As Britain morphs into the old East Germany, a matching iron-grey curtain of mist and December drizzle descends. But indoors it’s at least a more cheery picture, amid the piled-high Black Friday goodies and the soft glow of screens. Possibly the power cuts and food shortages will arrive in due course, but until then I’m personally quite pleased with my small baggings in terms of discounted software and 3D models. These were not Lovecraftian except in one case, as there were no book bargains or Amazon Warehouse deals on the Letters to be had this month. But some of the products of the software may show up here soon. I did keep an eye out for software of interest to Tentaclii readers, but neither PDF Index Generator or JitBit Macro Recorder offered a discount this year, and the Topaz GigaPixel AI discount was gone before I could mention it.

This month’s new research essays at Tentaclii took a look at “H.P. Lovecraft at Christmas”, and “Lovecraft and Havelock Ellis”, the early sexologist; and also “the Newport boat” which is an item of Providence scenery that appears briefly by implication in “The Call of Cthulhu”. This last post discovered a new picture of the very dock and this also doubled as one of my regular Postcards posts. In a lesser and related boat post I hopped onboard with Lovecraft as he took a steamer across the Mississippi in the 1930s. There was also an in-depth look at the Providence Art Club and specifically the old alley which was the haunt of the cat “Old Man”.

An actual new Lovecraft postcard was elsewhere put up for sale. This didn’t have new data, but the sign-off to C.A. Smith of “Yrs for the Eternal Infra-red Flame” at least gives Mythos writers a new “it came from Lovecraft” concept for tales. Someone should really collect all such sign-offs and salutations together, and date them, thus forming a sort of companion to the Commonplace Book. Sadly it won’t be me, as I don’t have the funds to order an immediate complete set of the published letters. Also relevant to Lovecraft-the-man was my quick summary post of “Some anniversaries for 2021”, of which the 100th anniversaries of “The Outsider” and “The Music of Erich Zann” seem the most notable.

Of new-found scholarly work, my Open Lovecraft had three more links added; and I was pleased to hear of a new Masters dissertation, “Providence Lost: Natural and Urban Landscapes in H. P. Lovecraft’s Fiction”, though this is not yet online.

A clutch of new journals popped out after Halloween, and with non-fiction too. These included Wormwood #35; the Italian Lovecraft journal Providence Tales; Bare Bones #3, and Skelos #4. Prompted again about Skelos I tracked back through their previous issues and filleted the non-fiction Lovecraft titles for your perusal. I also have a soft spot for Doc Savage, so noted here was the new The Bronze Gazette #84. This month the latest Lovecraft Annual No. 14, 2020 arrived in digital form on JSTOR for subscribing universities.

In open access and on archive.org, the microfilm journal The Art Digest arrived for free, covering the Lovecraft years of 1926-1937; and CLIJ: Cuadernos de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil is available for free from 1988-2009.

New books noted here included the greatly expanded H.P. Lovecraft: Letters to Rheinhart Kleiner and Others; Ideology and Scientific Thought in H.P. Lovecraft; the Annotated Guide to Robert E. Howard’s Weird Fantasy; and I also dug out a preview of the TOC for the forthcoming Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard. S.T. Joshi noted his Lovecraft biography I Am Providence is set for a 2021 Russian translation. Also noted here as forthcoming, but several years away yet, was the book Lovecraft & New York. This sounds like another welcome addition to the writing on Lovecraft and his topographies and topophilias.

Not much in the visual arts this month, other than archive diggings, but some will want to note that digital 3D Lovecraftiana can be had for bargain prices at present. The DAZ Store and Renderosity both have substantial Black Friday sales still on for a day or so. “Dead Pool” at the DAZ Store is basically Innsmouth for (currently) $15, and Renderosity has Lovecraft’s typewriter for $6. There’s also a modest 10% off Sixus1’s Aquarians Bundle which lets you populate Innsmouth. To run such 3D, Poser 11 Pro is currently a mere $80 at NeoWin Deals. They also have a… “Use code CMSAVE20 for an additional 20% off site-wide.” Which, if it works, would get you Poser 11 at an absolute bargain price of $64. Don’t delay, as Poser 12 is coming out any day now and will sweep away the deals.

My podcast notes at Tentaclii included one in which I was pleased to find Robert M. Price looking very hale and hearty at his new slot on the MythVision podcast, which I noted included a couple of new Lovecraft episodes; the discovery of A Scottish Podcast, this being a comedy Lovecraft podcast that seems well-regarded and worth noting; and a 50-minute “Lovecraft in the Merrimack Valley” talk from a local museum (time-bombed for 15th November, so it’s gone now).

In more substantial audio, Dark Adventure Radio Theatre released their new The Curse of Yig adaptation this month; Cadabra Records has a sumptuous new vinyl LP presentation of Lovecraft’s festive story “The Festival”; I linked a free recording of a world premiere of a song cycle All The Wild Worlds by Nicholas Ryan Kelly, which culminated in a Lovecraft poem set to music; and I found Clark Ashton Smith’s City of the Singing Flame and its sequel in free audiobook. I still haven’t got around to listening to this yet, but it’s cued up for Christmas. So many goodies, so little time…

I’m trying to find time to ease back into Tolkien and the post “Of cat-demons, Tolkien and Lovecraft” was a nice cross-over that resulted from this.

If you enjoy reading Tentaclii, please consider dropping me $1 a month or more via my Patreon please. Your Patreon giving has actually dropped slightly this month from $70 to $69, as one $1 patron has dropped out. So it would be encouraging to see a few more monthly dollars arrive over Christmas. Thanks!