Who Are You?
 

I figured this would be a proper way to start off the off topic board. Tell us about yourself

my name is Mike, I'm 16 and from Los Angeles. Writing, photography and music are my passions in life. I listen to all forms of metal, prog, jazz, ambient, classical and classic rock. My favorite authors are Ligotti (obviously), Lovecraft, Bret Easton Ellis and Simon Logan.

Well, OK. I am "Eddie" (Monika) Angerhuber, I'm 39 years old, from Germany (Berlin). I'm running the German Ligotti website, doing translations English -> German every so often, have written 5 books of my own so far (short story collections) but am not writing at the moment. People often ask me why and I can only tell them that I don't feel like writing. I have no idea whether this will ever change or not (it doesn't seem important just now). Obviously, Ligotti's works mean a little something to me. I have translated two books with his stories into German so far.
Best, Eddie

Hi – my name is Damian Lawrence, 35. I am originally from Liverpool, England, but have lived in London for the past 14 or so years. I am chief-sub (that’s chief copy editor for those stateside) on the country’s leading law newspaper. Done various jobs in my past, from washing dishes to construction to proofreading novels and various subbing jobs. My main love is literature (too many to name, but Ligotti, Lovecraft, Bruno Schultz, Stefan Grabinski, John Fowles and Charles Diickens (scuse the extra 'i' – it keeps changing it) spring to mind as big faves), followed by music (again too many, but The Beatles, Phish, The Who, Parliament, King Crimson and generally superior-quality rock, soul, funk, jazz etc are my tastes). I am also a fan of Liverpool Football Club and all things bizarre. Good to meet you guys.

My name is Giuseppe Panettieri. I live in Trenton, New Jersey, USA. My job is running a small cellular phone store. Favorite authors include H.P. Lovecraft, Jorge Luis Borges, and Thomas Ligotti (surprise surprise). I listen to some metal, some punk, some industrial, and a whole lot of NPR. (national public radio for those outside the USA) I am hoping to begin studying martial arts again soon (before I had to quit I estimate I was only about six months from being ready to test for apprentice instructor status in JKD). Other than that I'm just an ordinary average guy.

Thought I'd contribute to this thread in hopes of kickstarting some other contributions, since I'm interested to know about the people who have joined The Nightmare Network.

At present I'm 34, married for 12 years, with a stepson who will graduate from high school this year. I have a B.A. in communication (emphasis in radio and television production) with a minor in philosophy, as well as an M.A. in religious studies. My professional path has taken me all over the place. I worked for a few years in the music theatre industry in Branson, Missouri. I co-founded a video production business around the same time, although now it's been many years since I sold my portion of it. I produced telecourses for a large state university. I worked as a mortgage broker for three years. I taught high school for three years. Last year, briefly, I worked as an independent videographer and taught a creative writing class for a university extension campus. Presently I'm employed as a salesperson at a large piano and digital keyboard dealership.

My favorite authors include Ligotti, Lovecraft, Alan Watts, Eckhart Tolle, Jan Van de Wetering, Henri Amiel, Robert Anton Wilson, Nietzsche, Huston Smith, C.S. Lewis, and Theodore Roszak, with generous helpings of Algernon Blackwood, Mary Shelley, and a few other leading lights in the field of horror fiction thrown in for good measure.

Music-wise, some of my most dearly treasured artists and bands are David Darling, Dead Can Dance, Vangelis, and Blue Oyster Cult. At various periods in my past I've been fanatically in love with the music of Queensryche, King Diamond, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, and various metal bands and producers of space music or ambient music. If you're familiar with the venerable National Public Radio program Hearts of Space (www.hos.com), then you have a window into one of my most pervasive musical mindsets. David Darling's composition "Children" (from his album Cello Blue) and Vangelis' composition "Abraham's Theme" (from his soundtrack for the film Chariots of Fire) embody my dominant mood, which alternates between peaceful Buddhistic resignation and melancholic despair, as well as any two pieces of music I'm aware of.

I'm the author of the short story collection Divinations of the Deep (Ash-Tree Press, 2002) and the novella The God of Foulness (Delirium Books, 2004) as well as various stories, essays, and reviews. My writing has appeared in The Children of Cthulhu, The Thomas Ligotti Reader, The Best of Horrorfind II, Dark Lurkers, Penny Dreadful, and Mark McLaughlin's omnibus collection Hell is Where the Heart Is (Delirium Books, 2003), and on the Web at Thomas Ligotti Online, The Art of Grimscribe, Terror Tales (now renamed Horror Quarterly), Strange Horizons, Horrorfind, and Sinisteria. I've written a number of academic papers exploring my dual interests in matters of horror and religion, but these remain unpublished at present. Also unpublished is a 50,000 word manuscript I culled and edited last year from a private journal that I've kept for over 15 years. I titled the manuscript There Is No Grand Scheme (which is a phrase that will be familiar to readers of Ligotti's My Work Is Not Yet Done) and presently have no plans for it, although several excerpts from it will be published in June of this year in a book to be titled In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing from the American publisher Impassio Press.

