Yesterday was Keith Taylor’s birthday. I always try to come up with a DMR blog post to celebrate the occasion, since Mr. Taylor is one of the greatest living practitioners of Sword-and-Sorcery. However, from the beginning of his career, Keith has always done a great job of incorporating horror elements into his heroic fantasy fiction, as any good S&S author should. In addition, KT has written his share of actual horror tales over the course of his career. He is now about to jump into the Mythos horror field with a pair of novels.

Keith sent me an email (slightly edited by me) a few days ago and brought me up to date:

“I’m happily flat out on a novel--a sequel to the one I kept lamenting hadn’t found a publisher--Damned From Birth. But now DFB has a publisher and the contract is signed, and one for the sequel too.

The protagonist and narrator, as you probably know, is intended to be the same joker who narrates "The Thing on the Roof" and continues from the night of Tussmann’s death.

The narrator also owes something to a real-life archaeologist and epigrapher of the early 20th century with the wonderful name of Sylvanus Griswold Morley. Morley studied a lot of ancient Mexican inscriptions and also acted as a counter-espionage agent down in Mexico for the U.S. government, where just before the First World War German agents were trying to foment trouble between Mexico and the U.S. Anyway, the sequel is called Black Hoof's Tread and it chiefly takes place in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1912.”

Outstanding! Mr. Taylor has been putting Mythos references into his fiction since very early on, specifically The Tower of Death. He certainly knows Mythos lore better than most such scribes out there. In the still-unpublished novel about Friedrich von Junzt, Keith and I had von Junzt visit Natchez--along with LaFitte's haunted pirate stronghold. This should be quite interesting and entertaining.

Also, on December 19, Keith stated this on Facebook regarding the new Felimid mac Fal novel:

"BARD VI: SUNSPEAR is facing a couple of glitches where the manuscript formatting is concerned, but we'll get over that and the novel will be published (unless something wholly unforeseen happens) some time in 2025."

Great news! More blood n' thunder action in an Erin brim-full of magic, wonder and danger.

Thus, Keith Taylor fans might be looking at three KT novels over the next three years.

Happy New Year/Hogmanay!