EVERYBODY SCREAM! for a $0.99 novel!

Beetle aliens, extradimensional alien gods, street gangs, rock stars, conjoined twins, and corn dogs! Life is a carnival in EVERYBODY SCREAM!

For a limited time, Raw Dog Screaming Press is offering the e-book of my novel EVERYBODY SCREAM! for a mere 99 Earth pennies. If you’re not familiar with this book, here’s a description:

“Jeffrey Thomas first seduced readers to the world of Punktown through a short story collection of the same name, bending time and technology to create a futuristic world which felt more real than our own. Everybody Scream! continues the seduction with characters every bit as vibrant only this time each person’s story collides with the others in a dizzying thrill-ride of a novel.

It’s the final day of the season for the annual Punktown Fair and excitement is high. For the couple in charge, Del and Sophi Kahn, it’s a bittersweet day of transition. Little do they realize the trials they will face and how severely this one day will test their relationship. In fact, closing day seems to be a catalyst for many Punktown residents; drawing them in, stirring them up and letting them loose on each other.

This roller coaster tale builds to a peak of expectation then plummets, twisting and turning, a
breathtaking juggernaut, to the final chapters with plenty of screams and giggles along the way.”

And PUBLISHERS WEEKLY said: “…alternately hilarious and terrifying…Thomas uses
techniques and ideas pioneered by Lovecraft to make caustic social observations about humanity…”

Get your copy at Amazon before the price returns to 99 Punktown munits!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002IPHBMK/?tag=jeffreythomas-20

Frank Hebben’s “Maschinenkinder.”

First off, no — despite there being a number of my own books translated into German and released by Festa Verlag, and turned into audio stories by Lausch — I do not myself speak German. Nor read it. But German author FRANK HEBBEN let me see some English translations of his stories, and I was quite impressed. His new collection is called Maschinenkinder, and its cover has made me INSANELY JEALOUS.

In German translation, here is my blurb from the back cover:

„Frank Hebbens Geschichten schaffen, was nur der besten Literatur gelingt: Sie bringen einen dazu, Fragen zu stellen. Bei der einen Story mag man sich fragen, was Realität, was Illusion ist. Bei der nächsten, wie man in einer Zukunft, in der sich das Gedächtnis manipulieren lässt, der menschlichen Erfahrung und Erinnerung trauen kann. Er fordert unsere ethischen Maßstäbe heraus, indem er die Grenzen dessen erkundet, was als Kunst betrachtet werden kann. [...] Er ist anregend, belesen und unterhaltsam. Hier kommt man mehr als nur auf seine Kosten. Man bekommt alles, was ein guter Autor einem geben kann.“
[Jeffrey Thomas]

The book also features an introduction from Myra Cakan, in which — in endeavoring to describe Frank’s work — she puts my name in the same sentence with John Shirley, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson. Oh, ahem, but this blog post is supposed to be about Frank! Let me share some links he sent me, that you might learn more about his book…

Here, in English translation, is Frank’s story “Crematorium”:
http://www.neonrauschen.de/media/Crematorium_Hebben.pdf

The book’s publisher:
http://shayol.cms.corneredchicken.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=430

And here’s a link to his Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/neonrauschen

I wish you the greatest success with your new collection, Frank! But damn you for that incredible cover!

Portraits of Enoch Coffin

(Back cover art by the brilliant Santiago Caruso, interpreting Enoch Coffin.)

(W. H. Pugmire.)

Punktown RPG Kickstarter a Success!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1799183063/punktown-an-rpg-setting-for-call-of-cthulhu-and-br

I was also checking the Kickstarter’s progress, in greater detail, at Kicktraq.

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1799183063/punktown-an-rpg-setting-for-call-of-cthulhu-and-br/

We started out with a quick spike…then, following Thanksgiving and Black Friday, hit a scary plateau that had me wondering if this was going to happen, after all. But as the campaign went on — and word spread via chats at #rpgnet and Lovecraft eZine, and interviews with all the book’s contributors at Examiner.com — we not only reached our goal of $9,000, but surpassed it with $13,564 (150% of our goal). That, my friends, is what I call a success.

