Having been involved with excavating what lingers of the shredded masculine social mind peculiar to my own Indo-European heritage I have stumbled for five years now among the literary ruins of my forefathers’ culture. One after another have I encountered in the fiction, poetry and analysis of these long gone men, insights into the bewildering present form of our society, as if glimpsed in a dream—a dark dream of the pulp tradition.

Having read history primarily—often with the purpose of providing insights for the writing of historical and science fiction—since age eleven [1974], and imperfectly digesting thousands of books, I have, since 2010, expanded my reading list to include all subjects, with a focus on the obscure, authored by the now dead. This reading list has been expanded by my online readers who have graciously scoured book stores and online archives and forwarded such works for my consideration, asking only that I post a review.

During the very same period I began to receive reviews and impressions of my science-fiction writing as being horror. The subconscious relationship between the fiction and nonfiction input that is my reading list seemed to have a dark warping effect on my prose. My ego bruised by the meddling of my inner archivist, I resolved to sort this out and look more critically into the obscure writings I had been reading for pleasure and context.

Often, upon reading the works of the men listed at the head of this interpretation, I have felt like a half-ignorant boy having entered a cave to discover a ranting wise man within. Finally, upon reading a copy of Oswald Spengler’s The Hour of Decision I encountered a wise man minus the rant, with such a knack for condensed prose that the slight book I had viewed upon the to-be-read stack as a four hour jaunt across another man’s mind’s eye, grew in stature to that of a guidebook—a key—to the works of these other men. To Oswald Spengler—a man who I have sought to learn nothing about, wanting, as a writer, to regard him only through his writings—I owe the inception and title of this book, hoping only that it touches some future mind like his did mine.

A Thousand Years In His Soul is this postmodern horror writer’s interpretation of the works of nine writers from the first half of the 20th Century who believed—to lesser and greater degrees—in what can only be called blood magic. To some, like Junger, his heritage merely provided context for the transcendental aim of the evolved life. To others, such as Howard, his blood served as the very channel through which the triumphs, guilt and melancholies of long perished ancestors were brought into his consciousness. What all nine of these men had in common was the focus on the deconstructing force of truth within an acknowledged tribal construct. These men, to me—some great, some small—amounted to nine white shaman chanting of the gray passing of their world while those around them bawled of its brilliant creation.

This entire book will be posted online. Some of the material—such as reviews of Lovecraft and Howard—already exist on the site and will be updated and tagged for this project in a piecemeal fashion. All of these online serials, both fiction and nonfiction, are intended for print publication. The upper limit on such a self-published book in highly readable 13 point type is 499 pages. When the project nears that length I shall begin wrapping it up, or, as seems increasingly likely, continuing the project in a second volume.