Lovecraft’s Birthday, the 2019 round-up:
It’s the 129th!
* Released on H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday, from Hippocampus, An Imp of Aether. 279 pages of the late Wilum Pugmire’s writing in an affordable Kindle ebook.
* Lovecraft’s Letters to Wilfred B. Talman is said by Amazon to be shipping today.
* My own extensively annotated “The Cats of Ulthar”, new and free online. I think this ended up around 8,000 words. At 20 pages it should be printable as a five-sheet booklet.
* Revised and expanded 2019 edition of my big map of Lovecraft’s Providence. 5mb, printable. Added: Eddy’s Bookshop; Twin Islands (boyhood adventures); Fox Point (where he met and saw off visitors on the New York boat); St. John’s churchyard (a regular stop on ‘the tour’ for visitors).
* InnFest 2019. 20th-27th August 2019, “celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s 129th birthday. Visitors [to the famous Second Life ‘virtual world’] will enjoy shopping [for Lovecraftian ‘virtual crafts and fashions’] and experience a week of exploration, events and entertainment featuring a fine calendar of music and stage shows at the theatre and other [digital 3D recreations of] locations in Lovecraft Country.” Not sure about the knick-knacks, but the location-builds can be quite something. Especially now that Second Life has VR.
* Dark Adventure Radio Theatre have their new Mad Science old-time radio serial adaptations of Lovecraft ready to go, and when last heard planned to release the collection… “on or about Lovecraft’s birthday, 20th August 2019”.
* In Mexico, the state of Veracruz and the writer Miguel Angel Vartak have “organized an exhibition of Lovecraft books and stories, a reading of Lovecraft’s poetry, live music and several lectures”.
* I also spotted a special ‘H.P Lovecraft Birthday’ Guided Tour of Brooklyn.
Various other stuff that’s just too cynically spammy to mention, to do with offering marginal discounts on Lovecraft-labelled beer and modern RPGs and suchlike. Try harder next year.
And finally, not quite on the birthday, but on the closest weekend… the many-tentacled NecronomiCon Providence 2019 rises from the depths again on 22nd-25th August 2019. I seem to recall that the new Selected Essays and Selected Poems Lovecraft books are due for release to coincide with this?
The R.I. Historical Society had their usual annual H.P. Lovecraft: A Literary Life walk on the 17th August, rather than the 20th. If you missed it then they have a H.P. Lovecraft Literary Walking Tour in October: “October 19, 20, 26 & 27, 2019”.