About the Blog
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​Hi, folks. I’m Bill Gillard, author of Psycho Century (University Press of Mississippi, October 2026) a literary biography of Robert Bloch. Some friends and I last year did a slow walk through HP Lovecraft’s stories. It was a fun ride from chronological start to finish of HPL’s career. It wasn’t exactly literary criticism, although two of us are university professors of English. It allowed us to bring both our careful reading eye as well as personal perspectives as readers and thinkers to the project. We ended up with a document of a little more than a year of our lives through the lens of HPL’s majestic work.

So then I thought, well, if HPL’s several dozen stories were fun, what would happen if I read Bloch’s entire catalogue in chronological order by publication date and blogged about it?

I have read a ton of Bloch, especially when I was writing Psycho Century, but I have not captured impressions of most of the stories I have read. Only a few of the hundreds made it into my literary biography. Not only that, but I am hopeful that this project might result in a useful resource for future researchers on Bloch’s writing. 

Although I gave him every opportunity, Jim Nemeth did nothing to talk me out of this crazy project, and so here we are.  I am aiming to complete two stories per week and write about them. I’ll get a little bit ahead with stories and maybe fall behind a little bit with the novels. I’ll also write about the screenplays and teleplays that have Bloch’s name on them as the writer.

I won’t include references with each entry; instead, we’ll keep a running total in the next column. ISFDB is a great resource for the publication history for each story. If you see that I have missed something, please let me know. And please please please chime in with your thoughts about stories along the way. This is all about community and the power of great writing to bring people together.
                        About Bill

Bill Gillard is the Alberta Kimball Foundation Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, a campus that is only about thirty minutes from 205 Ann St. in Weyauwega where Robert Bloch wrote Psycho. He is the author of the literary biography Psycho Century: Robert Bloch, American Horror Master (University Press of Mississippi, October 2026). He lives in Appleton, Wisconsin.  BillGillard.com
         
​                  References
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Bloch, Robert. “Faceless God, The.” Weird Tales, May 1936. https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v27n05_1936-05_sas/page/n53/mode/2up
---. “From Robert Bloch.” Weird Tales, June, 1937, pp. 763-764.  https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV29N06193706/page/762/mode/2up
---. Psycho. Simon and Schuster, 1959.
---. Once Around the Bloch. Tor, 1993.
---. “Ultimate Ultimatum, The.” Fantasy Magazine, August, 1935. https://www.zomboscloset.com/zombos_closet_of_horror_b/2016/12/fantasy-magazine-vol-5-no-3-1935.html
---. “On ‘The Feast in the Abbey.’” https://www.robertbloch.net/on-the-feast-in-the-abbey.html
---. Robert Bloch. Starmont House, 1986.
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Joshi, S. T. “A Literary Tutelage.” The Man Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch, edited by Benjamin Szumskyj, McFarland, 2009, pp. 23-40. 

Larson, Randall. Complete Robert Bloch, The. Fandom Unlimited Enterprises, 1986.

“List of Cthulhu Mythos Books.” Wikipedia, 16 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cthulhu_Mythos_books#N. Accessed: 18 June 2026.

Langford, David. “Identity Exchange.” Science Fiction Encyclopedia, 29 July 2024. https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/identity_exchange

Nemeth, Jim. Robert Bloch: An Unconventional Bibliography. 2025.

“Milwaukee Youth Writes Horror Tales, Sells ’em.” Milwaukee Journal, April 6, 1935. https://www.robertbloch.net/milwaukee-youth-writes-horror-tales.html