The Collector, the first Seeling Night story, was written for Staff Infection, a collection of art, essays, and fiction contributed by the staff at Cody’s Books. The story was not completed by the submission deadline, but the editor promised to include it an upcoming fall 2006 edition. Before that issue was compiled, Cody’s Books went through an extensive restructuring in a failed attempt to save the business.
The Collector was inspired by a local news story: a woman, remodeling her home, discovered a human skull behind a wall. To that frame work the author added Cabal, a waspish antiquarian, Edward Hare a retiring bookseller, and Hare’s dusty and cramped bookstore.
In 2007 he created a website for a half-dozen additional stories about Cabal and the macabre. In trying to find a name for that first collection, he remembered a quote from the Scottish Play that fit the spirit of things: “Come, seeling night… “
A self-published collection of short stories Seeling Night: A Psychomanteum followed in 2017. It included, Arthur Leach, a version of the story written for Staff Infection, a decade after missing his deadline.
The Stories
The Seeling Night stories come from the author’s formative period working at Holmes Book Company in downtown Oakland. The eighty year old Holmes building had a quickly validated reputation for paranormal activity. Poltergeist phenomena and apparitions became something to accommodate into his experience.
A chance discovery of Arthur Machen’s The Three Impostors in a discard bin lead the author away from writing science fiction and into the field of terror and suspense. The Great God Pan followed, as did the work of M.R. James, William Hope Hodgson, Algernon Blackwood, and Robert Aickman.
The Seeling Night stories are based on actual events, often from the author’s experiance, rather than contrived plots. The central character is Cabal, an antiquarian book collector and seller. Fierce, lofty, with a serrated wit and sulphuric temper, only incidentally heroic. These qualities serve him, and the reader, as they navigate an urban world of ghosts and demons.
Who is behind this?
Lemuel Caleb Gonzalez lives and writes in Oakland, California. Along with Amity Armstrong he co-hosts two podcasts: The Latecomers, where the two review popular television and movies well after the general audience has moved on, and Without Works an exploration of the differences in Christianity and its conservative political manifestation.
He has contributed to Marc Damien Lawler’s anthologies, Before You Blow Out the Candle, Before You Blow Out the Candle Book 2, and Grave Encounters: Taphophile Tales and Poems.