Posts tagged Bobby Derie
NECRONOMICUM Issue 1 Authors and Cover Reveal
011 years ago
Editors Justine Geoffrey and Scott R Jones, along with everyone else at MMP HQ, are very pleased to announce the authors who’ll be gracing the pages of the premiere issue of NECRONOMICUM: The Magazine of Weird Erotica! But before we get to those names, we’d like to also present the amazing cover art we’ve commissioned from Vancouver-based artist and illustrator Michael “Alchemichael” Lee Macdonald!
Our intention with NECRONOMICUM is to showcase transgressive weird-erotic stories that go beyond the usual expectations, stories that aren’t simply “monster sex” or be-tentacled parodies of erotica. We want the magazine to push the boundaries of weird-erotica while still honouring the traditions that have built this very specific genre, and to do it all with a certain class. If you think you’ve seen enough hentai to know where we’re going, we’d like to ask you to think again. We also wanted to pay homage to the mythical book of Cthulhu Mythos magic and madness that the magazine’s name puns on. So: sex, horror, and contact with divine (if unholy) beings… the ecstasy of encountering the wholly Other… how to pull that off, and do it in a classy way?
Enter Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his The Ecstasy of St Teresa…
Bernini's "The Ecstasy of St Teresa"
Thanks, you naughty Christians saints, you! It’s that kind of transcendent confrontation with another realm of Being that we want to highlight in NECRONOMICUM (with the occasional break for funny bits!) and so we turned to Macdonald (who provided the interior illustrations for Jones’ When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality earlier this year) and asked him if he could, y’know, give Teresa of Avila a splendidly squamous dose of Lovecraft.
As it turns out, he could. Boy, could he ever.
"Sweetness of This Excessive Pain" by Michael Lee Macdonald
Sure, sure… the angel and the arrow are gone. But do you really miss them? Nah!
And now, below, the pretty-much-final cover for NECRONOMICUM #1! You’ll notice we have some authors listed here, and we’re very proud to see their names on this fantastic piece of art and design. The magazine will have stories by Christine Morgan, Sean Hoade (with the funny bit mentioned above!), Jessica McHugh, Konstantine Paradias, and the legendary Ramsey Campbell! There will also be steamy poetry selections from Portland’s own Pattie Palmer-Baker and Richard King Perkins II, as well as an illuminating short essay by Bobby Derie (author of Sex & the Cthulhu Mythos) on our literary-smut mag predecessor, the short-lived but memorable CthulhuSex magazine. And of course, a brief letter of introduction from our editrix Justine Geoffrey.
NECRONOMICUM: The Magazine of Weird Erotica Issue #1 will be online and available for pre-order purchase as an e-magazine (in multiple formats) from the MMP Bookstore and Amazon by the first week of October, and officially drops THURSDAY OCTOBER 23, just in time for Halloween. The magazine will be released electronically three times a year, with a planned best-of collection each autumn. We hope you’ll join us for the ride!
Martian Migraine Press: the Best Kind of Headache!
Polarizing
011 years ago
Two wildly different reviews in this week for Scott R Jones’ When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality. The first can only be described as “glowing”, the kind of glowing that might require the reader to don a lead apron, actually, and that makes it our favourite, for obvious reasons. The second has a lot to say about the book, and much of it in the category of complaints about what the book is not. Now, Nick Mamatas (a fellow who we trust) claims that no one actually reads these reviews, and he’s very likely correct in that. But the dynamic tension between these statements from readers of WTSAR has got us thinking. Some excerpts…
the Glowing review
“There’s no denying the potency of Jones’ profound examination of R’lyehian thought. This book is a beautifully weird Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen trinity paradox, where the author prods the primordial swamp of R’lyehian existence which invokes ripples across the mindscape, thus throwing interpretations of locality and reality askew. A literary Eliphas Levi, he weaves astral light into words with such honed wit, such wisdom, such a deep passion the title of literary mage is clichéd but appropriate…”
(full review here)
the Whiny review
“… the whole books reads like a lot of random journal entries from one guy who took a LOT of psychedelic drugs, had some tentacle dreams, and then decided that collecting his own writings about his personal experiences and how you are supposed to act once you have already begun to foster the Black Gnosis equates to writing a how-to on actually getting there yourself from scratch…”
(full review here)
Have you read When The Stars Are Right? If so, what’s your opinion: is Jones a trailblazing Lovecraftian mystic? or a damp, trippy hippy with pseudopods on the brain? Does WTSAR trust in the reader to find their own way into the R’lyehian mysteries? or should it hold the seeker’s hand more, explicitly pointing to the Black Gnosis? Let us know in the comments, or better yet, write a review of your own and let us know where you post it.
And speaking of polarizing books, we here at MMP HQ are extremely pleased to hear of the imminent release of Bobby Derie’s new book, Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos, coming out later this month from the esteemed Hippocampus Press. Mr Derie has been a friend of the show for a while now, and we’ve been fortunate to watch the process of the writing of what is sure to be a groundbreaker of a book that will ruffle a few skirts and spark lively debate. Mr Derie’s research skills are frighteningly impressive: many times we’ve been on the receiving end of some casually dropped piece of Lovecraftiana scholarship that has blown our minds (and we don’t mean Upworthy-style, either!) and reformatted our perceptions of Lovecraft the Man, the Product, and the Mythos. Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (with a snazzy Gahan Wilson cover, no less!) is available now for pre-order: we very strongly urge MMP readers to pick up their copy today, because this one? This one will be on more than a few lips upon its arrival, and if you’re at all interested in the seamy overlap between the perceived prudishness of classic Lovecraftiana and the boiling sexuality that froths between the actual lines of HPLs fiction, you’ll want in on the discussion. Order direct from Hippocampus Press here
Martian Migraine Press: the Best Kind of Headache
First Review for JustineG’s PRIESTESS
012 years ago
PRIESTESS contest winner Bobby Derie, who is (at least so far as we can tell!) a scholar and a gentleman if he is nothing else, has dropped the first of what we know will be a string of five-star reviews on Justine’s epic collection of weird erotica. To wit:
Among the dross and fool’s gold of Lovecraftian erotica ebooks published in the last few years, Justine G.’s Blackstone Erotica series from Martian Migraine Press stands out as one of the most entertaining, intelligent, ambitious, and daring of the lot. It is perhaps appropriate that she took as her starting place Robert E. Howard’s “The Black Stone,” still his most-remembered tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, whose pivotal scene of sexual flagellation was itself one of the most flagrant early examples of the erotic in Mythos fiction. However, Geoffrey goes far beyond revisiting REH’s stomping grounds in the old witch-town of Stregoicavar, and continues her erotic adventures in new locales, drawing more of the Mythos into the Blackstone series – readers will find here a challenging, open sexuality that deals with bondage, domination, rites of sexual magic and encounters with Deep Ones and other entities that will fill the characters to their limit.
(read the full review here)
Do you feel like a challenge, reader? Then pick up Justine Geoffrey‘s PRIESTESS (Blackstone Volume One) today! Instantly downloaded Kindle versions over on the Big A here, or swing by our Bookstore for EPUB and PDF versions and our under-24-hours delivery times.
