WordPress.com upgrades have just become more interesting. WordPress.com hosts this blog, and a half dozen others I run. Even £3-a-month blogging at WordPress can now include ‘Premium Content Blocks’ — available only to Followers who pay a monthly or annual subscription. This has been newly introduced, and at last makes WordPress the obvious alternative to Patreon. The future of Patreon seems increasingly uncertain, judging by their recent behaviour and reports on their balance-sheet and staff-cuts.

It would cost me £36 (about $45) a year, to step from Free to the paid ‘Personal Plan’ at WordPress. This would give me 6Gb of storage rather than 3Gb, and… the ‘paid subscribers’ features.

That would need to be done for two of my current free sites, Tentaclii and a local-history gallery site which is nearly full of local images (and thus will need another 3Gb by the Autumn/Fall). £72 a year is not impossible.

Ads would also be removed from a £3-per-month blog, but I’m not bothered about those — since I assume 99% of visitors run an ad-blocker in their browser.

I’m not saying I’m immediately going to switch Tentaclii from Patreon, having struggled thus far to get $65 a month there. But it’s an option I’ll be keeping in mind, as the weather cools and the ‘self-employed virus hardship’ payment comes in.

‘Tis the bleak midwinter, and in the grate the faint embers of the yule-log flicker and wither. My Patreon also withers, having lost two patrons since I departed from the daily posting schedule. If you can help out with just $1 or $2 a month, please, and so push it above the current $53… then then would be most encouraging for 2020. I still have hopes of $100 a month.

My thanks to my December patrons, though, who’ve enabled me to fortuitously acquire another two books. These being Lovecraft’s letters to Moe and to Bloch, bagged when I spotted them at £11-£12 Amazon “Warehouse Deals” inc. free shipping. So, half-price, basically. Slightly imperfect, with cover scuffs and slight bumping, but I don’t mind that. They’re perfectly intact otherwise. Thank you, also, to the Lightning Source print-machine maintenance elves… your scuffs have now saved me a bundle on three books! The Moe and Bloch books been added to the reading pile for early summer 2020.

I was able to hold back some snowy scenes from last summer’s very deep dive into Lovecraft’s College St… and these pictures became “Solstice special: College St. in the snow”. This proved to be a very popular post. I still have a few more such pictures, which may appear here when the the snows are chin-high this winter, plus another excellent no-snow picture that will appear here next May on the date that Lovecraft moved into No. 66 College St.

It was a quiet month at Tentaclii Towers. No new print books to notice, but scholarship noted here in December included the publication of the journal Dead Reckonings No. 26. I also made more additions to my “Open Lovecraft” page.

In games, I noted that “Open Cthulhu” is now online, which bodes well for the future of indie Lovecraftian RPGs.

It was good to see the release of Librivox’s audiobook anthology Lovecraft’s Influences and Favorites, and this collection provides a core around which a wider set of audio readings might be assembled.

Various bits of art were posted here, including a unique t-shirt ready .PNG for my Patreon patrons.

After the new(?) audiobook H.P. Lovecraft – The Collaborations from the HPLHS, the month’s big creative news was that the Game of Thrones writers are adapting the graphic novel Lovecraft (2003). It’s rumoured to be set to become a movie. I also undertook a quick survey of the big movies coming in 2020, and it seems set to be a far better screen-year than the lacklustre and disappointing 2019.

October departs, and the rain-glittered pinnacle of Tentaclii Towers stands stark and black against a moonless sky. Strange little tappings may be heard within, but lesser than of late. Yes, it was a lightweight month here on the blog. Daily postings continued here, but I am unlikely to maintain that over the winter. There may be soon days here when there are no posts, since I have several books for which the writing needs to be finished. I also have a large amount of reading to catch up with. First up are the two Lovecraft Annual journals which arrived recently, and in which I’ve only read the book reviews so far. Expect reviews of those on Tentaclii, when you see them. My thanks for my Patreon patrons for helping fund the purchase of the Annuals. I see that the Patreon total is still at $58 U.S. a month, though. I’m aiming for $100 a month, so please make generous Lovecraftians and others aware of the blog and my need for my Patreon to grow. Thanks.

