Nightmares in Yellow

NIGHTMARES IN YELLOW
Edited by Duane Pesice

Yep, this is going to be one big bunch of stories and poems, all set in the world of The King in Yellow, originated by Robert W. Chambers in his 1895 collection and imbued with a new life, so to speak, almost single-handedly by ye old Beast himself, Joe Pulver, who passed away a few weeks ago (R.I.P. Joe Pulver — The True King of Carcosa, April 25, 2020). Editor and founder of Oxygen Man Books, Duane Pesice, has put together this two-volume set of stories and poems of the Yellow King as a tribute to dear Joe, to be released this fall.

The books will feature the work of 70+ authors, with both new and previously published works of fiction and poetry. The antho will include my story, “Masque of the Queen,” which originally appeared in Celaeno Press’s In the Court of the Yellow King (2014), edited by Glynn Owen Barrass.

Ordering information will be available soon, which I will, of course, post here.

Here is the table of contents as it currently stands:

Four-Part Harmony — Introductions: John Linwood Grant, Edward Morris, Duane Pesice, Jeffrey Thomas
Luis G. Abbadie — Railway to Madness
Mike Allen — The Clairvoyant, Between Dark and Dream
Rebecca J. Allred — Lambda 580
Manuel Paul Arenas – The Yellow Tale
Donald Armfield — BEing
Donald Armfield – End is Nigh
David Barker — Chamber of Shards
Adam Bolivar — The Door to Nod
Bruce Boston — Exiled to Hastur
Joseph Bouthiette Jr. — Oedipus at Carcosa
David B. Busboom — From the Dusty Mesa
Kenneth W. Cain — An Unfortunate Night at the Oakwood Theater
Frank Coffman — Warnings to the Curious
Frank Coffman — Audience With the Last King
Scott Couturier — We Are the Sacrifice
Thomas Cunningham – The Tatters of the King
Matthew R. Davis — IL Re Giallo
Mike Davis — Tales of the King in Yellow
Ashley Dioses — Even Madness Cannot Hide
Douglas Draa — Neighbors Good and Fair
Denise Dumars – The Repairer of Refutation
S. L. Edwards – The Ambassador in Yellow
John Paul Fitch – Faces
John Ghost – The Beating of Raven Wings
Maxwell Ian Gold – naigoth.carcosa.exe
John Goodrich – Pain Wears No Mask
John Linwood Grant — Mr Bubbles and the Jaundiced Stranger
Mike Griffin — No Mask to Conceal Her Voice
Jill Hand — Autumn in New York
Brian R. Hauser – The Beast of Babylon
David Hoenig — Of Kings, Queens, and Knaves
David Hoenig — Last Dance for the Ancient Gods
Shayne Keen — Yellow Work
Curtis M. Lawson — Pinocchio and the Black Pantheon
Ross E. Lockhart — Shrubberies
Paul St John Mackintosh — The Grey Queen
Mark McLaughlin & Michael Sheehan, Jr. – The Gateway to Carcosa
S. P. Miskowski – Joe
Edward Morris — Beast: A Fable For Children
Edward Morris and Joe Pulver — The Resplendent Troswoman Below
Renee Mulhare — Paper Masks
Renee Mulhare — Snapshots of the Mayor of Carcosa
Drew Nicks — Opening Night
Logan Noble – Carcosa Calling
K. A. Opperman — Cassilda Dons the Pallid Mask
Eduardo Peret — The Next Emperor
Duane Pesice — Sunshine and Scarlet
Joe Pulver – five poems
Stephen Mark Rainey — Masque of the Queen
Peter Rawlik — The Imperial Dynasty of America
Andrew Reichart — A Sign of Pure Gold
Pietro Pitt Rotelli – Carcosa Beach Party
Erica Ruppert — The Traveller
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy — Saint in Faded Demon
Sam Schreiber – The New Devonians
Kimberly Smeltzer — The Queen and the Mayor and the Day of Sorrows
John Claude Smith — The Yellow Hour
Max D. Stanton — The Dying Chorus
Anna Tambour — From the Mouth of the Tributary
Roger Taylor — Cassandra's Song—a Fragment At the End of Things
Jeffrey Thomas — The Seed
Scott Thomas — The Sea Might Yet Be Weeping
D. J. Tyrer — Beautiful Dreams (p)
Sean M. Thompson — Songs of EyEs
Sarah Walker — The Keening of a Yellow Star
Kaaron Warren — The Naked Man
Don Webb — The Fourth Man
Michael Wehunt — numbers of the bEast
Can Wiggins — The Queen in Yellow
Robert S. Wilson — Cassilda's Refrain
Richard Writhen — What You Wish For

Art by Russell Smeaton and Derek Pegritz; Design by Dan Sauer

R.I.P. Joe Pulver — The True King of Carcosa

After a long, agonizing battle with myriad health issues, Joe Pulver has gone home. His wife, Katrin, was with him through every up and down, every hope and setback, of which there have been so many over the years. I used to semi-regularly hang out with Joe and editor/author Robert M. Price at the Price estate in Selma, NC, on the far side of Raleigh from here. We referred to those gatherings a new kind of Kalem Club, where Lovecraftian lore ruled the day. Our discussions of fiction, movies, philosophy, food, drink, and fun always went on until well into the wee hours. Since the Prices live a couple of hours from home, I'd always stay overnight so we wouldn't have to end our evenings too early.

Back then, I always slept in gym shorts, and on my first visit, I took a bright red pair with me. Joe loved to rib me about those, and whenever we made plans to gather, he always admonished me to "bring those bright red 'PUH-jamas'!" His wit and wisdom always kept us in stitches, and it's hard to believe the last of those was almost a full decade ago, just before he moved to Germany.

After Joe moved, I never saw him again in person, though several times in the past few years I have participated in Mike Davis's Lovecraft eZine videocasts, in which Joe was a regular panelist. During those episodes, the old-time banter came to life again, as if he were sitting just across the room from me, rather than across an ocean.

Joe's affection for Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow was legendary. He paid tribute to the Yellow King in the stories he wrote and the anthologies he edited. His work has deservedly received much critical acclaim and, near as I can tell, he almost single-handedly brought about a new appreciation in the dark fiction field for Chambers' work. I had read Chambers years before I met Joe, but it was Joe's influence that prompted me to get into it all over again, this time with a whole new perspective and appreciation. His fondness for the Old King is certainly what prompted me to write what I consider one of my best short stories — "Masque of the Queen" — which appears in In the Court of the Yellow King, edited by Glynn Owen Barrass and published by Celaeno Press.

By all indications, Joe and Katrin couldn't have made a more perfect match. Seems like it was right after Joe left the States that the two of them became one. I always enjoyed their posts on Facebook relating the ins and outs of their lives, and, once Joe's health issues became evident, it was Katrin that kept his huge online family apprised of his condition. His downward spiral wasn't consistent; so often it seemed he was going to bounce back, to resume life as the Joe we all knew and prayed to see again. Eventually, though, it became clear this was not going to happen. But he could not have been in better hands than with Katrin, whose efforts to safeguard his life and health were monumental. My heart sure goes out to her during this shattering time.

Joe is gone, but he left a personal and creative legacy that I believe will endure. You can find much of his work on Amazon.com here. If you have yet to sample any of his gut-wrenching tales of horror and surreal chills, I urge you to dive in. And you can still look at his blog here.

Goodnight, dear Joe. Perhaps, in some way, some day, that little Kalem Club of ours will happily reunite in Carcosa.

Photo by Lady Lovecraft