James G Champagne

Writer. Author of HARLEM SMOKE, GRIMOIRE, AUTOPSY OF AN ELDRITCH CITY, and other works of Decadence both Neo + old school🐈👁️🏰

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

@mariana197tzar Hardest? Probably the first 100 pages, which were written over an 8 month period (though there were long gaps in that time I did no writing at all). On the other hand, the last 100 pages I did in about a month and a half.

Funnest part? Probably assembling the "soundtrack"

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Last month I finished the second draft of THE JOY OF THE WORM. That's where I went and added a lot of the little details I had neglected to include while writing the first draft, along with running it through spellcheck, scanning it for word/phrase repetitions, adding some weird words (sparingly, in this case), and so on. Finally, the time has come to print it up and actually read the thing from first page to last (I usually don't bother to read the first draft tbh). That's always an interesting experience, if a tad daunting at first: "I hope this doesn't suck!" But all the same I like going through it with the red pen and making changes/corrections/cuts/additions and so forth.

Anyway, today marks the one year anniversary that I started writing the first draft, so I thought it would also be the ideal date to start reading the second draft. My plan is to do a chapter a night, then do the corrections the following day: by doing this, I can read and edit the whole thing in two weeks. The corrected draft will then become the third draft, which is also usually the draft that I use when submitting to publishers and what not.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: THE SHADOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD by Thomas Ligotti

This is also a reread. This was the first Ligotti collection I ever purchased/read, way back in December 2005. Published by Cold Spring Press, it was meant to be a sort of "best of"/introductory sampler to Ligotti's fiction, with the stories chosen by Douglas A. Anderson and Ligotti himself. It does a decent job of selecting some of the best stories from Ligotti's first three collections and the NIGHTMARE FACTORY omnibus (this book came out a year before the publication of TEATRO GROTTESCO), and I agree with most of the picks, though there are a few notable omissions: no "The Frolic," no "The Chymist," no "The Clown Puppet." But for the most part, it's a good introduction to his work. Much like the Lovecraft collection I finished rereading recently, this one I also read out-of-order back in the day, temporarily skipping over the long-ish first story ("The Last feast of Harlequin") to read the shorter "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech," which thus ended up being the first Ligotti story I ever read.

I'm not quite as obsessed with Ligotti as I was in my 20s and 30s, and have actually slimmed down my once vast collection of his books to just a small handful of seminal titles, but I still hold him in high esteem as a writer and stylist.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Finished my reread of the Del Rey BEST OF H.P. LOVECRAFT collection. It’s been almost seven years since the last time I read a Lovecraft collection period, and whenever I pick up one of his books I sometimes worry that, despite the fact that I place Lovecraft alongside Huysmans at the very top of my list of favorite writers, perhaps with the passage of time my enthusiasm for his work has diminished . . . but then I start reading and fall in love again, and all such fears vanish. Really, I probably like his work even more now than I did before, and one thing that’s interesting is that every time I go back to his fiction, I discover in it fresh areas of interest or things I had never noticed much before (perhaps because I'm much better read now than I was when I first discovered his work).

Take the collection’s first story, “The Rats in the Walls,” For many years now, I’ve long considered it one of his more lightweight tales, but reading it again, this time I found myself really getting hooked on its references to Roman ruins in England, the Magna Mater, and so on (because I’ve been doing some research on the Greek and Roman mystery cults as of recent). Or “The Colour Out of Space,” which I’ve often considered to be one of his more overrated stories. But now when I read it I’m struck by how his description of the “blasted heath” seem to eerily presage the ruined landscape following the Chernobyl disaster, with its mutating vegetation and animals, and the way the shaft of alien light pouring forth from the well reminded me of the shaft of radioactive light witnesses saw projecting forth from the ruined reactor of Chernobyl shortly after the explosion (while on the subject, the trees morbidly twitching in a windless night is one of the most surrealistic images conjured by Lovecraft’s pen). Even “The Whisperer in Darkness,” which I’ve often claimed was the weakest of Lovecraft’s longer stories, has a lot going for it, like the incredible descriptions of the Vermont countryside, which he likened to the magic vistas of the Italian Primitives . . . it’s only in recent years that I’ve really begun to get into the work of the Primitives, so now I can see such a description in a whole new light than I did before.

