BEHOLD: MISKATONIC DREAMS!

I love it when a personal invitation to submit to a publisher or editor's newest project comes my way. I almost always say yes, even though an invite isn't a guarantee of an acceptance, and do my best to honor the invitation by bringing my A Game to the table. Early in 2016, I received such an invitation from the brilliant H. David Blalock, whom I had the pleasure of publishing when I edited The Call of Lovecraft for EJP in 2011. Last year, Mr. Blalock asked me to submit to The Idolaters of Cthulhu, an anthology he was editing for the fine folks at Alban Lake Publishing. I wrote a story that was almost instantly contracted for, and got to be part of a beautiful release. This year's anthology would focus on the strange goings-on at Lovecraft's school of the mysterious and bizarre, fabled Miskatonic University. I was immediately smitten...if not quite so sure about what to submit. I have hundreds of first-draft manuscripts held in inventory inside my filing cabinets waiting to be trotted out and edited on the computer for future calls-for-submission, but nothing already written or jotted down on a note card in my catalog of unwritten ideas even remotely met the guidelines.

2016 has been one of my most productive years of writing ever, and one I'll remember for a number of adventures -- writing awards, fantastic retreats, my wedding, and book launches among the highlights. But before any of those adventures were enjoyed, the call for Miskatonic Dreams stands out for setting what became a wonderful tone for this year. I had nothing to submit. And then, one dark winter early morning, I woke up with an idea about two students failing class who are given a chance at extra-credit -- if they agree to catalog part of the university's collection of rare oddities housed in the vaults beneath Miskatonic U. Later that same morning, I put pen to blank page, and the following day had a completed rough draft. "Residue" dashed itself off at a fairly quick clip, and was accepted into another stunning volume (in fact, Mr. Blalock received enough quality submissions to justify the publishing of a companion anthology, Miskatonic Nightmares).

It was my pleasure to speak with my fellow authors regarding the back-stories behind their dark Miskatonic dreams.

Aaron Vlek on "The Accursed Lineage": "I have always had a special place in my heart for the batrachians in the Lovecraft mythos. When the call came out for his anthology I loved the idea of mixing my favorite things, libraries, batrachians, and Christmas into a disturbing nog that pushed the questions further. How might these creatures view their human relatives? Why wouldn’t the library at Miskatonic University hold just as much awe, fascination, and possibility, for the batrachians than it does the sometimes too curious human species? I loved getting into the head of this priggish fellow hunkered down at his studies over Christmas break when he has the run of the place to himself. But as the musty tomes and glittering horrors of the library wreck havoc on the human psyche, what lies within those hallowed walls, and below, to test the mettle and fortitude of a proud batrachian researcher shunning both humans, and his own fellows, when his research takes an unexpected turn? What would bring monstrous horror and seductive wonder to the batrachian denizen of the deep black sea? In ‘The Accursed Lineage’, that was a lot of fun to explore!"

Dave Shroeder on "Dear Mother and Father": "Dave Schroeder was inspired to write his story for Miskatonic Dreams when a friend he’d met at LibertyCon invited him to submit a piece for consideration. Dave is known for humor more than horror, so it was a stretch for him write something in Lovecraft’s universe. His only exposure to Lovecraft was through voice acting with the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, which frequently performs works by the master of the macabre. To find a funny angle on a dark topic, Dave thought the idea of a college student’s letters home to his parents would be an entertaining way to explore both the comic and serious aspects of student life at Miskatonic. For humor without the horror, Dave recommends checking out his Xenotech Support science fiction series from Spiral Arm Press about an entrepreneur doing tech support for alien technology after Earth has joined the Galactic Free Trade Association. To find out how the fun begins, look for Xenotech Rising on Amazon and see why reviewers are comparing Dave to Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams."

Chad Eagleton on "Your Special Advocate": "There was never any question that I would submit to Miskatonic Dreams. To pay my bills, I work in student affairs at a real-life university. Our purview covers anything that has to do with student health, conduct, and safety -- all issues that would be doubly important to an actual Miskatonic University. While my relationship to Lovecraft’s work has changed drastically over the years and my worldview is certainly nothing like his, what has never waned is my desire to play in his cosmos. To me, the richness, the depth, and the sheer breadth of Lovecraft’s imaginative creations, I think, are far more interesting and engaging than either his style or his nihilism. So I jumped at the chance to tie my real life knowledge in with ‘The Dunwich Horror’ -- the only Lovecraft story where the good guys win -- and create ‘Your Special Advocate,’ a wholly modern and, in some ways, more upbeat mythos tale than you’ll normally find anywhere else."

Jill Hand on "How I Died": "I need you to get me a book.”  The white-haired woman slid into the coffee shop’s black vinyl booth, across from Olivia.  Not ‘I want you to get me a book,’ Olivia noted, but ‘I need you to.’

            Olivia, no stranger when it came to nuance, raised her eyebrows.  This could be interesting.

            “A special order?”

            The woman nodded her head and took a sip of coffee.  Her lips were blood-red but they left no smudge on the cup’s rim.  Not lipstick then, or maybe it was a kind of lipstick that didn’t come off.  Despite her white hair, the woman didn’t look much older than Olivia, who was nineteen and a freshman at Miskatonic University.

            The woman slid a thick envelope across the table.  Olivia looked inside.  Hundred-dollar bills, twenty of them.   This was interesting.

