Coming from "Super" Sam McCanna {the King of Skurvy Ink}, based on artwork by JD Busch, this little autumnal number~ ~~ Make a pot of Earl Grey, put yer tootsies up and read some Trakl (or A Season in Carcosa) while you're wearing this and yer in Carcosa...
H.P. Lovecraft. Karl Edgar Wagner. Peter Straub. Those are a few of the names that stand tall in our genre and when it comes to Robert W. Chambers and his King in Yellow they agree, Chambers' beguiling tales of the King In Yellow and Carcosa are among the best in "weird" fiction. Miskatonic River Press and Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. are proud and delighted to present an anthology of all new tales inspired by Chambers.
In haunted and splintered minds… Minds shackled to lonely places…
In the unbound shadows infesting hearts of beautiful woman with frantic sensations…
In an old house where biblical thrived…
In threadbare truths, disturbed by despair, cobwebbed with illusions…
In far cold Carcosa…
Lies madness.
In A Season In Carcosa readers will find the strange and mysterious places of heart and mind that spring from madness, and those minds and the places touched by it are the realms that are mined. Chambers' legacy of the worms and soft decay that spring from reading the King In Yellow play stir both new and established talents in the world of weird fiction and horror to contribute all new tales that pay homage to these eerie nightmares. In Carcosa twilight comes and minds lost in the mirrors of lust and fear, are awash in legacies of shadows, not mercy. . .
Haunting the pages of this tome are the following voices:
Coming this November from Chomu Press is Anna Tambour's magcial new novel. Here's a look at the marvelous cover done by C. C. Askew.
In a medieval cookbook in a special-collections library, near-future London, jaded food and drink authority Nick Kippax finds an alluring stain next to a recipe for the mythical crandolin. He tastes it, ravishing the page. Then he disappears. So begins an adwentour that quantum-leapfrogs time, place, singularities, and Quests – from the secrets of confectionery to the agonies of making a truly great moustache, from maidens in towers to tiffs between cosmic forces. Food, music, science, fruitloopery, superstition, railways, bladder-pipes and birth-marked Soviet statesmen; all are present in an extraordinary novel that is truly for the adwentoursomme.
“Immerse yourself in the magical world of Anna Tambour’s Crandolin, a delirious journey that takes the reader through Central Asia and Russia with some fascinating strangers and a donkey, a demanding musical instrument, and delicious hints of nougat and honey.” Ellen Datlow
“By turns lyrical and absurdist, whimsical and elegantly true, Crandolin is unlike any novel you will ever have read. Anna Tambour is brilliant, a true original.” Lucius Shepard
I often begin the day by sharpening my WORDpencil, just letting words go where they may. Today was no different. Didn't know what the following would be--a tale I thought, but let it go where it wanted... It decided it was not a tale, just this
The
Meeting
Jimmy Webb poured me a drink. “Saw you look at her.”
I took a slip.
“Lot of us do… Have. Hard not to.”
Nodded my I guess.
I didn’t dare turn around. She’d be there, over my shoulder.
“She’s a harsh mistress.”
He didn’t say, you can’t keep the light in your pocket, even if it was true. It
is.
I tried. Tried to put it in jars and turn it into words too.
Tried to make dreams out of it.
Failed.
Lot of times.
On a lonesome night I put bell, book, and candle to it. My grip lasted as long
as a cigarette.
Jimmy’s fingers cried on the ivories.
I wished the drink in my hand was an ocean and I had the power to not turn and
look up at her.
[After Joe Cocker “The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress”]
(c) 2012 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
The pic, (c) Maddie Von Stark 2012, which I adore! !!, was done by Maddie Von Stark.
You can hear the song [an old favorite I've spent a lot of time w/!! !] that inspired the text here --
“Let us posit that Bukowski is the sun. Or Brautigan, Burroughs and the Beats—a solar Coney Island of the Mind where Timothy Leary’s dead and dead Cthulhu waits and sings the live long daydream believer. Then Joe Pulver’s Portraits of Ruin would be the burst of planets, Big Bang-Bang, Marquee Moons hanging on for what they got, scream of consciousness—in Outer Space no one can hear it . . . except Coffin Joe, Monster Mash Potato that big ol’ Portraits of Ruin—Mars needs it, you need it, so just open the lid and shake your fist—then say: “They kill horses, horses, horses, horses.” Thank you. Come again?”
Thomas Ligotti comments on "Blood Will Have Its Season"
"Some writers one admirers and others make one want to do as they do, or try. For me, Joe Pulver is of the latter type. His imagination is so vile so much of the time that it makes me giggle with amazement. And the prose so deadly visionary. I'm grateful that the pieces in this collection are those of a fellow horror writer who has raised the ante on what it means to be such a creature." - Thomas Ligotti
From Laird Barron's "Introduction" to my collection "SIN & ashes"
“. . . I’m gawping in amazement, shaken by Pulver’s eviscerating vision. He wields language as a scalpel, a Thompson submachine gun, an axe . . . Joe Pulver calls down the fire. Joe Pulver’s the Man. He’s got the Power.” – Laird Barron, author of Occultation and The Imago Sequence
Ellen Datlow says
"Sin & Ashes is a deliciously varied and ambitious collection... by writer who is quickly making a name for himself."
