Saturday, September 17, 2011

A Haunted Mind

I'm neglecting this site rather badly.

I keep meaning to add to the blog but somehow at the moment I can never find the time.

A lot of my community work has taken a step up and I'm working on new projects. These seem to be taking more and more time - or else I'm just getting older and they're taking me far longer - and whilst I say I'll write a bit of a blog I never really get round to it. I'm also trying to finish off American Vampires - almost done - as well as a couple of other writing projects which will appear in the fullness of time hopefully.

And I've been asked to do more tv work - I believe that I'm on television on the Ancient Aliens programme but we don't get it over here. I wouldn't watch it anyway as I hate seeing myself on tv. But it must be going down o.k. as they've asked me to do more,

And the big news is that The World's Creepiest Places has been printed - in fact I have a copy sitting in front of me - and should be available as from the 5th October, I think. I'm snowed under with requests for interviews and am trying to sort them out, so be prepared for me on radio stations everywhere. I've already done some of them and I think some are appearing as podcasts already.

Also the next book has been agreed with New Page. This is the Lovecraft book and it's called A Haunted Mind. I had suggested "Eldrich Worlds" but when I was doing up the scheme for the book, I called the Introduction, which is about Lovecraft himself and who he was "A Haunted Mind" and they loved it and decided to call the book that. Which means I've got to think up another title for the Introduction!

I've also started a new science-fiction novel which is about time travel and is set in the American Civil War. What if something had shifted the balance of history, which might be more fragile than we realise, and the South had won? Such an event in itself might not be ompletely shattering but what if it had ramifications further down the line And what if there were more timelines than our own? We'll see where this one goes.

By the way did anyone see Torchwood recently and more importantly did anyone understand it? My son and I sat through ten episodes of Miracle Day - my wife and daughter having given up after the third episode - and we were still no wiser. There were far too many unanswered questions and, dare I say it, the whole adventure was unnecessarily gay. I have absolutely nothing against gayness but did all the innuendo and reference add anything to the plot? Maybe it did and I missed it. Anyway I'll get back to my writing.

I promise not so leave it so long until the next post.

2 comments:

  1. I've been checking obsessively for The World's Creepiest Places for a couple weeks now, and yes, it IS indeed on our sales floor already. In fact, it was by looking at the back of the book that I found the url for this blog.

    I'm very much looking forward to this new vampire book as well. I cannot get enough of mirror lore (really, there isn't enough!), and I'm very intrigued by your mention, in an earlier post, of a Latvian story with a vampire mirror. When that book comes out, I think that's the first part I'm going to look at.

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  2. I'm a professional author of Lovecraft weird fiction, and I have an intense interest in books that present their "take" on Lovecraft's life and aesthetics. I am, I confess, rather defensive in my attitude that Lovecraft was in fact a very normal person (compared to any of the rest of us) but one with an extraordinary imagination and a genius for expressing that dark imagination in works of poetry and prose. So I am prepared to hate your book, which I shall order from Amazon, in which the title suggest that you will investigate an author's dark and twisted mind. It seems, from what I've seen, that one of the selling points for the book is that Lovecraft's reality (his life, his thought) was as strange and dark as his brilliant fiction, and that is an absurd falsehood. Oneneed only read his published letters to see how normal Lovecraft was as a person, or read the remembrances of Lovecraft in the Arkham House book, LOVECRAFT REMEMBERED (1998, edited by Peter Cannon). Perhaps your publisher wanted to use the myth of Lovecraft's eccentricities as a way of selling the book, but I find that this is an unfair practice and is belied by biographical facts, as found in S. T. Joshi's outstanding two-volume biography of HPL, I AM PROVIDENCE. I look forward to reading your book, but I am prepared to write a scathing (although hopefully not abusive) review at Amazon!
    yr obt Srvt,
    W. H. Pugmire, Esq.

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