            She asked, “What book do you need?”

            The woman’s red lips curved in a smile.  “The Book of Eibon.  I imagine a smart girl like you can find a way to get it out of the special collections room.  Do it and you’ll be richly rewarded.”

            Olivia put the money in her purse and smiled back at her.

S. L. Edwards on "The Darkness Makes Us Whole": "I wrote ‘The Darkness Makes Us Whole’ shortly after beginning graduate school. Being in grad school allowed me to think of Miskatonic less as a creation of Lovecraft’s and more as an actual university. What would such an esteemed institution, supposedly inspired by Brown and other Ivy League colleges, do after several scandals of faculty in the social and natural sciences losing their minds? What would happen when an expedition returned to Antarctica, finding no temples and plateaus, but only ice? That’s how ‘The Darkness Makes Us Whole’ began, Miskatonic has been disgraced by these scandals, its academic reputation never having fully recovered. Enter a zealous graduate student. Enter Secrets. Enter Madness. But the story took on a life of its own. It became one of the very real curses that weave their way across bloodlines and echo into the blackness of the lonely mind. I began to wonder why only the artists, only the fringe-dwellers of society would be attracted to Lovecraft’s monsters. Was it loss? Was it giving into the idea of insignificance, and somehow making this world more manageable? Enter Loss. Enter Depression.’ The Darkness Makes Us Whole.’ We can only hope."

Eric Tarango on "One Last Death": "I was Facebook surfing and came across the announcement from Alban Lake and read the guidelines and submission subject. I usually zone out when I am thinking and letting images come to mind. I kept imagining what the hallways of an empty university would look like, and who would be wandering the hallways. I saw my character come into mind standing by the corner of a wall and peering around to see if it was safe to travel the hallway. I knew she was dead when I saw her, and that she had died at the university. What I did not know was why she was afraid if she was dead. I put a few sentences down to get the feel of the story and it took on a life of its own from there. I love when that happens with a story. I was writing for about an hour on my couch, I lived alone, recently divorced; a stack of books on my nightstand, been there for days untouched, and suddenly the top one just fell over onto the floor. Scared the crap out of me. I jumped and almost dropped my laptop. That was not cool, but I was wide awake and alert and kept going in and out of the story to check my surroundings. Not the only time it happened to me, too."

DJ Tyrer on "Authorised Librarians Only":  "My story was inspired by thoughts about what Miskatonic University's library would be like in the present age, as obviously, they know exactly what sort of crazy stuff they're sitting on. I suspect Theo may have been born from thoughts for a story for a different anthology, but if that was her genesis, she was very much her own, three-dimensional character by the time she emerged from my subconscious to play her part here. Beyond those details, I can't recall much about the way I arrived at the story - it was one of those that came together without too much conscious thought, as if I was reporting on something that happened rather than inventing it: a wonderful way to write a story, but not one that lends itself to writing a terribly interesting back-story about its creation!"

Lyssa Wilhelm on "Miskatonic University Email Updates": "‘Miskatonic University Email Updates’ was heavily inspired by Nightvale (a show inspired by H.P. Lovecraft). I enjoyed the first-person aspect of the podcast and thought it would be interesting to have something similar to that. I didn't want to do anything too similar to Nightvale, so instead of coming up with weird things on my own, I delved deep into the pit of Lovecraft lore and short stories. Almost every email has a reference to one of H.P's works, if not multiple. My father was a big help with this story, as he is an encyclopedia of Lovecraft stories and helped me with how certain references should be done if I didn't have any ideas. He was a big help. An example of harder to see references would be ‘The Outsider’. Since it was so short, there wasn't an easy way to reference it in the emails. But, I loved the story and wanted to include it. So, I made an anagram of the name Outsider = Stu Dorie, as well as making him the guidance councilor. There are many other references in the story and I hope that people can find them and enjoy how they were done."

Guy Riessen on "The Bridges of Arkham County": "When I read the call for stories for Miskatonic Dreams, ‘what happens in the halls of MU after all the human students are gone,’ I immediately thought ‘professorial love story.’ Of course the irony of a mythos love story was too good to pass up, and it had to be a human professor and a mythos creature. I knew I wanted to write a tale of love-that-couldn't-be -- something like Bridges of Madison County, and the title was born. I don't write an outline for my short stories, so watching them unfold is quite a lot of fun. It's a bit like watching TV only on super slo-mo because I can only type so fast, you know. I wasn't sure how the story would end until I was writing it. Would the professor get eaten at the end? Go insane when he realized the cosmic horror of his ‘girlfriend’? Would the lovers discover they were both different mythos creatures masquerading as human? Just like watching a TV mystery I tried to guess the twist, but it ended up something very different than even I expected!"

James Simpson on "If These Shadows Could Talk": "I think the idea for this story was really meant as a celebration not just of Lovecraft's work, which I make references to, but also several of his own inspirations. There are pieces of Hodgson, Chambers and Machen in there along with a touch of Poe, Shelley and Stoker. It would be fun to expand upon this somewhat. I suppose there's a melancholic edge to it as well. There's this loneliness to evil and these creatures display that even among their kind. There's a tinge of sadness that pervades the whole thing as if these creatures are just stuck in perpetual motion, quietly hoping for release and, perhaps, envying the human race that they supposedly despise so much. There's symbolism to the light and how these beings belong to the darkness. It reminds us that we have never quite mastered the night despite our progression with technology and science. The darkness has always been home to the unknown and we all remember what Lovecraft considered the oldest and strongest fear..."  

