This one will be a shortie . . .

This one will be a shortie—Mike and Sheryl are heading north for a spot of r’n’r and just as they begin winding their way back officeward next Wednesday, Nicky and I will be hunkering down on the train on our way to London and the Carol King musical, BEAUTIFUL. Should be a blast, particularly as CK’s TAPESTRY album is one of Nicky’s all-time faves. Along with the likes of James Taylor’s SWEET BABY JAMES, Cohen’s SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN, Cat Stevens TEA FOR THE TILLERMAN and TEASER AND THE FIRECAT plus the fine first efforts from Family, The Nice and King Crimson etc, the songs of TAPESTRY could be heard drifting from umpteen campus Union bars and thousand upon thousand bedsit- and dormitory windows in the heady days of the early 1970’s. Heh . . . smoky bars and Double Diamond on draught. Oh my! And yet Thomas Wolfe said “You can’t go home again.” [*] What tosh! I can’t wait.

LETTERS TO ARKHAM - The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961-1971

Anyway, getting back to here and now, here’s a barnstorming review from Allen Stroud of Ramsey Campbell’s and the late August Derleth’s exchange of letters when our Ramsey was but a teenage tyke starting his epic journey towards iconhood (is there such a word? Everybody—“There is now, Pete!”) 

The review appeared on the British Fantasy Site.

LETTERS TO ARKHAM is the collection of written conversations between Derleth and Campbell over a period of ten years. This begins when Campbell was a fifteen year old undiscovered writer enquiring about the availability of books and sending in manuscripts on the remote chance an established author and editor like Derleth might accept them. The collection allows us to fast forward through their developing relationship, through the processes of publishing Campbell’s work noting all the nuances along the way.

For occasional readers of horror and all things Cthulhu, the correspondence between these two might be overlooked, but then these readers would be missing a treat. The patience of Derleth in the early years is clear amidst the fitful enquiries from Campbell who first expressed his interest in horror through his passion for H.P. Lovecraft. Derleth is initially cautious, but then encouraging as he sees worth in the young man’s writing and gently advises and supports him in developing a his first stories using the Cthulhu mythos.

It might seem as if I’m stating the obvious, but it’s worth remembering, this is the pre-internet age and not an exchange of emails. Here is a young man learning of the world and like anyone, whilst in some ways he might seem knowledgeable, he is still fifteen years of age and inexperienced with the business of getting a draft story into print. By comparison, here is an established writer and publisher taking the time to reply to a vast array of correspondence (Campbell being one of many people Derleth wrote and replied to).

The back and forth of the letters reveals much of note for any would be writer. The flaws with Campbell’s work are much the same as they might be for anyone; issues of overwriting, getting the details write, etc. The focus on minutiae gives a glimpse into what might be needed for anyone and the benefit of a fresh mind (Derleth’s) giving constructive comment on Campbell’s drafts is clear to see.

The perils of contracts and publishing are also laid bare in the letters. It is refreshing to see that even the most well-known authors can make mistakes over intellectual property and copyright. There are perils in allowing your creative work to be used by those who are naïve and ignorant of the right processes. Even in the pre-internet era of the 1960s and 70s there is much we can glean from Campbell’s early mistakes and the way in which Derleth guides him towards a much better understanding of what he can expect to earn from his worth demonstrates something of the man’s generosity at the time. In this, Campbell is being guided towards an appropriate price for his creative work, which he, like many others before and after, undervalues. Modern writers should make note of the processes employed, although I expect the fees have changed somewhat since this time.

The insights into writers of Derleth’s acquaintance are fascinating and we find ourselves as curious as young J. Ramsey, albeit with less temerity to ask the prying questions. Derleth handles each nosy request with the same phlegmatic patience. Occasionally the subjects become adult, but only from an observational standpoint. It is important to remember Campbell’s age and lack of experience as well as the period and its morality.

