Pulpwood Proofing

A Thousand Fops or How I Got Into the Proofreading Biz

by Rodney Schroeter

At the 2004 Windy City Pulp and Paperback Show, I was on a mission.

Obviously, I was looking for pulps, originals, books, and any other miscellanea that struck my fancy. But my mission went even beyond that.

I’ve been to every annual Windy City show since it started in 2001. In the years since, I’ve picked up lots of small-press publications that reprint the kind of pulp fiction that makes me smile, clench my teeth, widen my eyes so that the whites show all around, and chuckle insanely, causing my wife to wake in alarm and order me to turn off the light.

And when I did finally turn out the light, I could not easily fall asleep. It was rage that kept me awake. The seething resentment that had built up, causing my skin temperature to rise, as I read publication after publication.

All those typographical errors!

How could they publish books with all those typos? Didn’t anyone actually read them before the manuscripts were sent off to the printer in Timbuktoo?

I don’t think the science of psychology is advanced enough to explain why I developed my razor-sharp ability to catch errors as I read. (Actually, I don’t think psychology is advanced at all, but that’s another rant.) Part of it has to do with my decision to master the English language. (I haven’t done that, quite yet.)

I think, also, that my error-catching mindset is due to the fact that I deliberately chose to never mentally skip over errors. I remember a nice lady that my mother knew, when I was ten, lending me some science fiction paperbacks. Even back then, I didn’t let the publisher get away with anything; I circled and corrected each error with my orange-ink cigar-pen before I returned them to her.

In contrast, most normal people would shrug it off. An error? OK, I know what it should be; let’s move on. But for me, it’s like tripping over a carpet.

Thus, at the 2004 Windy City convention, I stopped at each publisher’s table, gave them a spiel about how I could help improve their product, and submitted a business card. I’d also put an ad in the show’s program and here, for posterity, it is:

Publishers!

You put a lot of work into your book or periodical. But your publication’s attractive, professional look is all too easily undermined–made amateurish and substandard–by only a handful of typos.

I can help! My eagle eye, and mastery of the English language, make my proofreading skills and ability to spot typos unsurpassed.

And I’ll do it for free!!–the first time I work with you. Thereafter, you’ll find my fees so reasonable, my services so invaluable, that you wouldn’t consider going to press without first subjecting your manuscript to my stern scrutiny.

Have a project in the works? Please e-mail me!

Rodney Schroeter
Proofreader
sreels@execpc.com

Several publishers offered polite, “We’ll let you know” responses. As I walked down an aisle in the dealers’ room, one such publisher caught up with me. “Come to think of it,” he said, “I do have something you could work on.”

I returned to the tables of Dr. George Vanderburgh, owner of the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box press. I have asked him just what the Dickens that phrase means, but he simply responds with a cagey smile that it’s a reference to a Sherlock Holmes adventure. (Dr. George is a serious Sherlockian.)

“I have this project that needs proofing,” he said, bringing forth two thick spiral-bound manuscripts from one of his boxes. It was The Compleat Adventures of the Moon Man, written by Frederick C. Davis. I’d never heard of the character; working with Dr. George would prove to invaluably enhance my knowledge of pulp authors and characters. (Another recent tremendous boost to my pulpwood education is Robert Sampson’s 6-volume work, Yesterday’s Faces, which I’ll write about at some point.)

“Can you have this done in a month?” Dr. George asked. I thrust out my chest and said, “Sure!”

It was no idle boast. Proofing that nearly 800-page set of 38 stories was about all I did for the next few weeks, but I got her done. The absolute worst aspect of that job: I did not have the source material. So I was left guessing on a lot of mysterious typos, which will no doubt lead to pulp fiction historians, centuries from now, sneeringly making light of my work on that edition.

Dr. George has provided me, for subsequent projects, with that much-needed source material, so I have been able to check the input whenever that wacky OCR program has garbled up the output beyond all recognition.

And those subsequent projects? Here they are, to date:

(Most are part of a series called Lost Treasures from the Pulps, edited by and/or with input from Robert Weinberg and other collectors/pulp historians.)

2005, The Compleat Adventures of the Green Ghost, by G.T. Fleming-Roberts. Edited by Garyn Roberts. 2 volumes.

2006, The Compleat Great Merlini Saga, by Clayton Rawson. 2 volumes.