BEHOLD: THE IDOLATERS OF CTHULHU!

In 2011, it was my absolute pleasure to edit the anthology, The Call of Lovecraft, which contained an exceptional story by author H. David Blalock, "The Shed".  On a gray, cold Friday earlier this past March, I received an IM from Mr. Blalock, inviting me to submit to his new project for the fine folks at Alban Lake Publishing, Lovecraftiana with a unique theme.  For his The Idolaters of Cthulhu, stories would be told from the perspective of the heavies, those villainous humans and anti-heroes who stand vigilant for the return of ancient cosmic evils, aiding their cause. In fairly short time (the very day, as I recall), I had the concept of my story: a young girl wandering a stretch of stormy New England beach collecting shells who discovers a jeweled relic straight out of Innsmouth -- a crown meant only for her head. But as I wrote the first draft of "Breakwater", the story became so much more than I expected, a tale of survival and the ends a person or species is willing to go in order to prevail in the face of extinction.

I submitted "Breakwater" and soon heard back from H. David -- the story was accepted into the anthology, which would feature a cover by the brilliant artist Michael Bielaczyc and a reprint by the master himself, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", one of my all time Lovecraft favorites. Idolaters recently arrived in my mailbox, looking as beautiful if not more so than imagined.  It was my pleasure to speak to many of my fellow authors in the Table of Contents, who shared the back-stories behind their stories.

Harding McFadden on "Casual Blasphemies": "Of all the various critters that Lovecraft littered his stories with, I suppose that my favorite have always been the inhabitants of Innsmouth.  When I stumbled across the guidelines for this anthology, it seemed an obvious choice to try to write about them, and their forms of worship, as, to be quite honest, trying to wrap my mind around many of the other followers seemed to be quite beyond me.  In a great old movie, a character says, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations.’  I try to stay humble by knowing mine.  As for the rest, you can blame an introduction that Robert W. Price wrote a decade ago for an Innsmouth collection.  In it he states his belief that old Marsh might not have been a villain, but rather someone trying to make the best of an impossible situation.  Coming at it from an atheist point of view, he saw the interbreeding of Innsmouthers with  Deep Ones as a way to postpone, or even eliminate, the coming destruction of his people.  From that beginning, I tried to imagine what a worship would look like then.  It wouldn’t be something drastically different from any random church gathering, though with a different sort of gospel than we would use.  To that, add in a bit of religious fanaticism, and eventual patricide, and there you have it.  In truth, I forgot all about writing this story until a few hours before the deadline, so I started pounding my head against a wall while knocking it out with all haste.  That it was purchased at all was an astounding thing to me.  I hope that you all enjoy it."

DJ Tyrer on "Fane of the Faceless God": "Generally, cultists in mythos stories are portrayed as evil and crazed, which is fair enough, given that most such stories are told from the point of view of (relatively) sane humanity, and, indeed, it stands to reason that some such people will literally have had their minds broken by what they have learnt. But, just as not every terrorist or serial killer is some froth-mouthed loony, I am fascinated by the idea of cultists who are rational. Such people, like Celia in my story, would be perfectly capable of functioning within human society to further their plans. But, in addition, they do not see themselves as evil or insane, even though their actions and motivations might seem so to others. Just as the Great Old Ones are incomprehensible to mere humanity, functioning as they do on an entirely different scale, so the rational cultist functions on a different level to normal humans, making a meeting of minds all but impossible, yet tantalisingly close. Entities like the Great Old Ones produce a frisson of fear because they remind us of the limits of our knowledge and power. In contrast, those cultists who are a step beyond the human remind us that our humanity may be little more than a veneer and make us question just what makes us human."

Robert Krog on "The Ones Who Remember": "H. David Blalock told me about the Lovecraft homage anthology sometime back, probably in 2014 at one convention or another, I'm not sure which one.  I told him I wasn't really a big fan of Lovecraft and that I wasn't all that familiar with his works.  David is persistent though and asked me more than once to write a story for it.  Since I'm a big fan of David and his work, I gave in sometime earlier this year.  I'm not sure when or from whence the idea for the story came to me, but come it did.  The villain of the piece was inspired by some of the lifeless partners for whom I worked back when I had an office job.  I am sure that many of them were sociopaths or psychopaths that would have welcomed the coming of a Great Old One to destroy the world, aiding and abetting it in all ways that they could. There's something soul deadening about the pursuit of money and power and something maddening about the meticulous routine one must endure at times to pursue such.  Thus the villain, Mr. Rains was born for my story.  The heroine, Jessica, could be one of any number of lovely fangirls I've seen wandering conventions dressed in costume, combined with one of any number of competent office workers I've known.  The rest was research.  Lovecraft's work was equally inspiring.  Challenged by my wife, I did personally test the bit about the duct tape.  It works." 