From each we get a clear sense of the day to day life of writers in different generations and at different stages of their careers. Both are well read – Derleth more so than Campbell and both keen on cinema – Campbell more so than Derleth. As Campbell develops as a writer, we see his influences and the way he experiments with ideas and styles.

Throughout the collection S.T. Joshi’s careful editing and annotation is enough to elucidate but not disturb. There is a clear effort to provide a continuum and ensure the arrival of letters on each side is preserved, particularly when Derleth might have replied three times before Campbell writes again. In choosing to maintain the arrival context rather than the direct conversation strand you have more of a sense of viewpoint. Beyond this Joshi restricts his interventions to footnote explanations of points that are not explained.

LETTERS TO ARKHAM is a strong historical collection of correspondence that provides an excellent insight into the unseen communications between writers and editors. A must read for writers wanting to understand what to expect.

INNSMOUTH NIGHTMARES

Lois Gresh’s follow-up anthology to the acclaimed DARK FUSIONS, is almost at the printers while Steve Rasnic Tem’s IN THE LOVECRAFT MUSEUM is already there. Meanwhile, Chet Williamson’s THE NIGHT LISTENER AND OTHERS arrived on Wednesday and copies of the unsigned edition have already been sent out.

Here’s Lois’s line-up for INNSMOUTH NIGHTMARES:

• Introduction by Lois H. Gresh
• Windows Underwater by John Shirley
• Cold Blood by Lavie Tidhar
• Fear Sun by Laird Barron
• Thicker Than Water by Paul Kane
• Strange Currents by Tim Lebbon
• Mourning People by Nancy Kilpatrick
• The Barnacle Daughter by Richard Gavin
• Between the Pilings by Steve Rasnic Tem
• The Imps of Innsmouth by Wilum H. Pugmire
• The Open Mouth of Charybdis by John Langan
• Water’s Edge by Tim Waggoner
• Dark Waters by William F. Nolan
• A Girl’s Life by Lisa Morton
• The Sea Witch by James Moore
• Brood by Jason V. Brock
• Gone to Doggerland by Jonathan Thomas
• The Scent of the Hammer and the Feather by Joseph Pulver, Sr.
• Baubles by Nancy Holder
• The Waves Beckon by Donald Tyson
• The Cats of River Street (1925) by Caitlin Kiernan
• Some Kind of Mistake by S.T. Joshi

And from Lois’s Introduction:

“This is the book of my dreams. I’ve always been fond of Innsmouth. Directly over my desk, a painting of Innsmouth hangs on an old hook left by the former inhabitants of my house. I spend most of my life at this desk, so Innsmouth is always with me. There’s something very appealing about the tottering village and its shambling denizens, the cults, the dreariness, the turbulence of the sea, and Devil Reef. 

“When I proposed this anthology to Pete Crowther at PS Publishing, I told him that I wanted to produce a book brimming with extraordinary Innsmouth stories. I wanted to produce a book that I would never grow tired of reading, a book that I would read every now and then for the rest of my life. I think that I succeeded. 

“I requested stories from all the top writers in the weird genre. I desperately wanted Ramsey Campbell, but alas, Pete had Ramsey squirreled away writing a trilogy of Lovecraftian novels, so Ramsey was a bit tanked out to pen a short Innsmouth tale. Almost everyone else is in this book—all the writers of weird fiction that readers go ape over. Given my obsession with Innsmouth, I was sorely tempted to add a story, but in the end, decided it would be poor form to write a story for an anthology of which I’m editor. 

“In short, this book is a killer. Every story supplies a knock-out punch.

“I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed editing it. If you like tales about Innsmouth, you’re in for a real treat.”

And this from IN THE LOVECRAFT MUSEUM

Let’s just call it ‘an opener of the way’:

I. THE PARK

The young man at the front door looked walleyed and fish-faced through the peephole. Even knowing that if he opened the door that distortion would disappear, Jamie sensed that what he saw through the peephole was in some way the truth, and that everything else was a lie and a disguise.