My blog’s “Postcards from Lovecraft” feature continued my occasional interest in Lovecraft’s various waterfronts: Lovecraft’s post-New York riverside cafes in Providence; my “Outward Bound” post which looked briefly but poetically at Lovecraft’s evocation of his own city’s harbour; and rather less poetically a post on the Fulton St. fish-market in New York City which was found to be amply illustrated with postcards and pictures. A more sedate but, it turned out, equally watery location included the park bandstand at Roger William Park — which was on a sort of pier that splayed out above the lake. One imagines problems with the midges rising from the depths on warm summer nights, but in those days they made liberal use of insecticide.

My blog’s weekly “Kittee Tuesday” feature also once veered in the direction of historical context, with “The Office Cat at the Brown Daily Herald”. This shed light on an editorial office tradition which appears to have been formative in Lovecraft’s youth, and thus of his own preference for ‘a kittie in the study’. Incidentally, this month I read elsewhere of a tradition among the Edwardian youth of pretending to be far older than they were (a sort of “young fogies” thing, but way back in the 1900s) and I wondered if that similarly fed into Lovecraft’s sense of himself as ‘an old gent’. Was his pose actually once part of a wider youth movement, to which he later clung — as he did to so many other passed-away things?

Sadly I feel I will have to scale back on these “Kittee” and “Postcards” blog features until next Spring. As I said above, I have several books that need to be finished. The “Kittee” posts often take much searching, and the “Postcard” posts do have a tendency to ramify if I let them, in terms of needing wider and wider historical investigations once one starts looking at a topic or a locale. Expect these posts when you see them, and there may well be weeks when they’ll be absent.

In non-fiction journals, I noted that the Blood ‘n’ Thunder journal has re-started, with a focus on scholarly fan-essays on “adventure, mystery and melodrama” in the pulps. The Italian Lovecraftian Dimensione Cosmica journal has also returned, and I translated the relevant contents pages to English.

In books, Io Sono Providence: la biografia di H.P. Lovecraft, the Italian translation of S.T. Joshi’s monumental biography, should be in the mail as I type; all three Lovecraftian Proceedings were noted as being available in very affordable Kindle ebooks; and forthcoming is a new wide-ranging Religion and Comics series from Claremont Press. In terms of collectables, a big Derleth collection popped up at L.W. Currey and was linked.

In audio, Lovecraftian multimedia sonics from Germany; the Lovecraft Geek Podcast made a welcome return with a fine and focused new episode; and a new audiobook of the HPL-fave The House on the Borderland appeared on Librivox.

Various creative endeavours and bits of art were noted. In comics I was pleased to learn that Marvel’s b&w 1970s and 80s Savage Sword of Conan is being properly reprinted as handsome volumes; and I was equally pleased to see as a follow-on that Howard Days 2020 will be “Celebrating REH in Comics”.

A clutch of academic calls and opportunities were noted, including a funded-PhD in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University; and the annual Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship 2020. I produced an annotated “The City” (1919) to mark the 100th anniversary of H. P. Lovecraft’s cosmic mythos in November 2019.

The month of May is bursting out all over, here in the English Midlands. It’s time to kick back in balmy breezes, bask in the sunshine, watch the willow-bay herb-fluff floating by, and review the month’s progress here at Tentaclii. Daily blog postings continued during April 2019. 12,000 words were slipped into the luminiferous aether in 65 posts, so actually it’s averaged out at two a day. I’m pleased to say that my Patreon is now back up at $50 a month. My thanks to all my patrons. Anything you can do to spread the word about Tentaclii will be welcome, please. All it takes is $1 or more per month.

A great many new scholarly books and journals were noted and linked here, probably 20 or more. Most have been published or else seem imminent, such as The H. P. Lovecraft Cat Book. Podcasts, arts, and recordings were also noted here, and even a worthy-looking game or two.

My own substantial musings here have included ‘The acoustic and Lovecraft’, ‘“Alonzo Typer” – does it contain traces of the lost “House of the Worm”?’. Plus a deep illustrated delving into Lovecraft and the New York Public Library inc. a newly colourised picture, and shorter trips down Pawtuxet way and into the realm of the Lovecraft fave-food Friends’ Beans.