         

Brian Fatah Steele on "A Better View": "I love themed mythos anthologies. I love how there’s this scaffolding in place that allows the author to build completely unique stories around them, exploring whatever themes and concepts fit in. Lovecraft purposely created in a vague manner, and that all allows us these decades later to continue on his legacy.  Anyone who is steeped in the mythos has a favorite Great Old One, and mine has always been Nyarlathotep. I gravitate towards The Crawling Chaos for a number of reasons, but mostly because this entity has no set form and is often portrayed as an emissary that interacts with humans. Of all in the ‘pantheon,’ this creature seems to have the most complicated agenda. Here to kill us, enslave us, enlighten us? Ultimately, for we feeble humans, it doesn’t matter. Sure, there’s going to be those worshippers up until The Stars Align, but what about after? The planet has been ravaged by the return of the Great Old Ones, and any survivors would be shaken to the core by such sights. These broken, battered people would need a sign, something to give them hope. But what is ‘hope’ to an ancient alien deity from the other side of the universe? They are now free to wander the earth, playing with us as they see fit. We could now be anything to soldiers, to slaves, to toys, to food, to fuel. We are so far below them, we couldn’t try to hope to understand. But we would try anyhow."

Jonathan Dubey on "Arms of the Gods": "I'm not going to lie and say I've read everything H.P. Lovecraft has ever written, though I know a lot of people have. I can with a clear conscience say that I've enjoyed what I've read. I've noticed patterns in his short stories; he almost always writes from first person point of view, almost always male, and almost never gives a character description or name of his protagonist. I believe that he did this in a way to make the reader feel like they were in the story, like, this guy could be me. I like the idea of making a reader feel like they're part of the action. In Idolaters of Cthulhu, we were asked to submit stories from the perspective of a villain -- someone wanting to bring about the evil from beyond. I wanted to do justice to Lovecraft's style, and still give you a story that you would care about and hopefully scare you a little. I chose to make the protagonist a woman, but keep the rest of the pattern. All that was left was motive. Why would someone choose to do these horrible things? In my mind there is only one true reason, one excuse: Love."

Amanda Hard on "Fatwa": "‘Somebody will always be incensed’ was the prompt one of my writing teachers sent out last spring. From that, I built a short tale of a writer who accidentally damned himself to Hell by channeling the lyric poetry of fallen angels. I worked on the seed idea for a few months, but I couldn’t resolve what seemed to be the injustice of the poet’s fate. I found my solution when I considered what might happen if Lovecraft’s Starry Wisdom cult survived into today; if its followers accepted predestined paths determined by a significantly ‘higher’ power. A fatwa, in Islam, is a legal ruling for a specific case, similar to a Supreme Court decision, but not actually legally binding. The ruling is left up to the individual to accept or dismiss, based on his or her faith and moral compulsions. In this story I wanted to question both destiny and faith, to swap them around and investigate whether either one is behind the actual mechanism of art-making. While I think it’s something of a cheat to have one’s protagonist ‘accidentally’ call up the Great Old Ones (almost always through his or her incredibly irresponsible decisions and general negligence) I do sympathize with my character’s obsession with notating the music of the cosmic spheres and  anticipating the terrible promise of a future of his own making."

E. Dane Anderson on "The Meat Junkies": "The original idea for ‘The Meat Junkies’ came about one late night while driving a friend home. Elliot Avenue in Seattle is an odd mix of light industrial, fast food places and a lot of other assorted businesses, almost none of which are open at night.  The near quarter-mile stretch of street can be quite deserted after dark. At the south end of the road is an oddly placed ice cream shop, situated nowhere near decent parking, and like the rest of the area totally deserted at night. My friend and I asked each other if either of us had ever seen the shop open. We hadn’t. I quickly joked that it must be a front for something. My friend immediately said ‘aliens!’ And taking a cue from the old Peter Jackson film, Bad Taste I upped the ante and said that it was a secret way station for aliens who were trading in human meat. After I had dropped her off, the story started to form in my head. The aliens became Shoggoths with all their human loathing characteristics. The setting changed slightly to a much bleaker type of urban decay landscape. And in the forty minutes it took me to drive home, I had the rest of the story outline worked out. Originally, it would have ended with a black-ops team showing up and using a spray chemical to disintegrate the Shoggoths. But in keeping with the Lovecraftian tradition, I thought it best that the humans lose."

Camp NECon 2012 Report: Part Two

(with the Sisters Dent, Karen and Roxanne)

I woke rested on Friday, July 20, the first full day of NECon 2012.  Down to the lounge area, where the mythical sofa from 2008 was sadly missing from the landscape (the matching ottomans remain, set before other less-comfortable sofas).  At just after six in the morning, I uncapped my pen, withdrew a fresh pad of lined paper, and began writing "The Eclipse," one of the short stories for my new collection forthcoming from editor Rob Reaser, 13 Creature Features (deets to follow).  The cafeteria's manager-ess graciously brewed a pot of iced coffee.  Based upon my request (read: groveling), she took pity and the iced coffee flowed 24/7 throughout the rest of the weekend.

It poured for most of our gray Friday in Rhode Island. Karen and Roxanne, Scott Goudsward, and I pulled off our Lovecraft panel at 3 that afternoon.  Though the panel was not what I originally conceived and presented to the NECon committee -- one specifically devoted to The Call of Lovecraft -- the hour went well and my wonderful authors in the anthology were still able to discuss their stories to a decent-sized audience.  The heat in the conference room was borderline volcanic; following the panel's conclusion, I returned to my igloo under the a-c upstairs and wrote for an hour before moseying back downstairs for dinner.  After the meal, sisters Dent, the talented Morven Westfield, and I headed to the farthest corner of the lounge to write.  Rain flowed down the greenhouse-style windows.  It was like writing beneath a waterfall, an experience similar to one I enjoyed at a writer's retreat in North Conway, New Hampshire.

