First new article up at my website is an interview with the authors of the brand new book, Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions.
I had the honor to talk with Joan Jocson-Singh and Julie Turley on their book. It can be read here.
H. P. Lovecast Podcast
New episode of H. P. Lovecast Podcast is online!
Michele and I return back to the Lands of Dream to talk about the one-shot comic Dreamquest by Clay Adams and Mick Beyers. The episode can be streamed at our Buzzsprout website, via the embedded link below, or via your podcast app of preference.
And for fun, here is my autographed copy from the original Kickstarter campaign:
Fan2Fan Appearance – Akira
2023 marks the 35th anniversary of the legendary anime Akira.
The cool kids over at Fan2Fan have invited me on their podcast to talk about the iconic Japanimation film. Part one can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn, in the embedded podcast player below, or via your podcast app of preference (Akira part 2 is with Allan and Rebecca and can be streamed here).
Also, here is my trustworthy, old school Vampire Hunter D DVD:
Book Reviews
A few reviews of some of the books I’ve been involved in have popped up.
First, there is a fairly positive review of The New Peplum that appears in Cadmo: Journal for Ancient History, 2022, No. 31., written by InΓͺs SimΓ£o SebastiΓ£o. The review is in Portuguese.
Next, there is a review of Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern in the debut issue of The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fairy Tale. The review, by Hogan D. Schaak, is not a positive one at all. Take it with a grain of salt since the reviewer butchers Michele’s name as “Brittany Michelle.”
Publishing Recap
Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.
Published in February, this collection contains my essay βDance or DΔcΔdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.β
Published in late March, the first issue of the zine Footage Fiends, contains my essay βAnalisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices.β
Mighty prolific last two weeks with articles, podcasts, and other projects. It’s also three consecutive weeks of me publishing an article at this website, and I have another one queued up this Wednesday. Feeling good!
Buzzworthy Book Review
I have a new book review up at my website. I return to the world of Jennifer Croll’s homage cocktails. Previously I did a review of her Art Boozel.
Croll’s newest book, Buzzworthy, was published earlier this month, and holy smokes in a rare instance of me being timely, I had a review of it written up and posted. Not to brag, (but I will), I think one of the things I do when I review cocktail books that other websites don’t do is actually make some of the cocktails inside. Anywho, my review of Buzzworthy is online, check it out and consider plucking up Croll’s newest release.
Claus Larsen Interview
Next up I return to my roots of music journalism! I have not really written about/interview anyone since my Heathen Harvest days, so I thought it would be fun to dip back into penning an article on something industrial.
Claus Larsen’s EBM act, LeΓ¦ther Strip, recently released a new album and I enjoyed it throughly. I reached out to Larsen to ask if I could ask him some questions about it and he said sure! So, here is my mini-interview with Larsen about his newest album, Last Station.
New H. P. Lovecast Podcast
Happy three year anniversary to the resurrected H. P. Lovecast Podcast! Back in 2020 when the pandemic had really started, Michele and I brought the podcast back and have done quite a bit since: read some good (and bad) works, interviewed lots of cool people.
On this episode we discuss the 1970 AIP adaptation of The Dunwich Horror. Arrow Video did a restored release of the film on Blu-ray this past January and we had hoped to do an episode then, but house stuff and other projects got in the way. So, a little late but here is our episode. It can be steamed at the HP Lovecast Buzzsprout page, via the embedded player below, or through your podcast app of preference.
Princeton University Press recently published the book, Helen of Troy in Hollywood, by Ruby Blondell (a super expert on classics and Helen of Troy canon).
Very flattered to see essays from The New Peplum cited in this tome! Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the book so I am using preview pages from Google Books to deduce what has been cited. From what I can tell:
Steven Sears’ afterword
My introduction
Haydee Smith’s “Queering the Quest: Neo-peplum and the Neo-femme in Xena: Warrior Princess“
Valerie Estelle Frankel’s “Hercules, Xena, and Genre: The Methodology Behind the Mashup”
Paul Johnson’s “Adapting to New Spaces: Swords and Planets and the Neo-peplum”
I love to see The New Peplum continued to be cited and used in new scholarship. More information about Helen of Troy in Hollywood can be read at the Princeton University Press’ product page for the book.
Fan2Fan Podcast Appearances
The cool kids at the Fan2Fan Podcast are doing a series of episodes about folk’s favorite theme songs from TV shows.