I want to thank, here, everyone who pledged and helped spread the news of the campaign. The book’s “core rules” have already been written (by Michael Tresca — and this game is his braincild!), and I myself am still working on my second of two original short stories, that will help gamers get a feel for the setting. And soon, game scenarios will be underway by Brian M. Sammons, Glynn Owen Barrass, and the aforementioned Tom Lynch. For the first time, there will even be a map of that dark future metropolis known as Punktown! And of course there’s the mind-blowing cover by Polish artist Mariusz Gandzel (who luckily got his hands on a copy of the Polish translation of Punktown).

The chats at #rpgnet seemed to have been enormously successful in spreading the word to gamers, and even won us a blurb from game legend Steve Jackson (who dropped in on one of the chats):

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/December_11_2012/Kickstarter_Punktown#.UMfZbt_5jB0.facebook

Here are links to the transcripts for those two chats (which featured myself and Michael Tresca in the first one, and Brian M. Sammons, Tom Lynch, and myself in the second):

http://gmshoe.blogspot.com/2012/12/jeffrey-thomas-mike-tresca-punktown-q.html

http://gmshoe.blogspot.com/2012/12/brian-m-sammons-tom-lynch-jeffrey.html

Then, as I say, there was the video chat at Lovecraft eZine, hosted by Mike Davis (who even, on his own, sponsored a contest to help draw contributors to the Kickstarter). The video chat featured myself, Michael Tresca, Brian M. Sammons, and that afore-afore-mentioned Mr. Lynch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ECy6dvhxXbg

Here are the interviews done to promote the project at Examiner.com.

Mine:

http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-jeffrey-thomas-author-of-punktown

Tom Lynch:

http://www.examiner.com/article/tom-lynch-miskatonic-river-press-discusses-punktown-rpg-kickstarter

Brian M. Sammons:

http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-brian-m-sammons-author-editor-and-reviewer

Glynn Owen Barrass (who came aboard to write a scenario as a result of us having reached an $11,000 stretch goal):

http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-author-and-punktown-contributor-glynn-owen-barrass

And finally, our brilliant cover artist Mariusz Gandzel:

http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-mariusz-gandzel-covert-artist-for-the-punktown-rpg?cid=rss

Why no interview with Mike Tresca? He was too busy writing these articles for the Examiner!

And let’s not forget the guest post I did over at SF Signal:

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/11/guest-post-jeffrey-thomas-on-the-role-playing-game-set-in-the-weird-and-wonderful-world-of-punktown/

Well, there you have it…your one-stop center for all things Punktown Role-Playing Game…

…for NOW.

Oh, there will be more to come…so much more…as the game and book take on flesh. Now the real work begins.

And the real fun for our talented crew.

(P.S. – But I confess…I do miss taking a peek at the Kickstarter page thoughout the day!)

On collaborating with my brother Scott Thomas (author of the new novel FELLENGREY)

My brother Scott Thomas has previously proven his abilities as an author with short story collections such as URN AND WILLOW (his most recent), QUILL AND CANDLE, MIDNIGHT IN NEW ENGLAND, COBWEBS AND WHISPERS, SHADOWS OF FLESH, and WESTERMEAD. He’s appeared in numerous anthologies, such as DAW Books’ THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES XXII, St. Martin’s Press’ THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR # 15 (two stories in that volume!), LEVIATHAN THREE, and THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW FANTASY. Plus, he’s collaborated with me on such books as PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY and THE SEA OF FLESH AND ASH (more on that below!). But now, Scott has seen his first novel, FELLENGREY, released by Raw Dog Screaming Press. As part of a blog tour RDSP has organized to promote Scott’s novel, they conducted an interview with me, focusing on the Brothers Thomas as a writing team. That interview follows…

*****

Raw Dog Screaming Press: What was your first collaboration with Scott? How did it come about?