Friday night saw a multitude of events -- movies, social mixers, music.  I retired early, passed out quickly, and woke to a gorgeous and sunny Saturday.  The rain blew the humidity out and after a decent breakfast buffet, I returned to my room and slid open the big window facing down on the central courtyard.  Fresh, sweet air swept through the room.  I wrote "The Eclipse" to conclusion just in time to welcome Evil Jester Press publisher and good pal Charles Day, who drove up from Long Island for his first-ever NECon.

(with Scott T. Goudsward on the Lovecraft Panel)

At dinner, which boasted delicious roasted pork and a variety of cakes, I, Charlie, Sisters Dent, Scott, David Bernstein, Sandy Shelonchik, Morven, and others flocked to the longest table at the back of the cafeteria, jokingly referred to as 'the naughty table.' Conversations about writing flowed until well after dinner service concluded and most of the conference's 140-plus attendees disbanded for the next leg of the Saturday schedule.  This, like writing at the desk in my hotel room beside the open window, became one of those wonderful recollections that will stay with me forever.  I returned upstairs and wrote for an hour or so, promising the others that I would join the gang downstairs for the traditional NECon roast.  The victim/guest was Darrell Schweitzer, the Lovecraft authority who moderated our panel a day before.  In the hellish heat of the main conference room, we were entertained by numerous musical numbers from which the official anthem of NECon was chosen.  At 11:30, I excused myself from the roast and headed back upstairs, barely conscious of my own name when my head hit the pillow.

Up early on Sunday, the conference's final day, I wandered downstairs, guzzled iced coffee, and completed the longhand draft of "Sticks and Stones," my second full story penned while at NECon 2012. Before breakfast service, I also got down another 1,000 words on a new novella aimed as my follow up to "Mason's Murder," available on August 3, my first release from the fine folks at MLR Press.  Another decent lunch and then NECon officially concluded.

(Dinner with the cool kids -- Charlie Day, Karen, Roxanne,
and David Bernstein's elbow)

When all was said and done, I had been invited to submit a short story to an anthology, another to a new graphic novel line, and was given four solid professional market leads.  Agent Lori Perkins asked if I would be interested in penning a pop culture book on the TV series Glee -- having never watched it, I declined; instead, I pitched a similar book on a show that I'm more than conversant with, Project Runway. There was also discussion about other novels, my back list, and new projects at the front.  The level of excitement I returned home with was supernatural in its intensity.  That wonderful energy, I am sure, will sustain me until next year's conference.  NECon 2013, I'm so there!

Answering THE CALL OF LOVECRAFT!

The book that would not die lives!  Long last, The Call of Lovecraft is available in both e- and print formats. It's been a circuitous route -- TCoL was staked, eulogized, and nearly forgotten...until the fine folk at Evil Jester Press asked me to take the reigns of a personal project, anything I wanted within reason, and I exhumed the collection from the dead.  I was one of the first authors accepted when TCoL was envisioned by another editor, a different press.  I brought back our celebrated cover artist, Billy Tackett, the uber-awesome Ramsey Campbell, and 99.9% of the original Table of Contents from Year:2010, which includes so many talented authors.  I even bulked up the page count by adding six hand-chosen authors whose work routinely ranks among my favorite.

Like TCoL, my original short story offering, "The Green Dream," experienced a whirlwind journey en route to publication -- it was accepted in June 2010 for this collection, which then folded when the book company dissolved; was accepted for another to be published by The Twisted Library, which was also cancelled in October 2011.  By that point, I had written "The Mercy of Madness" to replace it within TCoL.  "The Green Dream" found a home in my enormous collection of original short and long stories, The Fierce and Unforgiving Muse: Twenty-Six Tales from the Terrifying Mind of Gregory L. Norris (EJP).  "Mercy" is an updated, rewritten version based upon the most horrific dream of my life, which involved a forced march to an abandoned factory deep in the woods during an icy rainstorm.  The original story was read during the early days of my first writer's group, late 1993. During that same time, Scott Goudsward read his Lovecraftian tale "That Place" to an audience looking over its shoulder while navigating the brooding autumn darkness on the way to their vehicles post-meeting.  That both stories are contained within the covers of TCoL seems not only fitting to me, but supremely cool.

It was my pleasure to ask my fellow contributors to share a bit of back-story behind their stories in The Call of Lovecraft.

Ramsey Campbell on "Cold Print": "My short story 'Cold Print' began life as 'The Successor'. It was one product of my struggle to sound like myself. I wrote a bunch of these after delivering The Inhabitant of the Lake and 'The Stone on the Island' to August Derleth in March 1963. A couple saw limited circulation, but nearly all of them were rewritten from scratch to their considerable benefit. I mentioned having finished 'The Successor' to Derleth in June 1964, but subsequently did nothing with it until he asked me (in late1967, I think it would have been) to come up with a new Lovecraftian tale for his next anthology. If I looked at 'The Successor', I imagine it was askance.


