My mother, when she was alive (natch), hated this damn hot weather with a passion. And, you know, I think I’ve caught it from her. I drive Nicky mad constantly mumbling “Roll on winter” or “If only we could have a little rain” (smog/fog/snow—choose any one to suit your mood). But I guess we’re stuck with it, for a while anyways.

I have to admit feeling a little spooky this week so I thought I’d do a round-up of appropriate material as well as doing a little piece on the upcoming NecronomiCon which takes place in Providence (come on, where else is it gonna be, right?) on 23 thru 26 August, commemorating what would have been HPL’s 125th birthday (if you’re going, then be advised: take him a present and leave it outside your room door at night—don’t make him come looking for it). So here goes.

This year's Guests of Honor include . . .

. . . the indefatigable Ramsey Campbell, the lugubrious Stephen Jones, and the ever eldritch Lois Gresh (all with new titles fresh or imminently out), with the dangerously demonic Darrell Schweitzer to be found lurking on the threshold of the book room. Well, as you might expect, we’re hoping to have a few books on hand by these notorious scribblers (plus others of that ilk) and we urge you to dig deep and treat yourself (or someone you care for).

First up for grabs . . .

. . . will be Ramsey’s VISIONS FROM BRICHESTER (known in an earlier life—existence?—as COLD PRINT) re-presented here for your ample eldritchification with all manner of additional fab and fabled material hitherto unseen but merely guessed at.

I stared at the pages, to prevent Neal from reading them aloud. At least it saved me from having to watch the antics of the beach, which moved like slow flames, but the introverted meandering of words made me nervous.

IT CANT REACH DOWN HERE NOT YET BUT OUTSIDE IS CHANGING OUTSIDES PART OF THE PATTERN I READ THE PATTERN THATS WHY I CANT GO SAW THEM DANCING THE PATTERN IT WANTS ME TO DANCE ITS ALIVE BUT ITS ONLY THE IMAGE BEING PUT TOGETHER

Neal was wide-eyed, fascinated. Feverish disorientation gripped my skull; I felt too unwell to move. The heat-haze must be closing in: at the edge of my vision, everything was shifting.

WHEN THE PATTERNS DONE IT CAN COME BACK AND GROW ITS HUNGRY TO BE EVERYTHING I KNOW HOW IT WORKS THE SAND MOVES AT NIGHT AND SUCKS YOU DOWN OR MAKES YOU GO WHERE IT WANTS TO MAKE (a blotch had eaten several words) WHEN THEY BUILT LEWIS THERE WERE OLD STONES THAT THEY MOVED MAYBE THE STONES KEPT IT SMALL NOW ITS THE BEACH AT LEAST

On the next page the letters are much larger, and wavery. Had the light begun to fail, or had the writer been retreating from the light—from the entrance to the cellar? I didn’t know which alternative I disliked more.

GOT TO WRITE HANDS SHAKY FROM CHIPPING TUNNEL AND NO FOOD THEYRE SINGING NOW HELPING IT REACH CHANTING WITH NO MOUTHS THEY SING AND DANCE THE PATTERN FOR IT TO REACH THROUGH

Now there are very few words to the page. The letters are jagged, as though the writer’s hand kept twitching violently.

GLOW COMING ITS OUT THERE NOW ITS LOOKING IN AT ME IT CANT GET HOLD IF I KEEP WRITING THEY WANT ME TO DANCE SO ITLL GROW WANT ME TO BE

There it ends . . .

Indeed, this volume is a companion to the complete PS edition of . . .

