The First Annual NecronomiCon Providence 2013 - Arriving August 23-25: Gearing up to Become the Premiere Lovecraftian Convention, Conference, and Celebration in the World

(c) Abigail Larson

We Lovecraftians are a scattered lot.  From the icy reaches of Scandinavia, to the further tip New Zealand, from the Indian subcontinent to central Mexico - we dwell.  Hell, I'd wager there are a few 'Craftians down Antarctica way, doing their occupational duty whilst keeping an eye on the horizon, looking for shadows cast by Mountains of Madness.

We are also prone to be a tad, say, "curmudgeony," to put it delicately.  We have too many books to read and night skies to contemplate and stories to write and songs to sing to venture too far into proper, square society.  When we do, it always ends up being such a waste of time, doesn't it?  The hearth and page is never a let down.

Finally, we are diverse, as much as that would shock HPL, and as much as that constantly delights me.  Cosmicism knows no race, gender, or creed.  The fantastical doesn't choose followers.  You either feel it in your marrow and up your tingling spine, or you don't.

All of these reasons - and many others - reinforce why gatherings devoted to Lovecraftiana are so important, and so interesting.  It gets us away from our tomes and into a predetermined gathering spot, all within easy reach of cocktails.  There is browsing to do and things to purchase - LOVECRAFTIAN THINGS!  Familiar faces abound, as do new people to meet.  The air is abuzz with happy talk of very dark things, and all seems RIGHT with the world amongst those who dream of days when the stars will be, too.

Now, conventions solely devoted to the works and influence of H.P. Lovecraft have come and gone over the years, but keeping that sustaining momentum going has been difficult.  With that said, I'm here to inform you that this unfortunate sporadicism might be a thing of the past, as devoted Lovecraftian and local Providence resident (Providencian?) Niels S. Hobbs has put together what looks like the Mother of All Lovecraftian Gatherings - the Shubby of the HPL Con scene, if you will:  NecronomiCon Providence 2013, coming this summer (which will be here before you know it), August 23-25.  After going through the planned program of this massive event, I think Hobbs and his ambitious band are going to accomplish their goal, folks.  Read on and tell me I'm wrong...

Please note:  This is a lengthy posting, full of wonderful and edifying information.  As such, be sure to scroll down completely for information on becoming a reward-draped backer via the NecronomiCon Providence 2013 Kickstarter (LESS THAN FOUR DAYS LEFT!), and the official Call for Abstracts, for those of the scholarly bend (like I sometimes pretend to be).

First, some background, lovingly provided by the organizers of NecronomiCon Providence:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, born in Providence in 1890, is widely considered to be the father of modern supernatural fiction. In tribute to his legacy, the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council, Inc., a nonprofit organization based in his hometown, is organizing NecronomiCon Providence, a multi-faceted convention exploring the works of Lovecraft, his contemporaries, and the modern writers and artists that he continues to influence. This three-day event will feature renowned speakers, panel discussions, and workshops. Participants will be further rewarded with historic tours, art exhibits, film screenings, plays, and concerts that will immerse them in the city he loved and called home – Providence, Rhode Island.

Unusual for an event of this sort, we are working to bring attendees outside the traditional confining walls of the convention hall and into the streets to showcase and celebrate the character of Lovecraft’s city. Working with the municipality, area universities, and local businesses, we are creating a convention that will draw many people to Providence, and help to maintain its status as a destination city, a city that Lovecraft venerated, and immortalized in the minds of countless individuals around the world. It was in this centuries old city that Lovecraft was born, and where his literary mythologies were formed – and those ancient strains still resonate here today.

Theme: “The Rational Mind in Supernatural Literature” – an exploration of the intersection of art and science that lies at the foundation of the H. P. Lovecraft mythos literary genre. The name NecronomiCon is a tribute to the fictional ancient book of knowledge he conceived in his stories, and serves to underscore this theme.

Date: August 23-25, 2013, to coincide with Lovecraft birthday celebrations in Providence.

Subjects to be explored over the three-day convention:

· Literature: Science Fiction, Horror, Mythology…
· Science and Exploration: Astronomy, Archaeology, Biology…
· History: Primordial, Pre-Colombian, Colonial, 1920s…
· Culture: Art, Architecture, Cinema, Theater, Music, Poetry, Gaming, Food…

Many of the foremost Lovecraft mythos scholars and writers have signed on to be a part of this event, including S.T. Joshi, Robert M. Price, W.H. Pugmire, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, and many others. To date, there is already so much positive buzz in the literary and pop-culture community surrounding our plans, that this is expected to be the preeminent Lovecraft conference of the decade, and the largest convention of its kind anywhere in the world.

As we move past the formative steps, we are looking for SPONSORSHIPS and GRANT SUPPORT to help implement this long-overdue tribute to Providence’s own begotten. After more than a decade since the last Lovecraft convention in Providence, the roots have set for a newly invigorated NecronomiCon in August 2013. If you’d like to be a material part of this, with an anticipated audience of upwards of a thousand hungry and passionate fans from around the nation and the world, please contact us via email or phone listed below or through our website.

Niels Hobbs, director
Email:  keeper@necronomicon-providence.com  Phone: 401.743.3250  Web: necronomicon-providence.com

PROPOSED EVENTS

During the course of the three-day convention, NecronomiCon Providence will showcase a wide variety of engaging programs.

· Speakers and panel discussions covering all aspects of the Lovecraft legacy
· Art exhibits featuring local and international artists inspired by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft
· Film series highlighting cinematic works (full-length features and short films), including classics and new releases
· The infamous Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast, presided over by Robert M. Price
· Gaming rooms for the popular Mythos-based role-playing and board games
· A citywide scavenger hunt organized by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
· Guided tours of Lovecraft’s Providence with stops at key locations in his life and stories
· Vendors representing publishers, authors, artists, cultural organizations, and Lovecraft-themed merchandise
· Collaborative exhibits with area museums, libraries, and observatory
· Workshops on prop-making, film production, and other hands-on activities
· Plays and other theater productions, including live productions of old-style radio shows
· Waterfire activities, including Lovecraft-themed vignettes by Big Nazo puppets
· Music concert, with internationally acclaimed acts
· Restaurant and bar night, highlighting the great cuisine offerings found in Providence.