Numerous delights were pulled from the kitten-basket of the fantastic that is Archive.org. Including a great many relevant new scans of Weird Tales, noted and investigated and linked as they slipped onto Archive.org. Some of these revealed several header illustration I had not seen before for Lovecraft stories. Some of these headers seemed quite important in their ramifications, such as for “The Temple”. The world also gained the famous “Call of Cthulhu” first-publication edition of Weird Tales in a nice crisp scan, along with the previous issue’s trailer for the story and letters pages in later issues.

Also noted at Archive.org were new digital copies of zines providing Lovecraft essays previously unavailable online. Plus several useful books and other reference materials there.

New versions of software useful for writers and historians were noted.

Several discount sales at relevant niche stores were noted, to the advantage of Tentaclii‘s readers. Likewise the opportunity to get tickets for a free ‘psyhogeographic’ walking event in Providence, and tickets for S.T. Joshi’s forthcoming Australian speaking tour.

The Open Lovecraft page only had one addition, but it was a very fine piece of historical scholarship that adds to the small but growing interest in Lovecraft’s sources in the classical world.

What appeared to be Lovecraft’s copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho came up for auction and was linked.

For authors who do proper clean HTML-coded Kindle books for Amazon (rather than just pumping them through Calibre in 30 seconds), I pointed you to my workflow for a relatively easy solution for MS Word — clean HTML, including round-trip linked footnotes and intact indented quotations.

And finally but not least, there was also my respectful survey of the first week of responses to the passing of Wilum Pugmire, rest in peace. This post was also posted in public at another blog I run, where it has seen a goodly amount of visits.

March 2019 saw 15,000 words posted here at Tentaclii. Two new $1 Patrons were added, Leslie S. Klinger and Martin Andersson, who together nudged the total up from $41 to $43 a month. Please encourage other likely readers to support Tentaclii — all it takes is pledging $1 a month or more via Patreon.

Content posted here during March 2019:

An important but overlooked point about Lovecraft’s time in New York was uncovered, his seeing Fritz Lang’s Siegfried in 1925, and the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ of the movie’s showing in New York was investigated. Along the way, a small but important new aspect of the career of Arthur Leeds was identified. It also led me to wonder why this event was not included in Letters from New York or I Am Providence, as the facts originate in a Lovecraft letter held at Brown University.

Other investigative posts also took me to New York City, first tracking down the locations of the Binkin bookstores from the 1970s back into the 1930s, and along the way getting more context for this aspect of the mysterious rediscovery of a horde of rare Lovecraft material in the early 1970s. Looking for Binkin on the edge of Red Hook then led me to find out about Lovecraft’s favourite bookstore in the pest-zone — Schulte’s Book Store — and to discover photos of the exterior and descriptions of the interior.

A likely inspiration for Lovecraft’s Akeley in “The Whisperer in Darkness” was suggested and investigated. I also took an illustrated plunge into The Endless Caverns with Lovecraft, and a long illustrated stroll around Lovecraft’s Roger Williams Park in Providence. The nature of the ‘Waldorf Lunch’ restaurants was also uncovered, and good photo of a Providence branch found.

Many new or forthcoming books were noted and linked, mostly scholarship and history books. But also some curiosities, such as a colourized facsimile of the Home Brew “The Lurking Fear”.

One important book, Frank Belknap Long’s memoir Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside, was also noted in a new affordable ebook version.

The Open Lovecraft page had about seven new additions of free scholarly works, found and linked.

A sprinkling of blog posts noted excellent art, one free font, and one graphic novel adaptation with page previews.

New arrivals of old scans were noted: the entire 1923 run of Weird Tales was linked up in a post; as was the useful Lovecraft essay “Some Backgrounds to Fairyland”; Hugh B. Cave’s book Magazines I Remember: Some Pulps, Their Editors, And What it Was Like to Write For Them was found, read and the useful bits extracted; also found was a short 1933 biography of Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright and some other similar snippets. I’d quite like to write a detailed book-length biography of Farnsworth Wright, but on calculating the likely cost it would be just too expensive to obtain all the needed materials, and even then it would probably only sell 20 copies.

I also noticed and linked some choice store discounts, a generous scholarship from S.T. Joshi in the field of Lovecraft Studies, and a major forthcoming Lovecraft auction.