. . . THE INHABITANT OF THE LAKE AND OTHER UNWELCOME TENANTS as it collects all of the author’s remaining Lovecraftian stories that are of less than novel length. It begins with the first tale Ramsey wrote immediately after that first Arkham House book, and comes up to date with the novella THE LAST REVELATION OF GLA’AKI, his recent return to his own Lovecraftian territory, where he rediscovers Lovecraft’s first principles and strips away the accretions of the mythos that developed after Lovecraft’s death. The book includes the first publication anywhere of the first drafts of “Cold Print” and “The Franklyn Paragraphs”, and offers the bonus of “Mushrooms from Merseyside”, all his Lovecraftian tales inhumanly transmuted into limericks. The book also collects Ramsey’s Lovecraftian non-fiction, not least his transcription of an English correspondent’s letters to Lovecraft and a close reading of three Lovecraft tales. Like the companion volume, this book is superbly illustrated by Randy Broecker in the great tradition of WEIRD TALES. Here’s a taster—mmm, yum!

Also from Ramsey comes . . .

RAMSEY CAMPBELL, PROBABLY, originally published by PS back in 2002 since which time the author has expanded some of the essays, added others and generally tinkered around with the running order . . . as is his wont. Thus the original 140,000-or-so words compiled from Ramsey’s non-fiction of three decades have been considerably (and entertainingly) expanded to represent getting on for a full half-a-century of Campbelliana now well in excess of 150,000 words.

"The subjects range from the perils of authorship to the delights of amateur fiction and film, from drugs to nightmares, from the Highgate Vampire to the Dracula Society’s marching song. Friends are remembered and so is Mary Whitehouse. A seminal study of schoolgirl spanking is brought up to date. Many thoughts on the history of horror fiction are included. And, at last, it is revealed why Harlan Ellison® is responsible. May the reader variously laugh, weep, ponder, disagree and turn uneasily in bed. Time for another taster—boy, we really do spoil you folks!
"

Why I Write Horror

(from Ramsey Campbell, Probably)

I write horror stories, and I make it public that I do. Much of the time I could get away with saying that I write ghost stories, though the term “macabre fiction” might better cover what I produce. Either term might serve to dissociate my stuff from the mess which success has recently made of the field—from what seems like hundreds of books produced by far too many writers with no ambition beyond either imitating current best sellers or gaining fame by writing the most disgusting fiction of their generation. (God forbid we should see the field being influenced by American Psycho instead of just vice versa.) But whenever I’m tempted to save myself from any further guilt by association I can always reflect that Lovecraft suffered the company of a horde of uncollected hacks in Weird Tales. The worst thing that could happen to the field is to be deserted by the writers who care about it. Besides, I’ve no patience with people who make their reputation in a field and then pretend they never did.

There may be an element of bloody-mindedness in my public image, all the same (as no doubt in much else about me). Not so very long ago a lady who had for some years run the library of the British Science Fiction Association asked me at a party why I wrote that sort of thing, in a tone which suggested that she placed horror fiction on a level somewhat lower than child abuse. One might have assumed she would have remembered the decades during which science fiction was regarded with much the same sort of contempt, but perhaps it’s unreasonable to expect a persecuted group not to take the chance to get its own back on someone else, or perhaps some science fiction fans are still so insecure about their reading that they need to find a scapegoat who will bear away their secret guilt. More recently a student (unpublished, I believe) at a creative writing course organised by Liverpool University expressed surprise that I had been invited as a guest lecturer. He had just been to the dentist, and I hope I conveyed the extent of my sympathy when I enquired if he was in pain.

Such encounters tend to make me protective of my field rather than of myself (of whom, in this context at any rate, I’ve learned to take care), and more personal attacks are merely amusing: a review of mine in Shock Xpress was objected to before publication by a vampire hunter, the author of the book reviewed, because he apparently felt I was “a pulp fiction writer...a hack...a bizarre and singularly inappropriate reviewer [whose] credentials limit him to reviewing fantasy/horror fiction.” (Someone should inform the BBC that I’ve been reviewing films for them under false pretences for the past twenty-two years.) All this is fun, certainly, but it does occur to me that the vampire hunter is drawing on a widespread notion of what horror fiction is; and it occurs to me to wonder at what point “horror fiction” became an insult.

BREAKING NEWS

As you may recall, the author received the Liverpool John Moores University Honorary Fellowships for his outstanding contribution to literature. Nicky and I are going across to Liverpool in a week or so to cheer him on (and to lob the occasional tomato).

