Hi,all. I'm back in FL again and can FINALLY report that I'm done with D.R. I think it's pretty cool and certainly ranks high on the grossness scale. Now I'm taking a few days off to refill the tank and will then start the Header 3 novel, which I hope you will find, via the scenario, something a little fresher than what you might expect. As for D.R. I'm waiting for the final proofing, then I send it in. I'll let you know about release date when I'm informed.

Pasted below is a non-spoiler excerpt which I hope you get a kick out of.

Gonna drink tonight! And I hope you all have a happy Easter!

Best,
Edward Lee

EXCERPT

Though many bridges of dubious safety existed in Dunwich, the one worthy of the most remark was the covered, log-spanned bridge just beyond Dean’s Corners. If anything of a “landmark” might be referred to in that sordid little carbuncle of a village, this was it. The bridge extended across a more than meager brook which joined the Miskatonic a mile downstream, just as it canted away from the precipitous Round Mountain. In 1694, before the first incarnation of the bridge had been constructed, the men of the settlement’s earliest colonists had poisoned the water with carrion and Paris Green, knowing that said water flowed directly through the camp of the aboriginal Pocumtuck Indians, sickening and/or killing scores of squaws and infants, as the adult male contingent of the tribe was out on the hunt. In 1701, the first bridge was built, the same year that the village’s original designation, “New Dunnich,” had been changed boldly to Dunwich, a more direct reference to a legend-cursed hamlet in south eastern England (which had had a fierce repute for black magic and children gone missing) before it was ordered razed in the late sixteenth century by a Court of the Oyer and Terminer; but the accuracy of this information is open to debate. Another questionable rumor persisted as well (regarding the bridge itself, in fact): that the larch logs which comprised its first crossing platform had come from a not-far-off woodland in which still more of the Pocumtucks had been slaughtered via an ambush perpetrated by the next generation of Dunwich men, in 1719. Several of the comeliest squaws had been abducted, lashed to the trees of this wood, and barbarously tortured (with much attention paid to their sexual parts), such that their screams had traveled with sufficient tenor; hence, the “bait” of the “trap” had been set. When the warriors had embarked on what they perceived as a rescue, the Dunwich militia had been waiting with flintlocks, pitch and torches, and blunderbusses. This massacre had effectuated the extinction of the Pocumtuck tribe in His Majesty’s Colony of the Massachusetts-Bay.
The fact that, in after-years, more than a few Dunwichers had hanged themselves from the coupling spikes of the bridge gave further fuel to the legend of its provenance. It was beneath this bridge that the Reverend Abijah Hoadley had performed the town’s first Congregational christening, in 1746; and in the same water, a year later, that the reverend himself had been drowned quite protractedly. His body, after much violent molestation, had then been fed to swine by what some regarded as the local “coven,” presided over by one Silas Ephriam Whateley, a darkly prominent ancestor to Wilbur, and lineal progenitor of those of the Whateley Clan who would choose occultism, incest, and fervid isolation over Puritan society; and Lammas Night, Roodmas, and All Hallows Even over Easter, Advent, and the Yule. During the hours of darkness, a fair number of girls, women, and, lo, even a few boys had been raped on the bridge; and more than seldom had been the time when backwater strumpets (such as Sary) had plied the enterprises of their trade, only to receive, as the goes the adage, a bit “more than they bargained for.” Persons had been murdered on this bridge as well, by the highwaymen of olden times and occasional transients afflicted by malignancies of the brain. Three men had been gelded on the bridge; and one woman, the wife of a bean farmer named Saltonstall, had been “...confront’d b’fore her, while yet behind, and tooke against her Will unto ye Bridge which be know’d as ye Deane’s Corners Bridge, and then promptlie and with overmuch Violence strip’d of all Garment, and thereby forc’d unto Carnal Knowledge with more than severall Men not recognizable to her; where next, she be held down whilst severall barking curs be brung to this most Hideous Scene which then did procede, likewise, to engage in Unnaturall Consorte most offensive to God and Abominable in the uttermost to Scripture, upon much Goading and Urging, whilst ye Divellish Perpetrators did Hoot, and did make Exclamations of Laughter, and did clappe their Hands in Plutonian Glee; whereupon–horrid to convey!–this Pore Woman, devout’d Servant of God, be by Knife divorc’d of her Naturall Bosom and then–Lord, protect us!–scalp’d in ye Manner of ye Savages, (yet not by Savages so did she spake), not of any Hair upon ye Crown of her Head but yet of her most Privat Hair, which be then Made Away With amid Laughter and Revell worthie of Lucifer ye Morning Star himself,” asserted the criminal complaint filed with the Scrivener and Clerk of the High-Sheriff. The victim, whose name was Charity Saltonstall, survived for more than a year after the excruciating crime, well long enough to bear the child wrought by the rape, a female-child who would be given the name Melany. Melany, later at the tender age of thirteen, would step onto the bridge and cut her own throat from one jaw-corner to the other, but only after setting fire to the schoolhouse, in which five of her classmates perished. Her teacher perished as well, a Mr. Peaslee, whom diary entries would posthumously reveal to have been sexually seduced by Melany for several years.
Sundry other mutilations, emasculations, disfigurements, and less precise mayhem had also taken place on or in vicinity to the bridge, most with no motives whatever; and during the times of the witch-panics, a drove of women (most of whom were perfectly innocent) had been first branded with Our Savior’s mark upon the bosom and the privates, and then dunked into the rushing water below, urged to confess. Given all of this, the perpetual hearthside whispers of grandams was no wonder: that the bridge and its surrounding wood was ghoulishly and indelibly haunted.

I love you.

Awesome news, cant wait to get my greedy little hands on it. Have a safe and Happy Easter!!!

Congrats Lee! Too bad I can't celebrate with you with sharing a few drinks. Did you get my last email? Cheers to you! Bob

Yes,Bob, I did. My Easter, btw, involved TOO MUCH alcohol. I need to remind myself that I'm no spring chicken anymore. This is how drunk I was: I tipped a hot barmaid 20 buchs to show me half a boob.

Dang! For that much money she should've showed me the whole thing! At any rate, one of these dates I'll make an effort to be less of an a-hole in public.

Later!

Edward Lee

That is hilarious!!! $20 for half a tit? HAHAHA you crack me up. Bob

$20! And all you got was half a teet... Ed, you should have at least gotten a lap dance!

As an alternative for twenty bucks I'll show you my tits... but you'd indubitably regret it, drunk or not

Great to hear your finished and getting ready to start on Header 3. I'm definitely excited for this and right now i'm debating whether or not to change my order for witch water from the numbered edition to the lettered one. I'm in school right now and so not only do I get the GI Bill but I should get a loan refund for my summer classes so this will free up lots of money. Also my birthday is in july so either it will be an early b-day present or a belated one. Maybe I can get my girlfriend to pitch in a little for it.

~Tony Beals

_________________
"What?Is man merely a mistake of God's?Or is God merely a mistake of man's?"-Frederick Nietzsche

Travis:thanks for the offer but I'll have to pass! Big T: I can't think of a BETTER birthday present than an Edward Lee deluxe! Thanks, both of you, for your support!

Edward Lee