"Blood Will Have Its Season is an ambitious debut [...] obviously influenced by H.P. Lovecradt and Robert W. Chambers, for the most part Pulver uses their influences to create potent tales of his own. A writer to keep an eye on."
SIMON STRANTZAS on PoR
"Fearless. Daring. Poetic prose for the unhinged. Each tale in "Portraits of Ruin" packs the sort of mental wallop that leaves the reader reeling. From the scorched deserts to the highest foreign towers, across plains of reality and beneath burning suns, this is no volume for the weak, for the conventional. It is a wake-up call from one of the genre's most visionary masters. A book for those who see differently, for those not afraid to know the truth no matter how terrible the cost. I envy anyone about to experience Pulver's horrors for the first time." - Simon Strantzas, author of Nightingale Songs
Anna Tambour on Portraits of Ruin
"playfulness; heart-rending beauty as indissectible as a rainbow; magic; music in timbres unique to this writer, as if he'd mixed his own alloy and poured it, red-hot, to cast his own bell." Anna Tambour, author of Crandolin
S. T. Joshi says
"The prose of Joe Pulver can take its place with that of the masters of our genre-Poe, Lovecraft, Campbell, Ligotti-while his imaginative reach is something uniquely his own." -S. T. Joshi
Jeff Thomas says
"There are occasional books, movies, cds, etc. that are of such a special quality -- that resonate with people in such a perfect way -- that they seem immune to any strong negative criticism. Movies like FIGHT CLUB, TAXI DRIVER and DRIVE (I'm sure they have the rare haters), books like...oh...THE ORPHAN PALACE..." -- Jeffrey Thomas, author of PUNKTOWN
Simon Strantzas comments on "Blood Will Have Its Season"
"There's a mighty storm coming to rip up the world you know and tear a hole in all you believe. That storm's name is Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., and I pity anyone who dares stands in his way."
Matt Cardin on TOP
“Joe Pulver is like the answer to some arcane riddle: What do you get when you cross one of Plato’s Muse-maddened poets with a Lovecraftian lunatic, and then give their offspring to be raised by Raymond Chandler and a band of Beats? His work caters to a literary hunger you didn’t even know you had, and does it darkly and deliciously.”- Matt Cardin
Paul Tremblay comments on SIN & ashes
"Joe Pulver's SIN AND ASHES is a messed up (and I mean Cronenberg messed up) splicing of William S. Burroughs and Thomas Ligotti. Add a whiskey chaser. After reading these vibrant and weird stories with their assorted devils and down-and-outs, I kinda want to party with Joe. But I think I'm too scared to."--Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep and In the Mean Time.
Gary McMahon comments on SIN & ashes
"Joe's SIN & ashes is surely one of the most important fiction collections of the year, and serves to remind us all that greatness is still possible in the field of weird fiction.” --Gary McMahon, author of Pretty Little Dead Things and Pieces of Midnight
Robert M. Price says
"Pulver's genius in his ability to shape-shift stylistically between Raymond Chandler and Thomas Ligotti--without your even noticing! Like the gospel demon, his name ought to be Legion, since he assumes a new voice and persona as every particular chapter or sequence requires. In the new book, Pulver's polyphonic gifts mutate to a new and even more powerful pitch. There is nothing like it! It sounds, indeed reads, like a living contradiction in terms! The result is a deep dark forest of wonders, containing both monsters and molesters, both angels and devils." -- Robert M. Price
Anna Tambour said~ ~~
"In human terms, if I had to compare him to other authors, I would say that he reminds me more of a mug of hot Lear blended with Cummings, served with a squeeze of post-enema'd Shelley."
Robin Spriggs says
"Mad, malevolent, and incantatory, The Orphan Palace reads like the hagridden fever dream of one who has not only stared the Abyss in Its black and fathomless face, but welcomed Its gaze in return . . . and become Its living embodiment. It is a journey to be taken by none but the bravest of readers, and by souls with an ardent desire to savor their own damnation." --Robin Spriggs, author of Diary of a Gentleman Diabolist
Wilum Pugmire says
"Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. -- one of today's truly original and effective artists, before whom we bow, hypnotized."--Wilum Pugmire, author of The Tangled Muse
Cody Goodfellow says
"While everybody else in horror is still aping the shallow visual palette of cinema, Joe Pulver calls down a storm of psychotronic nightmares charged with the evocative depth and relentless pulse of the Devil's music. This isn't a book that wants to be a movie. This is a drug disguised as a book. SIN & ashes is an iconoclastic revolt, and a devastating reminder of the unique, unmatchable power of well-wielded words." –Cody Goodfellow, author of Radiant Dawn
Richard Gavin says
"Pulver is a writer who takes risks with each story he fashions, which in turn makes reading them exceptionally rewarding."-- Richard Gavin, author of Omen and Charnel Wine
Pearce Hansen says
"I'm in love with this man's work. This is not for you if you prefer bland, `normal' horror writing - but IMHO he is one of the most important voices in the genre today (if you can even impose the term `genre' on a style so personal and sincere). Read him." -- Pearce Hansen, author of STREET RAISED
