Blog

In this blog I will be keeping an irregular account of events related to my writings. Check back here to learn what is forthcoming in my work.

Matters of Interest

May 26, 2012 I just finished my entry for an interesting work planned by Nate Pedersen, a sales catalog of the various grimoires of H. P. Lovecraft. It's a fun project, with many fiction writers who write horror stories in the Lovecraftian tradition contributing their own bits. The dread tome I chose to write about is Liber Damnatus, which figures prominently in Lovecraft's novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
May 9, 2012 I am happy to report that Amazon.com has fixed its error of displaying a work by a different publisher that had nothing to do with me in place of my annotated edition of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy on my Author's Page at Amazon. The good people at Amazon never quite understood their mistake -- the fact that both books have the same title confused them -- but now when those interested in buying this important work click on it, they will get my Llewellyn edition and not the unedited reprint of some other publisher. Those familiar with my old Web site will notice many changes. The old site was becoming something of an antique, and was encumbered by so much content that it was awkward to use. I decided to compose a new site devoted only to my books and other writings, and to make it as simple as possible. It is still a work in progress, and I will be adding to it over time. This site is best displayed at higher resolutions.
May 7, 2012 The electronic edition of my collection of John Dee and Edward Kelley occult mystery stories, The Ravener and Others, is now available from Amazon.com for $4.99. However, I would suggest that you get the trade paperback, with cover art by my wife, Jenny, which is likely to become a collector's edition. This collection of stories continues the partnership of Dee and Kelley that first made its appearance in my novel The Tortuous Serpent (Llewellyn, 1997). I promised readers of that work to continue writing fiction featuring Dee and Kelley, and after a somewhat long hiatus I have done so. This is by no means the end of the partnership -- look for more story collections and novels in which Dee and Kelley solve mysterious crimes of an occult nature across Elizabethan England, and even further afield.
May 6, 2012 Just today I discovered that there was a cookoo in my nest at Amazon.com. Under the listing for my annotated edition of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, written by the German magician Henry Cornelius Agrippa, appeared not my Llewellyn Publications edition, but a completely different edition published by another publisher that has nothing at all to do with my work. This is, to say the least, annoying. Those wanting to buy my book at Amazon have been ordering this other edition in error, and getting badly cheated because it does not contain the vital notes and appendices that appear in my annotated edition. The correct cover for my Llewellyn edition appears on the right.
May 5, 2012 The new Canadian anthology of weird stories, Unearthed: Volume 3 (Third Person Press, 2012), contains my short story "Grass." The story concerns a hunter in northern Manatoba who discovered something unnatural in the deep woods.He's killed big game all around the world, but he's never faced a foe like this.
May 2, 2012 My story "The Skinless Face" will appear shortly in the anthology of Lovecraftian horror Black Wings II, edited by S. T. Joshi. Recently I completed my contribution to the signing sheets that will be bound up with a select number of copies of the book.What it involved was the signing of my signature around 250 times in succession on loose sheets that will become leaves in the books. It's the second time I've done this curious task (the first time was in connection with my book Liber Lilith), and it is an otherworldly experience. After the initial hundred or so sheets, your own signiture starts to look like some alien hieroglyph, and try as you will, you find your hand cramping up and refusing to obey your commands, so that random letters in the signiture go missing or come out of the pen deformed like poisonous moon-blighted fungi. I'll have to go through the process yet again when my novella Iron Chain is published as a book by Miskatonic Books, but that's still a little way off in the future.

Front