The Weird Cat Explores the Elusive Connection Between Cats, Humans, and the Supernatural World

WordCrafts Press is pleased to announce the October 18, 2023, release date of the highly anticipated new anthology, The Weird Cat. The new project, which was edited by Katherine Kerestman and S. T. Joshi and features more than three dozen short stories, poems, and essays by classic and contemporary masters of the craft, is already generating excitement among fans and industry insiders alike. The title debuted at Number 1 on Amazon.com’s Hot New Releases in Classic Short Stories chart and at Number 1 in Hot New Releases in Classic Fiction Anthologies and Collections. The Weird Cat also claimed the Number 5 spot on the Hot New Releases in Horror Anthology category.

“The Weird Cat is an anthology penned by cat-loving horror writers, who cherish the mystery and independence of the cat,” said editor Katherine Kerestman. “Cats have their own agenda and seem to possess an uncanny awareness of a cosmic reality not accessible to ourselves. Like H. P. Lovecraft, the authors of this present volume have come together to celebrate the peerless paradoxes which characterize our beloved Felix Catus, with a notable absence of specieistic condescension.”

From the book:

A well-told horror story has much in common with your own cherished puss. Kitty jumps upon your lap and purrs, and you turn the page of your book.
Pray, take heed! Some dire thing is afoot! On your lap, Kitty stirs, her ears lifting into two small velvet tents. She raises her chin, stares expectantly into the gloom beyond the aura of the reading lamp, gazes at something which you cannot see! Her silken hairs begin to fluff, signaling her unease. Swiftly, Kitty moves from your lap onto the arm of your chair, where, channeling Bastet, she strikes an Egyptian-cat pose, her expectant stance and twitching whiskers communicating unseen peril.

The hairs on your neck begin to rise in sympathy. As you doggedly continue reading your book, you cast frequent glances at your cat: Kitty provides you with a sixth sense which you lack, a window into the unseen and the uncanny. You are mindful that cats dwell in a larger world than our own, the gulfs and abysses of which we can obtain but a shadowy glimpse, through their eyes.

In The Weird Cat you delve into that larger realm through short stories, poems, and essays by masters of the craft including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary A. Turzillo, Christina Sng, Darrell Schweitzer, and more than two dozen other contemporary and classic authors. Edited by Katherine Kerestman and S. T. Joshi.

About the Authors

Katherine Kerestman is the author of Lethal (PsychoToxin Press, 2023) and Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling around Haunted Towers, Crumbling Castles, and Ghoulish Graveyards (WordCrafts Press, 2020). Her Lovecraftian and Gothic works have been featured in Black Wings VII, Penumbra, Journ-E, Spectral Realms, and The Little Book of Cursed Dolls (Media Macabre, 2023). Katherine is wild about Dark Shadows and Twin Peaks and has been seen cavorting in the graveyards of Salem on Halloween. You can keep up with her at www.creepycatlair.com.

S. T. Joshi is the author of The Weird Tale (1990), H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (1990), and Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction (2012). He has prepared corrected editions of H. P. Lovecraft’s work for Arkham House and annotated editions of Lovecraft’s stories for Penguin Classics. His exhaustive biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), was expanded as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010). He has edited the anthologies American Supernatural Tales (Penguin, 2007), A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (Centipede Press, 2013), The Madness of Cthulhu (Titan Books, 2014), and the ongoing Black Wings series (PS Publishing, 2010f.). Joshi has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the International Horror Guild Award.