I have a confession to make, I'm very behind in my Nightvale episodes. The cult hit just keeps rolling along, and I find myself completely out of the loop. I long for the dulcet tones of Cecil Baldwin, as the host of the community radio program ' Welcome to Nightvale ', to be immersed again in that dusty, Lovecraftian, twilight space but life keeps getting in the way (ok, Youtube Let's Play videos). I realised I've only listened to about 30 or so of the over 100 episodes now aired, and I can't remember at all what was going on the delightfully peripatetic story. Thank the unseen gods who shall not be named that the internet specialises in fostering compulsive obsessions, so of course I've found the WTNV fan wiki , which has a helpful break-down of all the salient and surreal plot points of the all the episodes. I've done Welcome to Nightvale an injustice by not keeping up, as it's the sort of unique, outside the box storytelling that I'm ...

HP Lovecraft has been on my 'to read' list for sometime, but it was only recently I picked up the lovely penguin paperback edition of the short story collection 'The Dunwich Horror' while browsing in Waterstones. The book is conducive to being read, and I quickly worked my way through the first story on a bus trip to Wales, the scenery of which perfectly mimicking the tale. It was a pleasure to find a story written in 1928 so enthralling and atmospheric in a distinctly contemporary way, and a delight to realise that the praise heaped on Lovecraft from various horror writers (there's a quote on the cover from Stephen King) is thoroughly justified. The modern sensibility of the horror is no doubt a reflection of the massive influence his stories have had on modern horror and fantasy. It's quite palpable. Lovecraft is clearly writing at a time in the early 20thC when modern science as we understand it was coming to the fore, yet there still lingered a residual ...