A WEIRD Way to End the Year!

So I was able to sneak in one last book (this time I’m sure…I think) before the end of the year. This one was WEIRD INHABITANTS OF SESQUA VALLEY by the gifted fantasist  W. H. Pugmire (see the link to my interview with him, below). Earlier in the year I read the revised edition of his great collection SESQUA VALLEY AND OTHER HAUNTS. Anytime I read one of his books, it’s like coming home again; Sesqua Valley has great seductive power, which enfolded me in tendrils of mauve mist a long time ago. This is a slim but rich collection of brand new stories and heavily revised reprints, including an expanded version of my favorite Pugmire tale, “The Million Shadowed One,” which he wrote for my autistic son Colin. Over the years I’ve seen Pugmire’s stories — once very short, like prose poems or dream vignettes, and there was certainly nothing wrong with that! — become longer and longer. One story here, “One Last Theft,” is surely the longest piece I’ve ever seen by him, and a fine tale for sure! I’ve also seen his stories gradually feature more dialogue and character interaction, and feature recurring characters like the fascinating and sinister Simon Gregory Williams, the inhuman “firstborn” of the haunted Sesqua Valley. Williams has a strong presence throughout this book, which includes sequels to H. P. Lovecraft’s tales “The Hound” and “Pickman’s Model.”  Though as I said in the introduction I did for this book, Pugmire is no mere HPL imitator by any means! I like my little intro alot, and I provided the cover art, too, per Pugmire’s request; it’s good but he deserves better. New publishing house Terradan Works is to be commended for putting this project together (and their first book was Pam Chillemi-Yeager’s cool crime thriller novel THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS: DEADLY TATTOO, so they’ve been treating my friends right!). WEIRD INHABITANTS OF SESQUA VALLEY serves beautifully as an introduction to Pugmire’s work, if you haven’t read him before — and as a welcome return to Sesqua Valley for those of us who are already hooked. Check out the book at the publisher’s website, here:

http://www.terradanworks.com/

And if you haven’t read it before, I did an interview with Pugmire a while back, that you can find here:

http://www.jeffreyethomas.com/blog/?p=154