But he was being uncharitable. Jamie was never as kind as he wanted to be, and if people liked him it was because they didn't understand him. He didn't want to let the fellow in—he suspected that people who traveled door to door had nothing good in mind—but he didn't want to be one of those old men who spoke to people only from the other side of a wall. He turned the knob and dragged the slab of heavy door inside. The sudden glare of sky against his face was painful.

"Hello!" the skinny young man said, too eagerly. "Sorry to bother you." And of course that was a fib. "But are you registered to vote?"

Jamie didn't answer because he wasn't sure. But he doubted it. He never signed things because when you signed things you were put on a list. It wasn't that he thought all politicians were monsters; he justdidn't trust any of them. He looked at the young man's scrawny chest, bejeweled with buttons. The names were unfamiliar, perhaps, maybe not. Without thinking of the consequences, he blurted out, "Who's running this time?"

The young man stared at him, looking shocked or embarrassed—Jamie could no longer tell the difference between the two. Then the fellow recovered, said, "I'm supporting . . ." and rattled off a list of names and elective offices.

Jamie thought he might have heard of one or two of the gentlemen, one of the women. Or perhaps it was simply the last names. Politics ran in families, it seemed. He looked past the young man at the street, looking for partners, fellow travelers, mob. He leaned slightly forward to try to get a glimpse of the park where his son Henry used to play, to see if shadowed figures were waiting there, or just people staring at his home, but saw no one. The nearby buildings and the pavement looked even shabbier than he remembered, purposeful or accidental gaps in the concrete and asphalt permitting earth and vegetation to show through, the occasional ragged pedestrian stumbling down the walk like arefugee from a disaster, vehicles belching smoke and rattling as they negotiated the poorly maintained lanes. He thought about how inappropriate the human presence was on this planet.

"Unopposed, are they?" Jamie asked. This time he recognized the embarrassment (or was it frustration?) in the campaign worker's face. He obviously didn't want to say the names of the ones on the other side of his arguments. No doubt they were evil, sinister characters who plotted the destruction of everything good and holy about America.

As the young man visibly perspired, Jamie noticed the skin tag at the side of the thin neck, obvious now as it grew and elongated and began feeling its way toward the Adam's apple, which seemed oddly shaped for an Adam's apple, actually, being too rectangular, too sharp-edged, too blue beneath the thin skin of the throat. The tentacle of flesh probed and stroked, then straightened and swung away from the neck and toward Jamie like some sort of alerted pseudopod. Jamie stepped back and pushed the door closed, retreating into the dim interior of his house. Sometimes all it took was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to see something you never wanted to see, to watch your life change around you.

He'd wanted to be both a good husband and a good father, but he'd learned long ago that the universe did not care what he wanted.

Much of the time the world was speechless. And when it did speak it whispered, and you never knew where its voice was coming from, and it always had the most terrible things to say.

Jamie stumbled as he tried to rush through the rooms. It wasn't safe, but he wanted more house between him and the front door. Everything had filled with even more clutter since he'd retired. Everything had filled and overfilled, and he'd been swallowed up by too much of everything. His health could withstand the tide no longer.

From Chet’s wonderful collection THE NIGHT LISTENER AND OTHERS

I begin to be aware of the sounds of night when my wife buys the electric blanket. Oh, there have been other sounds before—the hushed roar of the furnace, the weary hum of late-night cars passing on the road at the bottom of the yard, the whir of the refrigerator—but the electric blanket is what opens my ears to the night and makes me hear, makes me aware of what is waiting in the dark, what is stirring just outside, unheard by those who welcome sleep, shrouding themselves under covers, closing themselves off to the warnings.

It is that premeditated, deliberate click of the thermostat, as if a black finger had come down on a metal button, that keeps me on my back, eyes opened wide, fixed on the single red eye of my individual control on the headboard. The light for my wife’s side hovers over her sleeping head, bathing her hair in a crimson glow, and I think these two lights are like the piggish eyes of a monster whose head is as big as the bed, who could swallow us up, covers, mattress, box spring and all, before moving to the next house.

