ye book is officially releas'd to-day. I have posted a wee review at Amazon. Strangely, the book will not be available in ye UK until summer.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

My copy arrived from Amazon today, and I would be dancing in the streets if it were not freezing outside and I were not so tired after a busy day at work. Let us all hope and pray this is only the first of volume in a series. It deserves all our support!

We did a video last night discussing the book, and then S. T. read Smith's poem in memory of HPL. He got so emotional he began to weep,it was just incredible. Then -- o woe -- just as we were finishing the video we lost Internet connection, and I couldn't figure how to allow YouTube to let us retrieve what we had recorded, so the video was lost. Bah! S. T. is coming over this week-end and we shall try again to record a promotional vlog for the Penguin CAS.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

hello wilum

I would humbly suggest you try getting a camcorder to do the video and then dumping it to a pc to edit and upload. Most computers come preloaded with video editing software that's easy to use and then you're not relying on an unstable platform and your valuable data is saved in a format that you won't have to worry about. You could probably find a friend who already knows how to do it who could help.
Best of luck

Mike
pegana press

Looks like those of us on the other side of Atlantis will have to wait till August for Penguin to crank up the printing press... worth the wait tho, I'm sure.

Nobody seems to have commented on the fact that "Sadastor" is not actually in the finished product.

The selection seems nearly unexceptionable although I would like to see "The Plutonian Drug" included. Also I think that "The Chain of Aforgomon" is better than "Genius Loci"-- a more original treatment of the supernatural and, like "The Plutonian Drug", more interesting technically in its denouement.

jkh

To be blunt, "Genius Loci" has some distinct flaws and should not be included in the projected volume. Smith modestly observed that it was something of an experiment-- not an entirely successful one, surely. The narrative point of view falters a bit mechanically and becomes too distanced toward the conclusion.

I hate to be the one to break this news to you, but the book has already been published.

Oh, I see. Nevertheless, it seems worth clarifying here that the tale somewhat lacks the consistently "smooth beauty of narration" that REH ascribes to CAS's fiction in general. It isn't awkwardly flawed-- like HPL's "Whisperer in Darkness" for example, which asks the reader to accept the narrative premise that all the lost letters from Wilmarth were burned into Akeley's memory bank verbatim-- but it is an example of Smith working a theme that requires more deft characterization and more subtle use of dialogue than what was given. I'm obviously not competent to do a critical study of CAS, but I wish someone who is, would.