Jeffrey Thomas: It depends on whether you mean in published form. I guess we can discount anything before that, because our childhood collaborations of various types are too numerous to even approach. (You should see the elaborate movies we used to make on videocassette, some of which were set in my world of Punktown, involving lots of crazy makeup and bloody violent effects.) Actually, Scott and I have only ever written one story together, Apples and Oranges, which originally appeared in the 2005 anthology In Delirium. We were asked to contribute to the book because we had both had collections of our own published through Delirium Books previously. I can’t recall now, though, whose idea it was for us to join forces on the story — whether it was me, Scott, or the publisher. Later I expanded this story a bit, and in this form it appeared in my 2007 collection Doomsdays. Because Scott and I have our own very personal visions, our other published collaborations found us writing separate stories, though linked by a common theme under the same book covers.

RDSP: Which is your favorite collaboration?

JET: I’d have to say it’s the book The Sea of Flesh and Ash (2011, Terradan Works). It was originally to have been published by Prime years earlier but due to publishing delays we ultimately moved the project. Prime’s Sean Wallace sparked the idea for the book, though, asking Scott and me if we could both write a short novel inspired by a beautiful piece of artwork by Travis Anthony Soumis (which of course became the cover), depicting a woman lying in the surf in front of a mysterious misty temple. So Scott wrote a story called The Sea of Ash and mine was The Sea of Flesh (he came up with his title first so I took my cue from him). During the writing we didn’t tell the other what our respective stories were about, beyond that one image, but as it turns out we both wrote about New England and alternate universes. Of course, we’re New Englanders, but that isn’t to say we only write about this region. What I love most about this book is that both stories are rather poetic and very mysterious in tone. I think the book has a lot of artistic and literary merit, and it’s been sadly overlooked in comparison to other of our books.

(Writers Scott Thomas and Jeffrey Thomas)

RDSP: Can you describe the collaboration process? Is it different than the way you normally write?

JET: The method of collaboration has varied depending on the project. Previously I described the origin of The Sea of Flesh and Ash, and how we approached writing it in our separate corners, as it were. For our book Punktown: Shades of Grey the project demanded another kind of approach. When I first conceived of my dark future world of Punktown in 1980, from the start I wanted Scott and a writer friend, Tom Hughes, to set short novels of their own there so we could put the three together as one book. This we did, though to date only Tom’s story has seen print (in my shared world anthology, Punktown: Third Eye, though Scott did write a new Punktown story for that book). Anyway, so Scott was well familiar with Punktown already when many years later I approached him with the idea of a similar book, which became Punktown: Shades of Grey, but this time it would be a book of short stories — half by me, half by Scott. Now, Scott would rather be writing stories set in New England or Britain in the 18th or 19th centuries, or an alternate past as in Fellengrey, but he can get into that Punktown frame of mind admirably. I think the two best stories in that book are his: Pulse and The Merciful Universe. The former is chilling and disturbing, the second heartbreaking yet uplifting.

RDSP: What do you like best about Scott’s work?

JET: When I think of Scott’s writing, the word “beautiful” comes to mind. Whether he’s writing the ghastliest ghost story, or the most heart-wrenching tragedy, there’s still a great deal of beauty in the proceedings. Beauty in his poetic (but accessible) prose voice, and much beauty in his depiction of long-ago times — which he always renders with great assuredness, being a scholar of history in its minutest detail. His love of nature, and how nature figures into much of his work, reminds me greatly of Thomas Hardy. (His use of tragedy also makes me think of Hardy.) Readers and reviewers have often made this same observation, that his fiction is uncommonly beautiful in execution and content. But as I noted, that isn’t to say the chills aren’t there. For sheer eeriness, his work recalls that of classic horror writers like M. R. James and E. F. Benson. I think the horrors in Scott’s stories are made even more horrible for being framed in a beautiful context.

RDSP: Do you ever consult with each other on your personal projects?

