Invitation to El Savador!

I received a wonderful letter from Don, in reply to one I sent him, and it had many gems of information within.  Apparently he met Janis Joplin once, a tidbit he added for she was on the stamp.

He will be in Spectral Realms No. 2, which I am very pleased to hear, for it is an honor to be in the same publication as him for a second time.

I have been sending Don hand written poems of mine ever since I first started corresponding with him.  When Kyle and I visited him in 2013, we each read aloud a poem we wrote and I requested Don to read my favorite poem of his, Your Mouth of Pomegranate.  But I have never received a hand written poem of his until now.  

He had written a touching tribute to his late friend, Do Gentry, who bravely took her own lie in 2011.  He hand wrote me the poem and told me a little about her.  I have now framed it and will put it on my wall soon.  Here is the title.

Another extremely awesome thing included in the letter was an invitation for me and Kyle to stay with him for a few weeks in El Savador!  Crazy!  As much as Kyle and I itch to travel the world and explore its wonders, we have never been out of the country.  The farthest I have ever traveled was to Colorado, where I stayed in Larkspur for 2 months.  Kyle has not traveled as far as that.  It would be amazing to go and explore and learn and enjoy the company of the last courtly poet but for now, I think we shall make the adventure trip to visit and perhaps stay with him in Auburn sometime.

    

 

My Poetry Book

I am currently working on my first poetry book.  I had the goal to write a poetry book since I was about 12.  My dad is a poet and I grew up to him reading poetry and the stories he wrote.  He prompted me to write and read.  I was never really interested in writing poetry though, until I studied Poe in middle school.  That, paired with Cradle of Filth music and Stephen King novels, fueled my inspiration for my new writing outlet.

I wrote a few poems throughout middle school and then wrote one almost everyday in all my math classes through high school.  Needless to say, they all sucked.  I could not grasp meter and syllable count and other important components to poetry writing.  All I cared about was that it was dark and that it rhymed.  So I gave up writing poetry.

I hoped that I could still get some of them published, so during college I submitted a few to random ezines to see if there were any takers.  I finally landed a couple in the Horror Zine in 2011.  That was when things started to change.

Not long after I was published there was I contacted by K.A. Opperman who, at the time, was poetry editor for the Dark River Press ezine.  He had read my poems and wanted me to submit to Dark River Press.  I happily agreed and he urged me to start writing poetry again and patiently taught me about the important poetry components I was lacking.

That's when I started compiling new, better, poetry for a new poetry book.  S.T. and Derrick have expressed an interest in publishing it whenever it's done in due time for Hippocampus Press.  I have about 92 poems so far and am currently in the editing process.  It should be an awesome compilation of horror, weird, and fantastical traditional and formal verse.                      

3 Poems Accepted for Spectral Realms No. 2

I got three poems accepted for Spectral Realms #2! One is titled Ligeia, after Poe's story, and is written in the same likeness as Carathis.  The 2nd is a 'partner' to a poem of mine that will be published in this year's Weird Fiction Review #5, and the 3rd is based off a dying planet, Vexteria, of my creation.  Vexteria was first introduced in my short story Infused Realities published by the Horror Zine in 2013.  It can be found here.

Gifts from Don

When I visited Donald Sidney-Fryer for the first time in 2013, his friend Rah Hoffman had just passed and Don was in the process of moving. He gifted me these 2 skull candles and this box when he learned my interest in them and he seemed relieved to get them off his hands.  The box is beautiful even with the dust. It is supposed to be green and red.

Letter from Don

Don isn't the biggest fan of dark poetry and horror and wishes for Kyle and I to write lighter, more magical and fantastic subjects.  To quote him on Kyle and mine's poetry from Spectral Realms:

"You w/ 3 poems & Kyle w/ 3 poems as well make a v. good showing, even if all this poetic darkness rather quickly palls as too much of the same monotonous tone & subject!"  

I had to assure him that my poetry collection will have a few "non-darkling enchantments" in it but I'm a horror writer, so what can I say?

My Current Reading List

George Gordon, Lord Byron Selected Poems

The Thing on the Doorstep by H.P. Lovecraft

Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu
Best Ghost and Horror Stories by Bram Stoker
Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allen Poe
Bloodsuckers: The Vampire Archives, Volume 1 by Otto Penzler
Fangs: The Vampire Archives, Volume 2 by Otto Penzler
Coffins: The Vampire Archives, Volume 3 by Otto Penzler
100 Wicked Little Witch Stories by Martin H. Greenberg

Book Review- Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce

"Man is long ages dead in every zone,

The angels all are gone to graves unknown;

The devils, too, are cold enough at last,

And God lies dead before the great white throne!"

I have just finished reading Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce and will list the stories I think are worth the read.  Over all these stories were definitely different and interesting to read if nothing else.  Some stories held little of my attention and some I just didn't care for at all but they were few.

-Moxon's Master

-The Damned Thing

-The Way of Ghosts

-Some Haunted Houses

-Mysterious Disappearances

-An Adventure at Brownville

-An Inhabitant of Carcosa

-The Middle Toe of the Right Foot

-Visions of the Night

Ghost and Horor Stories of Ambrose Bierce

Almost finished....

Signed Fred Phillips Book

Derrick Hussey gifted me with a signed From the Cauldron! Thanks Derrick!

K.A. Opperman and I Posing with Spectral Realms

My favorite poem of all time.

Annabel Lee

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

   My beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsmen came

   And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulchre

   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,

   Went envying her and me—

Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,

   In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud by night,

   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

   Of those who were older than we—

   Of many far wiser than we—

And neither the angels in Heaven above

   Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

   In her sepulchre there by the sea—

   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

David Barker to Wilum H. Pugmire on My Poem 'Carathis' from Spectral Realms No. 1

Spectral Realms Issue #1 Copy

I just received my copies of Spectral Realms Issue #1 today and it is gorgeous!