The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.36: The Great God Pan

Machen’s The Great God Pan is one of the earlier iterations of what Lovecraft came to define as cosmic horror; here it is effectively wedded to The Shining Pyramid in a new, illustrated, limited edition hardback put out by Three Imposters Press to showcase themes which would provide the foundation of later Lovecraftian horror: inconceivable powers lurking behind the thin veneer of reality; monstrous miscegenations and hybridities; and horrible, inhuman survivals from the dawn of time.

Nice.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.35: Wyrd Signal

I’ve commented previously on my strong prediliction for the podcast medium  - to the extent that listening to podcasts is now my principle leisure activity and mode of media consumption. I live alone (discounting, of course those other spectral presences which haunt Ghooric Zone Towers) and, whilst I am very comfortable with my own company (often preferring it to that of others), the podcasting format seems to lend itself to an intimacy and sense of familiarity, such that listening to various podcasts over the years has made me feel part of a wider community (which this has been something of a lifeline to me during some especially difficult times). Indeed, by its very nature podcasting is a relatively democratic and participatory endeavour, and I certainly have had the opportunity to make many online friends (on occasion meeting them in the flesh) as a consequence of listening to many of the excellent podcasts out there.

In any case, this year’s Lovecraftian Thing a Day means to continue the tradition of highlighting new and unusual podcasts which might be of interest to regular Ghooric Zone readers. To which end, today we take a look at the recently-released first episode of Wyrd Signal, presented by Lucy Brady (who I had the opportunity to meet about a year ago at a Lovecraft-themed meet-up) and Sean Pearce. Whilst hauntological rather than Lovecraftian in its focus, the first episode of Wyrd Signal contains much of interest to fans of Lovecraft, including an analysis of the hauntological aspects of Lovecraft’s work, as well as an extended discussion by the hosts concerning Lovecraftian themes in The Stone Tape and other of Nigeal Kneale’s output (the theme of the first epusode). Whilst very accessible, the presenters also do an excellent job of framing their discussion around key academic elements (by way of Marx and Derrida) of hauntological theory. If you are interested in Lovecraft, hauntology, speculative horror or folk horror, then Wyrd Signal is a stong recommend - join the Facebook group here, subscribe via itunes and other podcatchers, or go and listen to it here - immediately!

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.34: Lovecraft’s Revenge

Lovecraft’s Revenge is a miniature skirmish game of Lovecraftian horror published by Two Hour Wargames. An iteration of the Chain Reaction engine which informs all of THW games, Lovecraft’s Revenge employs an innovative system geared specifically toward solitaire play. Given that, these days, I play most of my games solo, and having been a fan of THW’s products for well over a decade, I was excited to discover that they had recently added a Cthulhu mythos-themed ruleset to their stable of producsts.

I am less enthused by the gothed-up Nicholas Cage lookalike which graces the game’s cover; still, it is an improvement on THW covers from back in the day - and this remains one of the few soloable Lovecraftian miniature games out there. In any case, I look forward to cracking out some of my minis and scenery over the coming weeks with a view to giving this a spin.

Lovecraft’s Revenge is available in hardcopy and as a pdf download here.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.33: The Arte Mephitic

The Arte Mephitic is a long-form poem, accompanied by illustrative woodcuts and presented in chapbook form, detailing the efforts of an 18th century sorcerer to attain the secrets of immortality by evoking the forces of the Cthulhu mythos. 

I backed this as a Kickstarter last year, which brought with it a slew of extras, including the rather handsome red leather bookmark shown above; indeedThe Arte Mephitic is as notable for its production values as much as its contents, having the look and feel of the type of ‘talismanic’ book which seems so popular within the occult scene at the moment (but at a more reasonable price point). 

A worthy addition to the shelves of the more eclectic collectors of Lovecraftiana out there, The Arte Mephitic can be purchased here.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.32: Night Gaunts by Jim Pitts

Nightgaunts remain one of my favourite monsters from within the pages of the Lovecraftian bestiary, which is somewhat surprising given that they are one of the Lovecraft’s least teratologically fabulous creations - conforming ss they do to more traditional genre tropes by way of their recognisably devilish morphology. The smooth, featureless faces are, however, another matter entirely.

In any case, I was certain that this had appeared as part of 2016s Lovecraftian Thing a Day - but on closer scrutiny it appears not. Thus I present this framed print of Jim Pitts ‘Night Gaunts’ for your delectation and edification.

