William Scott Home

At age 17, Home had his first work published in a national magazine. The fantasy piece, published in Sir! under the "True Stories" heading, centered on an imagined visit to a snake handler's ceremony.[3] While he had a number of mainstream poems printed in "little magazines" during high school years, it was not until the publication of his story, "The Fruits of Yebo's Sins", in Weirdbook in 1971 that he found his niche.[4] Home would publish repeatedly with Weirdbook and its editor/publisher W. Paul Ganley for the next decade.

Soon after his first publication in Weirdbook, other horror fiction-themed magazines began printing his stories as well.[5] In 1972, both his story "Dull Scavengers Wax Crafty" and an essay were published in Meade and Penny Frierson's epochal HPL, a tribute to H. P. Lovecraft.[6] His 1977 Weirdbook story "Deadlier at Hearth than Hunt"[7] was not only published several times in English, but also as an Italian translation (1995).

In 1977 Ganley published a collection of Home's short stories, Hollow Faces, Merciless Moons,[8] illustrated by fantasy art legend Steven E. Fabian. One story, "A Cobweb of Pulsing Veins", was chosen for The Year's Best Horror Stories, Series VI.[9] In 1986 Home was mentioned twice in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural.[10]

Home's published short fiction includes:

In 1976, Home's essay "Eine Kleine Machen-Musik" was published in the Lovecraft fanzine Nyctalops, and in 1983 he contributed "The Rose Beyond the Thunders and the Whirlpools" to A. Reynolds Morse's massive volume Shiel in Diverse Hands: A Collection of Essays on M.P. Shiel.[11] His paper, "The Lovecraft 'Books': Some Addenda and Corrigenda" (originally published in 1966 in August Derleth's The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces)[12] was translated into French and published in the prestigious Cahiers L'Herne[13] in 1969. In 1987, Thomas Ligotti included Home's essay "The Horror Theme after H. P. Lovecraft" (first published in HLP) in the Gale Research compilation Twentieth Century Literary Criticism.[14]

Home's poetry appeared regularly in Weirdbook and Ganley's Amanita Brandy (starting with issue No. 1).[15] In the early 1980s, John D. Squires made a photocopy booklet of his own favorites from among Homes's poems, including Onyx and Bloodstone and The Ransom of Enchanted Castles; copies of the informal collection still show up on the book market now and then.[16] In 1985, Randy Everts of The Strange Company published two collections of Home's original verse: Black Diamond Gates,[17] pieces reflecting the 1200-1600 AD era of magic and experimental science; and Stain of Moonlight,[18] which offers more general poems.

French was the first of several languages Home translated into English, beginning with Jose-Maria de Heredia's French sonnets "Fuite de Centaures" ("Flight of the Centaurs"), published in Flame. By the early 1980s, small magazines, such as Nightshade,[19] were publishing Home's translations from French, Spanish and Portuguese.

In addition to his fiction writing, through the 1970s and 1980s, Home produced a large number of biological and anthropological writings, some book-length.[20] His 50-page study, The Chilkoot and Chilkat: A Capsule History, encompassed forty years of research into the Tlinkit history of the Upper Lynn Canal and Glacier Bay in Alaska.[21]