Of course, it was also fun to revisit some of the stories that I’ve long considered favorites, like “The Call of Cthulhu,” which perhaps could be claimed as being the most important, innovative and influential horror tale of the 20th century. Or “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” which not only features one of Lovecraft’s most atmospheric settings (the titular city of Innsmouth), but is also one of his most suspenseful stories. Or the frankly terrifying “The Dreams in the Witch-House” (memorably adapted to the computer game medium a few years ago by Atom Brain Games), which is one of Lovecraft’s most inspired stories thanks to the manner in which he combines then cutting-edge scientific theories of hyperspace and the fourth dimension with ancient witchcraft and eldritch folklore (incidentally, this combination of high-tech sci-fi with low-tech diabolism also worked well with the DOOM computer game series, which featured a futuristic military base on the moons of Mars being invaded by demons from Hell). Some of the stories even have a bit of levity going for them: it’s hard not to be amused at the spectacle of the “hard-boiled” war vet narrator of “Pickman’s Model” screaming like a little girl at the sight of some morbid paintings, or the at times campy dramatics of “The Dunwich Horror.”

As I mentioned when I first started this reread, the Del Rey collection has some notable omissions (I probably would have swapped out “In the Vault” and “The Silver Key” with “Dagon” and “The Festival” for example, or maybe “The Hound”), and I know that the stories are the original (and in some cases) corrupted texts of the initial publications, rather than the restored and corrected ones by editors such as S.T. Joshi, but all the same, this was the first Lovecraft collection I ever bought, and it remains close to my heart.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: THE ELECTRO ETHERIC MINOTAUR by Damian Murphy (Church Ghost)

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

My short story "Last Dark Ride" will be appearing in the anthology DECADENT STORIES FOR DECADENT TIMES from Rachilde & Co. Books next year, along with numerous other worthy contributors. Looking forward to it!

https://t.co/uqwAXPM9zj

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: GODZILLA by Ian Thorne

This is actually a reread. I never had this book as a child, but my grade school library had it, and it was one of my favorite books to check out. It was part of the Movie Monster series published by Crestwood House, which apparently were quite popular with school libraries in general in the late 1970s/1980s. Most of them were written by Julian May (under the name Ian Thorne), and I also enjoyed her books on King Kong, Dracula, The Blob, and divers others. I finally got my own copy off eBay some years ago (according to the circulation card on the inside cover, its former home was a library in Ohio), but I'm only just now rereading it. These books were very informative and featured great picture selections.

I've been a Godzilla fan since as long as I can remember. Along with Lewis Carroll's Alice, he's one of my first and oldest friends.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Also Currently Reading: MOVIE MONSTERS by Gary Poole

This is actually a reread. I got this book in the second grade, way back in the mid-to-late 1980s. Thing is, I had won the Young Authors' Award that year (for my adaptation/retelling of the FROSTY THE SNOWMAN story) and all the prizewinners were sent to some school to accept their award. At this school there was a bookfair where one could get a free book so I picked this one. In any event, it's been easily over 35 years since I last read it. But seeing as it's October . . .

Anyway, it covers a good mix of movies (with a decent photograph selection), from the classic stuff like the Universal Monsters to what was then more modern fare like GREMLINS, GHOSTBUSTERS and THE TERMINATOR (the book was published in 1986). My copy is so old and beat-up that it's practically falling apart!

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: SHADOW OF THE VAMPUSS by Karen Mahony (writer) and Alex Ukolov (illustrator)

This is yet another one of those cat-themed books I've had lying around for years (in this case, 2005, the year it was published) that I'm finally getting around to officially reading

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Over the last 10 years I've literally only seen two new horror films: IT PART 1 (2017) and IT PART TWO (2019)

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

I don't do these for public figures very often, but RIP Dennis Haskins

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Nuked my Substack this evening. Really didn't like the layout of that place, it was exhausting. I'm thinking of taking my old Blogger blog out of retirement. Some of my Substack posts I might gradually import to there over the future months.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Kierkegaard is one of those philosophers I'm starting to suspect I simply don't "get." Certainly I've long wanted to, ever since I found out what a big inspiration he was to David Tibet during Current 93's 90s era, to say nothing of his reputation as the father of existentialism.

I finally got around to reading FEAR AND TREMBLING over a year ago and I wasn't that crazy about it. So recently I tried reading THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH as well, but this time was so repulsed I had to bail after a few pages. I almost instantly realized this book was not for me when I came to this passage (in the very first paragraph, mind): "But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates to itself, or it is that in the relation which is the relation's relating to itself. The self is not the relation but is that the relation relates to itself." (One of my favorite negative reviews of the book on Goodreads simply reads "The relation of the relation is the relation to the relation.") Some philosophers can express their arguments clearly, while others talk in circles and pour on the obfuscation; Kierkegaard strikes me as the latter. I do find it amusing that this henpecked Dane made mountains out of molehills from relatively simple biblical passages/stories.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: THE BEST OF H.P. LOVECRAFT by H.P. Lovecraft

