Personal / Website News
General Things Going On
As usual, lots of stuff going on behind the scenes. A small recap of things I am juggling:
- Book reviews galore. I overcommitted myself to reviews I need to dig myself out of.
- Michele and I are judges for an upcoming film festival, so we’ve been watching lots of short films for it.
- Submitting the Emmanuelle proposal to publishers.
- Next HP Lovecast Podcast episode will be an interview with Angela Sylvaine about her debut novel Frost Bite.
- Will be a guest on a few upcoming Fan2Fan podcast episodes.
- Next Scholars from the Edge of Time episode will be on Ironmaster.
- Work has gotten hectic with project management work and implementations.
- Other essay projects on the to do list I keep deprioritizing to get above items done.
Ooof. I’ll get my desk cleared off. Someday. I hope. It’s nice to get things done, but I need to manage better and learn to say no.
Book Review: The Scourge Between Stars
It’s been a bit since I published something here at my website. To break the spell I’ve done a book review on Ness Brown’s space horror novella, The Scourge Between Stars.
Michele and I also had the honor to interview Ness on our H. P. Lovecast Podcast. That episode can be streamed here.
Publishing Recap
Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.
Published in February, this collection contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.”
Published in May, this issue of Weird Tales contains my essay “When the Stars are Right.”
Published in late March, the first issue of the zine Footage Fiends, contains my essay “Analisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices.”
Limited to 50 physical copies.
Published in early August, Dark Dead Things #2 contains my essay “Correlating the Contents: Mimetic Desire in H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu’.”
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Peplum Acquisitions
I did it. After watching G2: Mortal Conquest and doing a Scholars at the Edge of Time vidcast about it, I went out and bought a copy of The Swordsman 2: Gladiator Cop off eBay.
Oh yes, expect a podcast or an essay or a review – a something! – about this magnificent bastard of a film.
Autograph Stuff
Here are some of the autographed treasures I shared on social media these past two weeks.
First is the xbox game Darks of Days.
Michele and I saw this game demoed at PAX 2009? Around there. We have a shirt in a box somewhere. It’s an underrated time travel FPS game. It mostly takes place during the Civil War, but also WW1 and WW2, with a concentration camp scene being especially harrowing. The ending of the game is totally neo-peplum and totally epic: you’re back in Pompeii as Mt. Vesuvius is erupting. You got future armor and gun and you can just mow down Roman soldiers as folks run about. It is hectic and chaotic. Calls for an essay someday that’s for sure.
Way back then I contacted the developers, 8Monkey Labs, if they would autograph my copy. They said sure, I snail mailed it to them, and voila, here it is.
Next up is one of my most prized possessions, an Arkham House publication, Nameless Places, signed by author Gary Myers, Ramsey Campbell, and over artist Tim Kirk.
Gary is an old friend who has been a big inspiration to me for writing and getting into Lovecraft, especially the Dreamlands. I will never not plug his work when I can (check out his collection Country of the Worm!!!). Campbell I met at StokerCon 2018. Kirk I met at a Vintage Paperback Show in Glendale. He did a doodle in my book and its adorbs.