put money on that.

Sweet violets are also edible – but African violets and others variants may not be. Be careful out there!

The Vaults

Here are the links, with those key authors in bold.

• Master & Madame

L T Meade

http://greydogtales.com/blog/master-madame-detectives-l-t-meade/

• F Marion Crawford & the Screaming Skull

http://greydogtales.com/blog/f-marion-crawford-screaming-skull/

• Out of the Silence with Bessie Kyffin-Taylor

http://greydogtales.com/blog/out-of-the-silence-with-bessie-kyffin-taylor/

• Shiela Crerar, Clay-Corpses & Psychic Investigation for Girls

Ella M Scrymsour

http://greydogtales.com/blog/shiela-crerar-clay-corpses-psychic-investigation-girls/

• Five Mountains of Madness, & the Third Twin

E F Benson, H Russell Wakefield, Manly Wade Wellman, Jerome K Jerome

http://greydogtales.com/blog/five-mountains-madness-third-twin/

• Jerome K Jerome, Ghosts and Dystopias

http://greydogtales.com/blog/jerome-k-jerome-ghosts-dystopias/

• Vampire Women Go Fishing

Everil Worrell

http://greydogtales.com/blog/worrell-ward-vampire-women-go-fishing/

• Edith Wharton hears a Whooo!

Edith Wharton, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, and Mary E Wilkins Freeman

http://greydogtales.com/blog/edith-wharton-hears-whooo/

• E Nesbit – Mother of the Dead

http://greydogtales.com/blog/e-nesbit-mother-dead/

• Le Fanu Under Fire on the Royal Road of Ash

Sheridan Le Fanu

http://greydogtales.com/blog/le-fanu-fire-royal-road-ash/

• M R James and his Friend in The Fens

E G Swain

http://greydogtales.com/blog/m-r-james-friend-fens/

• Forever New: Women and Supernatural Fiction

Classic female authors including Mrs. [Margaret] Oliphant and Mary Elizabeth Braddon

http://greydogtales.com/blog/forever-new-women-supernatural-fiction/

• All Saints’ Eve: Some Seasonal Scares

Amelia B Edwards

http://greydogtales.com/blog/all-saints-eve-some-seasonal-scares/

• Casting the Prunes: Flaxman Low Triumphant!

E and H Heron

http://greydogtales.com/blog/casting-the-prunes-flaxman-low-triumphant/

• Not Exactly Ghosts

Sir Andrew Caldecott

http://greydogtales.com/blog/not-exactly-ghosts/

You might also enjoy our coverage of a collection by Willie Meikle, where each scary story is written in the style of a classic author.

• The Ghost Club Reveals Its Secrets

http://greydogtales.com/blog/ghost-club-reveals-secrets/

Next time, new news about weird new stuff for new people. And for old people. So anyone, basically…

The longdogs are flattened by the heat, as is your crumbling host, and walking them at the moment is like dragging bricks on a piece of string. So, O best beloveds, we make a quick and chaotic rush to the front line in the middle of much industry. Cathulhu, a feline RPG and fiction anthology campaign that’s over in around twenty four hours, in case you fancy it; a full review of Lavie Tidhar’s The Bookman, which is only eighteen months late, and hasty home news. Cutting edge!

The hasty home news: Old greydog is at the final stages of completing his novel The Assassin’s Coin, about which more some other time, but it is due out from IFD Publishing in October. The ODQ Presents anthology of longer supernatural fiction has gone for formatting (preparing the galleys for a last proofing and so on), and should be out in August from Ulthar Press. A second expanded edition of greydog’s A Persistence of Geraniums collection is also coming in the Autumn, and the anthology Hell’s Empire is due November or December 2018. It’s a bit of a busy time.

Firstly, we wanted to mention Cathulhu: Tails of Valor and Terror – a collection of adventures for the Cathulhu Role Playing Game, with a companion short story collection of Cat horror stories, both from Golden Goblin Press.

‘From The Cats of Ulthar to those owned by Delapore in The Rats in the Walls, cats have held a special place of honor in the heart of H.P. Lovecraft. They are deeply embedded into the lore of the Cthulhu Mythos. We hope you’ll join us on our journey into the world of Cathulhu, cats battling mythos horrors. Cathulhu – Velvet Paws on Cthulhu’s Trail is a horror role playing game by Sixtystone Press, an offshoot of the Call of Cthulhu RPG where the players portray cats investigating the Cthulhu Mythos.’

