AWESOME News!
I got my subscription copy of Weird Tales #348 today. This is the one with "Walking With the Beast" in it, my piece on being a bipolar lycanthrope. It even says it on the cover: "A bipolar werewolf." Neat, eh?
I got an illustration, too, by Star St. Germain, aka thisisstar, which I like very much. That is one pissed-off looking werewolf, I will tell you that for nothing.
If you don't have a copy, or have one coming to you, you can order one directly from Wildside Press. Or you could just, you know, subscribe.
I especially want to encourage you to do the latter.
Why?
Well, if you go to the website, where you can actually read the piece for free, and you scroll down to look at the bio, you will see why.
Amanda Gannon, WEIRD TALES’s new arts & culture editor, is a writer and artist living in Oklahoma with her husband, known as Sargon the Terrible. Their house is full of snakes - deliberately - and is also host to one catbot called Sif, a real cat named Fish, and one formless spawn of Tsathoggua, Tazendra, who for reasons both sinister and unfathomable is only pretending to be a cat.
So, yeah, that's my big news, the news I've been threatening you all with for ages now. I suppose, since it's right there on the internet for everyone and their cat to sniff at, I can announce it formally.
Hi. I'm the new arts and culture editor for Weird Tales.
With each issue, I will be bringing you a feature rounding up the best weird art I can find, and I will also be writing about general strangeness for the website on a weekly basis.
It is, of course, a tremendous honor, and if I seem to be sanguine it's only because I have already spent several weeks unable to sit down on a tail that won't stop wagging. I need that Lucian "Why, yes, I am made of awesome!" icon, because this one is woefully insufficient.
But seriously. This is, like, huge for me, emotionally. Weird Tales is the magazine that launched possibly the most influential speculative fiction/weird fiction writers, writers who defined the genre, and whose influence is pervasive even today: Lovecraft, Howard, and Bradbury. It was also home to two names I love with all my heart: Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber. You know, Smith. The guy Lovecraft wanted to be. And Leiber, the guy who made me want to be a writer in the first place. There's always C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, August Derleth, Lin Carter, Brian Lumley . . . Tanith fucking Lee. I have ranted this rant before. The list goes on and on. Being published once is a singular distinction. Being on staff is nothing less than . . . transcendent.
My dad read Lovecraft to me as a very young child. When I told him about this on Wednesday, he almost, as we say in my family, shit a golden kitten. I discovered the magazine when I was about eleven. My sister had old copies of the magazine lying around, and a hardcover anthology, which I read on nights I spent at her house. That is, in fact, how I discovered Leiber. So I owe them thanks, if I owe it to anyone: they fostered my weirdness gladly. And I owe my mom thanks, too, for making me a werewolf.
I feel I've done them proud, and hopefully I'll do the same for the magazine.
I'll be seeing you there!
I got an illustration, too, by Star St. Germain, aka thisisstar, which I like very much. That is one pissed-off looking werewolf, I will tell you that for nothing.
If you don't have a copy, or have one coming to you, you can order one directly from Wildside Press. Or you could just, you know, subscribe.
I especially want to encourage you to do the latter.
Why?
Well, if you go to the website, where you can actually read the piece for free, and you scroll down to look at the bio, you will see why.
Amanda Gannon, WEIRD TALES’s new arts & culture editor, is a writer and artist living in Oklahoma with her husband, known as Sargon the Terrible. Their house is full of snakes - deliberately - and is also host to one catbot called Sif, a real cat named Fish, and one formless spawn of Tsathoggua, Tazendra, who for reasons both sinister and unfathomable is only pretending to be a cat.
So, yeah, that's my big news, the news I've been threatening you all with for ages now. I suppose, since it's right there on the internet for everyone and their cat to sniff at, I can announce it formally.
Hi. I'm the new arts and culture editor for Weird Tales.
With each issue, I will be bringing you a feature rounding up the best weird art I can find, and I will also be writing about general strangeness for the website on a weekly basis.
It is, of course, a tremendous honor, and if I seem to be sanguine it's only because I have already spent several weeks unable to sit down on a tail that won't stop wagging. I need that Lucian "Why, yes, I am made of awesome!" icon, because this one is woefully insufficient.
But seriously. This is, like, huge for me, emotionally. Weird Tales is the magazine that launched possibly the most influential speculative fiction/weird fiction writers, writers who defined the genre, and whose influence is pervasive even today: Lovecraft, Howard, and Bradbury. It was also home to two names I love with all my heart: Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber. You know, Smith. The guy Lovecraft wanted to be. And Leiber, the guy who made me want to be a writer in the first place. There's always C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, August Derleth, Lin Carter, Brian Lumley . . . Tanith fucking Lee. I have ranted this rant before. The list goes on and on. Being published once is a singular distinction. Being on staff is nothing less than . . . transcendent.
My dad read Lovecraft to me as a very young child. When I told him about this on Wednesday, he almost, as we say in my family, shit a golden kitten. I discovered the magazine when I was about eleven. My sister had old copies of the magazine lying around, and a hardcover anthology, which I read on nights I spent at her house. That is, in fact, how I discovered Leiber. So I owe them thanks, if I owe it to anyone: they fostered my weirdness gladly. And I owe my mom thanks, too, for making me a werewolf.
I feel I've done them proud, and hopefully I'll do the same for the magazine.
I'll be seeing you there!