Friday, April 16, 2021

Flame and Crimson in Xuthal: Innsmouth Book Club Podcast is up

As mentioned on my last post, I was recently invited to guest on the Innsmouth Book Club podcast. That recording is now up; you can listen here (note: the podcast is hosted on Patreon but you don't have to be a patron to listen).

I have to say I was probably at my relaxed best; I had a lot of fun with this show. I spent a fair bit of my time on my childhood memories of what got me into S&S. I also relayed a story of the time I visited the abandoned Danvers State Hospital, one of the eeriest experiences of my life. I do after all live in Lovecraft country, a long stone's throw from the historical Innsmouth, Newburyport MA.

The two hosts were great and a lot of fun, and were well-read and asked some good questions that allowed me to ramble. It's amazing that you can just hop on a Zoom call and shoot the shit for an hour with two like-minded dudes from Britain. What a world.

The first 30 minutes or so are the two guests talking about Xuthal of the Dusk, with me joining later.

3 comments:

Matthew said...

Great podcast.

The thing about Stephen King talking dirt about Conan is that he called Conan a "power fantasy" which is that he loves the Jack Reacher novels which are nothing if not a power fantasy. Of course, even though I like a lot of his own stuff, King's taste in literature always seemed a bit off.

Despite having access to a machine with kindle on it, I too prefer paper. There is real joy in searching a used book store and finding a book by a favorite writer. People still do that, but maybe not as much.

Brian Murphy said...

Thanks man, glad you enjoyed it!

I'm a big King fan, love most of his work up until The Tommyknockers, but he wrote PLENTY of trash fic, so he doesn't exactly have the moral high ground to dump on S&S. I actually think (reading between the lines) he was ridiculing some of the pastiche, but he didn't articulate his argument well in Danse Macabre.

Matthew said...

Well, the pastiche often seems to overshadow Howard's original work unfortunately.