Happy New Year to anyone reading this! Here are a few updates.

My book on anomalous and paranormal music, Music from Elsewhere, is now slated to be published by Strange Attractor Books in May. Here’s hoping there are no further delays…

I was invited to give a presentation of this material in February, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, in conjunction with an exhibit on art and the occult curated by Robert Cozzolino. Given the worsening pandemic and the apparent collapse of the airline industry, I assume it will take place over Zoom.

My new album of songs, It All Went Pfft, is now finished, and I hope to get it up on Bandcamp soon. Brian Dewan did the recording, although I’m also including a few tracks recorded several years ago with Doug Roesch.

And I’ve started work on an album of my instrumental music, to be called An Afternoon in the Arboretum.

My next translation of Alphonse Allais for Black Scat Books will be his classic collection Loves, Delights, and Organs: Amours, délices et orgues, named after the three words in French that are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural.

Another book for Black Scat is also planned for later this year: Vanity Fare, an anthology of memorable oddities from the vanity press.

The next issue of Black Scat Review will include my short story “The Potato Farm.” You can read a teaser here.

And let’s hope 2022 is better than last year…

(Posted by Doug Skinner)