This Kickstarter ends at teatime, by British clocks, on Sunday 29^th July, so you have only a day or so to check it out – there’s loads more information on the writers and the scenarios on the campaign page below. It looks fun.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/golden-goblin-press/cathulhu-tails-of-valor-and-terror/posts/2249351

Meanwhile, in the fantasy and steampunk world, one of our intrepid reviewers, Matt Willis, kindly picked up something which kept slipping through our gnarled fingers. Other reviews have varied from describing the book as a wonderfully vivid alternate history of a Britain ruled by giant lizards to finding the plot over-packed and occasionally confusing. Let’s see what Matt made of it…

The Bookman, Lavie Tidhar

Angry Robot, 2016 (reissue)

Review by Matt Willis

“When his beloved is killed in a terrorist atrocity committed by the sinister Bookman, young poet Orphan becomes enmeshed in a web of secrets and lies. His quest to uncover the truth takes him from the hidden catacombs of a London on the brink of revolution, through pirate-infested seas, to the mysterious island that may hold the secret to the origin, not only of the shadowy Bookman, but of Orphan himself…”

This is the first in Lavie Tidhar’s Bookman Histories trilogy, originally published in 2010 but reissued by Angry Robot a couple of years ago. If you like your steampunk tropes coming at you thick and fast, you won’t go far wrong with The Bookman. Whether or not it’s technically steampunk is open to question, but the aesthetic is slap-bang in that territory – ‘Babbage Machines’ abound, alongside sophisticated automata, ‘baruch-landau’ steam cars, space guns and Edwardian Martian probes. A seedy London demi-monde gives way to fantastical Verne-esque landscapes.

The richness of the world is seen no less in its cast, where real historical figures rub shoulders with minor and major characters from dozens of novels, plays and poems – in some cases leading to the bizarre situation of authors interacting with characters they created. Not to mention the fact that some of those figures with familiar names appear in a distinctly unfamiliar form… Characters created by Conan Doyle mix with those from Thomas Hughes and the paranoid fantasies of David Icke, and they with real life actors, writers, astronomers-Royal, celebrity recipe-book creators and body-snatchers, in a world where pods of whales swim in the Thames and the ruling class is distinctly scaly.

All in all, the worldbuilding of The Bookman is a glorious mishmash, a gothic cathedral of a book drawing its influences from as many quarters as possible and wearing them proudly for all to see. I feel as though I failed to pick up half of the references, and as a student of English and American literature and a long-time fan of SF, weird fiction and historical fiction, I feel that is saying something. Not that you need to be completely familiar with everything from Wells to Wilde to follow the book, far from it, but the dramatic scenery will undoubtedly give an extra reward to those whose reading tastes are prolific and catholic.

This is no prose ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’, mind you. While The Bookman is undoubtedly an adventure, and a rollicking one at that, it’s a bit more than the stitched together carcass of 19th century scientific romances and animated with a galvanic charge. The narrative is nuanced and has plenty to say about the nature of the differences between us, between man and machine, of authority and security, myth and reality. It is unashamedly postmodernist (I mean that in the proper sense of the word, not in the conspiracy-fantasist, Jordan Peterson sense) but it does not lack heart.

Although it’s perhaps in that heart that The Bookman finds its one aspect that lacks nuance – Orphan, the central character. This is not necessarily a shortcoming – he is something of an Everyman onto which readers can impose themselves, and indeed, an absence onto which agencies in the book can impose their agendas. He has one straightforward goal, which is to recover his lost love, Lucy, and around him labyrinthine conspiracies, plots and counter-plots swirl. The narrative will constantly keep the reader guessing as to who is on whose side and if those distinctions have any real meaning. Not to mention who or what The Bookman is, and what he wants. It’s also unclear until the end not just what the broad outcome will be, but which outcome we might want to take place. Perhaps under those circumstances it’s entirely appropriate that Orphan’s greatest flaw is passivity in the face of the vast machinery driving events (or perhaps occasionally a surfeit of earnestness). A metaphor throughout the book is a game of chess, and Orphan is frequently, to his annoyance, likened to a pawn. It’s an irony that he turns out to be quite a different piece.

The reissued edition has an additional story – ‘A Murder In The Cathedral!’ – placed after the main narrative concludes, which is self-contained but takes place during the period of the book itself. The reason for presenting this episode separately becomes clear on reading it. There are moments of humour in The Bookman, and generally it stays just on the right side of taking itself too seriously, but ‘A Murder In The Cathedral!’ is far more light-hearted and satirical in tone. Here we meet a phalanx of late-19th century scribes all journeying to Paris for Le Convention du Monde, where they vie for the (Victor) Hugo awards. It’s amusing and sharp, and would have seemed very out of place in the main narrative, not to mention slowing the pace to a crawl. As it is, it’s a fine Easter Egg for the dedicated reader. The Bookman itself is a delightful read and highly recommended. I suspect, had it only included more longdogs, it could have been written especially for a greydogtales’ audience.

Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/amKH2rB

Amazon US http://a.co/ezchyaV

Do return in a few days, when The Assassin’s Coin’ will have gone to the publisher and we have a bit more time. We might even get a proper Lurchers for Beginners post done this Summer!