The Spyders of Burslem, available now

I’m very pleased to say that my novel The Spyders of Burslem has been published on Halloween, as planned. Available to buy now as a paperback. Kindle users will have to wait just a little longer, because the Amazon approval process holds things up for a day or two. Here’s the blurb…

The Spyders of Burslem. A dark historical mystery, brought to vivid life. It is the year 1869 in the English pottery town of Burslem, where a new age of industry and learning struggles to be born. A young graduate has arrived to teach the workers, but finds himself on the trail of a deadly evil. A new and original novel of 60,000-words, rich with authentic period details and characters.

Here are the chapter contents from the book’s website… with a link to a free sample chapter. Kindle users will, of, course, be able to read the first 10% of the new book for free.

CONTENTS:

Chapter One: Arrival.
Chapter Two: A Providential Meeting.
Chapter Three: The Raising of the Zodiac.
Chapter Four: A Pint of the Finest.
Chapter Five: In a Darkling Aetherstorm.
Chapter Six: Death and Time.
Chapter Seven: Discoveries.
Chapter Eight: The Scrying.
Chapter Nine: A Cunning Kiss.
Chapter Ten: What the Dark Brings.
Chapter Eleven: The Face and the Mind.
Chapter Twelve: The Shadows of the Blind.
Chapter Thirteen: The Workings of Men.
Chapter Fourteen: Lost and Dreaming.
Chapter Fifteen: A First Frost.
A historical note.

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Scary Game Findings

A new in-depth Gamasutra article on Scary Game Findings: A Study Of Horror [Video]Games And Their Players, which delves into exactly what scares Xbox 360 players. Finding out how good PC games look, compared to the Xbox — now that would be pretty scary…

The New York Times reviews Ambrose Bierce

The New York Times reviews a new Library of America volume: Ambrose Bierce…

“If there’s a genre Bierce was born to, it’s horror. He collected his supernatural tales under the title “Can Such Things Be?” — a question whose tone is cunningly ambiguous, hovering between cool skepticism and slack-jawed amazement. And that is exactly the tone of the stories themselves.”

Lovecraft as archaeologist

JAS Arqueologia has published a special academic monograph by Riccardo Frigoli, in Spanish, called: “Las excavaciones de R’Lyeh: La arqueología como metodo, la prehistoria como idea y la literatura fantastica de H.P. Lovecraft”. I very roughly translate this as… “The Excavations at R’Lyeh: the methods of archaeology and the prehistory of this [profession, as found] in the fantastical works of H.P. Lovecraft.” The Introduction, in Spanish, is online as a free PDF, if anyone wants to create an accurate English abstract.

Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

The complete Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello…

Chaosium Halloween sale – 30% off everything

Tabletop RPG game published Chaosium is having a Halloween sale of 30% off… “Chaosium titles and knick-knacks throughout our online catalog”. It runs until 3rd November 2011. Among the fiction anthologies are volumes such as Mysteries of the Worm: Early Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by Robert Bloch.

Secret World sucks in a half million for beta

I just can’t see the attraction of multiplayer PC games (and yes, I’ve tried some, from LoTR via Ryzom, to SL), but it’s interesting that Funcom has announced that The Secret World MMO game has sucked in more than half a million registered users. The Secret World is basically Lovecraft meets the Illuminati/Knights Templars in the modern day. And those figures are for a closed beta test, which makes the figures even more impressive. Size isn’t everthing with MMOs though, and as Age of Conan showed. What matters is the quality of the users. Get a half million 13 year-old idiots and the game is ruined. Although the website graphics for Secret World seem to pitch it at the early-teens market, the storyline is from Ragnar Tornquist — creator of the excellent Dreamfall: The Longest Journey — which might give it some adult appeal. The game goes live in April 2012. There’s some nice concept art floating around the web…

del Toro talks Mimic, releases Director’s Cut

del Toro talks about returning to Mimic (feature-film of Lovecraftian monsters in the New York underground system) after 15 years…

“Almost 15 years on, and del Toro has returned to the film he once regarded as something of a failure [due to interference by the film studio’s suits]. Digging around in Miramax’s film archives, del Toro salvaged the original footage, and returned with a re-edited cut of Mimic that trims out the second unit material he so disliked, and reinstated the atmospheric or character-based moments that irked studio heads back in the 90s. Out on Blu-ray on 31st October, the Mimic Director’s Cut is about as close as we’ll ever get to the film del Toro had rattling around in his head, before all those creative differences began…”

The DVD of the new cut includes lots of commentary, several ‘making-of’ items including “Reclaiming Mimic”, deleted scenes, and the original storyboard animatics.

My essay on the history of New York subway monsters can be found here (PDF link).

One of the great Lovecraftian stories set in the NYC underground, “Far Below”, is to be reissued in the forthcoming Joshi-edited anthology Spawn of the Green Abyss (Centipede Press, sometime far into 2012). The story can also be found in the completely-unavailable Century’s Best Horror Fiction, Vol. 1, and also in the 2003 Wildside reprint of the 1974 book Far Below and Other Horrors from the Pulps.

Free “Dunwich Horror” adaptation

19 Nocturne Boulevard is currently undertaking a full-cast audio adaptation for Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”. The first three parts (of four) are available now.

Wrightson’s adaptation of “Cool Air” (1975)

A blast from the past: Berni Wrightson’s adaptation of Lovecraft’s “Cool Air”, in Eerie magazine from 1975…

Muppet Lovecraft

So what could be next up in the seemingly-endless line of whimsical Lovecraft / kiddy-culture mash-ups? I’d say it has to be “Jim Henson’s the Muppets do Lovecraft”. To the sewing machines!

Cthulhurotica reviewed

This Book and I has a long thoughtful review of the Cthulhurotica anthology. I hadn’t realised that it also has an essay, as well as fiction…

Jennifer Brozek in her essay “The Sexual Attraction of the Lovecraftian Universe” [points] to common elements of Lovecraft’s fiction that welcome an erotic interpretation. […] Lovecraft is known for his lush descriptions of decaying towns, dark forests, and arcane ruins that become veritable Scenery Porn. “‘Food porn’ and ‘woodworking porn,'” Emily points out, “… can get as gratuitous as they want: there is no cultural stigma around watching cooking shows or looking at craft magazines, so we don’t feel we need to apologize.”