This is a reread. In fact, this book (with its attractive wraparound cover art by Michael Whelan) is actually the very first Lovecraft collection I ever purchased, on September 12, 1999, at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Bellingham, Massachusetts (this was some years before I started working there myself). It was my sophomore year at Rhode Island College, and I was transitioning into a Goth, and a website I discovered about Goth tastes mentioned how Lovecraft was a popular writer within that subculture, so I decided to give him a look (though I suppose the foundations had initially been laid by both the first GHOSTBUSTERS movie and also the animated GHOSTBUSTERS cartoon episode "The Collect Call of Cathulhu," though as a child the Lovecraftian references in such media went right over my head).

I've read numerous Lovecraft collections since, but it's been many years since I've read this one. For some reason when in my late teens/early-to-mid 20s I would sometimes read short story collections out of order (a bad habit I had shed by the time I hit my lates 20s/early 30s), so the first story I read in this one back in 1999 was actually the book's second tale, "The Picture in the House," thus making that the first Lovecraft story I ever read (and one reason why that story is always in my list of "Top Ten Favorite Lovecraft Stories"). I mostly agree with the selection of stories in this one: obviously THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD and AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS would have been worthy inclusions, but as short novels were perhaps too long for a collection of this type. Having said that, I probably would have also added "Dagon," "The Festival," and "The Cats of Ulthar," but to each their own.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Recently I finished reading/editing the second draft of THE JOY OF THE WORM. The corrections I made from that ended up being the third draft. And now I'm setting it aside for awhile, and I suppose at some point next year I'll start considering publishers (and obviously, if I can think of any cool new things to add to it in the meantime I will), but after working on it in one form of another for a 17 month span (from conception phase to actual writing to editing drafts), I think I need some time away from it, now that it's mostly complete.

I've also decided to take a few months off from creative writing, at least until January of next year. Frankly, I think I've earned it. Over the last 6 months alone I wrote around 260 or so pages in THE JOY OF THE WORM, so I think that entitles me to some relaxation time (even though I secretly hate creative inactivity).

Recently I have been considering editing GRIMOIRE, my first short story collection, for a potential future second edition, perhaps in 2032 to celebrate its 20 year anniversary (as it went out-of-print earlier this year). My editing/proofreading skills are much better now than they were back in the day, and the publisher did very little actual editing on it, so there are a lot of mistakes in it I've long wanted fix. I'm a little hesitant to go back to it, though. It's been 14 years since I've read it (back when it was first published), and the book was kind of written during a dark era of my life, so I'm not sure I want to revisit it.

At some point I still really need to figure out what to do with the two unpublished collections I have lying around (COMETH DARKNESS and PLEASANT TALES III). On the one hand no writer likes to be sitting around on a bunch of unpublished manuscripts, but on the other hand it at least shows I've been very active over the last number of years.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: BRUTALIST PLANTS by Olivia Broome

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

I saw this "Life is Good" T-shirt while vacationing in Maine last month and thought it looked cute. Annoyingly, they don't have a Men's version. Well, okay, they do have a few that are somewhat similar, but not in this nice Aqua Blue color: instead guys are stuck with "Athletic Blue" or "Granite Green" or whatever. Lame.

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: MAYBE IN HEAVEN by Francesca Penchant (Rachilde & Co.)

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Currently Reading: THEOGONY AND WORKS AND DAYS by Hesiod (M.L. West translation)

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

Due to an amiable parting of ways with the publisher in question earlier this year, my first two horror collections Grimoire and Autopsy of an Eldritch City have either gone out of print or are in the process of going out of print (I believe Autopsy. . . is still available for purchase through the Rebel Satori website, but I have no idea how many copies they have remaining in their stock). Whether this will jack up the prices of the aforementioned books on the secondhand market in the future (which inevitably seems to be the case with many such Weird Fiction/horror titles) remains to be seen, but it should be interesting to watch.

I'm not in any particular hurry to rush them back into print, though that might be in the cards at some point in the future. One idea I've been toying with is an omnibus edition of all three of my Weird Fiction collections in one volume, because I like the idea of all my horror short fiction collected in one book (working title: THE DOLORIST TRIPTYCH). Though first I suppose I should get the 3rd collection actually published (over the last five or six years it has actually been accepted, then dropped, by no less than three publishers, for sometimes amusing reasons), and as it is I don't think too many publishers are interested in omnibus volumes these days (or, to be more specific, omnibus volumes put out by literary nonentities).

[James G Champagne @JamesGChampagne]

@filter_autos love those little animal figurines