SPONSORSHIPS AND PARTNERSHIPS

NecromoniCon Providence is organized by the Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council, Inc., a nonprofit organization that dreams of bringing the world-renowned fame of Lovecraft back to its rightful home in Southern New England. We seek business partners, and municipal and state support in order to successfully achieve this dream – a goal with far-reaching benefits. We are presently asking for material resources, venue spaces, financial support, and active involvement from our community. Given the tremendous response we already have, we hope to make this a biennial event.  Our hope is to present Providence as a destination city, to that end all the bridges we build now are ones that will make a much stronger future.

The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council, Inc. is a non-profit organization based in Providence, Rhode Island. We are a networking center for scholars, authors, and fans exploring the literary world of H.P. Lovecraft and associated authors. We seek to examine the intersection of science and art that lies at the foundation of the H.P. Lovecraft literary genre. We work closely with experts and enthusiasts around the world to foster a critical review of related research, literature, art, and the cultural impact of Lovecraft’s writings on the modern world.

ABOUT THE TEAM

We strive to organize public educational events including NecronomiCon Providence – a biennial convention that explores the work of H.P. Lovecraft and that of his myriad literary and artistic offspring, via speakers, panel discussions, book readings, and workshops. We also organize historic tours, art exhibits, film screenings, plays, and concerts to highlight the world of Lovecraft with a particular emphasis on his home city of Providence – a city that Lovecraft honored and immortalized in the minds of countless individuals around the world.

NecronomiCon Providence is organized by a cabal of close friends and associates with a vision. A horrifying, horrifying vision. Join us in making our nightmares come true.

M. McArtor
Our Graphic Designer Mitch McArtor.

Anthony Teth
Web site of writer, occultist, and oddball, Anthony Teth.

Jay Gidwitz Web Design
The art web site of our web designer Jay Gidwitz.

Arkham Film Society
Josh Gravel and Scott Lefebvre run the Arkham Film Society in Providence, RI.
_________________________________________________________________________

Now, let's take care of some business, and provide you with some updates...

First of all, you have less than FOUR DAYS to kick this (in the words of Anthony Teth) "convention, conference, and celebration of all things Lovecraftian" further up into the cold, uncaring cosmos.

If this great video doesn't load, pounce on the provided link:

From the NecronomiCon Providence 2013 Kickstarter Page:

We're bringing Lovecraft back to Providence! Help us stage the greatest event in his memory ever, with renowned scholars and authors.

Resurrecting the Memory of Lovecraft... just a few more essential salts to go.

Dear Friends - we've been overwhelmed with the amount of support, positive feedback, and buzz we've gotten from Lovecraft scholars and fans, Weird Fiction authors and artists, and all manner of people who have a love for Hoary Providence.

Our plans are rapidly moving forward to bring the world the premier Lovecraft literary and scholarly conference and cultural convention, right here in the heart of Lovecraft's beloved hometown, August 23-25, 2013.

Resurrecting the Memory of Lovecraft... just a few more essential salts to go.

Dear Friends - we've been overwhelmed with the amount of support, positive feedback, and buzz we've gotten from Lovecraft scholars and fans, Weird Fiction authors and artists, and all manner of people who have a love for Hoary Providence.

Our plans are rapidly moving forward to bring the world the premier Lovecraft literary and scholarly conference and cultural convention, right here in the heart of Lovecraft's beloved hometown, August 23-25, 2013.

STRETCH GOALS

$19,000 - UNLOCKED!!! - We made it!! Now we will be able to have our good friend Jason Eckhardt, a local Lovecraftian artist of great renown, produce a gorgeous brand-new map poster of Lovecraftian sites around Providence and the wider region - absolutely suitable for framing.  Given this amazing support, we'll make this available both in pdf form for Download backers to Acolyte backers, and in print for Silver-Key and above backers. THANK YOU!

$23,000 - LOCKED -If we can make it to this level of commitment from all you devotees, we will be able to release an updated version of Jason Eckhardt's superb "Off the Ancient Track" Lovecraft travel chapbook, now long out of print. Given enough support, we'll make this available both in pdf form for Download backers to Acolyte backers, and in print for Silver-Key and above backers.

$25,000 - LOCKED -  After much machinating, fulminating, and otherwise plotting and devising some appropriately eldritch rewards for you all... we're still finalizing some of the details, but suffice it to say, this locked level includes a bunch more goodies for all Silver Key and above backers, made by our local and not so local artist friends - limited edition silkscreens of our amazing posters.

For ALL backers above the Acolyte level (i.e. PATRON and BENEFACTOR levels, and above) - a VERY gorgeous limited run amulet made ONLY for all backers above the basic Acolyte level... So, if you're a PATRON or a BENEFACTOR level backer, no matter the theme, you'll get one of these!

And, for ALL full-pass recipients, from PILGRIMAGE on up, you'll get a high-quality embroidered patch of our sigil design, as shown above.

Stay tuned for more (if our febrile minds can conjure more up!).

$60,000 - LOCKED - "We got a badass over here!!!" Wow, we must be nuts for even considering this, but it's been our dream to have Neil deGrasse Tyson come and join us, and give a keynote address explaining how Lovecraft's literary view of the universe is remarkably in line with present cosmology.  He is NOT cheap, though, and we simply can't skip other our more pressing immediate convention needs for this extravagance - but, with a little help? Backers at this level (we need four of them, each contributing $9,999 for this to work - fully refunded if it falls through for some reason), will definitely get dinner with the Man, AND absolutely everything else we offer - PLUS, we'll cover YOUR expenses, too - airfare, hotel, and meals! Does that sweeten the pot enough?

Prepare yourselves!

Anoint your feet!

The time for the Pilgrimage is nearly upon us!
__________________________________________________________________________

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Seeking new Lovecraft-related research for NecronomiCon Providence, 2013

The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council, Inc. (the organizer of NecronomiCon Providence) is seeking submissions of academic works that explore all aspects of the works and life of famed weird fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft, including the influence of history, architecture, science (anthropology, biology, geology, etc), and popular culture (movies, theater, etc), on his works.

