Platypus of Truth

After finishing up Marion Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts , I've decided to add a little lighter reading to my list.  Interspersed with my academic reading will be A Treasury of Modern Fantasy , a collection of the best magazine fantasy short stories up to 1980 compiled and edited by Terry Carr and Martin Harry Greenberg.  It should be a nice complement to The Mammoth Book of Fantasy   which I read several summers ag o.  First up on the list of stories is an old favorite by H.P. Lovecraft: The Rats in the Walls . The Rats in the Walls  is one of Lovecraft's best short stories.  Lovecraft's normally over-articulate prose is paired down and his mythos is deployed in a careful, subtle manner that avoids any of the usual C'thulhu gooberishness.  As always, Lovecraft is careful to link the story back to his beloved New England, but the setting in old England adds a sense of the classically gothic that strengthens the tale's atmosphere.  We ...

So, at long last I'm getting set to wrap up the first draft of my second novel, "The Place of the Skull."  I should have the conclusion and epilogue done by the end of the week.  Then it's forward to editing and back to applying a few things I've learned to draft four of the earlier work in the series, "The Corpse House."  Once that's done (I move on a glacial time-scale), it will be on to plotting the third book tentatively titled "Our Lady of the Wastes."  I may also take a break to mess around with a short story that will go into "Casebook: Volume I" just to get a bead on some of the characters' further trajectories.  Anyhow, it's been lots of fun and I look forward to being able to tie this one up with a big, black bow.

Houston has been a bustling place this fall with a host of conferences, lectures, and debates.  For as many as we've made, there have been two or three that we missed.  Of particular note for us was the Providence Classical School Colloquy which turned out to be an even bigger success than the one two years ago.  All the plenary and breakout sessions are now posted online at the school's website .  We've also enjoyed the seasonal round of Lanier lectures , but of particular interest was the HBU debate on the existence of God between Reynolds and Barker (now on Youtube).  Our seniors attended the lecture along with an assortment of teachers and family making for a particularly fun and informative evening. All of this, of course, is really an elaborate apology for the lack of content on my blog this month but it's also an update to let you know some of the things we've been doing (it also consoles me just a little for missing all the amazing things that have bee...

This picture of Sigurd and Fafnir is loosely based on the Hylestad Door .  It's my attempt to honor our transition from Beowulf  to The Volsungsaga .