A fancy, that, and one at which I am quickly able to smile. But that steady clicking continues. Every few minutes I hear it, and it brings me back from the half-sleep I have entered. I remember then the books I have read as a boy, in which Tarzan awakes from sleep to a sharp alertness, with none of the slow drifting up that civilized man experiences, no dull druglike flicking of eyelids, jarring from the light, none of that. It was once necessary to survival to awaken quickly, like an animal. It may be necessary still.

I practice with the blanket.

Click. I awake, alert, eyes wide, pupils huge, struggling to make light from darkness. There is nothing. I allow myself to sleep again.

Click. Again I awake, muscles tensed, ready to spring up, to move right or left. My wife sleeps through it all.

That is how I spend the night—awake, asleep, awake, asleep, over and over again, like a Pavlovian dog trained for insomnia. The next morning it is strange, but I feel rested, even vital. I consider having my wife return the blanket, but decide not to. There is something deeper here, something beyond switched-on switched-off night. There is a reason for me to spend the night on sleep's fine edge. Soon I learn what it is.

MUCH MORE FROM PS TOWERS

David Hambling’s truly fabulous collection THE DULWICH HORROR and Others is in the final stages of the design process. More on this very soon indeed.

Meanwhile BREAKOUT (aka POSTSCRIPTS 34/35 ) just tumbled off of Nick Gevers’s desk and is currently being checked before going to our designers. Here’s the roll call (Nicky’s working on the cover):

• 
Breakout — John Gribbin
• 
Josephine Knows Who — Allen Ashley

• The Cicadas — Jessica Reisman and Steven Utley

• Notes on the Future — John Weldon

• Circular Tour -- Howard Priestley

• Yesterday's Dreams — Kaitlin Queen (Keith Brooke)

• Scenes from the City of Garbage and the City of Clay — Paul Tremblay

• Those Who Remain — Kelly Barnhill

• Chasing Gaia — Garry Kilworth

• Endpapers — Lisa L. Hannett

• Holes — Keith Minnion
In 
• All Your Sparkling Raiment Soar — Robert T. Jeschonek

• A Walk in the Woods — Vaughan Stanger

• A Walk in the Rain — Vaughan Stanger

• Curb — Robert Reed

• Scraps of Paper — Simon Strantzas

• Forever Boys — James Cooper

• Bradbury's Finger — Greg Quiring

• The Needle, the Stitch, the Night, and the Sky — Kat Howard

• The Ebony Crucifix — Kit Reed

• The House of the Witches — Darrell Schweitzer

• The Aniseed Gumball Kid — Andrew Hook

• The Seven Mirrors — Marly Youmans

• Easy to Imagine — Ian Whates

• The Glasshouse — Emma Coleman
A
• ll the Layers of the World — Steven Utley and Camille Alexa

• Crossed Gates — Adrian Tchaikovsky

Next time or the one after, we’ll talk about our upcoming HPL biographical graphic novel and, staying with the cosmic (kind of), we’re in the closing stages of putting together a very special limited edition of a new collection from Stephen Baxter—XEELEE: ENDURANCE.

But first, Carol King beckons—and one mustn’t keep a lady waiting. Hey, we’re coming, Carol! (Will you still love me tomorrow . . . tum te tum . . . la de da . . .)

Have a great weekend, folks: look after each other and happy reading!

Pete

[*] He didn’t actually. It was said to him by fellow writer Ella Winter, and Wolfe liked it so much he asked if he could use it as the title of his book. Like I said, what tosh. But then, Frederick Wertham was a relative of Winter and we all know Wertham pretty much decimated the comicbook industry of the 1950’s with the barmy SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT so questionable judgement seems to run rife there. Phooey, I say. (See? This is the best and most informative Newsletter you’re gonna get today, and you can take that to the bank—just don’t give ‘em your money. Tell ‘em Pete tol’ you to put it under your mattress.)