2006, The Compleat Park Avenue Hunt Club, by Judson P. Philips. Edited by Garyn Roberts. 2 volumes.

2007, The Other Seabury Quinn Stories, by Seabury Quinn. 2 volumes.

2009, The Compleat Saga of John Solomon, by H. Bedford-Jones. 3 volumes.

2009, The Macabre Quarto, by August Derleth (jointly published by the August Derleth Society and Arkham House). 4 volumes.

2009 (forthcoming), The Compleat Adventures of The Suicide Squad, by Emile C. Tepperman.

Incomplete and unpublished, The Strange Ocean Vistas of Philip M. Fisher.

In-process, The Compleat Adventures of Luther McGavock, by Merle Constiner.

In-process, The Compleat Adventures of Satan Hall, by Caroll John Daly.

Finally: In case you’re wondering, “What’n’e heck does that title refer to?” Well, that was one of the most interesting boners the OCR program pulled on my most recently-completed project, The Suicide Squad. The output: “a thousand fops”. The input? “a thousand Japs”. (This was published during World War II, so that kind of thing was OK then.)

Rodney Schroeter, in Wisconsin

Derleth on H.P. Lovecraft

I first met John D. Haefele at The Walden West Festival in 2008; John had a project he was working on and I agreed to publish it.

John and I discussed many things that day in Sauk City: 1) August Derleth’s Comic Book collection and the unpublished manuscript on comics. 2) The many collections of Mythos stories by Lovecraft and other writers, and the fact that nobody has yet produced a collection of historical merit, nor tried to understand or frame properly August Derleth’s contributions. 3) A updated version of Derleth’s Bibliography as first published by Alisom M. Wilson in 1982 by The Scarecrow Press. and finally 4) the lack of information on the multiple magazine appearances of Derleth’s poetry opus. We agreed that these are all issues that we can work on in the years to come.

Here is John’s commentary about the contents of this monograph which has obviously been compiled in much detail over many years:

Lest We Forget is a reminder to everyone about the important role August Derleth had in fostering the literary reputation of H.P. Lovecraft until Lovecraft was well on the way to becoming the canonical American author he is in 2008. Specifically, it is directed to the generation of Lovecraft aficionados and critics who upon the heels of Derleth benefitted from his nearly half-century of devotion to a friend. Where what Derleth wrote might now seem commonplace, it is nevertheless interesting to note just when he wrote. — John D. Haefele

Re: Henry St. Clair Whitehead

It was Bob Weinberg’s idea in the first place. I discussed the project with April Derleth since her father had published two volumes of Whitehead’s fiction in the 1940’s — Jumbee and West India Lights. April agreed and I borrowed the Arkham archival copies of the two books in dustjacket. plan to the art work from the two Arkham editions and add a third volume containing other uncollected stories from the pulps. One story “The People of Pan” that was already collected merited a Weird Tales cover, and that story will be published in the third volume.

Right in the middle of this project I learned that Christopher and Barbara Roden of Ash Tree Press were also publishing the same project in three volumes, and the first volume had already been released. The stories were already in the public domain when Derleth published them, so there was no question of infringing any copyrights.

I telephoned Christopher to advise him that I was proceeding with the same project, and continued to collect the stories. The majority were from Weird Tales and many had been published in various anthologies over the past twenty years. I did not want to abandon this project especially since Arkham House had published the two volumes already, and both had been out of print for years

Before I can project I still have to find three of the stories, and one correspondent has advised there may be some more htat don’t have bibliographic data available which makes them even more difficult to locate. I append the list below, if anyone can assist I would be most grateful.

Want List for Whitehead

1. The Gladstone Bag, (ss) Black Mask Sep 1925

2. Gahd Laff!, (ss) Black Mask Jun 1926

3. The Return of Milt Drennan, (ss) Mystery Stories Jan 1929

4. The Great Circle, (ss) Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror Jun 1932; Bizarre Fantasy Tales Fll 1970

5. Ruby the Kid, (ss) Nickel Western Apr 1933

6 Litrachoor, (pm) The Writer; Omniumgathum, ed. Jonathan Bacon & Steve Troyanovich, Stygian Isle Press 1976;
The Writer Etchings & Odysseys #6 1985

A Zeppelin on the Horizon

Many years ago now, I received an e-mail from a gentleman who wanted to reprint the Fantastic Fiction of Philip M. Fisher. I agreed to do the project, and he sent me some of the stories that he had already digitized. There was a lot of other material to find, and I set about the task. The gentleman who first suggested the project grew impatient, and I suspect did not like my approach to the project and sought another publisher, and the project as he perceived it has already been published.

