It has been far too long since I’ve had a post here, so let’s do something about that. Here’s a look back at what I’ve been writing about at Black Gate over the past two months.

To start with, I looked at Brian Catling’s excellent, unconventional book The Vorrh. Then I wrote a piece on Jack Kirby’s magnificent run on Thor. After that I read a book called The Interior Life, by Dorothy Heydt writing as Katherine Blake. Then, after writing a piece on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, I found that February was Women in Horror Recognition Month; I was already working on a post about Peter Ackroyd’s history of England up to the Tudors, Foundation, but after that I wrote posts on Dion Fortune’s engaging novel The Demon Lover and Tanith Lee’s fascinating Secret Books of Paradys sequence, before considering whether Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca was horror or not.

I think I’m beginning to get happier, as a whole, with the stuff I write for Black Gate. I’ve been pleased with specific posts, but I think I’m beginning to get the hang of writing this kind of criticism; as though I’ve found some kind of form. That may just be a general sense of uplift as the weather gets better. Or, I hope, touch wood, it may be a sign that my health is taking a turn for the better. I’ve been feeling better overall since I changed my diet a little. So we’ll see.

I do intend to start posting here more frequently. That’ll be a good step forward, I think, if I can manage that.