Brian Lumley

Author Guest of Honor

Born 2nd December, 1937, Brian Lumley came into the world just nine months after the most obvious of his forebears – meaning of course a "literary" forebear, namely, H.P. Lovecraft – had departed from it. By his pre-teens Lumley had read Dracula and some other horror classics, but having followed the adventures of Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future in the British Eagle comic, his first love was Science Fiction. Then, in his early teens – as a result of reading Robert Bloch's Lovecraft pastiche Notebook Found in a Deserted House in a British SF magazine – he became more surely attracted to macabre fiction, an attraction that has lasted a lifetime.

Later still, in his early twenties while serving with the Corps of Royal Military Police in Germany, on finding a collection of stories by Lovecraft himself, Lumley began searching for every available item of the author's work. This culminated in his contacting HPL's publisher August Derleth in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in order to purchase the one or two volumes still missing from his collection. Then, after Derleth had read various "extracts" from the Necronomicon and other fictional "Black Books" of the so-called Cthulhu Mythos, which Lumley had included in his letters, he asked if the aspiring author had anything solid he could use in a book he was preparing for publication, to be entitled Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Thus Lumley began writing in earnest. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Derleth included stories by Lumley in a number of Arkham House anthologies and went on to publish three of the author's books. One was a short novel with the title Beneath the Moors; the others were collections of short stories and novellas: The Caller of The Black and The Horror at Oakdeene. These stories, set mainly in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos milieu, echoed HPL's literary style: a somewhat archaic, adjectival mode of writing which, during the course of Lumley's military career, he would gradually eschew in favour of his own very distinctive style.

Recently, both “Subterranean Press” in the USA and “Solaris” in the UK have undertaken to publish two companion volumes of Lumley’s previously uncollected Cthulhu Mythos tales. In fact the first of these books, under the main title: The Taint and Other Novellas, is already available from Subterranean in a beautiful hardcover edition, with a marvellous jacket and interior illustrations by Bob Eggleton, and Haggopian and Other Mythos Tales will follow early in 2008…

As for the future: "Well, the future is always uncertain." But with several books from an extensive backlist awaiting reissue – and Necroscope The Touch recently published by TOR in America, and several new novellas and new short stories awaiting publication – "Well it certainly isn't over yet!"

When they're not travelling, the Lumleys keep house in Torquay, Devon, England

http://www.brianlumley.com/

S.T. Joshi

Author/Scholar

S.T. Joshi is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and other writers, mostly in the realms of supernatural and fantasy fiction. He has edited corrected editions of the works of Lovecraft, several annotated editions of Bierce and Mencken, and has written such critical studies as The Weird Tale (1990) and The Modern Weird Tale (2001). His award-winning biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), has already become a collector's item.
http://www.necropress.com/stjoshi/

Robert M. Price

Author/Scholar

Robert M. Price discovered the world of fantastic literature in 1967 and has continued to read and write in the genre, founding the magazine Crypt of Cthulhu devoted to H.P. Lovecraft, in 1981, which reached 109 issues over twenty-three years. He has compiled a score of horror anthologies for Arkham House, Chaosium, Fedogan & Bremer, Del Rey and other publishers. Dozens of his scholarly articles and his short stories have appeared in various venues for a quarter of a century. We hope to see Bob dressed in his Innsmouth finery once again when he launches the festival with his Cthulhu Blessing.
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/

Scott Connors

Author

Scott received his B.A. in English and History from Washington ∓ Jefferson College, and has also studied at the University of Salzburg. He has written for such publications as Nyctalops, Fantasy Crossroads, Lovecraft Studies, Wormwood, The Explicator, and Publisherís Weekly. He is the editor of H.P. Lovecraftís Science Versus Charlatanry (with S. T. Joshi), A Century Less A Dream: Selected Criticism on H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith (with David E. Schultz), and two Smith collections, Red World of Polaris and Star Changes. Scott has been twice been nominated for an International Horror Guild Award, and that FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS was selected as a "Notable Book of the Year" by Locus Magazine. By profession he works as a psychiatric nurse near Clark Ashton Smithís hometown of Auburn, California.

Shawna Gore

Editor

Shawna Gore has been working at the Dark Horse Comics factory of joy and entertainment since 1997. After serving as Dark Horseís publicist for five years, she left the comics industry and briefly flirted with a career in music before regaining her sanity and accepting an offer to rejoin the Dark Horse staff as an editor. Quickly approaching her fifth year as an editor, Shawna is one of Dark Horseís more horror-focused editors, but she also likes comic books about talking bunnies. Recent projects include Steve Niles & Bernie Wrightson's City of Others, and the much anticipated collections of classic horror magazines Creepy and Eerie. Shawna will be moderating the Drawing on Horror Panel.