Gathered Dust and Others

With his first collection from Dark Regions Press, W. H. Pugmire continues his radical and obsessive reinterpretations of H. P. Lovecraft's brilliant fiction. Among the book's original pieces is the title story, "Gathered Dust," a sequel to J. Vernon Shea's "The Haunter of the Graveyard." Set in Arkham, this tale of utter strangeness concerns the legacy of Randolph Carter and a monstrous burying ground where the phantoms of the past linger so as to feed upon the living. In "Depths of Dreams and Madness" we journey to Pugmire's Sesqua Valley, wherein we find Lovecraft's artist, Richard Upton Pickman and Robert E. Howard's mad poet, Justin Geoffrey, tainted by the valley's supernatural lunacy. With "These Deities of Rarest Air," Pugmire continues his exploration of the prose-poem/vignette sequence, in a work that deliciously evokes the mystic aura of not only Lovecraft but Clark Ashton Smith as we ll. With artful decadence and a pen dipped into the dark fin-de-siècle poetry of Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire, Pugmire celebrates his beloved genre of fantastic fiction with works that only his cracked skull could conceive. Jeffrey Thomas has provided a provocative Introduction. "Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire is the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have." - S. T. Joshi "In my opinion, he's the best living writer of Lovecraftiana." - Toren Atkinson, of the band Darkest of the Hillside Thickets "Sometimes subtle, sometimes as blunt as a rosewood coffin, Pugmire's stories are always emotional. Drawing from his own rather bizarre life, it's often difficult to separate the facts from the fiction, even for those who presume to know him." - Ken Abner, editor of Terminal Frights

About the Author

W.H. Pugmire has been writing professionally since 1985. An obsessed H.P. Lovecraft fanatic, his work is most often in the Cthulhu Mythos vein. His many books, published and forthcoming, include The Tangled Muse (Centipede press), Some Unknown Gulf of Night (Arcane Wisdom), The Strange Dark One - Tales of Nyarlathotep (Miskatonic River Press), and Uncommon Places (Hippocampus Press). He is currently working on two collaborative books: one with Maryanne K. Snyder, in which all tales will be inspired by the weird fiction of Clark Ashton Smith; and with Jeffrey Thomas, a series of tales concerning the sinister New England artist, Enoch Coffin- forthcoming from Dark Regions Press.

Reviews

News