A chaotic entry today, dear listener, for time is a-pressing, and Django is a-whining, as usual. So here are some of the fabulous things we’re doing this month, to excite you, astound you and give you ammunition for when we forget to do them. And we name some of the guilty parties as well…
A new chapter in Lurchers for Beginners will be coming out in October, by demand. We’re toying with the idea of entire post about the activity which dare not speak its name – yes, Pooing and all things Poo-ey. We’ll see. It may be too graphic for the younger folk.
Edwardian Arcane has kicked off, and it won’t be just us. We’re attracting outside contributors as we did last October, and hope to have a wide range of Edwardian supernatural and William Hope Hodgson pieces.
Author and scholar John Guy Collick will be considering early science fiction (or ‘scientific romance’, as it started off), with coverage of George Wallis’s short story The Last Days of Earth and the Victorian/Edwardian obsession with the end of everything – if we nag him enough.
Sam Gafford should be back with some more thoughts on William Hope Hodgson’s writings, and we hope to have guest posts on Alasteir Crowley and Edwardian occultism.
We’ll also pick out some supernatural authors and tales of the period for particular attention, and have an interview with David Longhorn, editor of the long-running magazine Supernatural Tales.
In addition, we’ll be looking at contemporary pastiches and re-imaginings, including a feature on M S Corley’s long-awaited illustrated Carnacki: Recorder of Things Strange, where we’ll be interviewing the man himself. More Carnackis turns up this month in works by Willie Meikle and Brandon Barrows – we’ll be looking at Brandon’s collection of novellas, The Castle-Town Tragedy.
The Kickstarter for Occult Detective Quarterly, edited by Sam Gafford and myself, should be up and running by the end of the week, and we hope that many of you will spare at least some loose change to suport this exciting new endeavour. We’ll put a link up here when it’s live.
Speaking of occultism and related matters, I will be contributing to a series of Tarot-related articles on writer Debbie Christiana’s blog – the first one is up today. My contribution will be around the fictional Deck of Seasons from the more serious of my Weird Wolds stories.
debbie christiana’s blogAnd I’m being interviewed on Matt Cowan’s site Horror Delve, which is always well worth a look (his site, not the me bit). He’s recently mentioned some of Saki’s weird tales, very appropriate.
One of my favourite weird stories from me so far, The Jessamine Garden, is out now in the Beneath the Surface anthology, which is available in e-book format or print from Amazon.
“My sister watches as I write this entry in my journal. It is more difficult to form letters with the linen wrapped around each finger, but I have devised a method of wedging the pen in place. I notice that my writing has deteriorated, an irregularity of stroke which matches the stagger of my heartbeat. It does not matter, for the words are still legible and they will serve. They will be the only record of the time I spent in the Jessamine Garden…”
Amazon UKAnd we haven’t even listed everything. Amongst all this and more, we’ll be taking part in the October Frights Blog Hop again, highlighting a range of other paranormal and spook authors/sites. Endless confusion should occur…