We particularly hope to foster exploration of Lovecraft as a rationalist who created an elaborate cosmic mythology, and how this mythology was influenced by, and has come to influence, numerous other authors and artists before and since. However, all submissions that contribute to a greater understanding of Lovecraft and associated authors and artists of “weird tales” (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc) are encouraged.
For this component of the Convention, we are particularly interested in soliciting novel work from young or new academics. If selected, presenters should be prepared to deliver a twenty minute oral presentation summarizing their thesis, and are invited to submit a brief MS for possible inclusion in a proceedings publication.

Selected talks will be presented together as part of a mini-conference within the overall convention framework of NecronomiCon Providence, August 23-25, 2013. Interested scholars, whether faculty, graduate, undergraduate, or independent, should send a 250-300 word abstract, preferably in .doc or .pdf format, to keeper@necronomicon-providence.com by May 23, 2013 for consideration.

For more information on our convention, to learn more about the themes to be explored, and to sign up for email updates, please visit our website: necronomicon-providence.com

NB: In addition to these talks, NecronomiCon Providence will also feature numerous traditional panels and presentations given by many of the top names in the Lovecraftian community.

Check this link for further details.
___________________________________________________________________________

Act fast and get in line, kiddies.  Don't let this historic event go down without you.

Strange Aeons: Issue #9 Now Available, Featuring Comics, News, Reviews, Art, and Original Fiction by Stephen Graham Jones

cover by JD Busch

Sometimes its better to be lucky than good.

This is exactly how I feel about my current position as the Fiction Editor of Strange Aeons magazine, which was a favorite, four-time-a-year read of mine long before I was set up with a SA e-mail account.

As a child of the late 70's/early 80's who haunted dingy book stores and "hobby shops" - as retailers devoted to RPGs, lead figurines, models, comics, fiction, and other geekery were known back then - whenever I could get my mother to drop me off for a few hours, my foundation is girded with the aesthetic of pulpy fantasy/sci fi mags like Heavy Metal, oversize horror comics like Eerie and Creepy, wargaming journals like Dragon and White Dwarf, and brawny, ultra violent sword & sorcery black and whites like Savage Sword of Conan.  My inner world of fantasy was carved out by illustrators and writers of the ghastly and the fantastic, at that age when my mind was a sponge and imagination was my dearest friend.  As such, these images and textures are ingrained in me, bonded with that peculiar childhood DNA that shades the rest of one's days.

This was before I knew who H.P. Lovecraft was (although I was absorbing his echoes almost everywhere), or that Weird fiction existed as a vibrant, established scene, with proud roots, a present, and a future.  This was before I knew that I wanted to be a writer (or an editor), but I was certain - then, and now - that I loved to live in those dark, haunting, exhilarating worlds more than any other. Reality for me was doomed in the face of such unconquerable competition.  Fantasy, and all of its far flung outposts, would be my mental escape route when the dulling grind of reality threatened to pull me down in the morass of the crushingly common.

So, imagine my childish glee when I stumbled across Strange Aeons a few years ago, just as I embarked on my creative journey back home to my roots. It took me back to those cramped, out of the way shops, to that distinctive smell of moldering paper and ink and musty air spiced with junk food wrappers stuffing the bin behind the counter. Strange Aeons seemed like a throwback to those times, and celebrated a tradition of fantasticism and FUN (a concept often forgotten in this often grim, post ironic days) that I had missed so much.

Making the Masthead, flanking a stellar ToC

I quickly became a fanboy of the magazine, and struck up a professional relationship with Strange Aeons creator K.L. Young, who - along with Rick Tillman and Laurence Amiotte - made up the magazine's core at the time.  Content in my glorification of the lost art of the Pulps on the pages of Strange Aeons, which has featured some of the best in Lovecraftian, horror, and Weird fiction writers, artists, craftsman, retailers, and newsmakers since its worldwide launch in the spring of 2010, it came as an unexpected shock when Young invited me to come aboard as Fiction Editor earlier this year.  I couldn't believe my luck, and still can't, but won't question the movements of the stars, both visible and waiting.  For now, I'll count my blessings and pledge to uphold the tradition of excellence forged so long ago, and continued on the pages of Strange Aeons.  Our humble magazine isn't the first to do what we do, but we think we are doing it as good or better than anyone else out there right now, and we're just getting started.  Plans are afoot (and a-wing) for expansion, including a rumored all-fiction issue, electronic circulation through additional platforms, and other multimedia delights.

Stay tuned, true believers, and bring that inner child in from outside.  Playing football in the street is fun, but we have so many things to show you best seen under lamplight in a darkened room, while the rest of the flat world sighs.

And now, a walking tour gallery of page shots taken from Strange Aeons Issue #9.  Enjoy, and realize that until you feel that paper between your greasy fingers, you ain't seen nothing yet:

After a very tough selection process, in which I read the works of many of THE top Weird/horror/sci fi fiction writers working today, I finally settled on "Welcome to the Reptile House," by the unparalleled Stephen Graham Jones.  Having an original, fresh-off-the-brain piece from a true rock star of the speculative fiction scene mark my first issue as Fiction Editor is something I never could have dreamed, and makes me so incredibly proud.   Mostly, it serves as concrete testament to the reputation of Strange Aeons among the top level creatives working in the industry.

The first page to SGJ's spanking new story, featuring art by The Hat

In "The Corpse's Crusade", you are treated to a further tale of Zothique, Clark Ashton Smith's fabled land of charnel gods, necromancy, and bloodied steel, wrought from the poisoned pen of Cody Goodfellow, who once again joins up with long time collaborator Mike Dubisch to create a boldly illustrated tale that hearkens back to the best of the Pulps and graphic novels that truly are exactly that.

Evil tyrants, flesh eaters, and corpse humpers - Must be another Strange Aeons tale!

Issue #9 brings to our regular readers the first regular installment of "Anno Ktulu" (written by K.L. Young and Vincent Ferrante, pencils by Ben "1314" Hansen, graytones by Chris Hagerman, letters by Eduardo Martinez) recently launched with the special edition, oversize one-shot currently available at the Strange Aeons website, which premiered to resounding acclaim at Crypticon Seattle and the 2012 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland last month.  The one-shot ties into the ongoing "Anno Ktulu" storyline that will be running all year in Strange Aeons.  Get in on this innovative story of superheroes set in a Lovecraftian universe now, as you definitely don't want to miss this.