And finally, I managed to get my ebook version published for my 22,000-word The Cracks of Doom: Untold Tales in Middle-earth book. This was not as easy as it sounds, as in the end I had to hand-code it in HTML in order to preserve the vital indenting of the print version. But it was useful, as the book had yet another round of close proof-reading and ten more additions exclusive to the ebook. Only one ebook copy has sold so far, and two in print (probably to the Tolkien Estate and their lawyer), but hopefully it will eventually start selling.

All right, so… 1st March 2019. February is gone. Doesn’t time fly! The signs of early springtime are everywhere here in the UK, though the first leaves are not yet out and the nights are still shiver-ish.

Here at Tentaclii, February saw 10,000 words posted, even with the week’s holiday from daily posting at the end of the month. The most important post was one of the Friday ‘Picture Postals’, which became a lengthy and highly illustrated essay on an overlooked area of New York City during Lovecraft’s time there. Given that Sheepshead Bay and its environs was such an unusual and eerie terrain, it was rather surprising that other Lovecraftians had not already delved into the topic. The post now effectively serves as an additional chapter for my book on Lovecraft’s sojourn in New York in the 1920s, and will be added and footnoted if there’s ever a new edition. Those considering new fiction featuring Lovecraft in the 1920s might also take this unusual watery setting and run with it. The Dutch marshlands of New York at the turn of the century could also make an unusual ‘true-life setting’ for a non-scary children’s picture-book, though Gravity Falls-like elements might still be woven in.

I also found minor new supporting information about Lovecraft’s favourite coffee-house in New York. Numerous new books and comics collections were noted, including an important one on Lovecraft in Japan. Pictures that were new to me were were found, including three of the interior of the John Hay Library and a large new scan on the Brown archive of one Lovecraft’s boyhood publications. Five new scholarly items were found and added to the Open Lovecraft page. Various other useful things were spotted and linked, including the welcome return of The Lovecraft Geek podcast, and a series of in-depth insider posts on the state of the Lovecraftian RPG market in 2018. I also picture-researched and published a new game scenario “The Assemblage of Dr. Arnold Astrall”, and my Patreons have access to the pictorial .zip bundle for this with public-domain pictures.

As you can see, daily posting at Tentaclii has now started again, after a week’s break, and the blog is now Patreon-only.

My thanks to those who have decided to become or remain my patrons on Patreon. You have ongoing access to the Tentaclii blog, which now has nearly a decade’s worth of posts, consisting of around 2,500 back-posts. These contain millions if not tens of millions of words plus Web links, all searchable by keyword or phrase, thus providing you with a unique resource for your own Lovecraft studies and musings.

Please encourage others to access this unique resource — all it takes is $1 a month via Patreon.

Well, another month has nearly gone on Tentaclii. Snow and crisp ice powders the ground below Tentaclii Towers, and the sky across the valley is an icy blue. But thankfully my typing fingers are warm, and in January 2019 the blog had 7,000 words of daily blog posts + many pictures.

Including: my new discovery of details and pictures for Lovecraft’s encounter with a bas-relief maker in Salem prior to “The Call of Cthulhu”; details of where one might (perhaps) find a published Wortman cartoon showing a good portrait of Kirk (of the Lovecraft circle) & his Chelsea Book Shop; a new pictorial survey of the Rhode Island School of Design including my newly-found picture of the Greek and Roman sculpture gallery interior as Lovecraft knew it in his boyhood; many notes and links for new books and scholarly essays and papers; details of a new free high-quality graphic novel of Lovecraft’s life; and several links to relevant online archive and in one case free audiobooks. Free research tools for independent scholars were also noted, with Paperwork being open source software for searching inside your PDF collection, and my JURN open access search-engine has returned to its former URL. There were also posts and links relating to the comics artist Moebius, to R.E. Howard, and one for Poe as a character in fiction.

If you can support Tentaclii on Patreon, please, then that would be very welcome and encouraging. The end of January saw new Patrons emerge from Norway and France, and so I now have 8 patrons giving $52 a month. All appear to be Tentaclii readers, as my hopes appear to have been unfounded that patrons might also be found among the readers of Digital Art Live magazine or users of JURN. Despite the quality of those two projects.

If you can spare just $1 a month via Patreon, please, it would be very welcome. Or you can just promote Tentaclii to your forums and groups, or do the same for one of my books. Many thanks!