Enjoy.

The Lovecaftian Thing a Day (2018) No.31: The Annotated Fungi from Yuggoth

We began this year’s Lovecraftian Thing a Day with a version of Lovecraft’s The Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle, so it seems appropriate to bookend the first month of posts with yet another iteration of that fine work. So, today we present Fungi from Yuggoth: An Annotated Edition, edited by David E. Schultz and published by Hippocampus Press in 2017.

This edition also contains facsimiles of the original handwritten poems, and each sonnet is individually illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt. Shown here are two of the facsimile pages, along with the Eckhardt illustration to Sonnet XXXV, Evening Star, which is both a heartbreakingly haunting piece and my favourite of Lovecraft’s poems.

Unfortunately Fungi from Yuggoth: An Annotated Edition - which has been years in the making, and for me one of the most anticipated Lovecraftian tomes - has now sold out of its limited edition hardcover run; however, I understand that Derrick Hussey of Hippocampus Press is considering a reprint - which would be wonderful, as this certainly deserves a wider audience.

The Lovecaftian Thing a Day (2018) No.30: From the Mountains of Madness

Last night the Silver Key unlocked a portal to an oneiric realm of polar horror, wherein my dreaming self was propelled across a vast range of snow-encrusted, needle-like mountains and onto an icy plateau - upon which I saw arrayed a city of cyclopean proportion and alien design.

I sensed beneath that aeons-old metropolis great, benighted burrows within which strange life roiled and bubbled blasphemously. Feeling my consciousness drawn inexorably toward those black vaults of horror, I spoke a Word of Power evoking the Nameless One - a Word extricated from the strange system of signification etched upon the Silver Key - to recall myself to wakefulness.

Whereupon I discovered, clutched in my right hand as I lay upon my bed, the above token - whose unearthly and unknown alloy has given life and monstrous form to a curious and horrible design.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.29: Silver Key NecronomiCon 2013 Badge

More memories of NecronomiCons past: my Silver Key badge from NecronomiCon 2013. 

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.28: Lovecraft Bust Postcard

A postcard from the Providence Athenaeum depicting Bryan Moore’s bust of the Old Gent, which currently graces the hallowed halls of that august institution. I was fortunate to witness the official unveiling of the bust back in 2013. These postcards were available to purchase at the Athenaeum during last year’s NecronomiCon.

Good times.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.27: A Dollop of HP

I Monster is a collaboration between spoken word artist David Yates (also known as Dolly Dolly - who I’ll be returning to in relation to another Lovecraftian Thing at a later date) and music students from Leeds Beckett University. A Dollop of HP (the title of which, for non-UK residents, obliquely references a traditional culinary aspect of British culture) comprises of readings of Lovecaft’s The Music of Erich Zann and Dagon, as well as two of his poems (The Garden and Nemesis), all framed by an evocative incidental score of electronic music.

This is very much in the vein of recent British hauntological electronica, and encompasses some eccentricities of that genre: the music accompanying Nemesis seems to be emulating the theme music to classic 80s technology TV programme, Tomorrow’s World; nonetheless, it does work extremely well - Yates performance is especially bleak and menacing: think Lovecaft read by an official from some sinster British ministry delivering the three-minute warning at the height the Cold War (again, more about which in a later post). This could turn out to be one of my favourite Lovecraftian spoken-word pieces - here’s hoping we hear more Lovecaft from I Monster in the future (I, for one, would relish a complete rendition of the Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle).

Available for download via Bandcamp, for the hipsters and audio-retroists amongst you, this is also available as a limted-edition cassette tape (which I must admit I’m rather tempted by).

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.26: Innsmouth Gold

Regular readers will recall that, earlier in the month, I described how - through  curious circumstances - I came to be in receipt of a Silver Key; may also recall my decision to wear it during the hours of sleep with a view to unveiling the key’s oneiric secrets.

My dreams of late have been haunted by hints of weird scenes and terrifying cosmic vistas; indeed, only last night I dreamt that I was atop a great moonlit reef, overlooking a black ocean which stretched before me the distant horizon - and beneath which I sensed strange life stirring and swarming amidst monstrously ancient weed-strewn towers of repellent design.