With "Hell Dorado", SA's own cigar chomping Editor-In-Chief Laurence Amiotte pens a story of gunslingers and hellish monsters in the new old west, illustrated by Rob Corless.

Double threat Lee Davis offers up Part 3 of his supernatural zombiedrama "Bloodworm."

Eric York brings to life an excerpt from H.P. Lovecraft's epic poem "Fungi From Yuggoth" with his distinctive artistic style.

The Eldritch Words segment starts out each issue, giving a lowdown around Strange Aeons HQ, providing a bit of staff and related news, and introducing the wonders in the pages to come. Notice the smiling gent on the right. That's Strange Aeons staff artist Nick "The Hat" Gucker, who has decided that 2012 is now officially his.  Thank goodness he likes to share.

Also included in Issue #9 is an official report taken from Portland's recent H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, where SA's own Nick Gucker won the first annual "Pickman's Apprentice" competition, besting such worthy adversaries as renowned artists (and Strange Aeons favorites) Mike Dubisch and Lee Moyer.  Congrats to The Hat, and to all of us, as we're all winners based on the three mind bending end results.  YAY for everyone, and puppies too!

Book reviews are "Forbidden Lore" to us.  In this this issue, we give the business to Rough Music by Simon Kurt Unsworth, Lucky Bastard by S.G. Browne, and Laird Barron's The Croning, with a shout to All Monster Action by the above mentioned Cody Goodfellow, Nick Gucker, and Mike Dubisch in the "Currently Reading" circle.

Our "Unearthed" section features all the cool shit you need to know about, including the Monopoly-style board The Doom That Came to Atlantic City (which absolutely destroyed its goal on Kickstarter), the always fantastic Lovecraft eZine (which has featured work by yours truly), and this wonderful reproduction of Lovecraft's ghost written Weird Tales piece for Harry Houdini titled "Under the Pyramids" (aka "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs"), complete with a working lock and vintage-style U.S. mailbags, featuring art by our global landlord Nick Gucker (who proffers more info here).

In each issue, we always include something extra, from lobby cards to mini posters to your very own kitten (I MIGHT be fibbing a bit about one of those).  In Issue #9, the staff of printing gnomes stashes two "Anno Ktulu" trading cards by some guy named Nick Gucker into each magazine before mailing.  Collect them all, and trade with your friends.  Way cooler than the seventeen Ken Griffey Jr. cards doing exactly nothing in a cigar box in my parents' basement.

Well, that's the penny tour, kids.  Interested?  Goddamn right you are.  Now click through here and pick up the latest Strange Aeons, then work backwards on the previous issues, like any good collector of comics and the Pulps.  We're just getting warmed up, so watch us grow tall, dark, and infinitely monstrous.  We have such Things we'd like to show you...

TC Book Review & Interview: Laird Barron Weaponizes the Weird in Debut Novel ‘The Croning' from Night Shade Books

Laird Barron made me gain five pounds.

No, he didn’t hold me down and shovel deep fried butter wedges into my gaping yapper (although, dare to dream). What he did was write a colossal piece of fiction that was nearly impossible to put down, even at the gym, where I do much of my reading every morning. As I hazily recall, just before cracking open Barron’s debut novel The Croning some weeks back, I marched my happy ass off to the local garishly lit LA Fitness, eager to absorb a few pages in between moving weighted objects from one place to another. Forty-five minutes later I found myself on the floor, sprawled in some lazy stretching pose, peering at the pages in front of me with wide, slightly twitching eyes while sadly oblivious meatheads preened in front of mirrors around me. I was hooked, boated, and clubbed, and stayed that way until I closed the last page some blurry span of time later. As I became doughier, I also became more willing, suppliant. I was fattened and ready for the provender plate of dear Old Leech. Just like They wanted it.

Barron’s storytelling has that rare power of grip, weaving a particular strain of beautiful, sinewy prose that somehow possesses enough tiny microfibers to pick up the grit and sharp things swept into the corners of forgotten history. Both beautiful and monstrous, his evocative imagery lures you into the forest with the cadence of lost eons, leaves you in expectant silence, and then rips back the shading canopy, exposing you to the terrible realities that lie waiting under the thin veneers of bullshit “civilization”.

Not surprisingly, the writing is a reflection of the writer and his unique experience set. Barron grew up in the wilds of Alaska and spent several years fishing the murderous Bering Sea and racing the Iditarod on arctic tundra like some goddamn throwback to a time of brawnier, more road-tested scribes, who could lay down some poetic verse before laying you out in a pool of your own teeth for spilling his drink. Papa Hemingway. Jack London. Dashiell Hammett in a parka. All sitting in the corner booth of the Bar on the Borderland, waiting for their Weirdling pals from the Pulps to show up and swap stories of the violent and strange.

Indeed, his meaty, imaginative style is an amalgam of all of these rough and smooth elements, taking shape as a barrel-chested ballerina, a professional wrestler moonlighting as an ice skater. A pagan ninja hopped up on blood saki, beautifully weaponizing the sublime and stuffing horror into documented and geological mysteries long buried for a reason. Barron respectfully nods his heads to his forebearers, but is truly his own man, blazing his trail through the wild, untamed places to find the haunted ruins. The cryptic mounds.  The dolmens... This is Weird fiction boiled hard.

Unfairly or not, Barron is often compared to (elder)godfather of cosmic horror  H.P. Lovecraft, but in many ways, Barron’s work is far more bleak than the Gentleman from Providence. In Lovecraft’s Mythos, profoundly alien Great Old Ones and Outer Gods were mostly oblivious or apathetic to our meaningless existence. The horror often came from the realization of unimaginable truth.  Much like Barron, HPL’s protagonists reflected the man, and as such, were bookish and aloof, ghosts in the coal powered machine, sneering strangers in the hated crowd. In Laird’s “Barronic Mythos” (an increasingly legitimate construct that I may or may not have just given a name), the unearthly entities not only know where we are and what we’re doing, they pop in from time for a bite, and/or to continually fuck with us just because they can. His characters ARE the crowd, reflecting all strata of life, from the aristocratic elite to the shithouse dogs. Barron understand them all, and spares none. All are claymation figurines caught up in a Game Unutterable organized before the beginning of time. All of them are doomed, and Barron allows us a front row seat to the slow, excruciating execution.

