Sin and Ashes

"Some writers one admires and others make one want to do as they do, or try. For me, Joe Pulver is of the latter type. His imagination is so vile so much of the time that it makes me giggle with amazement. And the prose so deadly visionary. I'm grateful that the pieces in this collection are those of a fellow horror writer who has raised the ante on what it means to be such a creature." -- Thomas Ligotti on _Blood Will Have Its Season_ by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. The world of Joe Pulver's dreams and nightmares is a world of grim violence and death but also of strange beauty and wonder. In stories that read like poems and poems that read like incantations, Pulver weaves a sorcerer's spell of language-tough, gritty, cheerless, but always evocative, hypnotizing, intoxicating-that lays bare the fragility of human beings on the edge of the abyss, looking down at the depths and looking up at the boundless cosmos. H. P. Lovecraft, Robert W. Chambers, and other writers of terror and the supernatural are Pulver's touchstones, but his riffs on their tales are the work of a master craftsman who recognizes the emotive value of every sentence, phrase, and word. A poet in every sense of the word, Pulver sees the world and the cosmos as a cauldron of death and carnage but also a platform for triumph and redemption. In these stories, sketches, prose-poems, and vignettes, Pulver evokes the wild beauty of terror in a manner that few can match. Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. is the acclaimed author of the Lovecraftian novel _Nightmare's Disciple_, and he has written many short stories that have appeared in magazines and anthologies. His first short story collection, _Blood Will Have Its Season_ (2009), was published to wide acclaim.