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I know there are some brothermen here who are Ligotti fans so I hope someone here will find this of interest. I hadn't thought about this in quite some time but it was one of the more surreal moments of my life.
It was the summer of 2008 and I had just graduated high school. Ligotti was somewhat more obscure in the mid to late 2000s. He had no mass market paperbacks at the time and a lot of his work was out of print, although he was certainly known among horror fans. This was also before he published TCAHR and true detective plagiarized him. It was sort of hard to find his work then and I had to track down a lot of it on ebay. (Sidenote: I'm glad to see him finally getting some recognition after all these years.)
What was not difficult was finding his phone number, which I did with a Google search. At the time I had just started smoking weed regularly and was still at that stage where you can get stupidly high. I proceeded to call the number and was greeted with an answering machine message. An ominous voice said "You may leave a message if you wish." I recognized that voice from his Current 93 recordings. I left a long rambling message. I can't remember what I said but I invited him to call me back, saved his number as "Thomas Ligotti" and forgot about it.
The next day I was at the beach with my girlfriend at the time when my phone rang. I was not expecting him to return my long rambling call but sure enough "Thomas Ligotti" was calling me.
I have pretty good conversation recall so the following is more or less verbatim:
R: Hello?
L: Hi, this is Thomas Ligotti returning your call.
R: Is this the Thomas Ligotti? The writer?
L: Yes it is. How did you hear of my work?
R: I can't really remember. I think I came across your Wikipedia article somehow years ago.
L: Can you believe I didn't even write that? Someone else wrote a whole Wikipedia article about me.
R: Mr. Ligotti, I just want to tell you your writing has meant a lot to me. I know that's trite but I don't know what else to say.
L: Thanks a lot. That's really kind of you to say. So what else is going on?
R: Um, not a lot really.
L: Where are you?
R: I'm sitting on Revere Beach in Revere, Massachusetts with my girlfriend. She's also a big fan.
L: Tell her I say hello. I once went to Revere Beach as a teenager in the 70s. I ate something called fish balls and then hurled into the Atlantic Ocean.
We talked for longer but those were the highlights. Jeez, I didn't mean for this to go on so long. Hope someone finds it interesting.
It was the summer of 2008 and I had just graduated high school. Ligotti was somewhat more obscure in the mid to late 2000s. He had no mass market paperbacks at the time and a lot of his work was out of print, although he was certainly known among horror fans. This was also before he published TCAHR and true detective plagiarized him. It was sort of hard to find his work then and I had to track down a lot of it on ebay. (Sidenote: I'm glad to see him finally getting some recognition after all these years.)
What was not difficult was finding his phone number, which I did with a Google search. At the time I had just started smoking weed regularly and was still at that stage where you can get stupidly high. I proceeded to call the number and was greeted with an answering machine message. An ominous voice said "You may leave a message if you wish." I recognized that voice from his Current 93 recordings. I left a long rambling message. I can't remember what I said but I invited him to call me back, saved his number as "Thomas Ligotti" and forgot about it.
The next day I was at the beach with my girlfriend at the time when my phone rang. I was not expecting him to return my long rambling call but sure enough "Thomas Ligotti" was calling me.
I have pretty good conversation recall so the following is more or less verbatim:
R: Hello?
L: Hi, this is Thomas Ligotti returning your call.
R: Is this the Thomas Ligotti? The writer?
L: Yes it is. How did you hear of my work?
R: I can't really remember. I think I came across your Wikipedia article somehow years ago.
L: Can you believe I didn't even write that? Someone else wrote a whole Wikipedia article about me.
R: Mr. Ligotti, I just want to tell you your writing has meant a lot to me. I know that's trite but I don't know what else to say.
L: Thanks a lot. That's really kind of you to say. So what else is going on?
R: Um, not a lot really.
L: Where are you?
R: I'm sitting on Revere Beach in Revere, Massachusetts with my girlfriend. She's also a big fan.
L: Tell her I say hello. I once went to Revere Beach as a teenager in the 70s. I ate something called fish balls and then hurled into the Atlantic Ocean.
We talked for longer but those were the highlights. Jeez, I didn't mean for this to go on so long. Hope someone finds it interesting.
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Haha
