I've made it an annual tradition to take the end of the year/new year season to give a retrospective on my life as a bibliophile, mostly sharing my enthusiasm for my reading projects and using the term "agonies" ironically. This year, there was no shortage of real agony, so I'll take a moment to explain why.

I started 2023 with getting laid off from my job. Of course, this created no small amount panic and I started to address the issue. The sense of depression was immediate and the subsequent feeling of being a worthless castaway still lingers. 2 weeks later, I found a new job but it paid less. This isn't to say that I'm ungrateful. I'm grateful to this day that I found that job and it gave me some much-needed experience in my field. On the other hand, we couldn't pay our bills on my income alone, so my wife found a part-time job.

Flashforward a few months and my wife is pregnant. This was planned but, as always, we never quite feel ready for the news, so there is a little unplanned undertone to it. I started looking for a better job so I can pay the bills more fully. Fun, huh? The knots in my stomach took on a Gordian strength. This year was an easy match for last year's anxiety and I was fighting an ulcer then.

Our savings were dwindling, and my publishing company MonteHouse was not bringing in much money. One of our major efforts to market our stuff was taking part in the local farmer's market. Most of the time, it felt pointless, but we met some nice people and had a few customers. People generally want to buy food or crafty things at these places, not books.

To supplement the company's income, I did the unthinkable. I started selling my rare hardcovers and paperbacks. This included some of my best Arkham House books, my collection of Worse Things Waiting by Manly Wade Wellman, and The Complete John Thunstone by Wellman, published by Haffner Press, having been out of print for several years. I never in my adult life felt less like a bookman. On one side, I felt like I was cutting myself off from old friends and turning my back on my principles, on the other, we simply needed the money. I made a decent profit considering how much I actually sold. Just a few dozen. It wasn't the end of the world. I got the paperback reprint of Worse Things Waiting and that eases the pain.

I'm still breathing but it hurt like hell to part with these volumes. I also found the job I was looking for and finances aren't as scary as they were. Things turned out fine, but I can't honestly say it was a good year. It was a difficult time that forced me to re-examine my life choices for the thousandth time. My anxiety tells me to wait for the next shoe to drop, although I try to keep those feelings in check. Not everything turns into disaster.

Life is hard but there are books. The many others I didn't sell. At the beginning of the year, I was divided on where to devote my attention reading-wise. My Fawcett Gold Medal project with at least a hundred titles waiting to be read or my pulp reprints, numbering in the . . . I don't care to mention how many. It was like God spoke to me in my dilemma and said, "THOU SHALT PULP!!!!!" It was a good idea. Pulps are an escape from reality while noir fiction isn't. With pulps, I could go on an adventure with my pal The Shadow and I needed the escape. I've become buddies with Doc Savage lately. Of course, I would eventually delve into my Fawcetts, but not without re-reading the works of my cowboy soul-brother Robert E. Howard. I also read some Seabury Quinn, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Arthur J. Burks, and Thorp McClusky. The horror reprints from Armchair Fiction made this possible and I was able to reunite with Weird Tales and it's writers that made me fall in love with pulp in the first place.

I also got into some new pulp, particularly the work of Teel James Glenn including his short story collection Chronicles of the Skullmask: Revenge is Justice. This didn't feature a pulp hero, but an arcane object, a mask the comes into the hands of people who have been deeply wronged by the evils of the world and the mask gives them the knowledge and skill to take revenge. This book is rich in media adaptation potential, and I loved every violent minute of it. Glenn has also written many other works, including short stories of his character Dr. Shadows, and a series of novels featuring Robert E. Howard in an alternate history/fantasy/horror setting. Instead of taking his own life, this version of Howard chose to live and travel the world and faces monsters along the way. It starts with A Cowboy in Carpathia which is highly entertaining while treating Howard with respect. You can find Mr. Glenn's work at www.theurbanswashbuckler.com He's also an actor, stuntman, swordsman, and a real gentleman.

Around May, I was ready to take a dive back into Fawcett, with one of first being Madball by Fredric Brown, a notable and gripping mystery novel that involved a bank robbery with the money being hid at a carnival. I also took a detour and read The Lenient Beast by Brown, a police procedural featuring an unusual serial killer. Other excellent Fawcett novels include Whom Gods Destroy by Clifton Adams, Runaway Black by Ed McBain, and Cry Me a Killer by Garrity. I also can't leave out Night Squad by David Goodis, one of his sunnier crime novels. On the horror end of Fawcett, I read The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed by Charles Runyon, a thrilling and relentless serial killer novel. Fawcett also reprinted The first Pan Book of Horror Stories, which I took a dip into. It was more practical to get a reprint instead of the Fawcett edition, however.

It pains me to say that my reading lately has focused significantly less on horror. Around 2010, I read nothing but horror. It became a compulsion but as the years passed, I saw that I was limiting myself and becoming too wrapped up in one of thing leaves you a little warped. Gradually, I expanded into crime and mystery, as well as non-fiction, pulp heroes, rock and roll history, even westerns, and the occasional "literary" work. I haven't dropped horror. Not at all.

I recently came up with a concept for a weird western, which I think I can turn into a new pulp series. On that note, one of the highlights for this year is the fact that I published my first work of fiction, Dreambreaker and Other Horror Stories. I have some exciting things in the works for this collection and hope to update you on that in a few months. If you would like to sample my collection, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6PmexqKPdg for an audio version of the title story, read by Ian Gordon at Horrorbabble.

I said that this year wasn't a good one, but it wasn't a bad one either. I'm not even sure if I can call it Meh even though a share of mediocre things have occurred, such as the fact that although some bills were late, my family has been able to keep paying them. Not ahead but still in the game. Maybe the noteworthy part of this is that we keep going. Agony? Some of life can be, but books are the means of easing the pain, darkness, and stress that life has to throw at us.

Written by Nicholas Montelongo

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