Parts of it do survive in 'Cold Print': many of the urban descriptions, and except for changing 'moist' to 'wet', the final image. The main changes were to the characters. The protagonist Derek Sheridan collects banned books, and that’s pretty well all the reader learns about him, because I’d simply put myself into the story. Sheridan meets his unnamed contact at a film society based on the Merseyside Film Institute and has to suffer the other’s enthusiasm for bad thirties Hollywood movies. In those days I was given to inserting observations into the story whether or not they were relevant to the theme. I needed Sam Strutt to let the telling become more controlled, and I borrowed details of him from a gym master at my old school and a colleague in the Civil Service who would ask me to lend him exciting books. 'The Successor' will be included as an extra in the forthcoming follow-up from PS Publishing to their definitive edition of The Inhabitant of the Lake – the second volume will collect the rest of my Lovecraftian short stories. Meanwhile, here’s 'Cold Print', risen from the dust." 


Scott T. Goudsward on "That Place": "The original version of 'That Place' was written way back circa 1993/1994 and, after several failed attempts at placing it, the story was re-written and re-named.  It was one fated night at my writer's group that Gregory Norris heard it, and it stuck in his craw as did the story he was reading at the same time.  Through the years, I'd re-written it a few times to try to make it 'fit' and always thought it was going to end up a trunk story until the invite went out for The Call of Lovecraft.

What made the story what it is, the thing was based on a gaming session of the RPG The Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium.  My brother was running it and I can't tell you who else was at the table.  The undead ghoul rats (as I call them) from the session ended up being the creatures beneath the grates in the story.  The tunnels as well as some of the characters are long imagined speculation between friends and I..."

William Meikle on "The Colour of the Deep": "I don't like caves; dark passageways filled with creeping shadows, slimy moss and big beasties just waiting to jump. It's something that's been with me since my childhood when three of us ventured into one and, as a joke, I was left alone in the dark. That experience led directly to my story 'The Colour of the Deep.'  My friends came back for me, and we're still friends to this day, so the story isn't autobiographical beyond the first couple of paragraphs. But I really don't like caves."

Carol MacAllister on "Blood Pine": "In some pagan beliefs, the pine tree is considered to be 'alive.'  If you touch one you just might feel the pulsing life within it, particularly, if you are within a remote stand. Kirlian photography shows plants that have been trimmed back or cut still hold phantom energy shapes of lost limbs. Sick plants are said to be helped if surrounded by well ones – a communication of sorts takes place and many sick plants recover. So, if vegetation does have a unique mind of its own what would happen if human blood got into the mix?   I saw this when traveling through Kentucky years ago where wide open spans of Civil War battlefields lay before me, dotted with tall dark spruce. How interesting, I thought, they scattered the landscape like they’d sprouted from the dead who had lain there after the battles. And with a little tap on the shoulder from Lovecraft and fostering from otherworldliness, a stand of pine, as in 'Blood Pine,' might easily mutate and interact with humans, perhaps like Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows."

John F. D. Taff on "The Tentacle": "'The Tentacle' began life when my friend, J. Travis Grundon, wanted a story for a Lovecraft anthology he was putting together—which ultimately became Gregory’s The Call of Lovecraft. Now, I’ve read Lovecraft and enjoyed some of his stories, but he’s not exactly my cup of tea.  I think this is because his writing style has been pastiched to death, like Chandler.   And because his style has a kind of humorless aridness to it that’s a bit too pompous for my taste.  Probably shouldn’t be knocking Lovecraft in an anthology dedicated to him, but there are some pieces by good ole H.P. that I do like.  At the Mountains of Madness is a particularly effective story.  Anyway, what I wanted to do with 'The Tentacle' was pastiche the old guy and add a little humor to the mix.  The result is a story that has a lot of Lovecraftian elements in it, plus (hopefully) the humor I was aiming for; but also, at the end, a poignant and cosmic twist that lends a more serious air to the story’s conclusion.

Roxanne Dent on "Magnus the Magnificent": "As a lover of the sea and paranormal magicians who do more than parlor tricks, I was intrigued by the combination. When I lived in New York I taught remedial reading to prisoners in a prison and later joined an organization that helped them to adjust to life on the outside.  One thing I discovered was that it was extremely rare for an ex-prisoner to remain out of jail.  There were many reasons for this, including family dynamics, drugs and poverty, but one thing stood out.  It had a lot to do with 'hubris,' or pride that made him overestimate his criminal creativity, causing him to think he could execute the big score and get away with it.  I used all of these elements in my story, 'Magnus the Magnificent.'"

Geoffrey James on "The Vessel": "My exposure to Lovecraft goes back to the 1960s when I discovered a box of Weird Tales magazines in a drawer at my grandmother's house.  Later, my father (who'd collected the volumes) gave me a copy of Lovecraft's Best Supernatural Stories, which at the time contained his membership card in the "Weird Tales Club," which, alas, is now lost, although I still do have the book. When Gregory asked me to write a story for this volume, I turned to 'The Dunwich Horror' because, before my father died, he and I drove into central Massachusetts and, based upon internal references in Lovecraft story, discovered that Dunwich was, in fact, the town of Shutesbury.  Sentinel Hill is still there (there's a retreat center atop it!) as are numerous (apparently) pre-Columbian stone ruins. In my view, the most original aspect of Lovecraft's writing is his rejection of the dichotomy between good and evil. All horror written before Lovecraft assumes a world where Good and Evil are in equilibrium, with Evil able to (temporarily) overcome Good, but where Good will eventually triumph. As such, horror existed in an essentially Christian context.