Michele and I are on an episode talking about ours which can be heard at the Fan2Fan Libsysn, on your podcast app, or via the embedded player below. Sincere thanks to Bernie and Pete for having us on.
A side note, one of the shows I mention is the theme song to Mission Hill, which is an edited version of Cake’s “Italian Leather Sofa.” It’s one of my favorite cartoons ever and I talk about why on the episode.
But, for fun, here is my autographed copy of the Mission Hill DVD signed by Brian Posehn. I met him at an Emerald City Comic Con way back in the late 2000s.
Emmanuelle / Black Emanuelle CFP
The Call for Papers forΒ Emmanuelle,Β Black Emanuelle, andΒ EmmanuelleΒ derivative films is open until the end of this month (April 30th).
Emmanuelle the Private Collection Soundtrack.
The CFP can found on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! Iβd be super appreciative to get the word out.
Publishing Recap
Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.
Published in February, this collection contains my essay βDance or DΔcΔdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.β
March went by fairly quiet and BOOM!, first week of April do I have some epic and awesome news to share.
Weird Tales Issue #367
The big, big, big news is issue 367 of Weird Tales that is slated to be published this May. Yours truly got to contribute an essay to this legendary periodical!
Look at that! My name on the cover with some other titans of horror with a cover by Mike Mignola. Talk about a milestone, I am extremely elated.
My essay is about cosmic horror back in the 1920s and 1930s issues of Weird Tales. The issue is available for pre-order, so check it out at the Weird Tales website.
I’ll also be conducting mini-interviews for this issue as well.
Cinema Highball Writeup
New cocktail article is posted at my website as well!
As yall know I love diving into the esoteric, weird, forgotten, and sometimes, kinda nasty, cocktails. The PDT Cocktail Book has a recipe for the Cinema Highball which I actually gave a shot on Twitter back in 2021:
However that was made with Bacardi. The real recipe calls for Flor de Cana, and this time I am doing it for realz. Have a read!
New Episode of H.P. Lovecast
We have a new episode of H. P. Lovecast Podcast online!
As conveyed in previous posts, March was a pretty hectic month for Michele and I. We still are settling into the house and we had essays due at the end of the month (for the cats in cinema book) and just a few other obligations that popped up. Because of this, we didn’t get a normal episode of the podcast online, but we did get a Transmissions episode online. In this episode we got to interview weird fiction author Michael Cisco about his new novel, Pest, and one of our academic colleagues, J. Rocky Colavito, about his Giallo-inspired novel, The Night Scavengers. The episode can be streamed at the HP Lovecast Buzzsprout website, via your podcast app, or via the embedded link below.
We are hoping to be back on track in April as we will finally get our episode online of the Dean Stockwell Dunwich Horror.
Fan2Fan Appearances
Michele and I have made a few appearances on the Fan2Fan Podcast which have been published in the last two weeks.
First up is the Fan2Fan episode on the classic Larry Cohen film, The Stuff. That episode can be streamed via the Fan2Fan Libsyn page, via your podcast app of preference, or the embedded player below:
Next, Fan2Fan sometimes does short podcasts on Fridays called “Five Minute Fridays.”
Michele and I appeared on one to talk about what cosmic horror is. That episode can also be streamed via your podcast app of preference, at the Fan2Fan Libsyn, or via the embedded player below.
As always, sincere thanks to Bernie and Pete of the Fan2Fan crew for having us on their show. We sincerely appreciate them.
Emmanuelle / Black Emanuelle CFP
The Call for Papers forΒ Emmanuelle,Β Black Emanuelle, andΒ EmmanuelleΒ derivative films is open until the end of this month.
Recent acquisitions to the collection: Emmanuelle in Paradise and Emmanuele (single “L”) 3. Also notice the Silvia Castell vs. the iconic Sylvia Kristel.
The CFP can found on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! Iβd be super appreciative to get the word out.
Publishing Recap
Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.
Published in February, this collection contains my essay βDance or DΔcΔdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.β
Friend and colleague Sean Woodard has just had his first physical publication, his essay “‘But Illusions Don’t Kill’: An Examination of Giallo Tropes and Gender in Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue” in the newly released academic collection Bloodstained Narratives: The Giallo Film in Italy and Abroad.
The Bram Stoker Preliminary Ballot has been published and like last year on the podcast we are looking to spotlight some of the authors on the list and help get the word of their works out and entice readers to consider their works. Because of this, we are also flipping the order of episodes this month: Transmissions in the first half, normal episode at the end.
