The End of an Era

I mentioned to Sue today that I was 'emotionally invested' in my GHOST CLUB collection. I meant it as a joke, at the time, but there's more than a nugget of truth in the remark.

It feels like the culmination of the last six or seven years of writing. Before this collection there were the Carnacki stories, the Holmes stories, the Challenger stories, and the collaborations with M Wayne Miller, the deluxe hardcovers and sales to Dark Regions and Dark Renaissance. But with the end of Dark Renaissance in particular, that door is now firmly shut, and THE GHOST CLUB feels like a death, and an obituary as well as a celebration of everything I love about the era and the storytellers.

I'm fast approaching my sixtieth birthday, a wee milestone that has me thinking about what I might be able to achieve with my writing from now on. S T Joshi's remark about me 'trying to make a career out of Carnacki pastiches', while badly researched and a cheap shot, also got me thinking, and one result is that THE GHOST CLUB marks the end of me writing in other people's worlds unless I get specifically commissioned.

I have my own furrows to plow, in the Sigils and Totems mythos, in my enduring, unwavering love for creature features, and in the fantasy field where I have things I've always wanted to write and never got round to. I'll also still be writing period pieces, but from now on, they'll be my period pieces.

Onward.