JET: We don’t so much these days, because we live in different states and find ourselves more busy with all the aspects of our lives, but there was a time when we would read each other’s work while it was still in progress, to encourage the other along. Later on we still managed to keep up with reading each other’s work when it was finished/published, but we’re both so productive that we now have work that the other has never read. In fact, I haven’t yet read Fellengrey myself (though Scott has discussed it with me) and I’m looking forward to it with great excitement. All nepotism aside, Scott is truly one of my favorite writers.

RDSP: Most of the members of your family are creative. Why do you think that is?

JET: That brings up the classic debate of genes versus environment in human development. The obvious answer would be a combination of the two. We were brought up in a family that loved books, films, art, music. I mean, who doesn’t, but we were all obsessive in our interests. For instance, for a time my mother was fascinated with Korea and Japan — particularly Japanese films and the author Yukio Mishima — and even tried teaching herself Japanese. Her obsession helped instill in me an appreciation for those countries that ultimately led me to travel repeatedly to Asia. In her youth my mom wrote a newspaper column, and my father was a published poet and an artist. Consequently, my brother Scott and I became writers and artists, my brother Craig studied music, my sister Wendy wrote her own newspaper column as a teen and today is heavily into crafts. And now Wendy’s son Russ Thomas is a gifted graphic designer, and my own son Colin has filled countless reams with his drawings of monsters (and countless computer bytes with his stories). Recently my three-year-old Jade has begun drawing human faces. So the Thomas genes march boldly on!

*****

Scott Thomas’ novel FELLENGREY can be ordered here in trade paperback or hardcover edition:

http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/fellengrey.html

And here’s a brief description of the novel:

“As a boy, Hale Privet dreamed of sailing the grey waters of the northern Gantic Ocean aboard a mighty ship of war. But when farm life kept him from the sea, the sea came to him — in the form of Rye Blackbird, the infamous mutineer whose wondrous tales help set Hale on his own path to adventure. And such adventures they are! Villains, mysteries, sea battles and even a cursed island await. Privet’s story is part folklore and part fantasy, set in a long-ago time where you might just as easily witness something mystical, as feel the salty spray of the sea on your face. FELLENGREY is a bedtime story for grown-ups, complete with pirates, ghosts, magic spells and, of course, a beautiful maiden to capture the dashing hero’s heart. Author Scott Thomas lyrically creates a world that is visceral and treacherous, but also lovely and familiar.”

That last line could sum up all of Scott’s work very nicely!

The Last Big Thing

(Miskatonic River Press publisher Tom Lynch ventures into Punktown.)

Kickstarter for PUNKTOWN, the role-playing game.

(Logo created by Nicolas Huck, for the German-language site he designed and maintains for me, Planet Punktown.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a role-playing game based on my world of Punktown, setting for many of my novels and short stories, has been under development with Miskatonic River Press. Well, tonight, a Kickstarter campaign for the project was launched. In our first night we made $970 of our $9,000 goal, so we’re all excited and encouraged, but we hope to exceed that goal so as to present gamers and readers with the absolute best product we can provide. I may not be quite so crass here as to beg for your money — it goes without saying I hope we’ll see a lot of support for this project — but I will appeal to friends and fans of my work to spread the word about our Kickstarter.

And I feel this is a project that will appeal to even those of my readers who don’t game. (The game, by the way, is set up to be played via Call of Cthulhu and BRP.) The book will feature two brand new Punktown stories by yours truly, written especially for the book, in which the Cthulhu Mythos intrudes upon the far-future mega-city of Punktown. There will also be a number of game scenarios that promise to be terrific, from writers Brian M. Sammons and Tom Lynch. The core rules of the book have been written by Michael Tresca. At 37,000 words, these core rules read like a handy encyclopedia of Punktown, listing the major alien races, weapons, locations, and so on in great detail (culled from Mike’s exhaustive reading of my entire body of Punktown fiction). Not to mention the proposed artwork. The cover is currently underway, from Polish artist Mariusz Gandzel, and even incomplete it’s breath-taking.

