April issue – cover by Leslie Herzfeld: http://portlandportfolio.blogspot.com

Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet this week, folks, but I’m back on track.  Here’s a preview of Lovecraft eZine issue #23, out next week!

I’ll have five Lovecraftian stories for you, one poem, and an essay by Robert M. Price.  (And even better: Dr. Price reads his essay for the podcast version of issue #23!)

Echoes From Cthulhu’s Crypt (Robert M. Price column): As of this writing, a Wizard of Oz remake is about to hit the big screen. Has it ever occurred to you that “The Dunwich Horror” might be understood as rewriting of The Wizard of Oz? Consider the parallels…

The Strange Tale of Samuel Winchester, by Samantha Henderson and Andrew Nicolle:  When they move me, it feels like my bones are glass, shattered inside my skin. I try to run away inside myself, but the pain chases me up and down the passages of my mind, my body.  A blur of blue sky, and Dingane’s face hovers above me. Black as pure, virgin coal, not this coal that burns me and becomes ash, as my leg becomes ash, as my blood boils away and my veins become ash…

Tracking the Black Book, by Douglas Wynne: Stop it. He had to stop this train of thought. It was just an old book, the downed plane, just a coincidence. The dread tome had slept on the dusty shelf of a library in Baghdad for how many years?  And then something stirred and war came to Baghdad. And what will come to you when you have the cursed thing?

Not With a Bang, but Waves Whispering, by Wendy Wagner: The sea will come / upon the shores where we picnicked…

A Cold Yellow Moon, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., and Edward Morris: The main room of Miskatonic University Observatory’s new Mission Control wing flickered so badly it felt like it was always raining during an eclipse. In that cramped, sawdust-and-plaster lockdown that seemed a hasty afterthought, twenty tele-visor screens ringed the room, with audio-telephone switches and lavaliere microphones everywhere between each.  Some screens merely showed what could only be described as a continuous storm of ‘snow’; some, at any given time, very much not, as the Big Day drew nearer and nearer…

The Whisper From the Deep, by Cora Pop: He’s stuffing his knife in his belt. The big hunter’s knife that he’s used on that other girl. The one who screamed too much even when she’d been alive. Not just when she was dying. The one who danced on the deck and yelled insults at the water when the waves were too big for you two to bathe. The one who didn’t know better. Just like you…

Nectar of Strange Lips, by Michael Griffin: Frank swirled his glass at the window. What’d she give him? Chianti?  Beyond the vacation home’s weathered gray deck, the lake’s cold heart spread out beyond the trees. The view, which earlier seemed like a travel brochure, made his hands tremble…

The stars will be right next week for issue #23!