The Croning, Barron’s first full-length novel after making his bones and racking up accolades as a conjurer of short fiction, is a perfect reflection of what he does as a writer, while serving as a stage one culmination of much of his storytelling from the past decade. Characters, artifacts, and even families that were introduced in such short stories as “Mysterium Tremendum” and “The Men From Porlock” reappear in The Croning ready to cast off their potential and reveal their dreadful destiny. After a prologue of sorts, which serves as more than just a pitch-black origin story of Rumpelstiltskin, we are lead through three life stages of the affable geologist Don Miller, and together, we follow Don as he follows his brilliant and headstrong wife Michelle, forever living in her secretive shadow as she chases arcane anthropological discoveries around the world, when not locked away in her study researching her family tree, obsessing over the hard-to-find root system buried impossibly deep in the antediluvian loam. As Michelle pursues her own path that occasionally intersects with her husband, Don is left to reflect on his own life barely lived, and in doing so, starts to unspool – with the help of off-the-grid intelligence agencies, old money eccentrics, and even his own son – the mind shattering reality of what has been slithering around his ankles and through his home for decades, and his role in ongoing Outer Machinations older than the cosmos and twice as dangerous. Cults and conspiracies. Secret societies and powerful bloodlines with grand designs forged through unwholesome alliances dating back to the Stone Age. Mind snuffing dread born beyond the reach of time and space. This is the world of The Croning, and this is the writing of Laird Barron, who effectively synthesizes science fiction with science fact, creating a New Kind of Truth that can be as mortifying as it is wondrous. And it all works. Perfectly, it works.

Much like Bloch, Carter, Lumley, Campbell, Klein, and even Ligotti before him, and with the curiously scarred crone looming protectively behind him, Laird Barron has emerged as the new poster boy of cosmic horror, thankfully without a shred of pastiche anywhere in the shot. The Croning shows an already masterful writer fully in the throws of his own, unique style somehow getting better, and that bodes well for us, his readership, which grows by the hour.  We are the Children of Old Leech, and we love you.

In the end, and after all of this convoluted blather, I supposed the highest compliment I can pay The Croning is that it’s the sort of novel I wish I had written had I not first read it. It’s a gift of cosmic naturalist horror that will force you to re-examine everything and everyone around you, if only slightly. The X-Files in print, only infinitely scarier and hitting far closer to home.  It will make you fear the trees.  It will make you check for zippers.

I reckon that’s not too shabby for a first novel.

(The Croning can be purchased directly from Night Shade Books [recommended by The Cosmicomicon, because it's the right goddamn thing to do], and from Amazon for you corporate-felching cheapskates who hate Santa Claus a little and Ross E. Lockhart even more)

___________________________________________________________________________

As you process the jibber jabber above, please enjoy the second installment of the The Cosmicomicon Book Review & Interview (the first of which was christened upon the diamond cut abs of Simon Strantzas).  I'd like to thank Laird for making time to sit down with me across the table o' ether, as I know his hours were limited in the days leading up to the hugely anticipated release of The Croning.  As such, I kept my questions as brief as possible, attempting not to repeat inquiries covered in other interviews.  The resulting answers show a very candid, free-form/riffy side of Laird that I don't think I've read before.  Fantastic stuff, that I'm honored to share with you all below.

TC:   Your writing is often compared to that of classic cosmic Weirdists H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, etc. (including by yours truly above), but there seems to be far more at play under the surface of your prose.  More contemporary, brawnier, bare-knuckled stuff.  Just as much Lawrence Block as T.E.D. Klein.  Who are your influences, both conscious and subconscious?

LB:  My earliest influences were pulps and adventure novels. H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, that was my crowd as a kid. Big men with axes, naked alien princesses, exotic landscapes, fantastical beasts. Rivers of blood. Hell of an escape from my family’s sub-Arctic shack.

My interests have shifted over the years. I enjoy Martin Cruz Smith and Kelly Link in equal measure. I riff on Lovecraft and McCarthy if the firing solution calls for it. But my love of the pulps is always there and ever inflecting what I write.

TC:  Charlie Parker had a great quote that always stuck with me:  “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”  Based on your diverse, wide-ranging jobs, pursuits, and travels – many of them often taking place in some pretty gritty, unforgiving locales - you’re a writer who has certainly “lived it” out under the sun and rain, in contrast to a more reclusive individual like Lovecraft or Thomas Ligotti.  How important do you think it is for a writer to get out into the world in order to write about it and the homo sapiens taking up so much space, or can the same time be spent researching to achieve a similar result?

LB:  A good artist had better be able to fake it until he makes it. There’s a reason I do what I do, however. I look at the more desolate portions of my youth as a sacrifice to the muses.

My professional writing career has spanned a decade. What was I doing before that? Digging my way out of the hole provenance dropped me headfirst into as a baby. I know what it feels like. To be punched, kicked in the balls, frozen, dragged, bitten, betrayed and heartbroken. I’ve fired guns and swung clubs when my life depended upon them. I’ve set aside years to train in combatives, and I’ve used them too. I’ve gone completely off the deep end from too many months alone in the wild and come all the way back again like a drunk who drinks himself sober. If a man’s going to write about damaged human machinery it doesn’t hurt to have spent time on fishing boats among ex cons and addicts. Doesn’t hurt to have bunked with bikers and trappers and professional ne’er do wells. I don’t have to invent much when I write. I just reach into my pocket and pull out some bloody receipts.

TC:  I’m sensing that you wouldn’t trade one second of it - the many hardships, tough upbringing, and dangerous scrapes you’ve been through.

LB:  There are moments here and there I’d do anything to change. Just like everybody alive. In the end, it’s all grist for the mill.

TC:  The natural world features heavily into your brand of cosmic horror (I call it “cosmic naturalism”).  Do the wild places on earth – places where you’ve spent quite a bit of time – truly terrify you, or are you instead mining what you know and enjoy, and then twisting it to the dark side?