Putting this collaborative project together reminds me of making a movie, in which everyone gets to do their thing, show off their specialty, in order to fulfill one cohesive vision. This game book will be a dream come true for our whole group. But despite the super-powers of this heroic team, we need help to get the job done…

Won’t you please go have a look at the Kickstarter page? There, you can read more about the project and watch a video introduction from Miskatonic River Press’ president, Tom Lynch: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1799183063/punktown-an-rpg-setting-for-call-of-cthulhu-and-br

Here’s how the Kickstarter page describes our endeavor:

Game in a haunting, dark, cyberpunk city, full of aliens, robots, and mutants. Welcome to Jeffrey Thomas’ Punktown. Watch your back!

• Launched: Nov 19, 2012
• Funding ends: Dec 19, 2012

“Skyscrapers with sides so smooth and featureless (with vidscreens on the interior, instead of windows) that one might think they were solid granite monuments in a graveyard for dead gods. Other buildings that looked like they’d been pieced together from thousands of odd-matched parts salvaged from stripped factory machines, steam curling out of grids and grates in their complex flanks. Buildings with snake skins of multicolored mosaics. Buildings wearing an armor of riveted metal plates, like retired warships looming vertically with their sterns jammed into the street. Flat roofs upon which perched smaller buildings, symbiotically. Other structures tapering to needle points that seemed to etch the clouds upon the blue glass of the sky. Stacked apartments. Stacked businesses. On street level: shop fronts, and gang kids squatting on tenement steps, glaring insolently at the slow sludge of traffic…Ah, Punktown.”

Risks and Challenges:

Risks? Challenges? Ha! We laugh at them. Not really…but we face them every day. As a small press, day-to-day survival is a challenge. We’re used to facing challenges and overcoming them. After all, MRP did not fail after our founder and CEO Keith Herber passed away not even a year into our existence. We pressed on. No doubt we’ll find some new challenges using Kickstarter, but as with all past challenges, MRP will overcome them, and provide you with the best product(s) we possibly can!

*****
Thanks for your time, and for hearing my appeal. Please wish us the best in seeing this exciting and unique dream-project come to fruition!

– JET

(Logo for Miskatonic River Press.)

An acclaimed new collection: “Jagannath,” by Karin Tidbeck

Cheeky Frawg Books, the publishing imprint of Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer (recent winners of the World Fantasy Award for their anthology THE WEIRD), is releasing a fascinating new short story collection: JAGANNATH, by Karin Tidbeck.

The publisher describes the book thusly:

Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish writer Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in what is likely to be one of the most talked-about short story collections of the year. Introduction by Elizabeth Hand.

Praise for Jagannath:

“I have never read anything like Jagannath. Karin Tidbeck’s imagination is recognisably Nordic, but otherwise unclassifiable–quietly, intelligently, unutterably strange. And various. And ominous. And funny. And mysteriously tender. These are wonderful stories.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

“Restrained and vivid, poised and strange, Tidbeck, with her impossible harmonies, is a vital voice.” – China Miéville

“Tidbeck has a gift for the uncanny and the unsettling. In these wonderful, subtle stories, magic arrives quietly. It comes from the forests or the earth or was always there in your own family or maybe exists in another realm entirely…leaving you slightly dazed and more than a little enchanted.” – Karen Joy Fowler

“Were this collection to contain only its biomechanoid wonder of a title story, it would still be amazing. Jagganath heralds the arrival of a bold and brilliant new voice, which I see too few of these days. You must read Karin Tidbeck.” – Caitlín R. Kiernan

“In Karin Tidbeck’s collection Jagannath, the mundane becomes strange and the strange familiar with near-Hitchcockian subtlety. I loved Tidbeck’s clean, classic prose. It creates beautifully eerie music for a twilight domain.” – Karen Lord

About the Author:

Karin Tidbeck has become something of a sensation in her native country, having published a collection there in Swedish, won a prestigious literary grant and just sold her first novel to Sweden’s largest publisher. A graduate of the iconic Clarion Writer’s Workshop at the University of California, San Diego, in 2010, her publication history includes Weird Tales, Shimmer Magazine, Strange Horizons, Unstuck Annual, Steampunk Revolution, and the anthology Odd.