Behind me I could discern a jagged coastline, across which spread the crumbling remnants of an old port-town - from whence came a small rowboat in the direction of the reef and which, I spied, held a loan occupant. Making my way to greet this stranger at a small sandy cove at which he had soon beached his boat, I discovered an old man dressd in the oilskinned garb of a fisherman from times past; stranger yet was his wide mouth and bulging, unblinking eyes. Approaching, he took from the pocket of his worn and heavy jacket a small pouch of roughly woven sackcloth, offering it to me with an abominable smile which revealed a long line of shark-like teeth - through which he uttered in a low, gutteral voice the alien words of an immeasurably remote and unknown tongue...

Gripped by a terror so profound that I was immediately brought to wakefulness, I discovered the small sackcloth purse arrayed on my bed next to me, smelling of the sea, and disgorging from its disagreeable interior a small flood of gold coins of curious provenance and unknown mint.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.25: The Night Ocean

Paul La Farge’s novel The Night Ocean controversially documents the friendship between H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Barlow (Lovecraft’s literary executor, and noted anthropologist). I have not yet read The Night Ocean - in part because I’d like to give it some context by first reading O Fortunate Floridian: H.P Lovecraft’s Letters to R.H. Barlow; however, I mention it here because I accepted The Night Ocean as first prize for winning the Lovecraft trivia quiz, compered by the mighty Pete Rawlik, at NecronomiCon 2017. In fact, it was one of a parcel books awarded, the other two of which, in my magnanimity, I gave to the second- and third-place runners-up.

Did I mention that this was the second time in a row I have won the NecronomiCon Lovecraft trivia quiz? If not, then do feel free to take a moment to bask in the glory of my awesomeness.

You are welcome.

I mean to return to NecronomiCon in 2019 with a view to retaining the title for a third time in a row - if you think you can do better, come along and try to lay the smackdown on me, suckers!

That’s how winning’s done

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.24: Multiuniversum & Project: Cthulhu

Multiuniversum is a small card game in which you are trying to shut down a mechanism which has open portals to other dimensions; Project: Cthulhu is an expansion which relocates Multiuniversum within the Cthulhu mythos, where players are desperately trying to stop the strange denizens of the mythos from entering our world.

I continue to be fascinated by the pervasiveness of the Cthulhu mythos throughout contemporary gaming culture, and mean to ruminate on the significance of this in the coming months, as well as offering thoughts on the reiteration of certain tropes (insanity, opening/closing portals, preventing the end of the world) in Cthulhu-themed games, as well as some analysis as to how successful these games are in accurately simulating or reflecting actual Lovecraftian themes. Much to ponder here.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.23: Lovecraft Letter

Lovecraft Letter is the Lovecraftian iteration of the immensely popular Love Letter card game - although to be honest, it being multiplayer means that I have virtually no interest in it (beautifully illustrated though it is), given that I now almost exclusively play solitaire games.

The Cthulhu and Elder Sign poker chips which come with Lovecraft Letter, are however, another matter - I pretty much bought the game (which was also ridiculously cheap) for the chips alone, and which I plan to use as part of a secret solitaire sandbox rpg project later in the year...

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.22: Off The Ancient Track

Additional to his wonderful map of Providence - and in celebration of the return of NecronomiCon -in 2013 Jason Eckhardt also produced a revised edition of his Off The Ancient Track, a beautifully-illustrated guide to Lovecraftian locales in Providence, New York, and New England more generally. I’m surprised that this didn’t get a mention in the 2016 edition of the Lovecraftian Thing a Day. Although I managed to pick up a second copy at NecronomiCon 2017, sadly this no longer appears to be readily available.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.21: Lovecraft’s Providence

Part of my NecronomiCon 2015 haul, Jason Eckhardt’s map of Lovecraft’s Providence is a thing of monstrous beauty - and I can’t believe that I haven’t yet had it framed and hung on my wall (indeed, I’m surprised I didn’t include this as part of 2016’s Lovecraftian Thing a Day). Truly gorgeous.

You can purchase a copy from Lovecraft Arts and Sciences located, appropriately enough, in Providence, RI.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.20: What Rough Beast Slouches Towards Innsmouth To Be Born?

The bag I received yesterday from Miskatonic University contained this curious specimen, labelled as an ‘unknown fetus’ and apparently hailing from the notorious Devil’s Reef off the Massachusetts coast. The label (which also bears the mark of Miskatonic University) dates the recovery of the specimen to 1928 - the same year of the infamous federal raid on the legend-haunted coastal town of  Innsmouth (which overlooks the Reef).

