Shortly after last week’s item on Michael Moorcock ran, I got a care package from Weird Tales that included several recent issues, including one that had come out just that week with a new Elric of Melniboné story from Moorcock. In all honesty, “Black Pearls” struck me as somewhat formulaic, but that might just be because I’d read a bunch of tortured, angstful Elric stories in a short timeframe—at any rate, the rest of the three issues I read over the weekend were awesome, grounded in stories like Erik Amundsen‘s “Bufo Rex,” Amanda Downum‘s “Catch,” and John Kirk‘s “The Talion Moth.” (If that last one isn’t going to be part of a series, I’m going to be awfully disappointed.)
On the nonfiction front, Elizabeth Genco (disclosure: a pal) is doing a bangup job interviewing writers like Melissa Marr and Jacqueline Carey, but there’s also wonderful conversations with China Miéville and James Morrow. And there’s a swell series of articles from Kenneth Hite exploring H.P. Lovecraft‘s use of place in his fiction, from the cursed towns of Massachusetts to the barren sandscapes of the Middle East. The most recent issue includes a list of “the 85 weirdest storytellers” that’s eclectic enough to include Nick Cave and David Lynch alongside Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. If you’re interested in where horror/”dark fantasy” is headed these days, this seems like a pretty good starting point.