WEDNESDAYS WORDS

WEDNESDAYS WORDS is a new weekly installment that ranks the most interesting, intriguing books of the week (old, new, reissues, digital, etc). Contributors represent a variety of genres and sources. Each book includes Title and publisher blurb.

This is a rare one item WEDNESDAYS WORDS and the latest I’ve ever put one together, but put it together I did. Enjoy!

Creepy Presents Bernie Wrightson [Hardcover]

Book Description
Publication Date: September 13, 2011 | Series: Creepy Presents
All of horror legend Bernie Wrightson’s Creepy and Eerie short stories, color illustrations, and frontispieces are finally collected in one deluxe hardcover! These classic tales from the 1970s and early 1980s include collaborations with fellow superstars and Warren Publishing alumni Bruce Jones, Carmine Infantino, Howard Chaykin, and others, as well as several adaptations and original stories written and drawn by Wrightson during one of the most fruitful periods of his career! All stories and images in this collection are restored with care and reprinted in the same oversized format as Dark Horse’s award-winning Creepy Archives and Eerie Archives series.

As far as one book recommendations go, you would be hard pressed to find a better one than CREEPY PRESENTS BERNIE WRIGHTSON! First the hardcover book, which I’m perusing, in between writing this post, smells great.

I know that sounds like an odd statement, especially to all you digital i-something babies, but for those of us raised and reared on paper and ink, there are few things as evocative as the new book smell.:)

Add to that the fact that DARK HORSE who published this book, publishes really high quality books, and you have something special as much for construct as content. Something that can not be effectively… digitized.

So despite being printed in China, DARK HORSE is very quality-conscious and demanding… and it shows in the finished product. It’s a gorgeous art compilation book, containing the best art and stories from Wrightson’s time at Warren Publishing!

And lastly it’s Bernie Wrightson, one of the most celebrated sequential artists of the late 20th century; and here in the 21st, his work still remains… unrivaled.

While this book is no FRANKENSTEIN BY WRIGHTSON (Also Published by DARK HORSE, and copies getting scarcer and more expensive every day), it is vintage WRIGHTSON and as such most definitely should be an essential part of anyone’s desert island survival bag!

And at the current ridiculously low price you would have to be an unhinged art-hater, not to own a copy.

So there! Go here for more and to get your copy if so moved to:

Creepy Presents Bernie Wrightson

Bernie Wrightsons Frankenstein

The WEDNESDAYS WORDS column is a new blog feature, appearing (you guessed it!) every Wednesday. Come back next week to see which books make the list!

If you’re a publisher, writer, or other creative representative looking to submit items for WEDNESDAYS WORDS, just leave a comment on this post with your email/contact info, comments don’t get posted they come right to me, and I’ll reach out to you with the snail mail details.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY: MY STAY AT A HAUNTED HOTEL

“After that, nothing was real. It was fantasy, ecstasy, dread and apprehension. It was glory. They went to live in her apartment, and did not need a thing. Neither people nor food nor sleep. Nor the world. Because there was too much of each other within the hours that they would never have.”
— SO SOFTLY SMILING by Chester Himes from
The Collected Stories of Chester Himes (Himes, Chester)

I see her often.

When I have given up seeing everything.

In the darkness and in the light, when it’s softly raining and when it’s hardly night… I see her often.

She’s in the places where corridors end, and doors that are shut… speak of being opened.

In the middle of the night I find myself in endless hallways, in strange cities, in tortured lands, waiting for the one corner that I will turn, the one door I will open, the one promise I will break…

And she will be there.

And hell will have no dominion.

It’s a dream… I have.

—NO DOMINION copyright 2012 HT

H Russell Wakefield and Today’s Discoveries and Best Buys!!

“And I will end you
from the highest to the low
And I will end you
And my name you shall then know”
—HT 2011

The artwork of Santiago Caruso.

Artist on the spanish language book….Lovecraft: El horror de Dunwich/ The Dunwich Horror (Spanish Edition) [Hardcover]. About to go out of print. I don’t like Lovecraft enough to own him in English, much less Spanish. But the artist intrigued me on this, and for the fans among you… seems like a solid buy.

Lovecraft: El horror de Dunwich/ The Dunwich Horror (Spanish Edition)

The Ghost Stories of H. Russell Wakefield

The latest addition to my best short story list, this being H Russell Wakefield’s DAMP SHEETS from THE BEST GHOST STORIES OF H. RUSSELL WAKEFIELD

DAMP SHEETS- A couple in financial straits, eye a rich uncle. A simple premise, and now 80+ years removed from the stories publication, quite a well used premise, but as always Wakefield’s writing transcends the familiar, by being just so endearing, and engaging. You find yourself turning pages easily, as reading Wakefield is like a relaxed, almost conversational storyteller, spinning a yarn at a dinner party… just for you. And the story builds to one of those odd Wakefield endings, a bit curt, and wry, and ironic… that at first feels like someone put on the brakes perhaps a bit too quickly, but a shake of the head later, and a reread of the page, and nope, it’s just right. Just great ghost story writing, told in a handful of pages. Grade: B.

For more of my short story reviews go here.

The Best Ghost Stories of H. Russell Wakefield

Reunion at Dawn and Other Uncollected Ghost Stories

Strayers from Sheol

The Clock Strikes Twelve

On HP Lovecraft, HAUNTER OF THE DARK and The Melancholy of All Men

I’m not a fan of HP Lovecraft. I’ve read several of his short stories, listened to several more via audio dramas, and while the cult of Lovecraft is strong, and I appreciate his dark ramblings, I’m not particularly a fan of them.

I’m far more fond of the work of some of his contemporaries such as Clark Ashton Smith, MR James and particularly H Russell Wakefield.

And this goes beyond Lovecraft being a product of his manifest destiny upbringing, his work judged on its own… largely drones on me. He has a tendency to ‘talk’ his stories into repetitive circles, perhaps feeding his love for litany and language, at the expense of momentum and a story. And perhaps even simpler, as a pulp writer, paid by the word, padding the story was not out of the realm of his possibility or his purpose.

Whatever the truth his stories to differing extents, are perhaps not the better for their length. HAUNTER OF THE DARK being an example. The most interesting thing about the story is the 4 line poem that opens it.

I have seen the Dark Universe Yawning
Where the Black Planets roll without aim
Where they roll in their horror unheeded
Without knowledge, or luster, or name
… From the opening of THE HAUNTER OF THE DARK

That’s a great opening, unfortunately the story fails to be worthy of it.

I consider myself a person with some patience, and appreciation for the setting of mood. As I said I’m a fan of some of Lovecraft’s contemporaries, and even a few of Lovecraft’s own stories (The Outsider comes to mind), but the HAUNTER OF THE DARK showcases the over stylization that hinders rather than helps the world Lovecraft is trying to create. He can take 10 sentences to say “Blake ran out of the building”, and if you’re enriched by those 10 sentences that’s fine, but largely it’s a repetition of ten sentences he used to describe his protagonist walking into the building.

His erudition, taken to such extremes… is by definition pedantic. And as such his work can be far from compelling.

But at moments, in small doses, his work rises above the minutiae of the man, to be something not unlike… a window onto the melancholy of all men.