The test tube in which the specimen floats is attached to some kind of arcane incubation device, which emits a strange yellow glow. I’m almost certain I saw the thing twitch or move a few minutes ago.

Whatever its provenance, the mystery remains as to who sent this anomalous specimen and why...

The Lovecaftian Thing a Day (2018) No.19: What’s in the Bag?

This arrived in the post today, forwarded anonymously from Miskatonic University (Arkham, Mass.).

I do wonder: what’s in the bag?

Perhaps tomorrow we will find out.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.18: The Way It Went Down

The second of this year’s digital entries, which just dropped on Amazon and rpgnow: Delta Green - The Way It Went Down: a collection of Cthulhu mythos microfictions by Dennis Detwiller. This is going for a song (I picked it up for a couple of quid), and the stories I have read so far (about half) are redolent with the strange, oblique and unnerving mood of its parent setting - an ideal taster for those seeking an entry point into the wider world of Delta Green.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.17: Seeking the Darkest Gods

I haven’t made it common knowledge that, since September 2017, I’ve gone from being a part-time lecturer to full-time status; whilst overall this is a very good thing, the intersection of new roles and responsibilities which come with this has, over the last couple of weeks, been a tad stressful! Thus it is time to unwind by way of memories of times past: namely drinking coffee with Joe and Kimberlie Broers at their suite in the Providence Biltmore on the first day of NecronomiCon in August 2017.

On that occasion, Joe - an incredibly talented scultor of things Lovecraftian and macabre - was kind enough to gift me a copy of Seeking the Darkest Gods: a wonderfully chilling collection of Lovecraftian tales, vignettes and art, scripted by Joe, with visuals provided by Eddie Wilson, and available here.

Thank you Joe - and sorry again I wasn’t able to make dinner with Kimberlie and yourself before the end of the Con (I mean to rectify that when we meet again in 2019!).

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.16: Delta Green - Handler’s Guide:

In today’s post we revisit an old favourite - but in a new guise: the Delta Green rpg (also our first digital Thing a Day in 2018).

Initially a campaign setting for the Call of Cthulhu rpg, Delta Green has now been published as its own rpg system; whilst it is one in which I have not yet played, I nonetheless consider Delta Green to be the finest rpg setting of all time.

‘The X-Files meets the Cthulhu mythos’ is the elevator pitch often used to describe Delta Green; this, however, fails to do justice to the rich and deeply-researched background, as well as the outstanding writing which informs the setting: even for a digital product, this reeks of stale despair and unreconstructed Cold War nihilism - it is perhaps the most uncompromisingly bleak iteration of the Cthulhu mythos, catching players between the unthinkable indifference of Lovecraft’s cosmic monstrosities on the one hand, and the equally uncaring predations of government bureaucracy and neo-liberal corporatism on the other.

The Delta Green: Handler’s Guide is the GMs sourcebook for the various conspiracies which make up the Delta Green milieu, detailing their secret histories and hidden agendas from the 1920s to the post-9/11 world. Even if you are not into gaming, this still deserves to be on the (digital) bookshelf of the dedicated Lovecraftian, being the ideal primer and companion piece to the range of Delta Green fiction available from Arc Dream Publishing - all of which is uniformly excellent, containing some of the best modern Cthulhu mythos fiction currently available in an increasingly oversaturated market.

The Delta Green: Handler’s Guide - you need to buy it.

Do it! Do it now!

The Lovecaftian Thing a Day (2018) No.15: Wax Cylinder

Paul Mclean, librarian and overseer of the Miskatonic Library’s Special Collection, recently sent me this curious wax cylinder. Apparently it contains a recording pertinent to a series of strange events which occured in the wilds of Vermont in 1930; the item is labelled as belonging to Henry Akeley, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances during the culmination of said events - events which, curiously, also occured around the time when the (dwarf-) planet of Pluto was first discovered.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.14: Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill

Belated salutations to the Emperor of Dreams on the occasion of his 125th birthday!

Today we celebrate the life and works of Clark Ashton Smith - one of the great Weird Tales triumvirate - by way of Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, currently available from Hippocampus Press. This gorgeous 800 page volume traces the correspondnce between Lovecraft and Smith until the former’s demise.