My writing, incidentally, is powered and motivated to some degree by a recurrent experience of sleep paralysis that plagued me during the 1990s, and that still returns occasionally to this day, although not with the same intensity that it used to have. These episodes were -- and I promise this is not too strong a way to state the matter -- transcendently terrifying, in large part because they involved an excruciating and realer-than-real sense that some horrific metaphysical presence was hovering over me and exerting an unspecified but nightmarishly awful influence upon me. These experiences altered me in significant respects, not least by suggesting to me for a time that I might be going insane. At the time they began occurring, I had already been an avid reader of horror fiction, especially Lovecraft's, for many years, and had also been a longtime student of religion and philosophy, but it wasn't until these episodes occasioned a piercing of my skin, so to speak, with an experience of terror and horror that was not enjoyable, but was instead dizzying and sickening in its existential immediacy and inescapability, that I discovered Thomas Ligotti and fastened upon his writings as the exquisite embodiment of the thoughts, insights, and emotions that had come to dominate my worldview and inner life.

Hello all,

I'm Ronan Pronost, 33, married with a son of 3 and another child to be born.

I live in Brest, in the westernmost, windiest and wettest part of France where I earn a living by being a hydrographer (i.e. I survey the oceans to make charts and discover new lands to give my name to and things like that). I've been doing this for 10 years now, and it's not as glamourous as it may seem (for instance being away from your family for 4 months onboard a survey ship in the middle of nowhere is not exactly my idea of fun...)

I used to read a lot of science-fiction and fantasy when I was a teenager and let this fall for so-called more "serious" authors until I relapsed, quite recently, when reading Lovecraft for the first time (being an arrogant twat when I was a kid, I despised horror-fiction, and wouldn't even look at a book by HPL, Clive Barker et al. And in the meantime I would spent hours watching second-rate horror movies: how silly!). Internet led me to Ligotti and others, and most of all helped me buy their works (it's difficult and expensive to get English books in French bookstores, when you're looking for something different from Shakespeare's plays or the latest Danielle Steele best-seller...). I've always liked to read in English, ever since I was able to do that without stopping every other word to look in a dictionnary, and now 4 out of 5 books I read are written in English. My favourite authors are probably William S. Burroughs, Ligotti (surprise!), Robert Aickman, Lovecraft, Borges, Calvino and Russel Banks and I've enjoyed (sometimes enjoyed a lot!) books by Agota Kristof, Martin Amis, Will Self, Harry Crew, Tolkien, Moorcock, Frank Herbert, Virginie Despentes, Michel Houellebeq, Rhys Hughes, Nugent Barker, Mark Samuels, HR Wakefield, Alasdair Gray, Mark F. Danielewski, Philip K. Dick, Arthur Machen, Oliver Onions, Kafka, Goethe,... I could go on for a while...

I listen to a lot of music but my favourites are Mirror (and what bands are commonly cited with them: Jonathan Coleclough, Ora, Monos,...), Autechre, Will Oldham, Current 93, Lambchop, The Smiths, Muslimgauze, Björk, Joy Division, Bela Bartòk, Olivier Messiaen, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Benjamin Britten,...

And I've always wanted to be a movie star! 8)

Re: Who Are You?
 

Greetings, all,

As this is my first posting on "The Nightmare Network" I thought I would simply say "hello" and offer a brief introduction:

My name is Richard Gavin. I am a Canadian author of macabre fiction and an admirer of Mr. Ligotti's work.

I look forward to interacting with you all.

Regards,
Richard Gavin
Author - CHARNEL WINE

Re: Who Are You?
 

Welcome to the group, Richard. Although I haven't yet read your work (and I emphasize the "yet"), I've heard wonderful things about it. I hope you enjoy your stay here.

Re: Who Are You?
 

Thank you, Matt! I'm glad that a forum like The Nightmare Network exists.

I'm also thrilled that my writing is being well-received by connoisseurs of weird fiction. The fact that writers such as Thomas Ligotti enjoy and praise my work is the greatest honour I could ever hope for.

I look forward to further discussion with you and the other members of the Network.

Best Wishes,
Richard Gavin
Author - CHARNEL WINE

Re: Who Are You?
 

My name is Quentin Crisp. 32 years old. Currently resident in London. Well, I'm about to go to sleep, so that's all for now, except that I thought I'd say hello, particularly to Richard Gavin whose book is not two feet away from me as I write. I shall read it soon.