Just some random thoughts, bear with me...
The passage of time, in ten years has hit me like a brick. Ten years ago, I'd just gotten married and, my Dad was dying(the 10th year to the day will be the 17th of this month) in a terrible, situation I had no control over or could change. It was fairly wrenching. I still don't know where all that strength came from.
I'll be at my 7th appearance at a Sci Fi or related convention, next week in Cambridge. After that, I'll be completely exhausted. I made a promise not to do so many conventions in the next year. It used to be that I could just hop in the car and go to Philcon, near Philadelphia, "like that" up until say 2000(2001 was the Worldcon there so that doesn't count as a regular convention). Now, as arthritis slowly encroaches in my hips, long drives are tougher to do. How much has changed-the people I have know who have died or moved on, the business has changed and how many people who have walked into and out of my life astounds me. I spend alot of time looking back and wanting to communicate with ghosts...
It will be interesting what this new era may have in store for us, in 2009. I'm an independent- I have high hopes with President Barack Obama. Did we ever think in our lifetimes we'd see another giant leap for Mankind in such a way as we saw on the night of November 4th??? When you think of events of 40 years ago and more?? Certainly it will take a long time, to fix some of the things that have recently culminated for the worst, in various ways-financial crisises and wars-but I think, they can be overcome and we'll be the better for it. Dictators and terrorists and overpaid Wall Street CEOs, come and go, they rise and fall to obscurity. But, dreams go on. I try to be positive. That's why when you read some blogs, a great deal, people seem to vent and rant about the negatives. I tend to not give much credence to Biblical predictions and Mayan clocks and all that which, to some indicate doom and gloom. The truth is, we're really lucky.
We can now admit we're "living" science fiction and hence, the stuff that astonished us in the written and visual form, now seems so prosaic and, almost...dare I say, boring? Now comes the great balancing act...can we make our technology to a degree that it doesn't run our lives? And at the same time, do more enjoying of the moment. I'm working on that myself, and it seems to be going well....
This unsettling creature is called The Nonsuch. It's part of a three-story Brian Lumley collection, due out from Subterranean Press. Brian wrote this new story and what it involves is an almost Night Gallery-like story of a man staying in a hotel and he's being slowly stalked by a strange sea-borne cephalopod. I used reference taken at the very hotel we used to stay at for Keoghcon down in Torquay, England as that is where the action takes place. The image took forever to form in my head. This was a case wherein the cover was a tough thing to do-as Norman Rockwell used to say "Some come easy, some come hard". It's also a truly frightening story, one of Brian's scariest I have to say. The painting turned out 20x30 inches, and done in oils. 
