She Walks in Shadows

Coming soon: the first all-woman Lovecraftian anthology, She Walks in Shadows , edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. What’s the deal with all-women Cthulhuviana? A year and a half ago, there was a fracas about whether women ever, you know, have anything to do with Lovecraft. Now that the anthology is available for pre-sale, Silvia has posted a FAQ on her website in response to recent inquiries. Check it out, and how can you not buy it with such awesome cover art? Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the Table of Contents is so squamously, rugosely batrachian…

“Bitter Perfume” Laura Blackwell
“Violet is the Color of Your Energy” Nadia Bulkin
“Body to Body to Body” Selena Chambers
“Magna Mater” Arinn Dembo
“De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” Jilly Dreadful
“Hairwork” Gemma Files
“The Head of T’la-yub” Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
“Bring the Moon to Me” Amelia Gorman
“Chosen” Lyndsey Holder
“Eight Seconds” Pandora Hope
“Cthulhu of the Dead Sea” Inkeri Kontro
“Turn out the Lights” Penelope Love
“The Adventurer’s Wife” Premee Mohamed
“Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961″ Sharon Mock
“The Eye of Juno” Eugenie Mora
“Ammutseba Rising” Ann K. Schwader
“Cypress God” Rodopi Sisamis
“Lavinia’s Wood” Angela Slatter
“The Opera Singer” Priya Sridhar
“Provenance” Benjanun Sriduangkaew
“The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad” Molly Tanzer
“Lockbox” E. Catherine Tobler
“When She Quickens” Mary Turzillo
“Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses” Valerie Valdes
“Queen of a New America” Wendy N. Wagner

Pre-order She Walks in Shadows.

Further Insight into Basic Mysteries

This weekend I read an essay by Andrew J. Wilson in Pulp Fiction of the ’20s and ’30s, a volume in the Critical Insights series: “The Last Musketeer: Clark Ashton Smith and the Weird Marriage of Poetry and Pulp.” I read it partly as potential grist for something I’m working on, but also simply because I was curious to read more criticism of Smith, an author of weird fiction and poetry who continues to be read, but who has received little critical attention when compared with the likes of Chandler or Lovecraft. Wilson inserts a quotation from Smith’s “notebook of ideas” that resonates with the thinking of any number of  people in the pulp era, weird fiction writers or otherwise:

The weird tale is an adumbration or foreshadowing of man’s relationship—past, present, and future—to the unknown and infinite, and also an implication of his mental and sensory evolution. Further insight into basic mysteries is only possible through future development of higher faculties than the known senses. Interest in the weird, unknown, and supernormal is a signpost of such development and not merely a psychic residuum from the age of superstition.

In Belgium, No One Can Hear You Fhtagn

What waits between the stars? Lovecraft eZine illustration by Peter Szmer

It’s been a pretty good month. I’m delighted to announce that I have sold French-language translation and publication rights for my Lovecraftian SF story, “How Rare Are Light and Life.” My first foreign rights sale! They were acquired by Patrick Dechesne for a Lovecraftian anthology forthcoming this autumn. Patrick is starting a French-language house, entitled “Les Editions de l’Instant,” which will publish anthologies and novels, including some translated from English. I’ll share more information about this project as I have it.

Big thanks to Mike Davis for first publishing this story in The Lovecraft eZine, a year ago this month. I’ve been pleased to hear from both friends and strangers who have read and enjoyed it over the last twelve months, and I’m glad to see its wings tentacles spread a little farther.

Lovecraft in Space

What waits between the stars? Story illustration by Peter Szmer

Many people claim that Alien is the best Lovecraftian movie ever made, and while I have mixed feelings about that, there is something inherently disquieting about the gulf between the stars, and the question of what might wait there. Building on that disquiet, and thinking about both Gliese 581g and the challenges of colonizing space, I came up with a story called “How Rare Are Light and Life.” It’s now live for you to read over at The Lovecraft eZine. If you prefer reading the issue on Kindle or Nook, just click here. I’m grateful to Mike Davis for publishing this story, to Jesse Bullington for providing comments on the draft version, and to Peter Szmer for his striking, wonderful illustrations. Enjoy!

Fungi in the Wild

Innsmouth Free Press has released Fungi, a delightful anthology of the mycological fantastique edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Orrin Grey, the hardcover edition of which includes my short story, “The Flaming Exodus of the Greifswald Grimoire.” You can buy paperback and electronic versions at Amazon and elsewhere, but your best bet for getting a copy of the hardcover is direct from the publisher. Mine is a somewhat lighthearted tale of the occult involving two black-hearted, book collecting brothers, but the collection’s full of a wide range of stories, and the Table of Contents includes a roster of names familiar to anyone who reads fantasy or horror these days, particularly of the dark and/or literary varieties:

• Ann K. Schwader, “Cordyceps zombii” (poem)
• A.C. Wise, “Where Dead Men Go to Dream”
• Andrew Penn Romine, “Last Bloom on the Sage”
• Camille Alexa, “His Sweet Truffle of a Girl”
• Chadwick Ginther, “First They Came for the Pigs”
• Daniel Mills, “Dust From a Dark Flower”
• Ian Rogers, “Out of the Blue”
• Jane Hertenstein, “Wild Mushrooms”
• Jeff Vandermeer, “Corpse Mouth and Spore Nose”
• John Langan, “Hyphae”
• Julio Toro San Martin, “A Monster In The Midst”
• Kris Reisz, “The Pilgrims of Parthen”
• Laird Barron, “Gamma”
• Lavie Tidhar, “The White Hands”
• Lisa M. Bradley, “The Pearl in the Oyster and the Oyster Under Glass”
• Molly Tanzer and Jesse Bullington, “Tubby McMungus, Fat From Fungus”
• Nick Mamatas, “The Shaft Through The Middle of It All”
• Paul Tremblay, “Our Stories Will Live Forever”
• Polenth Blake, “Letters to a Fungus”
• Richard Gavin, “Goatsbride”
• Simon Strantzas, “Go Home Again”
• Steve Berman, “Kum, Raúl (The Unknown Terror) – b. 1925, d. 1957”
• W.H. Pugmire, “Midnight Mushrumps”

The three extra stories included in the hardcover edition are:

• E. Catherine Tobler, “New Feet Within My Garden Go”
• J.T. Glover, “The Flaming Exodus of the Greifswald Grimoire”
• Claude Lalumière, “Big Guy and Little Guy’s Survivalist Adventure”

It’s a pleasure to be sharing a dust jacket with such fine and talented folks, among whom I number friends, confederates, and co-defendants. Rest assured, loyal readers: they’ll never make the charges stick! I’ve not yet met a court that hasn’t accepted my perfectly reasonable explanations (“sacrificial knife aficionado,” “extreme gourmand,” “amateur mortuary chemist”), and I’m sure that my depredations will go unpunished I’ll continue to remain free to inflict further literary injury upon your persons.

Fungi will make you happier, healthier, and wiser. Buy your copy today!