Notably, these letters also include the only extant reference in Lovecraft to Austin Osman Spare, whose life and work later became so central to Kenneth Grant’s exegesis of Lovecraftian occulture (Crowley is also mentioned on a few occasions in the exchanges between Smith and Lovecraft).

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.13: Sticky Monsters

John Kenn Mortensen’s Sticky Monsters is a visual phantasmagoria of the strange, the weird, and the creepy, all expressed via the medium of pen and ink on post-it notes. Whilst the influence of Edward Gorey runs through many of the illustrations in this wonderful little book, Lovecraft also looms large; indeed, explicitly Lovecraftian examples Mortensen’s work appeared at the Ars Necronomicon exhibition in Providence at NecronomiCon 2017 - so here’s hoping we might, at some point, see a dedicated volume of Cthulhu mythos-themed work by the artist.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.12: Bibliomantic Ephemera

A little piece of Lovecaftian ephemera for today’s post: the cover of von Juntz’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten - a book about a bunch of nameless cults, one of my favourite mythos tones to boot - turned into a cloisonne pin. Nice.

The Lovecaftian Thing a Day (2018) No.11: Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign Messenger Bag

The Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign Messenger Bag allows me to stylishly and discreetly carry around my Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign All Rolled Up gaming accessory, which currently holds my Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign polyhedral dice in their Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign dice bag, as well as my Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign dice tray. I think we are done here.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.10: The Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign All Rolled Up Gaming Accessory

This Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign All Rolled Up gaming accessory currently holds my Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign polyhedral dice in their Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign dice bag, as well as my Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign dice tray – with space  to spare for pens, pencils and a small notebook.

That’s a lot of Cthulhu Hack. Surely this must be the end of the matter?

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.9: The Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign Dice Tray

For your entertainment and edification, today I present a companion piece to yesterday’s offering: The Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign foldable dice tray (complete with six Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign d6s) - available from the lovely people at All Rolled Up.

Now I have a dice tray into which I can roll the dice for a game I’ve never played.

Nice.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.8: The Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign Dice Bag

I am a rather compulsive consumer of gaming accessories (as will become evident over the next few days), purchasing any and all available add-ons for a boardgame or rpg system in the belief that ths will somehow facilitate a more immersive experience of said game. As a consequence, I have acquired a not-insignficant cache of Cthulhuvian gaming embellishments and trinkets over the years.

In any case, last year I discovered a range of such accessories for The Cthulhu Hack rpg (the focus of one of my 2016 posts); so I set about laying my grubby little paws on everything Cthulhu Hack-related in a display of joyfully-nihilistic excessive consumption. Hence today’s offering: the official Cthulhu Hack Elder Sign dice bag, crammed full of three sets of Elder Sign-branded official Cthulhu Hack polyhedral dice.

Needless to say, I’ve never actually played the game...

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.7: The Twilight Zone

The last few years have seen something of a minor explosion of horror-themed theatre in London - outside of the the annual London Horror Festival (a month-long celebration of horror theatre which runs throughout October), I believe I must have seen at least 5 horror-themed plays or dramatised readings staged in the capital during 2017. February this year also sees the Etcetera Theatre in Camden hosting a week-long Lovecraft season (which I will, of course, be covering in this blog). Currently a version of The Exorcist is playing in the West End, alongside The Woman in Black and a musical version of Young Frankenstein.

2018’s first foray into horror theatre was The Twilight Zone, which I saw a couple of evenings ago, and is currently running at the Almeida Theatre in Islington until January 27th. A portmanteau piece, the play adapts seven episodes of the classic tv show for the stage, linked by the initial framing device of a group of bus passengers stuck in a diner during a night of heavy snow.

This is also one of those entries (which I warned of in the prologue to this year’s daily blogging project) whose status as ‘Lovecraftian’is questionable. However, the mixture of science fiction and horror which appears in a number of the adapted tales - as well as the theme of strange events outside of the purview of human comprehension which appears in at least two - certainly strikes a Lovecraftian chord (post-The Twilight Zone, writer, producer and presenter Rod Serling also went on to host Night Gallery, which contains some early adaptions of Lovecraft - but I’m not sure that counts).