Last year I thought everything was ready to publish and then Rodney Schroeter pointed out after he had completed the proof reading and also scanned an additional novel that I didn’t know about, pointed out to me that there were Fisher short stories listed by Bill Contento that were not in the table of contents of the project.

In the meantime I found a great Zeppelin cover which was adapted from an oil painting by Donald Purdon. Donald had painted it for the late Ann Skein Melvin, and her husband David Skein Melvin arranged with the artist for the necessary permissions.

The project still lacks a small list of short stories which I will enumerate below under the front cover and wrap around Dustjacket illustrations.

The Fisher Want List

The Admiral’s Uniform, (ss) Sunset Magazine May 1924
El Capitan’s Revenge, (ss) Munsey’s Aug 1922
Compass, (ss) Sea Stories Jul 20 1923
Kin Lee, (ss) Munsey’s Oct 1922
Platonic, (ss) Breezy Stories Aug 1920

My colleague Kevin Cook has suggested that these stories are almost impossible to locate — but I’m still going to wait and hope for the best. I will publish what I have in another year or so, and THAT is one sure way that the missing stories surface!

Introducing Norgil The Magician …

This morning I completed a set of photocopies of the 23 short stories by Walter Gibson featuring Norgil, a Magician Detective. The Mysterious Press completed 2/3 of the series back in the 1970’s with two volumes. I had a list of all 23 cases and borrowed a set of the original pulps from Randy Vanderbeek, a member of The Sacred Six (The Editorial Board of The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box). Ordinarily this procedure would not be worthy of commentary in a blog — but the list I obtained somewhere on the internet was seriously flawed. Three of the titles had been (I suspect) purposely altered. However the list below is accurate to the best of my ability, and I post it here! and invite comments!

The Compleat Portfolio of Norgil the Magician

by Walter Gibson as Maxwell Grant

1. Norgil (Crime Busters, November 1937)
2. Ring of Death (Crime Busters, January 1938)
3. Murderer’s Throne (Crime Busters, February 1938)
4. The Second Double (Crime Busters, March 1938)
5. Drinks on the House (Crime Busters, April 1938)
6. Chinaman’s Chance (Crime Busters, May 1938)
7. The Glass Box (Crime Busters, June 1938)
8. The Mad Magician (Crime Busters, July 1938)
9. The Ghost That Came Back (Crime Busters, August 1938)
10. The Silver Venus (Crime Busters, September 1938)
11. Double Barrelled Magic (Crime Busters, November 1938)
12. Magician’s Choice (Crime Busters, December 1938)
13. Old Crime Week (Crime Busters, February 1939)
14. Murder in Wax (Crime Busters, April 1939)
15. The Mystery of Moloch (Crime Busters, June 1939)
16. $5,000 Reward! (Crime Busters, July 1939)
17. A Chest of Ching Ling Foo (Crime Busters, September 1939)
18. The Blue Pearls (Mystery Magazine, December 1939)
19. The Lady and the Lion (Mystery Magazine, January 1940)
20. Crime in the Crystal (Mystery Magazine, March 1940)
21. Too Many Ghosts (Mystery Magazine, May 1940)
22. Battle of Magic (Mystery Magazine, July 1940)
23. Tank-Town Tour (Mystery Magazine, November 1940)

August Derleth will celebrate his 100th Birthday

Back in the 1990’s Kay Price and I regularly visited Hugo Schwenker who lived in The Harness Shop on Water Street in Sauk City. Hugo was a childhood friend of August Derleth and they remained friends up to Derleth’s death in 1971. Derleth wrote about their teenage years in The Adventures of the Mill Creek Irregulars — a series of ten mysteries. Hugo’s Harness Shop remained essentially unchanged from the 1940’s up until his death. When I asked Paul Churchill to illustrate the series he did a caricature of the Steve and Sim and I illustrate it here:

"Steve Grendon and Sim Jones" by Paul Churchill

On one of our visits, I asked Hugo if he remembered the stamp that August had created back in the 1940’s. He said a simple “yes” and went to a drawer in his cabinet where he kept his correspondence and took out a couple to give me. There were two distinct shades, one was brown gray and the other was gray. They both had straight edges. I wondered how large the sheets were? and whether any of the four sides had selvage? I gave him a copy of Country Matters, a series of short stories featuring the shenanigans of Gus Elker, one of Augie’s Sac Prairie characters who manages to regularly get himself into and out of trouble in each of his 6,000+ word stories.

