Weirdbook
#33-What you get
Quite
frankly, this is overdue.
I’ve
dreamed (not ‘wanted,’ dreamed) of
being a part of Weirdbook since I read the “first” issue volume #31. Since then
I’ve gotten every issue, and have been a strong advocate for the magazine.
Weirdbook is something that has stepped out of a time capsule, straight out of
the heyday of pulps and into the modern era. It’s a grab-bag of themes and
subjects, ranging from horror to historical fantasy to sword and sorcery. If
Clark Ashton Smith were still around, he’d be contributing to this magazine.
Being
a part of issue #33 was more than a little overwhelming, and I can happily say
that I will also be in another coming issue (which one and in what way, I
cannot say, but the contract is signed).
One
of my favorite stories in this volume was also one of the quietest, “Teatime
with Mrs. Monster” by James Aquilone. It’s the sort of story that is both
simple and profound enough to stick with you in fleeting nightmares. But there are also quite a few occult
detectives in this one, ranging from the unreliable protagonist of “The River
that Flows to Nowhere,” by John R. Fultz to “Trance Junkie’s” washed-up junkie
detective courtesy of Brun Lombardi to Adrian Cole’s ever-popular Nick
Nightmare. C. M. Muller’s “Diary of an Illness” tells the story of a
particularly unique, particularly horrifying apocalypse as well. I could go on
about these stories, but am running low on time. Suffice to say fans of sword
and sorcery will not be disappointed.
Now,
the poetry:
I
loved Donald W. Schank’s prose poem “A Cure for Unrequited Love,” which reads
like a cautionary fable. To say that I really enjoyed the contributions of
Ashley Dioses and K. A. Opperman would be redundant. Of course I enjoyed those
two, I always do. But let’s talk about Frederick J. Mayer, whose love of Clark
Ashton Smith is a reverence that I have not seen paralleled in anyone else.
This is someone who channels the power that Smith has more than any other
writer I can recall, the power to shock-and-awe with language. The poetry is at
once silken and steel, a pointed dagger through an ornate curtain.
My
own meagre contribution came to me in my undergraduate career, on a night that
I did not want to write a paper. “The Owl” has been read publicly in a few
coffee shops, workshopped with a few friends and been a passion project of mine
for about five years. It was wonderful to finally have it emerge on the pages
of Weirdbook and I can only hope that it is enjoyed by its readers.
-S. L.
