Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar

Neil Gaiman’s World Fantasy Award nominated short story SHOGGOTH’S OLD PECULIAR will be published as a limited-edition chapbook with a new full color cover and 12 full-page interior illustrations by Jouni Koponen.

Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar is a very funny, somewhat scary story about what a young American Tourist encounters when he fetches up for the night in the Lovecraftian town of Innsmouth. The original illustrations combine horror and humour in equal measure.

Neil Gaiman is the award-winning writer of the epic comic series SANDMAN, and New York Times Best Sellers AMERICAN GODS, ENDLESS NIGHTS and CORALINE. “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar” appears in his 1998 short fiction collection SMOKE AND MIRRORS and was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. He is currently working on his new novel, ANANSI BOYS.

Jouni Koponen is a graphic designer and illustrator living in Henlinna, Finland, with his wife and child. Koponen has contributed work to several Finnish books, magazines, and newspapers, but SHOGGOTH’S OLD PECULIAR is his first internationally published work.

Koponen began work on SHOGGOTH’S OLD PECULIAR as an artistic exercise for his own amusement. Koponen, in Finland, sent Gaiman a web-link to his illustrations, and Gaiman, impressed, passed it on to Greg Ketter at DreamHaven Books.

Ketter immediately realised that what Jouni had done would
make an excellent chapbook. DreamHaven Books has previously published Gaiman’s short stories SNOW GLASS APPLES and ON CATS AND DOGS as limited edition chapbooks.

The SHOGGOTH’S OLD PECULIAR chapbook, which will be limited to a print run of 5000 copies, will be launched on November 12th, 2004. Initially the book will be made available only to members of Fiddler’s Green, the Sandman convention being held in Minneapolis November 12th — 14th, 2004 (http://www.fiddlersgreencon.org). Remaining copies of SHOGGOTH’S OLD PECULIAR will be available to the public through DreamHaven Books following the convention.

As with previous DreamHaven Gaiman chapbooks, a portion of
the profits will benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
(http://www.cbldf.org).

SHOGGOTH’S OLD PECULIAR
44 pages, 12 illustrations, 1 full-colour wraparound cover