I subsequently met with April Derleth, and discussed the August Derleth Sac Prairie Stamp, and she presented me with an intact sheet of 100 stamps (straight edges on all 4 sides), and then we spent the evening looking through Augie’s stamp collection — a memorable experience. The stamps themselves have an Arabic gum. I have now produced a reprint of this “Cinderella” stamp and this second printing has a PVA gum, and has a lighter gray in colour, and it will be available in reasonable quantities at no charge, to all those individuals who wish to use them on February 24, 2009 on their mail along with regular US postage.

There will also be two series of postcards. The first will feature the front Dustjacket reproduction of each of the four Macabre Quarto Volumes. The second will feature the “Barn in the Meadow” in all four seasons, and the reverse has an extract reproduced from Augie’s journals.

And finally, the header that started this post featuring train is one of the Frank Utpatel’s woodcuts that that Augie regularly used on his stationary. I have seen many different varieties over the years while viewing his correspondence, and somebody should really collect them, and I do believe that Dan Boulden already is. Frank Utpatel illustrated many of Arkham House’s books and covers over the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s. It is a curious irony that many of these dustjackets in fine condition are worth many times the price of the books themselves. This is truly a quaint variegation of book collecting obsession as opposed to plain and simple addiction to book reading!

"The Harness Shop" by Frank Utpatel

The Evolution of The Macabre Quarto

In the beginning it was Bob Weinberg’s idea, and we discussed it in his living room away back in 1999 when I showed him In Lovecraft’s Shadow. He wanted to a short volume of August Derleth’s Best Short Stories. He noted that much his weird fiction had been written to make a living, but now and then he managed a superb story, and these were all buried in the pile of 100’s of stories that had been published in various volumes by Arkham House over the years. Bob enlisted Stephan Dziemianowicz to assist him in making a selection. I sent Stefan a hard copy printout of ALL of Derleth’s Weird Short Fiction, some 1200 folio pages arranged chronically by first publication date. Once Stefan had made a selection of “The Best of,” I suggested that he go on to select a couple of other collections of sub-genre writing. Stefan obliged by selecting an additional collection of Ghost Stories, Black Magic and Occult Stories and finally Monster Stories. I next assembled all four collections, and sent them along to Rodney Schroeter for a final proof reading. At the Walden West Festival in 2008, I invited David Drake to write an Introduction to one of the volumes, and he accepted. I subsequently invited Ramsey Campbell and Brian Lumley to contribute commentaries to the other two volumes. All three are commercially successful authors. All three were significantly influenced by August Derleth as young men, and all owe him a debt of gratitude which they express in their commentaries in their own unique way.

The titles of the volumes changed at the suggestion of the contributors,as well as the cover art, and finally four previous covers from Weird Tales were used and supplied by Robert Weinberg.

When I was discussing this “The Best of Derleth” project with April Derleth and Kay Price back in the fall of 2006, April offered to pay me a fee of $1500 to act as the Editor for this project, which I emphatically declined saying, I couldn’t accept a fee from Arkham House to edit a collection of stories by Arkham’s founder, her father. April suggested that the book should be published in 2009; but I disagreed, wanting to get the project done in 2007, at the latest 2008. But circumstances have dictated an alternate solition and these four volumes will now be published on February 24, 2009 which is in fact the 100th Anniversary of Derleth’s birth in Sauk City.

At the same meeting the three of discussed whether the project should appear under the Arkham House Logo or The Logo of the August Derleth Society — a flying Hawk. Rather than make a choice, April suggested the project should appear with both logos on the title page, and that’s why there are two instead of one logo on the title page.

The four front jackets as they will be published are illustrated below, and more details can be found at my website www.batteredbox.com. There were many earlier version with different cover illustrations and titles. The edition of each volume will be limited to 1000. The books will be available  after February  24, 2009 from The August Derleth Society or from my website, and the price is US$30.00 or Can$36.00 each.