Part one of this interview can be found here.

How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
My audience’s expectations are totally a mystery to me. The only part of the audience that I can competently address is the small part representing weird fiction aficionados. I go after that market share because they like to read that type of work. There are jags of competing genres, but at my age I don’t have time enough to learn about writing them well and, in the past, I didn’t have enough interest enough to want to learn them. Shucks, even if I wrote a western, I’d want to make it a weird western. Some people can write in divers genres, but most people can’t. Doesn’t trying to learn something for which one has no solid interest amount to a kind of self-torture? Does undergoing torture produce well-done work?

I try not to worry about vagaries that are probably unsolvable. The type of reader that I can naturally attract is the type who shares in my tastes of fun and excitement. It is risky for a craftsman to work outside of his own area of interest. If he has little personal involvement or interest in something, can he produce a good product? A person who is doing a job that he doesn’t like tends to put out only the minimum.

Now, if one’s question is, in fact, about how can he draw in even more readers who are enthusiastic for the kind of work that he is already doing, I have to say that I don’t know. Writers rarely hear enough even from their bedrock fans so as to gain any firm idea of their expectations. That’s not a writer’s fault; it’s the fans’. Even when it is easy and cost-free for the individual reader to send worthwhile comments to the writer, he seldom bothers. The freelance writer has traditionally been a creature doomed to walk alone. For him to get anywhere, he must be a tough person with the fortitude to keep slogging ahead despite the feeling that nobody cares.

I write because I love the act of creation too much to give it up, but I do believe that if I had been getting dozens of supportive letters every month for the last 45 years, I would have been working harder and faster to produce a larger body of work. Someday, I hope, fandom as a whole will realize that to get more and better product, they need to encourage those authors whose work they like. As is, very few readers upload comments onto posting boards or go to meet authors at conventions.

Now we will look at the subject of experimentation. The proposal seems to be that “playing it safe” may stop a writer from carrying out successful experimentation. But isn’t it also true that playing it safe will save a writer from wasting his time in a lot of failed experiments? Remember, the writer has to put as much time into a risky experiment as he puts into a work that he is already able to write capably.

But that is not to say that I myself want to put out the same type of junk that weird fiction mid-list writers have been doing. I’m a selective reader. I have hundreds of weird fiction books, but there are thousands that I’ve never felt like buying. If we are talking about experiments, my favorite experiment is done when I write a story of the kind that I would personally like to read and see if it sells.

My thief characters, Bingor and Donalbain, might be called my most recent experiment. They are my attempt to do something “different.” I gladly committed a year of my time to the Ambrosia project because humor is a theme that I’m fond of. Oh, yes, a cynic might say that the S&S thief has been around for a long time, but he should be honest enough to admit that the character type is not very common. Jack Vance’s Cudgel the Clever, for instance, has no large body of work. Anyway, one should not expect absolute originality from a writer. As King Solomon would say, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Should we expect a writer who is successful by his own criteria to be very experimental? Usually, the experimental writer discovers, as Edison did, that experimentation is the process for learning what doesn’t work. We should be glad that a scientific researcher is willing to experiment. But one needs to take into account the great loss of time (and satisfaction) that goes into performing many failed experiments. One can get into the money chase if he wants to, but if writing for pleasure is your goal, just do what you feel like doing. If you sell it, great. If you don’t sell, at least the creation process was fun.

It is the writer who is not selling (when he very much wants to sell), or one who is bored with what he is doing (though perhaps he has been somewhat successful), who is more likely to experiment. “I want to try something different,” is his attitude, and that’s the right attitude. This turn of mind will work best for the versatile writer. If a western writer also likes sport-themed stories (like REH did), by all means he should do some sports stories and see what happens. If one is a bored writer or a failed writer, he definitely should experiment.

Louis L’Amour was successful in his own genre, but I wouldn’t rate him as being very experimental. About as far as he would go was to occasionally write a typical L’Amour story that was set outside of the Old West of 1865 to 1900. I believe that he was a tepid experimenter because he didn’t have to experiment. Most readers were okay with his standard crank-out product. I think L’Amour would have become experimental only if he’d been seeing his sales dropping year after year.

Also on the subject of Robert E. Howard’s experimentation, I recall how he went out on a limb by offering a female hero in a (brief) series of stories. Her name was Dark Agnes. The tales of Dark Agnes present a character who is masculine to a pathological degree. She was the kind of woman that few readers of Howard’s day could admire. Nor has the perspective of time been any more kind to Dark Agnes.