LB:  I lived in Alaska for about twenty-five years. My family was nomadic. We chased the snow in order to train huskies for the racing circuit, and most especially the Iditarod. Of course the more fabulous elements of my stories are fabricated. But there’s no dismissing the sinister grandeur of primeval wilderness. There’s got to be some natural force in Alaska that fucks with human circuitry. I think Lovecraft’s head would’ve popped like a balloon if he’d found himself trapped in some of the places I’ve been.

TC:  Your memoirs could be a piece of Weird Noir.  Have you ever thought about publishing something entirely autobiographical?  Or hell, maybe you already have.

LB:  Oh, perhaps someday. In the meantime I’m working on a sequence of stories that deal in more explicit terms with Alaska and what I saw there during my youth.

TC:  When writing previous tales like “The Men From Porlock” and “Mysterium Tremendum”, did you know that the characters, locations, situations, and/or Mythology would someday evolve into a novel?  Into this novel?

LB:  With a tiny handful of exceptions, my entire body of work exists within a continuous universe. A few stories, such as those you highlighted, indeed feed directly into one another. I seldom write something that doesn’t inflect or reference every other piece I’ve done prior. I don’t write for an anthology or magazine, regardless of theme, without plotting how it’ll fit in to the mosaic.

TC:  Building on the previous question, are you intentionally constructing a Mythos, or perhaps adding onto that which was initially crystallized by Lovecraft?

LB:  I owe debts to every piece of fiction I’ve read, every man I’ve fought, every woman I’ve loved, every musician or artist who’s taken my heart out then handed it back, changed. The classical masters of dark fantasy and cosmic horror perfected a tradition of the weird story that generally features aloofness and restraint. For better or worse, I am not that guy.

The old tradition’s hallmarks include those of repressed sexuality, violence hinted at or understated, vagueness, iciness. Lovecraft is a giant in the field and I don’t believe the canon needs a contemporary update from me. I don’t repress jack shit. There’s going to be fucking, fighting, blood and thunder in a Barron tale. When I write in this tradition, I’m interested in weaponizing it.

TC:  You’ve emerged as a standard bearer, of sorts, for whatever we’re calling the brutal amalgam of Weird fiction/dark fantasy/cosmic horror these days.  I’ve personally described “Barronic verse,” and I’ve seen “Barronian” used as an adjective.  Did you ever foresee this sort of impact on speculative fiction from the back of a dogsled heading up into the frozen white all those years ago?

LB:   No. My dreams were humble. I was usually too worried about starving or whether freezing my dick to the side of my leg would have long term consequences.

TC:  In a perfect world, what would you be writing in twenty years?

LB:  In a perfect world I’ll be alive twenty years.

TC:  What’s next on the docket for you?  Longer term, what’s a personal or professional goal still unachieved?

LB:  There should be a new horror collection out next year. Deal just needs to be inked. I’ve several stories set to appear soon. Longer term, I’m working on a crime novel. Right now, my main goal is just to keep moving forward as a writer. Keep pushing myself to the breaking point.

TC:  Who would look better poured into a tight pair of spanking new Jordache jeans?  Robert E. Howard or Ramsey Campbell?

LB:  Considering how much weight Mr. Howard has lost these past decades, I’d say Mr. Campbell wins it in a landslide.

"Laird Barron" by JD Busch

They Are (in) Providence: John Langan's Walking Tour of Mr. Lovecraft's Neighborhood

"I am Providence" might have been the last bit of unusually restrained, intentionally published writing H.P. Lovecraft ever undertook, leaving it carved into his modest headstone marking his remains buried below the ground at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, Rhode Island.  In many ways, this bold and audacious claim is true, as no one person (or even place or thing) springs to mind more quickly than Lovecraft when the city of Providence is mentioned.

Due to its veneration in florid verse, and what essential salts have now filtered into the soil, Providence holds the distinction - at least in my fevered mind - of reigning as the sun dappled Mecca of cosmic horror, demanding a personal Lovecraftian hajj before I'm allowed to pass on to the Other Side to meet either Paradise or Oblivion.  Regardless, I'm getting my pasty ass to Providence while the getting is still good, most likely to coincide with Readercon (possibly this year, but certainly next).  The city should be nice and ripe 'round mid July.  Blooming with greenery, whispered locales of dubious renowned, and centuried secrets waiting further exploration.

To give us good pilgrims a glimpse of what to expect, upstate New York-based horror writer John Langan lashed Laird Barron to the hood of his car and headed east, joining Paul Tremblay, Jack Haringa, John Harvey, and Geoffrey Goodwin for a walking tour around the Old Gentleman's haunts.  Langan captured it on the video above, giving a face (and gambrel roof) to many of Lovecraft's famed locations made legendary through his prose.  Locations mentioned in "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Shunned House", "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", and "The Haunter in the Dark" (the latter of which was HPL's last terrestrial abode) feature in the video.

Thanks to John for posting up the video for all of us to enjoy, and to the rest of the squamous assemblage for making the trek up the perilous and lung clutching Jenke Street hill.  BTW, Paul Tremblay assures us that the soundtrack is him strumming a six string with his feet.

Text from John Langan's YouTube posting:

On March 18, 2012, Laird Barron and I took a ride over to Providence, RI, to meet up with some friends including Paul Tremblay, Jack Haringa, John Harvey, and Geoffrey Goodwin. The lot of us wandered around some of the city's Lovecraft-related sites; this short video records the silliness that ensued. Afterwards, there were burgers with Paul Di Filippo and Barry Lee Dejasu, and a trip to Ben & Jerry's; though there was no video taken of any of that.

(A side note:  A song by DisneyPop kiddie band Lemonade Mouth was suggested/linked on the right hand side of the YouTube page for Langan's video "In the Mouth of--Oh, Wait".  Talk about unnameable madness...)

It's fascinating, at least to me, to see these places previously only constructed in my mind appear as they really are today, and probably were back in Lovecraft's time.

Click here for detailed list of Lovecraftian sites and sights waiting dead but dreaming for you in Rhode Island, a haunted corner of weird Americania proving time and time again that size truly doesn't matter.  Unless we're talking pizza...  Oh, and penis size, too.

Anthology Open Call for Submissions Starting January 15, 2012: 'Fungi' for Innsmouth Free Press to Celebrate 'The Year of the Mushroom'

Fungi cover art (c) by Oliver Wetter

With the chiming-in of the New Year, the holiday season is now sadly yet officially behind us, which turns our vision away from the magic in the air, to the sorcerous conjuring brewing in the mind.