And now I'm delighted to report—we've just learned this morning in fact—that Ramsey can add a WORLD FANTASY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD which will be presented at the 2015 Word Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs this coming November.

Hearty congratulations from all the staff at PS Towers.

BEST NEW HORROR #25

We’re hoping that Stephen Jones’s BEST NEW HORROR #25 deluxe signed and slipcased hardcover will be available at the Con but pre-publication interest on this title (just 100 copies) has been fierce so we’ll have to see.

But what will definitely be available is Stephen’s WEIRD POEMS being the complete H.P. Lovecraft poetry from WEIRD TALES, which he has painstakingly (not to mention lovingly) edited and compiled. This from Steve’s Introduction:

A supreme rationalist and avowed atheist, Lovecraft’s Mythos mostly eschewed the supernatural in favour of a scientific rationale. Rejecting the old-fashioned monsters of Gothic horror, he 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”.

As a consequence, there are many echoes of themes, names and images from the “Cthulhu Mythos” in much of Lovecraft’s weird poetry.

In 1934, Lovecraft had begun to complain about suffering from “indigestion” or “grippe”. In fact, he had a combination of colon cancer and Bright’s disease (which affects the kidneys). However, he did not consult a doctor until more than two years after he first noticed the symptoms, by which time his illness was already inoperable. He died at the age of forty-six on the morning of March 15, 1937, at the Jane Brown Memorial Hospital. He was buried in the family plot in the Swan Point Cemetery three days later, where his name was inscribed alongside those of his parents. A handful of people attended the funeral service.

Editor Farnsworth Wright marked Lovecraft’s passing in the June 1937 issue of WEIRD TALES with a personal eulogy: “Sad indeed is the news that tells us of H.P. Lovecraft’s death. He was a titan of weird and fantastic literature, whose literary achievements and impeccable craftsmanship were acclaimed throughout the English-speaking world . . .His death is a serious loss to weird and fantastic fiction; but to the editors of WEIRD TALES the personal loss takes precedence.”

The following month’s issue contained the memorial poem ‘To Howard Phillips Lovecraft’ by Clark Ashton Smith. “I am profoundly saddened by the news of H.P. Lovecraft’s death after a month of painful illness,” Smith wrote in that issue’s letter column, ‘The Eyrie’. “The loss seems an intolerable one, and I am sure that it will be felt deeply and permanently by the whole weird fiction public. Most of all will it be felt by the myriad friends who knew Lovecraft through face-to-face meeting or correspondence; for in his case the highest literary genius was allied to the most brilliant and most endearing personal qualities.”

Quite so.

In addition, of course . . .

. . . .we still await—feverishly—the now imminent arrival of Steve Rasnic Tem’s IN THE LOVECRAFT MUSEUM, David Hambling’s THE DULWICH HORROR and Lois Gresh’s INNSMOUTH NIGHTMARES, the follow-up to her marvelous DARK FUSIONS: WHERE MONSTERS LURK (how on earth did Stan Lee miss THAT title?), which proved to be such a hit that we went right ahead and agreed to Lois’s Lovecraftian anthology idea. And finally, Darrell Schweitzer’s and John Ashmead‘s TALES FROM THE MISKATONIC LIBRARY, though this is a little ways off just yet. 

And now ABSOLUTELY finally, still available are:

  • the first six volumes in our Lovecraft Library (the final three due this autumn);
  • the first eight paperbacks of Ramsey Campbell’s work (more are underway);
  • THE STARRY WISDOM LIBRARY; and
  • LETTERS TO ARKHAM.

Okay, that’s it for this week. Nicky and I are celebrating our birthdays with friends so we won’t be back at our desks until late Monday. In the meantime, if it occurs to you, raise a glass to us as we will do too to you good folks out there in PS Land. Have a glorious weekend, look after each other and (as if I really needed to say this) happy reading. (Yes, mum . . . I know: it’s far too hot . . .)

Best

Pete

PS Publishing

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Hornsea, HU18 1HG

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Website www.pspublishing.co.uk

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