Lovecraft completely scraps that dialectic. Lovecraft separates religion into two general categories: traditional religions which are based upon human imagination and therefore impotent and (for want of a better term) eldritch religions, which are based on actual (albeit alternate) reality and therefore powerful. Put another way, trying to scare away Cthulhu with a crucifix will get your crushed or eaten. As such, in Lovecraft's world, it makes a certain amount of sense for those who are religiously minded to worship the elder gods, since they 1) actually exist and 2) actually have an impact on the mortal world. Unfortunately, Lovecraft never pursues this angle, instead attributing such worship to either cultural or racial degeneracy or a combination of both. In other words, to Lovecraft, those who worship the Elder Gods are simply sub-human.

When writing 'The Vessel' I decided instead to take my cue from my father's observations and treat such worship not as a manifestation of inferiority, but rather an understandable reaction to the intrusion of an alternate reality into the mortal world. While Lavinia's family background and albinism have certainly influenced her life, what's far more important to her is an ecstatic religious experience that makes her feel cherished in a way that she'd been unable to experience before. In doing so, I tried to raise her from the subhuman caricature that she is in the original story into more of a human being, with understandable motivations and desires.

H. David Blalock on "The Shed": "As a long-time Lovecraft fan, I often find interesting ideas surrounding ordinary objects, usually at the most unexpected times. In the case of ‘The Shed’, I was mowing my lawn when I noticed the door to the shed in my yard was slightly ajar and didn't remember leaving it open. One thing led to another, and soon that shed had become something much more sinister than a simple wood and metal structure. The story, once the idea was developed, took just a short time to write. I was delighted to find that it met the requirements of TCoL."

Karen Dent on "Endless Hunger": "As a child, I loved the old movie The Crawling Eye.  The mists, the mountain, the psychic woman connected to the monster are all rolled up with my first introduction to Lovecraft.  I’d always wanted to create a story that would affect others as those images had me.  I hadn’t read any of Lovecraft’s works in years so I downloaded every story I could -- and scared the crap out of myself all over again.  He was a painter of words, teleporting you from a soft, cushy couch to getting dragged into the deep recesses of an agonizing forever. 

                                       

The idea of endless suffering, the inability to escape and the slow torture of continued cognitive thought horrifies me.  I hope you like ‘Endless Hunger’ -- however I think placing it in New Hampshire, at Lake Winnipesaukee might have been a mistake.  I no longer feel safe walking the black road alone in the dark of night, especially when I pass the D.H. [Divided Highway]."

John B. Rosenman on "I Luv RT": "Sometimes stories come from nowhere, an empty void.  Or a faint wind on your face.  Or from a word, a book cover, a sublimely beautiful sunrise—or sunset. In the case of ‘I LUV RT,’ the kick-starter was very definite.  I was driving down the street, minding my own darn business, when a pretty girl cut in front of me, giving me the finger as she sped on.  I recall that her license plate contained the letters ‘RT.’

I sped up, ran the girl off the road, and killed her.

No, I didn’t.  I was pissed for a few seconds and then forgot it.  Or rather, I went home and wrote a story called ‘I LUV RT,’ which is about a nerdy loser with self-esteem issues who has a young girl cut in front of him on the road . . .

Well, you get the idea.  And I swear on my psychiatrist’s couch the character in the story has nothing in common with me.  Honest!  I’m absolutely comfortable with my rugged masculinity.

At the time I wrote the story, I was reading the works of H.P. Lovecraft.  At the Mountains of Madness, “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Rats in the Walls,” and so on.  What impressed me the most was the creepy, Medusa-like nature of supernatural horror.  Imagine the sinister and seductive possibilities of ultimate evil! There are not only cosmic forces that don’t care a rat’s ass about us, but to most of us, they are ineffable, indescribable, and unimaginable. You not only can’t capture their good side in a photograph, they don’t have a good side.  And if your mind is strong and resilient enough to view them directly for a whole second, in the next second, it will probably snap like a dry pretzel and crumble completely.  Unless you are one of the few who find them beautiful.

Look out!  These banished Old Ones want to return and take over Main Street again.  Are you going to stand in their way?

So an impatient female driver and Lovecraft’s view of supernatural evil and horror were two main influences on the story.  I’ll mention one more: the possibility that we’re ultimately all alone and don’t even begin to understand each other as well as we think.  In my case, was that female driver really disgusted with my slow driving, or was there another reason she cast driver etiquette to the winds and blew me off?  I hope you read my story and find out, then realize it’s unwise to make assumptions about anybody.  Who knows?  Even your sweet old granny may have a body or two stashed in the cellar.

There’s a lot more I could tell you about ‘I LUV RT,’ but then I’d spoil the surprise. So—enough said!"

James Ravan on "The Winds of Gobekli Tepe": "I prefer fiction that is rooted in truth and 'The Winds of Gobekli Tepe' is such a story. The setting, a hilltop expanse called Gobekli Tepe, does exist and is a thriving archaeological site today. What happened there? Why was the site buried? Who buried it? What rituals were performed by these prehistoric peoples millennia before writing was invented? To what Gods? And to what intent? Gregor Engel, a field archaeologist, his wife Ingrid, Aya and her mother Kek, explore these questions."

