Sunday, September 26, 2010

The Back Cover

Here we go, folks, another preview of the upcoming Swill. Again, going with the hard-sell theme I'm working for this issue, we establish that a failure to purchase our magazine will make a noted authority sad and lonely. You don't want that to happen, right?

When I met Nick Mamatas at a book signing in San Francisco (I was there to meet some friends and, jesus I disgust myself, network), he signed my copy of Move Under Ground (a note-perfect Kerouac-does-Lovecraft I actually enjoyed more than some works of his models), I mentioned an interview he'd given the Oakland Trib where he'd named Swill as a sign of the thriving East Bay literary underground.


When I told him that he'd bought the only copy of Swill that sold in Berkeley, this is what he wrote. He's graciously allowed us to use it. Plus, ol' Rob gives us a typical dollop of soul-crushing filth, and I engage in some ritualistic chest-beating. Honestly, you'd at least have to leaf through the damned thing after reading this, right?

2 comments:

robp said...

Nice to have the great Mamatasian on the same page with us. Have you read the Lovecraft-in-the-title piece he wrote with Tim Pratt? I think that one was nominated for a Stoker. Anyway, it was online, I have it in .pdf if you need it.

Please don't forget the one word edit on my piece. And you may want your name on your soliloquy - it's a clearly Swill statement, which I agree with completely, but you did write the thing. And then you too could have your name on the same page as that of a Hugo/Stoker/etc nominee.

Sean Craven said...

Oik. I thought I fixed that typo. I'm firing up InDesign right now.

If that's going out with my name on it, it's got to be funnier. I'm willing to produce that kind of tripe from a gray editorial distance, but I have my pride.

I don't think I've seen that one, but there's quite the Lovecraftian streak in Mamatas's oeuvre. Which sound kind of gross. "Waiter? Waiter?"