The odd thing is that it lay within REH’s capability to bring off a more successful woman warrior. He did so in Red Sonya (not Red Sonja), but for some reason Sonya appears in only one historical story. Yet she was impactful enough to inspire the comic-creative team of Roy Thomas and Barry Smith to translate her character into the Hyborian Age and call her Red Sonja. (By the way, it was that team and not Howard who created Sonja’s iconic chainmail bikini). One wonders why Howard had seized upon Dark Agnes to promote while doing so little with the compelling Red Sonya. By the way, there is a genuinely entertaining 6-book series featuring Red Sonja’s adventures (from Ace Fantasy, early ‘80s). These books benefit immensely from the considerable writing skill of Richard L. Tierney.

Have you had any new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
In 2020-2021, I wrote A Feast of Ambrosia (referred to above). My latest new story has been “The Hounds of the Cherusci.” That’s a Simon of Gitta tale soon to be anthologized by DMR Books in Die by the Sword. A project that I would enjoy would be to do more Simon of Gitta stories (and, yes, I do have the rights to use that character). I’m also looking forward to doing a second book featuring Bingor and Donalbain. But currently I’m not engaged in any new project. I need all my available time for polishing the long-neglected manuscript of The Path of the Dragon, which Pickman Books might put out as early as this year. After that, I will need to bring my earlier published novel, The Gardens of Lucullus (Sidecar, 2001), up to my current standards of craftsmanship for a 2024 release target.

What I will do next depends largely on what publishers are asking for. Without any outside encouragement, I’d be inclined to fall back on reviving one or another of the pet projects that I have been wanting to do for some while. I have an appealing project in mind, but I hesitate to describe it since I don’t want to raise false expectations. It’s possible that I’ll never be able to get to it. I am at an age when life expectancy is chancy. None of us knows how much time he has left.

Sometimes I wish that I’d have spent the last 50 years doing nothing other than fiction, but if I had not put a lot of time to establishing a retirement fund, the odds are that I would be now living in a single room inside a rooming house with its walls lined floor to ceiling with books. That was actually the fate of a Lovecraftian fan and weird-style artist whom I knew back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. His wish to dedicate himself to his art failed. He never talked about ever working a career, only about doing small jobs along the way. One of these memorable work experiences had been grave-digging. (Yes, some people really have had to dig ditches to survive!) He even lost out in that category when mechanized grave-digging machines put him out of business. I think he was depending on Social Security in his last days.

Your brother Philip, who founded the weird fiction press Fedogan and Bremer, was a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft. Can you tell us about his publication accomplishments? And can you tell us a little bit about that interesting trip that he and you took to New England to visit various locations that inspired HPL?
That trip is a fond memory. It was brought off just before Halloween in 1986, when I was in my middle 30s. Back then, there was a short-lived airline called Peoples’ Express. The round-trip rate they offered between Minneapolis and Boston was incredible, something like $65. We set out at about dawn and reached Boston after several hours. We immediately rented a car (and I instantly had to deal with some of the rudest and most aggressive drivers that I’d ever encountered). We got to Providence, RI’s Biltmore Hotel in the afternoon. That was the location of the World Fantasy Con. It ran from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3.

Right off, we met a friend from the local Lovecraftian group back home. He was grousing about the miserable trip he’d just made from Minneapolis on a “cost-saving” bus. He’d found it cramped, tedious and, really, not very cheap. I was surprised to learn how slow and expensive his journey had actually been. He seemed floored when I told him that Philip and I had jetted in from Minneapolis only that morning, after having ridden in comfort at a super low price.

This being my first WFC, I met many of the then-well-known mid-list writers of fantasy. On the elevator ride between the lobby and the top-floor convention area, one of my fellow passengers was Donald A. Wollheim of DAW Books. There was no time to do more than to express my delight in meeting him. Over the four days of the convention, I found out which genre writers were the good guys and which ones were puffed-up egotists. Or, should I say, which ones were grownups who had mastered the art of courtesy and good manners and which ones seemed to think that the world revolved around them. (Can the egomania, guys; being a mid-list writer is no big deal.)

During the convention, my brother and I found time to visit the Providence Lovecraftian sites listed in the guidebook that Philip had brought along. These included the addresses of the still-standing Lovecraft residences and also the specific city sights that had inspired his stories. Significant among the latter was the church from “Haunter of the Dark” and the “burying grounds” featured in multiple stories, including The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

We walked the same streets that Lovecraft had walked and saw the Georgian architecture that he had so much admired. (To be honest, my own tastes run to the fantastically creepy Victorian style.) And we visited the gravesite of the master himself. Though Lovecraft had been buried in the family plot without an individual stone (he was that poor), his fans in later days had collected the funds needed to install a marker. I had a snapshot taken of myself standing at the grave and it came out looking as if it had been professionally posed, having good lighting effects and a backdrop of autumn leaves. We also had pictures taken at “Arkham University,” which was actually Brown University of Providence.

