A Night in the Lonesome October —
All is not what it seems…
In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff – gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.
Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.
And now the dread night approaches – so let the Game begin.
Author: Roger Zelazny
Illustrator: Gahan Wilson
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Gaslamp
Publisher: Avon Books
Publication Date: September 1, 1994
Pages: 280
October 9th
Snuff and Jack are back in the city again, with Jack still on the hunt for ‘materials’. They have a successful hunt, but on the way home are approached by the great detective finally showing himself in the game, on the trail of that night’s murderer. Holmes makes sure that Jack knows he is being watched. Snuff senses something almost canine-like in the doggedness shown by this new man, and resolves to keep a close eye on him.
Larry Talbot has also been in the city and has also been approached by the detective and his rotund companion, who was making cryptic comments about ‘hounds’. Talbot reveals that he has a chequered history with Count Dracula and believes Dracula to be an ‘opener’. This conversation reminds Snuff that earlier in the day he visited the Count’s hideout with Greymalk, who crept into the crypt under the ruined church and returned with tales of a swanky coffin and a sleeping inhabitant. As a reward for information Snuff took Greymalk to see the ‘slithering things’ in Jack’s mirror. The things do indeed ‘slither’.
Snuff’s relationship with Greymalk is quickly turning into a mutually beneficial friendship and is rather sweet, a lightness and sureness of touch that’s typical of Zelazny even while he piles on the growing sense of dread as the time of a full moon gets closer and Jack keeps an eye on the newcomer, Mr. ‘call me Larry’ Talbot.
Boo-graphy:
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.
He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, Crossroad Press and Severed Press, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines.
He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company.
When he’s not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory.
The Green & the Black —
A small group of industrial archaeologists head into the center of Newfoundland, investigating a rumor of a lost prospecting team of Irish miners in the late Nineteenth century.
They find the remains of a mining operation, and a journal and papers detailing the extent of the miners’ activities. But there is something else on the site, something older than the miners, as old as the rock itself.
Soon the archaeologists are coming under assault, from a strange infection that spreads like wildfire through mind and body, one that doctors seem powerless to define let alone control.
The survivors only have one option. They must return to the mine, and face what waits for them, down in the deep dark places, where the green meets the black.
Meghan's House of Books 