UPDATE FOR OUR DEAR LISTENERS – WE’RE ON HOLS WITH THE LONGDOGSES UNTIL NEXT WEEKEND!
Today, a little of everything – horror and weird writing, weird art and audio, plus sad doggie news. We regularly get snippets on all sorts of interesting things, but don’t have time to construct a full feature. We’re also powering down – we’ve been doing greydogtales continually for about a year, with up to four features a week, and we’re having a few days off soon. So we’ll give a nod here to some of those snippets before we start locking up the kennels.
Sad part: Some of you will know that we lost Twiglet, our sixteen plus years old chocolate labrador, recently. Not going to talk about it here, although we might have a celebratory post for her later in the Summer, as she was an extraordinary dog. After nearly sixteen years with us, that loss has lead to some breaks in our normally positive vibes, and a lot of tears, but the obstinate old bear always had a major impact on life. No change there, then.
We are due a major longdog and lurcher post, but losing Twiglet has dampened us a bit, so we’ll do that later on as well. Apologies.
Onto the weird. We can’t cover everything, and we’re not a news channel, so these are plucked from the front of our brains as we write…
Not long ago we covered Fritz Leiber’s The Pale Brown Thing, which has been re-released sumptuously by Swan River Press. As we wrote, we drifted into the question of Our Lady of Darkness and her sisters, originally from Thomas de Quincey.
Then, a few days later, we were sorting through old copies of the 2000AD comic, and lo and behold, we came across de Quincey’s opium-inspired Ladies again in a strip called Tyranny Rex – Prog 879, from March 1994. Which was unexpected, as it quotes directly from de Quincey in some detail. Who says comics aren’t educational?
And for audio buffs, we note that our old friend Morgan Scorpion has recorded this section of de Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis here:
Sticking to audio, and being self-indulgent, you can now hear the actual voice of John Linwood Grant as he struggles to speak Yorkshire and Radio Four English at the same time, to the benefit of neither. This was an interview for the Television Crossover Universe Podcast, whose prime mover is Robert Wronski Jr.
The crossover bit was in celebration of how Tales of the Last Edwardian eventually links up Sherlock Holmes, William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki and Jack the Ripper (and maybe even a white rabbit eventually) in its planned arc. Ironically, Robert himself had to go to hospital that day. People do find a lot of excuses not to listen to us.
The old greydog opens his big mouth at about 6:30 minutes in, if you get confused, and then goes on for some time while everyone else mops the studio floor and turns the lights off.
One of our favourite artists, the Argentinian master Santiago Caruso, has been at it again, for Libro del Zorro Rojo (Red Fox Books), an independent publisher in Barcelona.
Yes, it’s in Spanish, but their new edition of Robert W Chambers’ The King in Yellow looks most excellent, full of Santiago’s fantastic illustrations.
You can check out an English introduction to Red Fox Books here:
Submissions for the planned magazine Occult Detective Quarterly are coming in thick and fast, with over seventy stories now to be read, which will take up most of August. Fortunately, Sam Gafford and JLG (the co-editors) will be reading for more than one issue, so they’ll have some room for manoeuvre. More news will be put onto the web-section here in a week or so.
Back in Argentinian territory, our friend Diego Arandojo has been sharing more of his concept work. This is perhaps weird beyond what we normally cover, but Diego, a film-maker, writer and editor, has the facility to move from comic book art to horror to esoteric ritual roots. Cool guy.
The piece in question is an album by Kazeria, conceived as a rite of passage from dusk to the deep night of the Spirit to reach the fullness of the Gnosis. The Crow guides the neophyte through the Four Hymns to achieve transmutation in the Midnight Sun, which is the Morning Star as a symbol of a new Golden Dawn.
The album contains four dark ambient songs plus two hidden tracks, representing the rites of Liber Corvus and a video-ritual directed by Diego Arandojo, that emphazises on the main theme of the work. There’s a sample track at the link below:
If we translated recent news properly, we think Diego may have a collection of his own writing coming out later this year.
You can also check out Diego’s Lafarium site, which has a mix of Spanish and English contents:
In less Spanish news, Rich Hawkins, who we interviewed in June, has released a new novella, Scavengers, which you can check out below. Knowing Rich’s other books, this will be a jolly tale of carefree laughter and children hugging in the streets as it rains marshmallows and pretty kittens. Or possibly a tense and terrible struggle for survival. It’ll be well written, whichever way it goes.
scavengers on amazon ukAnd in the colonies, Brian Barr is still at it with his comic Empress, which we mentioned a while back. Empress is an unusual blend of periods, mythologies and story arcs from the world of silent films through Norse myth to its own brand of destiny, which deserves a look. Issues 1 to 4 have now been collected into one volume, and the series is currently on issue seven.
We understand that Brian is completing his second novel in his Carolina Daemoniac series at the moment. Dystopian alternative timelines ahoy!
Finally, an update on some of John Linwood Grant stuff which should be coming later this year (we have to do this, you know – the dogs need food that isn’t made out of parts of us):
The Horse Road – A dark tale of loyalty subverting the ‘girl and her pony’ theme of our long-lost youth (Lackingtons’ Magazine).
The Adventure of the Dragoman’s Son – Sherlock Holmes treks across the Arabian deserts in search of a threat to the Empire (Under wraps at the moment).
The Jessamine Garden – The chance meeting of two men in period Virginia and the formation of a relationship which may kill (Parsec Ink’s Beneath the Surface anthology).
A Stranger Passing Through – One of the Returned makes a stand against corruption in seventies New York (Nosetouch’s Blood, Sweat and Fears anthology)
Next time we’ll return to more substantial mitherings, meanderings and general malarkey, so we’ll see you soon, we hope.
Looking forward to reading Twiglet’s story.
So sorry for your loss
Thank you. We’re hoping that the good memories will take over eventually, and we do at least have lots of those. 🙂
Tough on the Twiglet, we have all been there, not good but no doubt the very greatest of memories.
Thanks for the kind words. She certainly won’t be forgotten – she was an obstinate, interfering little juggernaut. 🙂