Recommended for fans of:

Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand, Karen Russell, Lauren Groff, Ursula K. Le Guin, and China Mieville.

Story behind the stories:

Although Sweden and other Scandinavian countries have become famous for their mystery fiction, Tidbeck’s success points to the rise of unique writers of fantasy, magic realism, and the surreal from that area. Discussions online of “Finnish Weird” and Swedish Weird” speak to an untapped wealth of talent in the region that will soon be introduced to English-language audiences.

Cheeky Frawg is a literary imprint founded by Hugo Award-winner Ann VanderMeer and her husband World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer. Cheeky Frawg focuses on translations and international fiction. Other current and future offerings from this publisher include iconic Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola’s Don’t Pay Bad for Bad & Other Stories and critically acclaimed Finnish writer Leena Krohn’s novel Datura http://cheekyfrawg.com

ISBN-10: 0985790407 * ISBN-13: 978-0-9857904-0-0 * $11.99 trade paper / 160 pages / November 15, 2012 World-wide release date / E-book also available

(For more information, contact Jeff VanderMeer at vanderworld@hotmail.com)

NPR has just run a review of the book that can be read here: http://www.npr.org/2012/10/31/164055676/book-review-jagannath

W. H. Pugmire and “The Strange Dark One”

It should be no mystery to anyone who knows me half well that I’m a rabid fan of the brilliant dark fantasist W. H. Pugmire. (I interviewed him on this blog back in February of 2009: http://punktalk.punktowner.com/?p=154) Wilum and I have been friends dating back more than twenty years now, though we’ve never met in person. (I do hope that can be rectified at next year’s NecronomiCon!) We’ve collaborated numerous times; usual with me providing illustrations for Wilum’s stories, the occasional cover, and introductions to a number of his short story collections. I even published one of these in chapbook form, TALES OF SESQUA VALLEY, via my Necropolitan Press. Some months back Wilum and I wrapped up a short story collection we wrote together called ENCOUNTERS WITH ENOCH COFFIN, the titular character of which is a sinister and seductive artist who will take readers through all kinds of Lovecraftian adventures. Writing that book was immensely fun, and Wilum and I plan on writing a novel about Enoch Coffin further down the road. While ENCOUNTERS WITH ENOCH COFFIN is itself still some time from appearing, let me tell you about another of Wilum’s books that is just over the horizon…

THE STRANGE DARK ONE, from Miskatonic River Press, collects eight stories involving H. P. Lovecraft’s mysterious invention, Nyarlathotep. Here are the contents:

The Strange Dark One (a novella)

Immortal Remains

Past the Gates of Deepest Dreaming

One Last Theft

The Hands That Reek and Smoke

The Audient Void

Some Bacchante of Irem

To See Beyond

For this book I had the honor of providing the cover and an illustration to accompany each story. Since Wilum’s work has an intensely artistic, poetic feel (he is very much inspired by classic writers such as Oscar Wilde and Henry James), I decided to go with the medium of collage, using images from Victorian-era steel engravings, cut out with an exacto knife and pasted up by hand. I hope they capture some of the essence of Wilum’s remarkable work.

THE STRANGE DARK ONE by W. H. Pugmire can be preordered here:

http://www.miskatonicriverpress.com/products/sdo.shtml

And if you’d like a little more information on the book…

“With The Strange Dark One, W. H. Pugmire collects all of his best weird fiction concerning H. P. Lovecraft’s dark god, Nyarlathotep.