Notably, one of the episodes adapted for the stage - ‘Little Girl Lost’ - recounts the tale of a young girl and her dog who fall through a dimensional portal which unaccountably appears in her bedroom. Not only does this have parallels to Lovecraft’s ‘The Dreams in the Witch House’, but the staged version contains an implication of strange and nightmarish perceptial distortions (not dissimilar to those encountered in Ramsey Campbell’s mythos tale ‘The Render of the Veil’) effected by entry to the realm beyond our world - such that the little girl in question seems to find the appearance of her dog horrifying (the barking of the dog is also rendered distorted and monstrous whilst it is trapped in the alien otherworld).

So, even if not explicitly Lovecraftian, The Twilight Zone leans on some Lovecaftian themes and ideas, and is definitely worth seeing if you are in Lndon between now and the end of January.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.6: Born to the Dark

Ramsey Campbell’s Severn Valley tales constitute some of my favourite post-Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos fiction, contemporising Lovecraftian horror via the inclusion of elements of gritty social realism (as well as provding inspiration for last year’s daily blggong project, The  Horsingdon Transmissions).

Whilst a strain of cosmicism have often been evident in his non-mythos work, it has been gratifying to see Campbell occasionally return to more explicitly Cthulhuvian forms of cosmic horror - albeit inflected with his uniquely subtle and unsettling style - in works such as The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Children of the Pool, The Last Revelation of Gla’aki and, most recently, Born to the Dark: the second of a new trilogy of Cthulhu mythos novels  - collectively titled ‘The Three Births of Daoloth’ - which I am about to start reading.

The previous novel (The Searching Dead) was mostly set in the author’s native Liverpool; the publisher’s website, however, also refers to the series as ‘The Brichester Mythos trilogy’ - so I’m curious to see whether the current work will return us to some classic Campbellian mythos locales. Regardless, if The Searching Dead is anything to go by, ‘The Three Births of Daoloth’/‘the Brichester Mythos trilogy’ may well turn out to be Campbell’s Lovecraftian masterwork.

Born to the Dark and The Searching Dead are currently available to purchase from PS Publishing.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.5: The Atlantis Fragments

I had the great pleasure of meeting - albeit briefly - Donald Sydney-Fryer at NecronomiCon 2017, which he was attending in the capacity as the convention’s poet laureate. I saw him both at the opening ceremony, and on various panels - but also  had the opportunity to speak to him briefly the day after the convention’s end: we were both in the foyer of the Providence Biltmore, having just checked out of the hotel.

Donald was waiting for a taxi, but kindly took the time to sign the copy of his The Atlantis Fragments, which I had purchased from Derrick Hussey of Hippocampus Press earlier that weekend (and which contains Sydney-Fryer’s Songs and Sonnets Atlantean - long out of print since its first publication by Arkham House in 1971). We spent sometime chatting, and Donald reminisced eloquently and passionately about his own sojourns in England and Wales (where he had spent time at the Machen heartland of Caerleon).

Unexpected and fleeting moments such as this are what makes the journey to Providence every couple of years all the more worthwhile.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.4: Cthulhu Breakfast Club Traveller's Journal

This Stamford leather traveller's notebook - stamped with the famous silhoutte of Lovecraft - was produced by Paul Maclean and the good folks over at yog-sothoth.com (YSDC) as part of a fundraiser to cover the costs of hosting the site and producing their regular podcast, The Cthulhu Breakfast Club. The initial run of the notebooks (of which the one shown above was part) was produced as a limited edition for patreons of the website, allowing them the choice of a variety of colours, and with their yog-sothoth.com membership number individually stamped on the back as a unique and personalised identifier.

This is one of my favourite notebooks (only eclipsed by my Midori Traveller's notebook), and is currently being used for keeping notes relating to various boardgaming and rpg activities.

If you are not a patreon of the website or missed the limited run, a standard edition of the notebook is available in green leather - although you may have to sign up for free for membership of the site first). Purchasing one is definitely a fantastic way to support the content which the good folk over at YSDC regularly produce for the Lovecraftian community.

The Lovecraftian Thing a Day (2018) No.3: The Silver Key

This copy of the fabled Silver Key was forwarded to me by Professor Gage Prentiss of Miskatonic University's Department of Medieval Metaphysics. He remains circumspect regarding its provenance, but the thing is undeniably ancient, regardless of its being a simulacrum of the original. As of yet, the Key has failed to disclose its arcane properties to me - although a number of esoteric tomes describe it as the means of opening doorways to other realms and worlds of oneiric fancy.

For now, I plan to don it before I drowse, in anticipation of the fantastic visions it might evoke from the river of nights dreaming.