Tangled up in Boo? Bob Dylan wants this South African horror press to look at his short stories
Crystal Lake Publishing got an unexpected shout-out from the Nobel winner
Bob Dylan and a g-g-g-ghost! Photo by Gary Miller/Getty Images/Canva
By PJ Grisar October 28, 2024
In breaks on his Never Ending Tour, Bob Dylan has returned to social media to send his regrets to the Buffalo Sabres hockey team for missing a game, recommend an incredibly famous restaurant in New Orleans and, in a new twist for the Nobel laureate, hint at his spooky literary aspirations.
“At the hotel in Frankfurt there was a publishing convention and every room was taken, parties all night,” Dylan posted on the social platform X (formerly Twitter) Oct. 23.
“I was trying to find Crystal Lake Publishing so I could congratulate them on publishing The Great God Pan, one of my favorite books,” Dylan continued. “I thought they might be interested in some of my stories. Unfortunately it was too crowded and I never did find them.”
At the hotel in Frankfurt there was a publishing convention and every room was taken, parties all night. I didn’t know there were so many book publishers in the world. I was trying to find Crystal Lake Publishing so I could congratulate them on publishing The Great God Pan, one…
— Bob Dylan (@bobdylan) October 23, 2024
As always, Dylan speaks, the world listens. It came as quite the October surprise for Crystal Lake, a Bloemfontein, South Africa-based press specializing in dark fiction and horror whose current titles include an anthology called Dastardly Damsels and Blood and Bullets: A Trio of Western Horror Novellas. (Yes, they also published a “revamped” edition of Machen’s 1894 Great God Pan, about a sinister woman who seems to be driving powerful men to suicide.)
“We had literary agents in Frankfurt representing our books, so we weren’t there in person,” Crystal Lake’s founder and CEO Joe Mynhardt said in an email.
Mynhardt said that, since the Dylan post, they’d spent a few days tracking down the songwriter and his team.
“It’s my understanding that they now have our contact info, so fingers crossed,” Mynhardt wrote in his email Saturday.
While Dylan has previously published poetry, the first part of his memoirs and most recently his 2022 book The Philosophy of Modern Song, it remains to be seen what scary stories he may have in his drawer. Less of a mystery is what he may have admired in Machen’s novella — a tale of sex, pagan gods and death. Somehow this all seems very on brand, even if it’s lacking in the Americana department (Machen was Welsh, like another great poet named Dylan).
Dylan already has some creepy bangers in his catalogue like “Man with the Long Black Cloak,” “Ballad of a Thin Man” and his JFK murder ballad “Murder Most Foul,” if you were looking for a Halloween party playlist to rock out to with some Timothée Chalamet lookalikes in A Complete Unknown mode.
“Naturally, we’re very interested in anything Bob has to say,” Mynhardt said. “We live for great stories.”
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