At the convention’s end, we had a few days left to our trip. Anxious to see the sea for the first time, we checked out of our B&B and drove to Newport, RI. During the Revolutionary War, the city had been occupied by the British. The port’s situation had made it hard to attack and its harbor was large enough to shelter the whole British navy. Most especially, it provided a base from which to blockade the rebel cities located in New England. We fondly dined at the local White Horse Tavern, founded in 1673, where British heroes in dashing red had merrily quaffed their ale.

From Newport, we went northwest into the Dunwich Country of south-central Massachusetts, an area centered around the district of Monson. It was a rural environment of picturesque woods and rock fences. We found the ambiance to be a welcome relief from the urban localities that we had been seeing up to then.

The following day, we arrived at Newbury Port, MA, the inspiration for HPL’s Innsmouth. I had my picture taken at its Masonic Temple, which reputedly inspired Lovecraft in his creation of the Temple of Dagon. From there, we journeyed farther south to the geographical location of Innsmouth, just a jog away from the modest town of Ipswich. Oddly, the guidebook did not cite Ipswich for having any Lovecraftian attractions. The book directed us to a beachfront whose main feature was an offshore sandbar (in no way as spectacular as Devil’s Reef ought to be). I’d have to say that the place was not spooky at all. It looked more suitable for a seaside picnic rather it did for a horror story, and most visitors would have considered it bland even for the former purpose.

At day’s end, we overnighted at Marblehead, MA, a picturesque town with antique architecture. It was reputedly HPL’s inspiration for Kingsport. I unfortunately saw very little of of Marblehead because we arrived at dusk and I was dead tired. I dropped off to sleep at about 7:00 pm, but Phil, much more of a night owl than I was, did a lamplight tour of the streets. He hurried us away in the morning before I could see my share of the sights. In fairness, though, we couldn’t afford to wait until businesses opened. This was the day that we’d planned to begin our tour of downtown Boston and we still hadn’t seen the “real Arkham,” that is, the witch town of Salem, MA.

While a good number of HPL stories are set in Arkham, including “Reanimator” and “The Thing on the Doorstep,” Salem doesn’t offer many HPL-specific sites. Our guidebook did not mention any “Arkham Sanitarium,” for instance. But while there, we toured the “Witch House,” featured in “Dreams in the Witch House.” Historically, this was where the Puritans held some of their witch trials. Contrary to the impression given in that story, it is a smallish building. From there, we went to Hawthorne’s “The House of Seven Gables.” This is a real place, also, but one who reads the novel (as I did later) would be led to anticipate a much larger house (maybe suggestive of Dark Shadows’ Collinwood). In reality, it is a townhouse of modest size – one so small that a person can scarcely imagine that it could have ever hidden very many secrets.

One amusing feature of Salem was the way in which the residents commercialized the witch-hunting era. Rather than fear the witches, they glorified them. There were witch-themed shops, street displays, and fortune-telling places. I hope they are all still there.

We then drove back to Boston for the return of our vehicle. We rode a courtesy car to our reserved downtown hotel. Right off, we took a historic walking tour. That evening, the two of us dined at an evocative restaurant using the Robin Hood theme, Friar Tuck’s. My meal was a Sheriff of Nottingham sandwich. Alas, the modern-day internet offers no reference for Boston’s Friar Tuck’s. It must have closed down before the internet era. The next morning, we continued the walking tour and saw Bunker Hill, the Old North Church, and Paul Revere’s house. The streets thereabouts hosted open-air markets. The distinct smell of fish hung over the area and one could have imagined Innsmouth smelling that way!

With anticipation, we walked the streets of Beacon Hill, the fabled neighborhood of Boston’s rich. But it turned out to be nothing like one would expect. It was a very old neighborhood with steep, narrow streets and sidewalks. I couldn’t grasp how the rich could ever have enjoyed being wealthy while living in such a neighborhood, not even a hundred and fifty years ago. The townhouses were flush against one another other and lacked individual character. Such an environment should not have appealed even to the more modest expectations of the middle class.

So, our time being run out, Phil and I took the courtesy car back to the airport. Without mishap, we returned to Minneapolis in the dark of night.