As stories written in the rapidly fading Old Year burst forth from their tightly wound cocoons and blossom in anthologies and publications, a new swath of waiting display cases open up, eager for interesting, beautiful, and often terrifying specimens.

2012 promises to be a very exciting year rife with opportunities, both personally and throughout the overlapping Weird fiction and Lovecraftian multiverses, as more and more compelling books are in the planning stages by various major indie and small press outfits.  As I write toward the release of my collection in late 2012/early 2013, I'll also endeavor to embrace as many anthology invites and open calls as I possibly can.  It'll be a labor intensive tight rope walk, and I've already had to decline a few choice opportunities that in a "normal" year I would have jumped upon.  But sadly, when time is limited and every creative move shaded by cold calculation, tough decisions must be made.  2012 has dawned as the Year of Opportunity for me, if I can stay focused, inspired, and continue down the path that has been hacked through the jungle by so many trusted (and trusting) friends and colleagues.  As such, this is my year to raise my ink-stained banner, as it were, as room on the horizon has been made.  Now, I just have to pitch strikes, and knock them down one by one.  Heady times, indeed, and not without its share of anxiety.  Need to keep that forked grip tight, and the sinker low and inside.

The first of the open calls that really piques my interest and plays to what I perceive to be my strengths as a writer is the intriguing anthology Fungi, edited by Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, for publication by Moreno-Garcia's stellar Innsmouth Free Press, which has lately produced such handsome tomes as Historical Lovecraft, and Future Lovecraft, and the Gothic fiction collection A Candle in the Attic Window, and puts out the tri-annual fiction review Innsmouth Magazine, featuring an array of some of today's top Lovecraftian scribes, available for free download at the IFP website. 

I wrote for but didn't complete in time two respective stories for both Historical Lovecraft and Future Lovecraft (back when I chased every submission call I ran across, wrongly thinking I could finish any and all story to which I set my mind and energies).  After two misses, I'm trying like hell to not blow the deadline for Fungi, as just the spectacular cover alone - combined with the impressive efficiency and professionalism shown by Innsmouth Free Press in the past - makes this collection definitely one of the can't-miss books of 2012, as both a writer and a reader of Weird/speculative/Lovecraftian fiction.  On a more superficial level, a writer (or maybe just me) loves to have their work wrapped in a gorgeous bow, and that cover shown above by the genius Oliver Wetter (who also goes by Fantasio) is exactly that, and then some.  Cover art counts, for writer and customer, and it rarely gets more eye-catching than Wetter's work.

From the official IFP submission call press release:

Days Micotic: Announcing Fungi for 2012

In 2012, Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia tackle the darkest of all horrors: fungi. William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night”, and its Japanese film adaptation, Matango, terrified and fascinated the editors. And now, they’re back for more.

Fungi is an anthology of dark speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science fiction, and any other variant, such as steampunk) focused solely on the fungal. Full guidelines for the anthology will be posted in December (Don’t send anything, yet!).

In the meantime, we are trying to build a comprehensive mushroom fic list. Do you know of a story, movie, TV episode, or book that featured fungi in it? Add it to our little spreadsheet. The list will be used to compile a comprehensive database of fungi fiction, to be used as an appendix for the book. You can see the items we have already collected here.

Fungi will be released by Innsmouth Free Press as a special edition hardcover, paperback and e-book. Look for it in October of 2012, which we are gleefully dubbing “The Year of the Mushroom”.

About the editors:

Orrin Grey writes stories of the supernatural and macabre, which have appeared in a number of Innsmouth Free Press anthologies, as well as other venues like Bound for Evil and Delicate Toxins. His first collection, Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, is due out from Evileye Books in 2012. His fascination with monsters and fungus, and fungus monsters, is longstanding and shows no sign of waning any time soon.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Evolve 2, The Book of Cthulhu, and a number of other publications. In 2011, Silvia won the Carter V. Cooper Memorial Prize (in the Emerging Writer category), sponsored by Gloria Vanderbilt and Exile Quarterly. She was also a finalist for that year’s Manchester Fiction Prize. Together with Paula R. Stiles, she has co-edited Historical Lovecraft, Candle in the Attic Window and Future Lovecraft.

Fungi: Guidelines

What?

Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia tackle the darkest of all horrors: fungi. William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night” and its Japanese adaptation, Matango, terrified and fascinated the editors. And now, they’re back for more.

Fungi is an anthology of dark speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science fiction, and any other variant, such as steampunk) focused solely on the fungal. No happy mushrooms from Mario Bros. A fungus of some type must be a key element in the story, not just a throwaway element. A character can attempt to poison someone with a mushroom, mushroom cultivation may be of importance to the story, the dark patch of mould on the ceiling may begin to terrify an unhappy tenant, a group of people may consume hallucinogenic mushrooms, etc.

We are looking for a variety of settings and protagonists. Mushrooms sprout around the world, after all.

Oh, and if you can add a story, novel, movie, or TV episode with mushroomy content, please do it! We are keeping a spreadsheet, here.

Payment

•      1 cent per word for original stories.

•      Reprints paid at a flat rate of $35. Canadian dollars, eh. Indicate where and when it was published.

•      One complimentary print copy and one e-book copy provided.

Length

Short fiction up to 5,000 words.

Submitting

• E-mail us at fungi.innsmouth AT gmail.com. Subject line: Fungi, [Title of your Story, Author's Name].

• Do not send more than one short story submission at a time. If we reject one story, you can send another one.

• Include a cover letter with the story word count, salient writing credits and any reprint information (if applicable). Yes, we do read cover letters, so include the information.

• Attach story as an RTF (preferred) or Word document. Use standard manuscript format. Italics as italics, bold as bold. No fancy fonts.

• Stories can be sent in English or Spanish.

• Submissions are accepted from January 15 to February 15, 2012. Do not send anything before or after that date. If you do, we will ignore it.

• Final story selection will take place in the spring of 2012. Check back for updates.

