The Dark Crusade

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Victoria Dalpe stuck around after recording and we got a chance to talk about her recently published modern-gothic vampire novel Parasite Life published by ChiZine. Pick it up here. It’s a perfect stocking stuffer or present for that horror-loving friend. For those of you in the Providence, Rhode Island area check out her book launch this Sunday, December 17th 4pm at the Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council.

Next Week: We cover Wagner’s tale, Where the Summer Ends. To close the season out we’ll have two guests!

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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Beyond Any Measure

Originally Published: Whispers #15-16, March 1982 edited by Stuart David Schiff

Awards: Won 1983 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella

Whiskey Pairing: High West Double Rye

Special thanks for this episode to Lincoln Brown for helping with the afterward by Wagner in the Scream Press edition of In a Lonely Place, and to Phil Gelatt for loaning me recording equipment.

Beyond Any Measure is easily one of my favorite Wagner tales, and I was so grateful to have Victoria Dalpe as my guest host. Her knowledge of horror, and specifically vampires, is a dark cold well that runs deep. In this episode, she adds a very insightful context for this story and its place in horror history.

I urge folks to check out her own book Parasite Life from Chizine’s Chiteen imprint. It was just released in Canada and the pre-orders for the US are now open.  It’s a fresh take on vampirism and has a nice gothic influence for Wagner fans.

Victoria mentioned a plethora of books which I’m linking to below. Oh yeah, and the vampire Count from Chelsea Quinn Yarbo, his name is Saint-Germain.

The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas

The Golden by Lucius Shepard

Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro 

The Hunger by Whitley Strieber

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson

Because there were so many film references I wanted to leave you with some fun clips as well.

Carroll Boland as the original goth vampire-here 1:44

Emma Peel in Lilith Costume (I know I said Dianna Peel at some point, sheesh)-here

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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A Fly One By Steve Sneyd

Needle Song by Charles L. Grant

All the Birds Come Home to Roost by Harlan Ellison

The Devil Behind You by Richard A. Moore

We’ll be back in two weeks with Wagner’s story Beyond Any Measure.

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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WARNING: EPISODE CONTAINS CONTENT RELATED TO SEXUAL VIOLENCE

The River of Night’s Dreaming

Originally published: Whispers III edited by Stuart David Schiff (1983)

Awards: Nominated for 1982 Balrog for Short Fiction, Nominated 1982 World Fantasy for Best Novella

Whiskey Pairing: Kings County Distillery Straight Bourbon

(Special note: Wagner fan Lincoln Brown, pointed out the Afterward of the Scream Press version of In a Lonely Place. You have to check it out! It tells about Wagner’s dream that he based the story on and calls out the title as being a reference to a lyric from The Rocky Horror Picture Show-“The darkness must flow down the river of night’s dreaming…”. Lastly, the ending is a purposeful parallel to The End by The Doors, Wagner also reveals the protagonist is a male who is identifying as a female! This blows my mind, thanks again Lincoln. Looks like it’s already time for a re-read.)

This story is a rabbit hole. We could spend an entire season talking about Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow (1895), but we kept it brief. It truly is an amazing weird fiction collection. You can read it for free here.

Once again I mention a story from the Wagner website. Check that out here. It’s where I learned about the attitudes Wagner had about shock therapy, and the treatment of patients in some of the hospitals he worked at.

For any of you law abiding citizens out there, I bought The Hunger Season 1, Episode 16 so I could watch the adaptation of the story…it was just as bad as I hoped. I have a bonus episode with some special guests in the works for early next year reviewing that episode, and Season 2, Episode 20 The Double, based on Wagner’s story Beyond Any Measure.

I spoke with Justin Steele editor and reviewer extraordinaire last summer at Necronomicon 2017. We were talking about Wagner and he pointed me in the direction of the story D T by Laird Barron. In this story there is a thinly veiled version of Wagner in the story towards the end of his career. There are easter eggs galore in this story, Barron weaves them all into a short doppelganger tale. To get my hands on this story I bought A Season in Carcosa, a collection of new King in Yellow Stories edited by Joe Pulver. I was delighted to find that in addition to D T, both Joe Pulver in his story Not Enough Hope and John Langan in his story Sweetums, give nods to Wagner. Karl Edward Wagner only wrote one King in Yellow tale but it has definitely rippled down the years as both important and part of the Carcosa cannon.

A very special thanks to our guest Tim Mucci. He rocked!

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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Sheets by Alan Ryan

Billy Wolfe’s Riding Spirit by Kevin A. Lyons

Lex Talionis by Russell Kirk

Entombed by Robert Keefe

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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The Baby-Sitter by Davis Grubb

The Well at the Half Cat by John Tibbetts

My Beautiful Darkling by Eddy C. Bertin

A Serious Call by George Hay

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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If you missed my blog entries here they are as a bonus episode! Enjoy.

Introduction: Access to Horror by Karl Edward Wagner

The Dead Line by Dennis Etchison

To Wake the Dead by Ramsey Campbell

In the Fourth Year of the War by Harlan Ellison

From the Lower Deep by Hugh B. Cave

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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Link to the blog entry where John Mayer talks about Wagner’s suspension from medical school. here

Link to ‘The Last Interview’ in Dark Troubador Magazine here Though I called it the last interview in the episode it is only one of the last. The last interview was done by Bradley H. Sinor for Horror Magazine Issue #5. You can read that interview on karledwardwagner.org here

Readers: Malcolm Mills, Laura Maxfield

Music: F. N. York

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/

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For an in depth reading of Howard’s Men of the Shadows and the pictish connection to Machen’s work I suggest Nameless Tribes: Robert E. Howard’s Anthropological World-Building in “Men of the Shadows” by Jeffrey Shanks in Skelos 1 : The Journal of Weird Fiction and Dark Fantasy.

As a further connection to Brandon and Bran Mak Morn we see Wagner using the same Persephone motif in his Mak Morn pastiche Legion from the Shadows in the Chapter entitled Proserpina and Dis.

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Check the blog out all this month as I’m working on my special October Project, covering The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series VIII edited by Wagner.

The Dark Crusade is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://thedarkcrusade.wordpress.com/