The Call for Papers for the Emmanuelle, Black Emanuelle, and Emmanuelle derivative films is now live!
The CFP can found on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! I’d be super appreciative to get the word out.
Fan2Fan Podcast Appearance
Fan2Fan Podcast is doing a series of John Carpenter-centric episodes. I had the honor, along with Joshua Pruett, to appear on an episode discussing Carpenter’s ode to King and Lovecraft, In the Mouth of Madness.
The episode can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn website or via your podcast app of preference.
Around the time this Fan2Fan episode was recorded, Michele and I did an H. P. Lovecast episode on Carpenter’s Princess of Darkness. That episode can be seen as a companion piece to the Fan2Fan episode, so check both out!
Sincere thanks to Fan2Fan for having me on!
Galactic Terrors Appearance
The New York chapter of the Horror Writers Association does a monthly vidcast called Galactic Terrors which features authors doing readings of their work followed by Q/A.
I was very honored to be asked to appear on the November episode of Galactic Terrors. This episode featured authors Kenneth Cain, Karen Heuler, and myself. It can be streamed at YouTube or the embedded player below. Check it out!
A few citations have popped up in Google scholar in the last couple of weeks.
First, a journal article called “XVII New Literatures” from This Year’s Work in English studies looks to have cited or referenced Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays. The description makes mentions of Australia, so I highly suspect what is specifically referenced is Naomi Simone Borwein’s essay “Synchronic Horror and the Dreaming: A Theory of Aboriginal Australian Horror and Monstrosity.” However, since I lack institutional access, I can’t confirm this (so if you can, I’d be appreciative!).
Next, Karl Otty’s article “GTA Vice City Created a New Wave of ’80s Nostalgia” at SuperJump looks to have been re-published. This article cites my essay “Lost Nights and Dangerous Days: Unraveling the Relationship Between Stranger Things and Synthwave” that was published in Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Born of Blood Issue 2 Kickstarter Loot
My swag from the Born of Blood 2 Kickstarter arrived.
I am revamping my news roundups for the time being. I don’t think I am quite prolific enough to merit a weekly aggregation, so instead I’ll be switching to biweekly. Think that will also help reduce the clutter of news articles at my website. I’m doing some other changes as well, so read on!
Personal / Website News
Not changing anything in the “Personal / Website News” section. If anything, they might get longer (such as this week’s) as I’ll be sharing more news in each biweekly post.
New Website Articles
I’ve published two articles at my website over the past two weeks.
I haven’t quite written enough essays here on cocktail and tiki culture, so I felt one was overdue. I’ve got a handful of other cocktail pamphlets like this from the 70s, so expect some more write ups of a similar ilk in the future.
Next, there is a new issue of Weird Tales that will be coming out very soon. This issue will focus on the sword and sorcery genre so I thought it would be awesome to help do my part to promote the issue by doing some micro interviews with some of the authors and poets within. I put out a call on social media for interested parties and this aggregation of short-form interviews is the result.
The article currently contains interviews with Brian W. Matthews, Teel James Glenn, Dana Fredsti, and Dave Fitzgerald.
H. P. Lovecast Podcast Updates
For August we got a little off track with H. P. Lovecast as we had to hunker in and prep for CoKoCon (see below) and other projects. This means that while August had only one episode of H. P. Lovecast (our dive into Douglas Wynne’s collection Something in the Water and Other Stories), September will have three episodes!
First, we have a Fragments episode that contains our interview with Wynne about his new collection, Something in the Water. The episode can be streamed at the H. P. Lovecast Podcast Buzzsprout page, via your podcast app of preference, or via the embedded player below.
Second, our primary episode for September will be on the movie, Prince of Darkness, direct by John Carpenter. This episode will drop on Sunday the 18th. This episode will act as a companion episode to an upcoming Fan2Fan appearance (see below).
Personal collection.
Finally, for September’s Transmissions episode, we will be interviewing Ian Welke about his new novel, Union Station, and Brenda S. Tolian about her debut short story collection, Blood Mountain. That will drop the last day of September.
In no particular order, three episodes were recorded:
Discussion on John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness
Top Five Vampires Films
Top Five Halloween Films
Our forthcoming H. P. Lovecast Podcast episode on Prince of Darkness will act as a companion episode to the Fan2Fan In the Mouth of Madness. Check out both episodes when they are online!
For Scholars at the Edge of Time later this month, (Thursday, September the 22nd), Michele and I will be discussing Son of Samson.
Personal copy of the recent Kino release.
Finally, to have on the radar, I’ll be doing a reading on the HWA New York Chapter’s Galactic Terrors vidcast. That will be in November.
