In my view, pastiche has very high risks, but it can be done well, and not be a faulty manner of literary expression... so long as it is not one's only or main expression. Hommage, on the other hand, is something which nearly all writers of any worth have done and continue to do -- many doing it interspersed throughout their career. Certainly the French Decadents did so with their nods to Poe; Leiber did his share where HPL is concerned, as did Robert Bloch, and Ramsey Campbell still periodically revisits the Lovecraftian hommage; Collins did with Dickens and vice versa, it would seem; Poe did with numerous writers; and so on.
I don't think such keeps a writer's name or memory alive, save in future scholarship should one become a renowned writer critically (as with Poe, Hawthorne, etc.), but there is certainly nothing wrong with such, either -- as long as one does such in one's own voice and manner... and this is something you have long done, Wilum. True, you can slip into that "fan-boyish" mindset now and again, but it tends to be rather briefly, and you yourself seems quite unsatisfied with these, either abandoning them or reworking them until they are very much your own. And I must admit that I would hate to see a disappearance of "the Lovecraftian tale" by other hands -- that is, one which is hommage or worthy pastiche, not the plethora of tripe which has been done over the past 70+ years. Like a tale done in the style or manner of Poe, Le Fanu, James (Monty or Henry), these can be very worthy works on their own, as you note, and should not be discouraged when done with skill, intelligence, and genuine art. Fortunately, we have a fair number of writers these days who know the difference between imitating Lovecraft's style and expanding the sort of visionary experience he brought to literature, and that makes all the difference....