I probably never would have taken this enjoyable vacation had my brother Philip John Rahman’s enthusiasm not carried me along. For the most part, I had been happy enough exploring the wonders of the world through books. It was not that I wasn’t a Lovecraft fan; I was very much one. (In fact, in about 1968 I was the first in my family to learn about HPL’s career, courtesy of a book available in Rochester Public Library.) But it would not be until the start of the ‘90s, that I would become a self-motivated traveler. Specifically, my most congenial mode of travel has been by automobile.

As you mention, Phil was deeply into Lovecraft and interested in Lovecraftian scholarship. Only a year after our Providence trip, he released an audio tape of HPL’s Fungi from Yuggoth, issued under the label of his newly founded company, Fedogan and Bremer. He had a partner, Dennis Weiler, an Idaho surgeon who had been his best college friend. Their company was specifically created to put out weird fiction. They would release over 35 books and F&B was frequently nominated for “best Lovecraftian press.” It won the 1998 World Fantasy Award for Non-Professional book publishing, an award that was called the “Howard” (after HPL).

Though it required immense work and was unprofitable, F&B amounted to a labor of love for Philip and he kept the business going for from 1987 to 2011, putting out about 26 distinct titles during his lifetime. After Phil’s death in 2011, Dennis Weiler carried on the label, producing some 12 additional books up to 2019. The backlisted books are still available, but I have no information as to whether future volumes are planned.

With a publisher in the family, one who was avid to put out the very same genres that I was working in, I should have been in the catbird seat. But Phil was determined to be taken seriously as a publisher and his idea of being serious meant not putting out work done by friends, relatives, or even himself.

The latter was a mistake, because Philip had many talents, including a knack for writing. But after he started publishing, he had no time for authorship. Furthermore, he had been even more unsuccessful at getting his works published than I’d been and this discouraged him from creating any large literary legacy. I’d disagreed then and I still disagree about the “professionalism” of self-publishing. Didn’t Edgar Rice Burroughs put out most of his own books? Today, self-publishing has been regularized, such as in Kindle Books and other outlets. Far from scorning an author who does self releases, fans look back with gratitude at authors who served the public need by expending their own money. (Bad works, by the way, are simply bad works, even if put out by mainstream publishers).

Philip’s revenge on the publishing industry was to release the sort of weird literature that he most wanted to read, but which was not being well supported by other labels. Even in his lifetime, his effort were frequently compared to that of Arkham House. Far from being rivals, Arkham House assisted F&B with its distribution.

Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)
Here’s a question that I can actually give a short answer to. I used to read a lot, but not lately. As the previous part of the interview indicates, I’ve been buried under a workload of editing that starting about 3 years ago. (After having been ignored for decades, some editors started contacting me.) From necessity, most of my recent reading has been research material. Currently, I’m bolstering my knowledge about pre-Roman Britain.

As for older books, the state of affairs is the same, namely that I’m strapped for time. The very latest fiction book that I’ve read has been Swords Against Caesar by Richard L. Tierney. I reread it to freshen my feel for the character of Simon of Gitta, who is featured in both “The Hound of the Cherusci” and The Path of the Dragon.

Any final words?
I’ve been considering the possibility of doing ebooks for some while. Current-day writers are lucky to have this new technology available, a definite improvement over the old style “vanity press.” That term, unfortunately, was always a derogatory one used with calculation by the publishing companies which wanted to make people think that their own books were the only books of “quality” and whatever was self-published was only an exercise in ego. How untrue that is. Almost all the significant books dealing with weird fiction that I have collected have come from small publishers, including self-publishers.

By doing ebooks, a beginning writer is rightfully telling the industry gatekeepers to pound sand. By doing an ebook, one is able to publish whatever he wants to and at the same time he taps into a worldwide market. Oh, yes, there are hideously bad Kindle Books – more bad ones than good ones. But even a poor Kindle writer spares himself from the career-killing demoralization that come from rejection slips. And the expense of hard-copy printing and distribution is avoided. Most home offices already have the equipment necessary to create and upload ebooks.

Best yet, the ebook will probably increase in popularity as we look ahead; it may even become the dominant book format of the future. And here’s another boon for cost-conscious writers. Kindle and other sites have put out many public domain books as free downloads. I’ve sometimes been surprised by the quality of 19th century scholarship. In former days, a writer had to deal with libraries to access needed materials and getting them in hand would take days or weeks. Nowadays, a public domain book that can be found through a net search is downloadable immediately.

Looking ahead, if my current hot streak plays out, I will certainly consider going the ebook route.