Monstrous Aftermath

For decades, W. H. Pugmire has been one of the foremost exponents of Lovecraftian fiction. In an array of works ranging from exquisitely crafted sonnets to delicately perfumed prose-poems to richly textured novellas, Pugmire has channeled the work of H. P. Lovecraft with a sensitivity and penetration that few have equaled. This new collection displays Pugmire's many strengths as a writer. Here we have stories inspired not only by Lovecraft but by Oscar Wilde and Robert W. Chambers. Many of them are set in the Sesqua Valley, that magical realm in the Pacific Northwest that Pugmire has devised as a parallel to the constellation of New England towns-Arkham, Innsmouth, Dunwich, and others-that Lovecraft fashioned in his tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.

The capstone to the collection is a substantially revised version of Pugmire's classic prose rendering of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle. This work, Some Unknown Gulf of Night, exhibits the full range of Pugmire's imagination-an imagination triggered by literature and infused with the quintessence of his own aesthetic sensibility. As a bonus, Lovecraft's poem is included so that readers can appreciate Pugmire's wondrous transmutation of verse into prose that is scarcely less poetic than the original.

W. H. Pugmire is a self-confessed "Lovecraft fan-boy" whose books include The Fungal Stain (Hippocampus Press, 2006), The Tangled Muse (2011), Uncommon Places (Hippocampus Press, 2012), and Bohemians of Sesqua Valley (2013). He lives in Seattle with a house full of cats from Ulthar.

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