Yesterday, I received an advance copy of Necronomicon: The Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft, to be published by Orion, an imprint of Gollanz. The 1,008-page book will contain all of the writer’s major stories and short novels, including the entire Cthulhu mythos. I read the complete Lovecraft a long time ago, so there’s no need for me to dive into it again immediately (though someday I will, and if you haven’t yet, you should make plans to do so now), but I did enjoy reading editor Stephen Jones’ lengthy afterword, which brought to my attention some information I’d never read before.

One such tidbit was a reproduction of the cover to an issue of Home Brew, a magazine from the ’20s which had published a few of Lovecraft’s short stories. (Click on the image at right for a closer look.) I’d heard of the magazine, but I’d never seen a copy. I was very much taken by the taglines of Home Brew, which states that it is “Full of Moonshine,” and promises “Peppy Stories – Pungent Jests – Piquant Gossip.” Home Brew also claims to be “America’s Zippiest Pocket Magazine.”

Ah, they just don’t make magazines like that anymore!

Then there was this anecdote:

After selling another tale rejected by Wright, “The Colour Out of Space,” to Hugo Gernsback’s archetypal science fiction magazine Amazing Stories in 1927—and receiving a paltry fifth of a cent of a word for it after having to write several letters demanding payment—Lovecraft refused to offer his fiction to any magazine except Weird Tales. However, he also resisted selling those stories turned down by Wright to other markets, even though many of them paid better rates: “I have a sort of dislike of sending in anything which has been once rejected,” Lovecraft admited.

If we all lived by that sentiment, how little fiction would ever be published! I know that very few of my own stories sold the first time to market, and I suspect most writers who read this—except for the very lucky few, and I’m sure those will be very few indeed—would agree.