This avatar of the Great Old Ones is Lovecraft’s most enigmatic creation, a being of many masks and multitudinous personae. Often called The Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep heralds the end of mortal time, and serves as avatar of Azathoth, the Idiot Chaos who will blow earth’s dust away. Many writers have been enchanted by this dark being, in particular Robert Bloch, the man who, through correspondence, inspired Wilum Pugmire to try his hand at Lovecraftian fiction. This new book is a testimonial of Nyarlathotep’s hold on Pugmire’s withered brain, and these tales serve as aspects of a haunted mind.

Along with stories that have not been reprinted since their initial magazine appearances, The Strange Dark One includes “To See Beyond,” a sequel-of-sorts to Robert Bloch’s groovy tale, “The Cheaters;” and the book’s title story is a 14,000 word novelette set in Pugmire’s Sesqua Valley.

The Strange Dark One is a collection of Lovecraftian fiction by W. H. Pugmire. Each tale is beautifully illustrated by the remarkable Jeffrey Thomas, who is himself one of today’s finest horror authors.”

Shucks, Wilum!

Cthulhu invades Germany, Monsters invade France

It’s been a while since my last post (I sound like I’m in the confessional booth here), so I have a few things to catch up on…

Firstly, I want to announce the recent release — from Germany’s Festa Verlag — of my Cthulhu Mythos collection Geschichten aus dem Cthulhu-Mythos. It’s a beautiful hardcover, the dust jacket having a wonderful mock-leather textured feel. I think I’m in love. The contents, in English, are:

I Married a Shoggoth

The Bones of the Old Ones (which is set in my Punktown universe, as are the next two stories)

The Avatars of the Old Ones

The Young of the Old Ones

Servile

Conglomerate

Through Obscure Glass (which is set in W. H. Pugmire’s Sesqua Valley)

Out of the Belly of Sheol

The Face of Baphomet

Corpse Candles

Pazuzu’s Children

The Dance of Ugghiutu (another one set in Punktown)

Children of the Dragon (the first appearance of this story anywhere; it’s set in modern-day Vietnam)

As a bonus, the book also contains an interview with me, conducted by German writer Christian Endres. I featured the English version of this interview here on my blog, back in September of 2011: http://punktalk.punktowner.com/?p=1372

Also, the interview appears in the November/December issue of the German magazine GEEK! Here’s their third issue.

Christian decribes GEEK! thusly: “a new geek-culture sf fantasy horror print magazine here in Germany that reaches 40,000 people.” Sounds good to me! Christian sent me a PDF of the four-page interview, and it bowled me over with its colorful interior design. They even have me, on the first page, side-by-side with Mr. Lovecraft himself. I wish I could reproduce those pages here to show you. Thanks, Christian! And thanks as always to mein freund, Frank Festa.

The book Geschichten aus dem Cthulhu-Mythos can be ordered from the Festa Verlag web site here: http://www.festa-verlag.de/Lovecrafts-Bibliothek/Geschichten-aus-dem-Cthulhu-Mythos::328.html

Also recently released is the anthology MONSTRES!, from France, edited by Jacques Fuentealba. I’ll let you guess what the theme of the book is. My contribution is the story Me femme est un shoggoth. Can you figure that one out? Yep, it’s I Married a Shoggoth again, in French translation this time instead of German. As you can see, the book features really cool cover art. This link gives the full contents:

http://www.psychovision.net/livres/sorties-livres/827-monstres

If you English-speaking people are feeling left out, here’s a link to an oldie-but-goodie review of the ebook edition of my novel MONSTROCITY (the Cthulhu Mythos again, and again in Punktown), from the SF Crowsnest site:

http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/books/2011/Monstrocity-by-Jeffrey-Thomas-16305.php

…wherein it is said:

“Thomas creates a rich, alien world that mixes many quite prominent elements of H.P. Lovecraft’s Chthulhu mythos with twists of his own, setting the tone for a story that jangles the nerves and pulls on the puppet strings of paranoia and insanity.”

The ebook of MONSTROCITY can be ordered here:

http://anarchy-books.com/

That kind of catches me up…I hope to be back sooner next time to keep you filled in on my conquest of the world.