For this special episode of Transmissions Michele and I interviewed David Aquilone about Kolchak the Night Stalker: 50th Anniversary and Donna Lynch about Girls from the County.
The episode can be streamed via our Buzzsprout website, via the embedded player above, or through your podcast app of preference. Give it a listen and consider checking out Aquilone and Lynch’s works.
Scaredy Cats Podcast Appearance
Back in 2021 I had the honor to be a guest on the Scaredy Cats Podcast to talk about the influential slasher film, The Slumber Party Massacre (episode link here).
Host Sherri invited me back on the podcast, along with co-host of the Schitt’s Simply the Best Podcast, Katie, to talk about the 2015 meta-horror-slasher film, The Film Girls. It was a lot of fun to watch the film and then discuss it.
The episode can be streamed at the Scaredy Cats Buzzsprout page here or via your podcast app of preference. Sincere gratitude to Sherri for being asked on.
Emmanuelle / Black Emanuelle CFP
The Call for Papers for Emmanuelle, Black Emanuelle, and Emmanuelle derivative films is open.
Severin DVD (left) vs Full Moon Blu-ray (right) of Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade.
The CFP can found on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! Iβd be super appreciative to get the word out.
A Hero Will Endure Preorder
A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiatoris available for preorder at the Vernon Press website.
This collection contains my essay βDance or DΔcΔdere: Gladiatorand Industrial Music Samplingβ and is slated to be released later this month.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
New Edge Sword and Sorcery Kickstarter
The Kickstarter for New Edge Sword and Sorcery is now live!
The Kickstarter campaign can be found here. The project is currently (evening of 2/12) at 71.77% funded with 19 days left. Consider backing it!
Miss Corsair Debonair YouTube Channel Launch
Pinup/stockings model Miss Corsair Debonair (who I interview for Exotica Moderne issue 14) has launched a YouTube channel (found here).
Her first video (which can be found here or in the embedded player above) has her showcasing a vintage pair of tan RHT stockings. One of her kitties makes a cameo! Check out her video, consider subscribing so you can see her next stockings/nylons/kitties video.
As with 2021, 2022 was a crazy year. Lots of life stuff: got a new job after 16 or 17 years at my previous job, and bought a house – first house ever! It’s been quite a process and these last few months busy with cleaning, packing, and moving. However, that is all done (well, except unpacking and furnishing) and Michele and I get to start 2023 off in a home with our cats.
I did a 2021 Accomplishments List and looking back on those, I actually got most of them done! Some projects have been delayed, and of course I have items and reviews on my to do list that have been pending for a while.
Now that I’m all settled in in the new house, with my own office, and library of research material close at hand, I look forward to taking a big bite out of 2023!
Iβd like to give a shout out to the following folks who have given me platforms to share what I’ve been working on or given me venues to contribute to:
Bernie Gonzalez and Pete Charbonneau (Fan2Fan Podcast)
Hercules Invictus (Voice of Olympus Network)
Ken Holewczynski (Exotica Moderne)
James Chambers, Carol Gyzander (Galactic Terrors)
Jonathan Maberry (Weird Tales)
Kevin Wetmore (Twilight Zone book)
Hal and Dee Astell (CoKoCon)
Michele Brittany (partner in crime)
You are all greatly appreciated!
2023 Projections
Three days into 2023 and projects are already lining up. Some are carryovers from 2022. Some have been legacy to dos. Some will be brand new. We’ve already been in touch with folks for future episodes of H. P. Lovecast, so expect lots of cool stuff there. I got some looming deadlines for essays for anthology editors, so time to get to work!
Things to look forward to in 2023
Publishing of the debut issue of the Footage Fiends zine which contains my essay on the Mario Bava cosmic horror/exotica film, Caltiki: The Immortal Monster.
A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator is slated to be published this February. This contains my essay on industrial bands that sample the film. This book has been a long time in coming, so I am extremely excited to see it published!
My CFP for the Emmanuelle / Black Emanuelle project will be open until the spring. Submit, submit, submit!
Essay to be published in Weird Tales. Proof was done and turned in.
New episodes of H. P. Lovecast Podcast
Appearances on the Fan2Fan Podcast
Appearance on the Scaredy Cats podcast discussing the film The Final Girls.
Being on panels for CoKoCon 2023.
