“When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.” ~ Ignatius Reilly

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Greetings, dear reader…

Finally having a look at “The Terror” on AMC.  If you haven’t had a chance to read any of Dan Simmons’ work, I recommend his stuff, particularly his first novel, “Song of Kali.”  “The Terror” is based on his 2007 novel of the same name, and Mr. Simmons is executive producer of the show.  I’m only an hour in, but so far, so good.

I’ve been working on a couple of projects, and they are both painfully slow going, yet taking most of my effort.  An unfortunate side effect is that I don’t always have many words left over in the predawn hours for you here.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been immersing myself in the short stories of both Poe and Lovecraft.   So I was thinking about talking about those things here.  It could by like our own little book club, except we’ll actually read the book, and we don’t have to deal with the hassle of actually being in the same place at the same time.  It won’t be anything “scholarly” and I am approaching both of these authors as just another reader…not a critic, certainly not an expert.  In fact this is my first time reading any of Lovecraft’s stuff.  I’ve been a Poe fan for most of my life (my first exposure was when I was 10, and I was instantly and permanently enthralled).  I took one class that focused on Poe in grad school…nothing related to Lovecraft was ever offered.  But I was always hearing about him.  He was one of maybe three or four authors that other students would talk about in the context of “Oh man, you’ve got to read this guy,” but the professors would hardly acknowledge publicly (incidentally, when I started teaching college, I talk these authors any chance I could).  So yeah…what I mean to say here is that though I’ve been directly exposed to Poe’s work for decades, I’d managed to read a single word of Lovecraft, despite almost constantly hearing about him and his work for just as many decades.  And so I’ve been trying to change that this year.  I started at the beginning with “The Tomb” and have been making slow but steady progress.  More on this to come, but I just wanted you to know what I was thinking about.

Okay…I might be delirious.  Back to work.

N.P.: “In the Name of the Father” – Bono, Gavin Friday