I founded House of Moonlight one Saturday morning in May 1981. At least that's how I remember it. (To begin with, House of Moonlight was called House of Moonlight Press, but the 'Press' has long since vanished along the way.)

I named House of Moonlight after the novella of the same name by the American writer August Derleth -- see below.

Previously, I'd started out in science fiction fanzine publishing, with two issues of The Usual, co-edited and published with fellow High Wycombe fan Chris Lewis. This was in the prehistoric days when small-press publishing often meant cutting stencils on a manual typewriter, and then getting someone with a duplicator to do the hard work.

In March 1981 I'd published the first (and only, as it turned out) issue of Not To Be Named, a magazine of fiction, non-fiction, and verse, mainly in the field of supernatural horror. I now regard this as a sort of House of Moonlight publication before that set-up really existed....

On that Saturday morning in May I decided that I would start to publish poetry. Beginning with a small collection of my own work, as I had it easily to hand, House of Moonlight started its life. And now more than twenty years have passed....

Noted horror artist Dave Carson produced a logo. Then I looked for other work to publish.

Two English poets immediately came to mind -- John Francis Haines and Steve Sneyd. I have always considered them to be among the best poets writing in the science fiction / horror / just offbeat field. Thus I am still proud to have been able to publish John's first collection, and to have published both poets in the House of Moonlight Poetry Leaflet series.

Recently, I got the urge to start publishing again. But rather than return to the era of typewriters and stencils, or electric typewriters and photocopiers, I thought that publishing on the Web was the thing to do.

So, House of Moonlight returns to publishing after a gap of several years, and twenty years on from when it first started. Although I am older, I don't know if I'm any wiser -- but now as then, I intend to publish poetry  that I like. That's all. To begin with, I will reprint some of my favourites amongst past publications -- although I never published anything that I wasn't proud to, and would defend.

Publication by House of Moonlight is by invitation and/or whim only.

This is my first attempt at a website, and I hope that you enjoy its contents! No doubt it will improve in production quality as I get more practice. Those who remember the old HoM printed publications will know that they made no pretence to anything other than being cheap and cheerful, and wanting to present fantastic poetry of the fantastic. The website won't be any different. Any constructive comments will be welcomed! Please email me.

August Derleth's novella The House of Moonlight was first published in 1953, in a limited edition from The Prairie Press. This haunting and hypnotic story concerns the musician Joel Merrihew, and his return to Sac Prairie under some sort of cloud that is not only to do with his self-perceived imperfections as a creative artist.

Derleth tells the story through the eyes of the adolescent Steve Grendon, an alter ego character that he used in many stories and novels. These include one of Derleth's best novels (and the author's favourite) Evening in Spring (1941) as well as his most ambitious and interesting, but most flawed, novel The Shield of the Valiant (1945).

Joel and Steve form a sort of friendship, as they are often brought together through the friendship of Joel's widowed mother with Steve's grandfather, the retired village doctor, Jasper Grendon. It soon becomes clear, to both the wise Dr Grendon, and his young but highly observant grandson, that Joel is fighting an intense mental and psychical battle for his very self. This aspect of the story mirrors many of Derleth's own thoughts about the relationships between artist and his world and its inhabitants, and the relationships that an artist can have with other people that threaten or enhance his art.

Joel has returned home to try to resolve the conflicts inside himself. It soon becomes obvious that only one ending is possible -- and it is inevitable. Derleth's method of telling the story mainly in the words of Joel Merrihew and Dr Grendon, but through the eyes of Steve Grendon, gives The House of Moonlight the moody aura of darkness and mystery, of things in the background and far away, nothing ever quite finished and laid to rest, that it needs, to take the story almost out of the idyllic Wisconsin setting that Derleth gave it, and put it into a twilight zone of the mind, that is recognisable and yet like nowhere.

"The House of Moonlight" was reprinted in the collection Wisconsin in Their Bones (1961). It is currently available in the collection Return to Sac Prairie (1996). This last collection also contains the novel Linda Frayne, never before published in book form.

The house is still there, its stone walls aged in the sunlight of the years, yellowed where it stands on top of the highest of the moraine hills across the blue Wisconsin, east of Sac Prairie. It is closed now; it has been closed for a long time; its sightless windows are like a wall separating past time from this....

So go ahead -- enter and get reading!