All of these appearances, along with their publish dates (if known) have been added to the Podcast Index page. As always, if you feel like I’d make a great guest on your podcast, please feel free to reach out to me at vnvdiak@gmail.com.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
I am going to cease doing peplum-specific news go forward. While one of my expertise is peplum, my interests run in a variety of subject matters. Instead, I’ll have a section called “Miscellaneous Tidbits” (temporary name until I can think of another) where I’ll post news relevant to my research or projects I’m working on. Could be peplum, could be something else.
However, if folks do have their own peplum news they want to share with me to promote here, I am still very much available to do that. I am here to help others.
Blog and Adventures
I’ll be adding a new section that will appear time-to-time, and that will be “Blog and Adventures.” I’ll kick it off for this post with a re-cap of CoKoCon.
CoKoCon 2022 Experiences
CoKoCon is a Phoenix fan convention in the old school sense of the early days of fandom: smaller, more intimate crowd taking over a bit of hotel convention space. This is the first in-person version of CoKoCon since 2019 due to the pandemic.
Hal C. F. Hastell and Dee Hastell are the two primary folks behind CoKoCo. Despite us being still fairly new to the Phoenix area and not really knowing anyone, they extended an invitation to us to be on a few panels. We are both extremely flattered and appreciative. Michele and I wound up on two panels: Pre-Code Hollywood Horror Films, and Swords, Sandals, Sorcery, Planets and Other Worlds.
Our first panel was Saturday and we got to the Tempe Double Tree around 9am-ish. This was our first appearance at any sort of public event, let alone a con, since the Covid Pandemic started. We were a little bit nervous as we both have evaded getting Covid thus far. We were so relieved that CoKoCon has strict mask mandates and vaccination or negative Covid test requirements. We felt so much better: everyone was masked, all spaced out. We felt super safe.
We also got a cool swag bag filled with books, stickers, and other goodies. There was also a nice program booklet which had our brand new H. P. Lovecast Logo as an advert! We were pumped.
The Pre-Code Hollywood Horror Films panel started at 10:0am. Hal was the moderator with Michele and I as panelists. Michele is an expert on silent cinema, particularly the city symphony genre, but because of her interest in mummies, she had seen a lot of Universal Horror films. So, she was the big subject matter expert. I’m not too much of a specialist of the period, but know enough since it is all precursor to my Italian genre film/exploitation film studies (but I do love Busby Berkeley musicals). We spent all August prepping for the panel by watching quiet a few Pre-Code horror films: Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), Kongo (1932), King Kong (1933), Island of Lost Souls (1932), and Life Returns (1934). Michele watched a plethora of even more films.
Pre-Code Horror from our collection.
I suspect this might have been a panel that Hal had wanted to do for a while, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We talked about how transgressive and ahead of their time these movies were compared to the films released in the years following the Hayes Code going into proper effect. We all agreed that Life Returns was a terrible film while Kongo was the most controversial and squeamish film we all saw. Definitely worth an experience.
After the panel we meandered around the con for a little bit. We ran into Beth Cato, steampunk author and baker extraordinaire. She gave us ooey gooey delicious cookies and a ribbon for our con badges that proclaimed we had taken part of her baked delectables.
We visited the dealers’ room which housed a handful of authors with tables along with the art that was up for auction. We met authors Adam Gaffen and David Lee Summers.They were cool folk and of course, we had to pluck up some books (can’t walk away empty handed!).
Michele and I returned Monday for the Swords/Sandals/Sorcery/Other Worlds Panel which was at 1:00 pm. This is a panel of Michele’s own creation which she has moderated at other cons, such as Long Beach Comic Con and LA Comic Con. I brought the sword and sandal knowledge while artist Gilead brought the sword and sorcery expertise. I believe this was the first time Michele had an artist instead of a writer on her panel, so it was nice to get a different perspective.
Gilead is an amazing artist. I had to purchase his original painting “Ziggurats and Tentacles” which was part of the art gallery/auction.
“Ziggurats and Tentacles” by Gilead. Now hanging in our living room.
This panel was a lot of fun. Gilead brought a list of sword and sorcery resources (websites, podcasts, Discord servers, etc.) and invited folks to copy it and check them out. He was super knowledgable about all facets of sword and sorcery.
Overall, CoKoCon was. a blast. It was a low-key event for us, which is exactly what we needed during these pandemic times. The 2023 conference is already being planned and has GoH information at the CoKoCon website. We will definitely be back!
The CoKoCon Facebook page is uploading photos, so keep an eye there for photos of the event.