So, hug up to that toadstool, meander amongst the molds, and listen closely to the lichens. They definitely have a story to tell, and a firm place amongst the strata of Weird fiction and cosmic horror.  HPL wasn't just whistling Dixie (can you imagine?) when he penned Fungi From Yuggoth, in which he famously wrote:

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know
What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents
And tints of flowers fill Nithon’s continents,
Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.
Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,
A dozen more of ours they sweep away!

From penicillin to yeast to black mold and Cryptococcus, the smallest and most innocuous living things amongst us can either grant life, or take it, on a massive scale.  That's the stuff that sets the mind a' wheeling, and the eager spores swirling out into the evening gloom.

That's the stuff of Fungi.

'Tis The Season To Be Culty: Red Wasp Design Unveils Two Digital Cthulhuvian Releases Just in Time for the Holidays

Ah, kids these days... Just nutty about the smart phone apps and the video games.  And the hippity hop.  But mostly the smart phone apps and video games... set to a soundtrack of the hippity hop.

Understanding this, and endeavoring to give "the kids" - meaning, well, EVERYONE with a mobile phone and a jones for electronic gaming - exactly what they want, Red Wasp Design, the critically acclaimed, proudly indie games development studio based in Bristol, England (home of the semi-mythical yet somehow still fully vicious Chicken of Bristol), has just released a brand new holiday-themed calendar app, and will be launching an anticipated video game in the coming months.  What both share, aside from a digital womb nestled deep inside Red Wasp Design studios, is a celebration of the God(s)father of Cosmic Horror, one Howard Philips Lovecraft, and his beloved Golden (Greenish Gray?) Boy, Cthulhu.

Tapping into the whole "cute Cthulhu" craze that is morphing tiny, bright eyed children into unwitting fans of HPL's eternally grumpy and chronically sociopathic Great Old Ones, Red Wasp has conjured up a fun advent calendar app titled "Cthulhu Christmas Calendar" that is rooted in enough sanity-sucking horror to appeal to both hardcore Lovecraftians who eagerly snap up anything remotely Outer Goddish, and also those uninitiated few who appreciate cuddly monsters bent on cosmic destruction set in the cheery key of pastel and holly.

"Cthulhu Christmas Calendar" is now available for your iPhone, iPad, and Android phone (the latter of which is also easily purloined through this link to Amazon.com).

The "secret ingredient" to a successful fruitcake is finally revealed

Please note the official Red Wasp Design press release below, generously provided for The Cosmicomicon by Red Wasp's own Debbie Connor:

Press Release

Cthulhu's Crazy Nightmare Before Christmas (for immediate release)

Fans of the meme-monster Cthulhu and other creations of cult horror novelist H.P. Lovecraft can get a little extra help in counting down to Christmas, thanks to a new mobile advent calendar app. Titled 'Cthulhu Christmas Calendar', it features 25 original pieces of artwork - one for each day in December until Christmas Day. Each image presents a fun mashup of festive icons like Santa into the Cyclopean world of the great Cthulhu, the malevolent Mi-Go and the dark god Nyarlathotep.

Indie developer Red Wasp Design today released the Cthulhu Christmas Calendar for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android. As well as featuring a new and original creation of art for each day, it also features quiz questions related to the images. Fans will find out their 'Mythos rating' on the 25th when their scores are revealed along with the final festive- horror image.

The app is available now from the App Store for iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone. It is also available for Android from the Android Market. It is priced at:

• iPhone & iPod Touch ($0.99/£0.69/€0.79) • iPad 1 & 2 ($1.99/£1.49;/€1.59) • Android Store ($0.99/£0.69/€0.79) • Amazon App Store (coming soon!)

There is more information on the Cthulhu Christmas Calendar page and you can chat about it with fellow cultists on its own Facebook page.

The Great Priest - The only Being sorta' alive who is impervious to the unbridled joy of party hats

_________________________________________________________________________

And now the electric lights dim and the candle smoke billows, as we turn our heads from the glittering holiday trappings and gaiety, and delve back a bit deeper, looking into our past for a glimpse into our future.

A dystopian land, wrecked by cosmic forces beyond human comprehension, but somehow distantly remembered.  Monsters roaming the blasted hilltops.  A handful of .30 caliber shells in your calloused palm.  The sunlight dims... Figures dance behind the cover of smoking corpses.  The battle begins anew.  You are the last hope for us all....

This is "Call of Cthulhu: Wasted Land."  This is what you've been waiting for, Lovecraftians.  Check these badass sneak peek screen shots below:

Press Release First 'Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land' Screenshots Released (for immediate release)

Indie developer Red Wasp Design today released the first screenshots from their anticipated upcoming game, Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land'. These screenshots are taken from the Standard Definition (SD) iPhone version of the game and are, the developer says, a work in progress. A High Definition (HD) version will follow. They show characters from the game under attack by the undead, and the Dark Young. As the characters fight these legions of horror they will have their sanity eroded away as the game's designer Tomas Rawlings noted, “Lovecraft and his peers created really iconic monsters that tap into our deepest fears. As huge fans of his stories, we've worked really hard to transfer the essence of these alien horrors into a game form. We're blending the core ideas of the classic role-playing game along with our experience of gameplay design all wrapped in our new 3D engine to craft what we hope is a gaming experience of malignant evil!”

Announced in May this year and set to launch initially on iPhone and iPod (both SD and HD versions), Red Wasp Design plan to infect other platforms such as iPad, Android, PC and consoles with their World War One themed turn-based strategy horror. The game has been developed in co-operation with Chaosium, the purveyors of the cult horror role playing game based on Lovecraft's work, Call of Cthulhu. The much loved RPG marks it's 30th year of publication this year, which Chaosium has been celebrating with the launch of a limited edition release of Call of Cthulhu. Dustin Wright from Chaosium said, "We're very excited to be working with Red Wasp Design to bring the Call of Cthulhu world to gaming devices. It's a great time to be a fan of H.P. Lovecraft gaming."

A final release date, pricing and other information has yet to be announced by Red Wasp Design, but you can be kept in the loop via Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/redwaspdesign), Twitter (@redwaspdesign) and on their site (http://www.redwaspdesign.com)

_________________________________________________________________________

Happy Holidays, fellow Lovecraftians, Weirdlings, video gamers, hippity hopists, and smartphonists.  Red Wasp Design has everything you need... possibly sans the hippity hop, but give those folks time...