Projects Iβll be starting in 2023
Projects I anticipate to be starting/working on in 2023:
Essay on peplum cats for a project for Simon Bacon about cats in cinema (due early spring!)
Essay on the Front Line Assembly album Implode and how it samples the films Mimic and Event Horizon (passion idea project)
Crossing fingers – get enough submissions for the Emmanuelle project to procure a publisher and get that book off the ground
Turning my Acylum/Vikings presentation in a journal article
And other legacy items on my to do list…
Thank you to everyone who has been with my on my academic journey, who has read and shared my material or given me platforms. You all rock socks!
The Call for Papers for Emmanuelle, Black Emanuelle, and Emmanuelle derivative films is open.
Personal copy of Emmanuelle Pie signed by Summer Altice.
The CFP can found on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! Iβd be super appreciative to get the word out.
Fan2Fan Podcast
The fine folks at Fan2Fan podcast are doing episodes about the best things (movies, books, music, etc.) that came out in 2022.
The next episode is called “The Best of 2022: Movies, TV, Comics and More.” Bernie, Pete, Josh, Michele and myself are on both of these episodes. Sincere thanks to the Fan2Fan crew for having us!
McFarland Holiday Sale
My publisher, McFarland, is doing a holiday sale for all their titles. Use the code HOLIDAY22 during check out to receive 25% off your order. If you want to order a book I am a part of (for yourself or maybe as a Yuletide gift), here they are:
A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator, is set to be published this February by Vernon Press. The collection contains my essay, βDance or DΔcΔdere:Β GladiatorΒ and Industrial Music Sampling.β There is no cover art yet, but there is aΒ product/pre-order pageΒ at the publisherβs website.
Footage Fiends #1
Found footage-centric zine Footage Fiends debut issue is slated to be published this month.
This issue contains my essay, “Analisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices” and can be pre-ordered at the Footage Fiends Patreon.
Awards Season
Horror/speculative award season is upon us. This year I have two pieces of writing eligible for the various awards out there:
βStrange Realities: Twilight Zone-sploitation in Encounter with the Unknownβ in The Many Lives of the Twilight Zone: Essays on the Television and Film Franchise
βAnalisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practicesβ
The Call for Papers for the Emmanuelle, Black Emanuelle, and Emmanuelle derivative films is now live!
The CFP can foundΒ on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! Iβd 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 β80s Nostalgia” at SuperJump looks to have been re-published. This article cites my essay βLost Nights and Dangerous Days: Unraveling the Relationship Between Stranger Things and Synthwaveβ 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.
Three weeks in a row of articles at my website. I hope I can keep up the momentum.
Two New Book Reviews
I’ve published not one but two book reviews at my website in the past two weeks.
First up, stepping in the realm of middle grade, I’ve done a review on Lora Senf’s debut novel, The Clackity. It can be read right here.
Book Template
Monster mayhem continues in my second book review which is on Robert P. Ottone’s newest novel, Nocturnal Creatures. This one can be read right here.
New Episodes of H. P. Lovecast
More double trouble, two episodes of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast have also been published in the last two weeks.
First is our monthly Transmissions program. For September we interviewed Brenda S. Tolian and Ian Welke. That episode can be listened to at our Buzzspout page, the embedded link below, or via your podcast app of preference.
McFarland is doing a sale on horror books during the month of October. During checkout, use the code “HORROR22” to get 25% of books in their horror category.
There’s three books included in the sale I have involvement in (The Twilight Zone book is tagged as horror, but it isn’t out yet, so I’m not sure if the sale applies to it or not):
This is a great opportunity to pluck these books up and be supportive to what Michele and I do.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Footage Fiends Zine
Evan Jordan of the Void Video Podcast and Madeleine of the Unnamed Footage Festival are launching a brand new zine called Footage Fiends that is devoted to all aspects of the found footage genre of films. Tweet embedded below:
Exciting news: my good friend @DVDBoxSet and I are starting the first ever zine exclusively covering in-world camera films (found footage, mockumentary, faux doc, screenlife, hybrid, etc.) and we're now accepting pitches for the first issue!
— πΌπ§ππ ππ π£πππ (@thatevanjordan) September 14, 2022
I’ve completed and submitted a short-form essay about Mario Bava’s film Caltiki: The Immortal Monster. The submission window for issue 01 is still open, so send them a pitch! Email address is footagefiends at gmail dot com.
