W. H. Pugmire

Pugmire was born on May 3, 1951, to a father active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS church) and a Jewish mother. Pugmire grew up in Seattle. Pugmire attended Franklin High School, where he said he was "a wimpy wee fag" who got beaten up a lot. To escape what he called a rough childhood, Pugmire embraced "weird, creepy sci-fi stories" like The Twilight Zone TV show. The character was based on the look of Lon Chaney's vampire in London After Midnight and Pugmire played the role into the 1970s. Issue #69 of Forrest J Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland featured a dedication to Pugmire in his 'Count Pugsly' guise. In the documentary film The AckerMonster Chronicles!, Pugmire described how he was influenced by Ackerman's magazine and showed the audience the issue in which his photo appeared. Following one year in college, he served as a missionary for the LDS church in Omagh, Northern Ireland for eighteen months, where he corresponded with horror writer Robert Bloch and first began writing fiction. It was also in Northern Ireland that Pugmire discovered a paperback of Lovecraft's stories and was immediately captivated. After returning from his mission in 1973, Pugmire came out as gay to the church, was given psychiatric treatment, and requested excommunication, which lasted for about 25 years. In the early 2000s, he reconnected with the church and was rebaptized, telling the church's leadership that he would be a "totally queer Mormon, but celibate." For many years Pugmire worked various jobs in cafés owned by old-time punk rockers, who would let him "dress in my Boy George makeup and mini-skirts as I bussed tables and washed dishes." In March 1995, Pugmire's long-time lover, Todd, died in his arms from a heroin overdose. In the early 2000s he became the live-in caregiver for his mother, who was an invalid due to epilepsy and dementia. == Writing ==

Pugmire first began writing fiction during his Mormon mission in Northern Ireland, Returning to Seattle, he became a figure in the local punk rock scene and launched an influential zine, Punk Lust, in April 1981. Called "one of the more interesting characters in the history of early 1980s punk," Pugmire filled the zine with his own gothic and grotesque drawings. Many of Pugmire's stories directly reference "Lovecraftian" elements (especially Nyarlathotep). A self-described "obsessed writer of Lovecraft horror", his stated goal was to "dwell forevermore within Lovecraft's titan shadow", claiming that "being Lovecraftian is my identity as an artist". When Pugmire visited Lovecraft's birthplace of Providence, Rhode Island, "he walked the streets from College Hill to Federal Hill with a diary in hand, scratching impressions as he went." Pugmire used these notes in his book Bohemians of Sesqua Valley. Pugmire set many of his stories in the Sesqua Valley, a fictional location in the Pacific Northwest of the United States which for him served the same purpose as the fictional Arkham / Dunwich / Innsmouth nexus did for Lovecraft, or the Severn Valley for Ramsey Campbell. == Critical response ==

Pugmire's writings have been described as a "love letter to Lovecraft" around which he constructed his own universe. Pugmire's fiction has also been described as embracing the gothic with a modern sensibility, not as a look or a style but as "an idea that cut against the naive American faith that the past was absolutely past." Writing for Weird Fiction Review, Bobby Derie stated that Pugmire "wrote Lovecraftian fiction without the formulaic trappings of the mythos, wrapped in a sensuous prose and characters with easy, fluid sexuality". Issue 28 of The Lovecraft eZine was devoted to Pugmire—"one of our greatest Lovecraftian writers"—with tributes from S. T. Joshi, Joseph S. Pulver Sr., and others; in it, Lovecraftian author and editor Robert M. Price described Pugmire as "the Oscar Wilde of our time ... the most revered and beloved figure in the Lovecraftian movement today." and a writer who "puts forth a new baroque masterpiece every other year". Nick Mamatas, in a 2009 interview, stated that Pugmire and Thomas Ligotti were "the best Lovecraftians today". Silvia Moreno-Garcia, in a Washington Post review article, spoke of Pugmire's "decadent, lush prose". S. T. Joshi described Pugmire's writing style as "richly evocative", writing in his scholarly analysis of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos, that Pugmire's work contains "some of the richest veins of neo-Lovecraftian horror seen in recent years." However, Joshi has been more critical of Pugmire's nonfiction writing, proclaiming "no one takes him seriously as a critic." ''Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, in their review of Sesqua Valley and Other Haunts'', stated that "Pugmire's devotion to his sources transcends mere pastiche, and his style is neither overwrought nor too sparse." Publishers Weekly, reviewing Uncommon Places: A Collection of Exquisites, said that readers "with an appetite for the weird and the decadent will find Pugmire's work a rich confection." The site's review of Monstrous Aftermath: Stories in the Lovecraft Tradition, stated that "horror fans fond of baroque prose" should enjoy the collection, noting "a knack for injecting gallows humor", but adding that those "looking for memorable plots and vivid characterizations ... will have to look elsewhere." Fantasy Magazine's review of The Weird Inhabitants of Sesqua Valley, while observing "the love-it-or-hate-it nature of even the best Lovecraftian style", noted that there were "many pleasures to be had" in the collection of "surprisingly humanistic" tales. The New York Review of Science Fiction's review of The Tangled Muse stated that Pugmire's writing revealed "a mastery of language and vocabulary that brings to mind the work of Clark Ashton Smith", noting a "distinct homoerotic theme or undercurrent that is neither gratuitous nor inconsistent but rather genuine and often central to characterization and storytelling." ==Bibliography==