Jacqueline Seewald on "Legend": "As the educational media specialist/librarian for a large regional high school in Central New Jersey, I did all the book ordering. High school students love horror fiction. So it's important to provide a quality collection. One of the books I ordered was Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, ten stories by the master edited and introduced by Joyce Carol Oates. As I examined the book, making certain it was appropriately cataloged, I became intrigued. I knew I wanted to be the first to read this particular volume. So I checked it out and took it home with me that day. Oates, a prolific mainstream literary author, wrote what I consider to be a brilliant essay on Lovecraft. After reading that as well as the short stories in the collection, I was inspired to write my own short story, a tribute to the father of modern horror fiction. I hope readers will enjoy ‘Legend.’"

Derek Neville on "The Clearing": "The original germ for the idea for 'The Clearing' actually started in a dream I had. The fragments I remember from it were that I had a bird's eye view of a man wandering into, of all things, a clearing and finding an abandoned train there. It should be noted, I have very odd dreams pretty much every night, but regardless it was a visual that stuck in my head. With most of my story ideas I tend to latch onto a moment that just gives me a feeling in my gut, something that no matter how many times I think about it, I get that same excitement to start filling in all the blanks. I have a lot of ideas, as I'm sure most of my fellow writers do, and a lot of them exist in this form of smalls scenes and moments, just waiting for their time in the sun to be fully explored. When Greg first approached me about contributing to The Call of Lovecraft it was like he opened up a door and gave me carte blanche to figure out why this man and this train were in a clearing to begin with. It was a chance to play in a sandbox I'm most comfortable in. 

For me, 'The Clearing' was about exploring a lot of different themes, and I won't explain them all here as the reader's interpretation of the story is far greater than my intention. I'll tell you that one of the bigger ideas that the story is picking at is the eternal battle between free will versus fate. If you knew that someone was pulling the strings would that impact the choices that you made? Also, I've always been a big fan of ensemble pieces and there's nothing more fun for me as a reader and as a writer than to watch a group of people who hate each other have to band together to survive. I hope 'The Clearing' makes the reader ask a lot of questions. I'm sorry to report that the answer's are not all there on the page, but I think I gave you enough to draw your own conclusions on what things meant. The story is very similar in that way. It asks questions, big questions, like are we ultimately judged for the wrong we do? I'll be honest with you, I had a blast writing this story and I hope that enthusiasm comes through on the page." 

and artist Billy Tackett on his beautiful cover: "I've always been a Lovecraft fan and doing this cover was a treat. For some reason I had never considered doing any Lovecraftian pictures but while doing the research for The Call of Lovecraft I was bitten by the bug! I'm currently working on a series of pictures featuring the indescribable horrors featured in Lovecraft's works."

The Call of Lovecraft

The long-anticipated homage to all-things-Lovecraft has been put to bed and sent off to the publisher. I first became associated with The Call of Lovecraft as a contributor when the book was set to be published by a different press.  A year later, so much has changed -- after Call's resurrection from the dusty vaults of dead projects by the fine folk at Evil Jester Press, I was brought on to edit and collect the original Table of Contents (all but one tale and author are back and on board), my own story accepted by the then-editor, "The Green Dream," had since sold elsewhere, leading me to replace it with "The Mercy of Madness," an even more appropriate 6,000 words (details to follow), and for logistical reasons, the original H.P. Lovecraft reprint that would have been included, "Pickman's Model," was dropped in favor of "The Tomb," first published in 1922 (copyright issues post-1923 are a very gray area in regards to the celebrated American author's work).  Artist Billy Tacket's amazing original cover was contracted for, the brilliant Ramsey Campbell agreed to reprint his chilling "Cold Print," and I chose six authors to round out the anthology, which weighs in at a very respectable 76,000 words, all told.

Table of Contents:


Editor's Foreword
Cold Print by Ramsey Campbell
Izothaugnol Ascending by Lee Clark Zumpe
Legend by Jacqueline Seewald
The Colour of the Deep by William Meikle
The Winds of Gobekli Tepe by James Ravan
Blood Pine by Carol McAllister
The Vessel by Geoffrey James
Magnus the Magnificent by Roxanne Dent
The Tentacle by John F.D. Taff
The Clearing by Derek Neville
I LUV RT by John B. Rosenman
And in the Darkness I Waited by Scott Lefebvre
Endless Hunger by Karen Dent
The Shed by H. David Blalock
That Place by Scott T. Goudsward
The Mercy of Madness by Gregory L. Norris
The Tomb by H.P. Lovecraft

(Me -- and about a hundred extra pounds of me since shed -- at Lovecraft's grave in July 2008)

From my editorial foreword:

In December of 1993, I woke screaming early one Saturday morning from perhaps the most terrifying nightmare of my life—and I’ve had many dark dreams since my youth growing up near the big woods in Windham, New Hampshire. I wrote a draft of the dream’s linear storyline, which culminated with a man hunched down beneath a window in an abandoned factory hemmed in by trees, staring out through a brittle shade made opaque by a full moon, when something gargantuan on the other side passes by, pauses, and turns toward him. I read part of “The Mercy of Madness” to the group that following Thursday. At the same meeting, Scott T. Goudsward shared an installment of his latest story, which also paid homage to Lovecraft, a chilling early version of “That Place.” For the next two weeks, we read our work to a captive audience, our fellow scribes held paralyzed in breathless anticipation of what would happen next. Though I’ve left the group, years later friends still mention our two stories and wonder where those tales were published.

            The answer is here, in The Call of Lovecraft.

So listen for the Call -- the book is scheduled for release next summer and will make the perfect read, whether on the beach or in bed at night, with the lights still on.