Artist Gilead Kickstarter Campaign
Sword and sorcery artist Gilead has started a Kickstarter campaign for his Sketch book and print art.
Check out the campaign on Kickstarter and consider supporting.
Welcome to the second instance of my biweekly news roundup. I am digging this schedule more than my prior weekly schedule. There is a lot of content below, so make sure you scroll through it all.
Alicia Carter and Robot #1 Review
The physical first issue of the crowdfunded pulp/sword and planet inspired comic The Astonishing Adventures of Alicia Carterand Robot arrived last week.
One of my favorite things is finding new citations of the essays by the authors who appeared in the books I edited.
Dr. Hannah Mueller’s essay, “Male Nudity, Violence and the Disruption of Voyeuristic Pleasure in Starzβs Spartacus,” which appeared in The New Peplum, has been cited in Dr. Amanda Potter’s essay, “From Female Stereotypes to Women with Agency: Elite Women and Slave Women in Howard Fast’s 1951 Novel, Spartacus (1960), and Starz Spartacus (2010β13)” in Gender, Power, and Identity in the Films of Stanley Kubrick, edited by Karen A. Ritzenhoff, Dijana MetliΔ, and Jeremi Szaniawski.
Super congrats!
The Kubrick collection has been published by Routledge and the product page can be found here.
H. P. Lovecast Podcast Updates
New episode of H. P. Lovecast is online!
Thumbnail by Michele Brittany.
In this episode we talk about the second film in John Carpenter’s informal apocalypse trilogy, Prince of Darkness. This episode can be streamed at our Buzzsprout page, in the embedded player below, or via your podcast app of preference.
On the 30th this month our September Transmissions episode will publish. This episode will have Brenda S. Tolian and Ian Welke.
Looking to the future, for October we will be covering the movie Mimic 2 (we covered the first Mimic film almost a year ago – here is the link). We are also solidifying our Transmissions guests as well.
Fan2Fan Podcast Appearance
The folks at Fan2Fan Podcast are collecting top five Halloween season films from their guests and I was honored to contribute mine.
The episode I appear on with my top five was published last Wednesday and can be heard at this Fan2Fan Libsyn page. Present in this episode was also Joshua Pruett. His top five movies can be heard on this Fan2Fan episode. Keep an eye out for Michele’s list!
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Footage Fiends Zine
Evan Jordan of the Void Video Podcast and Madeleine of the Unnamed Footage Festival are launching a brand new zine called Footage Fiends that is devoted to all aspects of the found footage genre of films. Tweet embedded below:
Exciting news: my good friend @DVDBoxSet and I are starting the first ever zine exclusively covering in-world camera films (found footage, mockumentary, faux doc, screenlife, hybrid, etc.) and we're now accepting pitches for the first issue!
— πΌπ§ππ ππ π£πππ (@thatevanjordan) September 14, 2022
This, of course, inspired me, so now I am working on an essay about the 1950s Italian cosmic horror film, Caltiki: The Immortal Monster (one of the first films to have a found footage scene). If you’re interested in submitting, check out the Tweet thread above for more information.
The Warrior and the Sorceress Re-Release
Shout Factory, under their Scream Factory label, is did a re-release of the Roger Corman 1980s sword and sorcery (sword and planet since it takes place on another planet?) film, The Warrior and the Sorceress.
My copy of The Warrior and the Sorceress with the poster.
I have not seen this film before, even though it is included in the four movie DVD release Shout Factory did a few years ago that contained Deathstalker, Deathstalker 2, and Barbarian Queen (side note: if you want to hear me talk Deathstalker 2 with the Fan2Fan Podcast crew, click here). Of course I had to pre-order the Blu-ray incarnation, plus it comes with a poster and the cover is reversible to a Cthulhu-looking one.
Emmanuelle director Just Jaeckin passed away earlier this month.
The filmmaker may be gone but his legacy lives on. Later in September Cult Epics released two Blu-rays of Jaeckin’s work: Madame Claude and The Last Romantic Lover. Commentary on the discs is done by Jeremy Richey who wrote Sylvia Kristel: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol (read my review here). Check out the Cult Epics website for more info on these releases.
Artist Gilead Kickstarter Campaign
Sword and sorcery artist Gilead has started a Kickstarter campaign for his Sketch book and print art.
Check out the campaign on Kickstarter and consider supporting!
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.
