Poems
Beyond Light and Dark
Written way back in the mid-to-late 80's after staying up very
late reading HPL stories. It was about 2:00 AM, the window was
open slightly and a chilly breeze was moaning through the
window-screen into my bedroom. I was getting sleepy and
contemplating the curious spacial/temporal qualities of
Yog-Sothoth. Just for kicks, I once submitted this to one of
those poetry contests they advertise in some magazines. It didn't
win. One of the judges wrote me back that it was "a very
allusive and intriguing poem."
In Ulthar
Written several years ago, early 90's, after reading (of course) The
Cats of Ulthar. I have occasionally written poems or song
lyrics that were inspired by stories or books that struck me just
right. I like cats, and this has always been one of my favorite
HPL stories. Sometimes a poem will come to me in a single rush in
inspiration, and if I recall correctly, this was one of them.
This was the first thing I ever submitted to an e-zine, just
before writing Seafoam. The good feedback I received
from it encouraged me to write more, and is one big reason why
I'm doing all this.
Yule Fest
The Festival was one of the first HPL stories I ever
read as a young teenager, and it has been one of my favorites
ever since. I wanted to write a Lovecraftian Christmas poem, and
this story was a good inspiration for such a poem. Strangely
enough, I have another poem that was originally titled
"Yulefest" (as one word) that has nothing to do with
HPL but is rather a sort of pagan-ish Yule poem, written in the
late 80's. I even submitted it to Weird Tales (it was rejected).
It will probably turn up again, most likely here on my own site,
but will have a different title to prevent confusion with this
poem.
Yuggoth on the Rim
This poem was a long time coming. The phrase "Yuggoth on the
rim" has been lurking in my head for a long time, just
waiting to be turned into a poem. I put a rhyming dictionary and
a conventional dictionary to heavy use to come up with all those
rhymes for "rim." I don't think I'm finished with the
mysterious Yuggoth just yet, it will probably turn up in a story
eventually.
On the Shore by the Ocean
I like images that deal with darkness, moonlight,
oceans and dreams. This poem was partly inspired by Robert E.
Howard's Singer in the Mist.
Where the Moon is Always Gibbous
I just couldn't think of enough rhymes for "-ight". So one stanza doesn't exactly fit the pattern. Oh well. One night on the long drive home from work the phrase popped into my head, "Where the moon is always gibbous/and the stars are always right." It sounded good enough to base a poem on, and eventually I did.
Stories
Nyarlathotep and Me
This story was written in the late 80's not long after I had read
the SubGenius short story collection, Three-Fisted Tales of
"Bob". As anyone who is familiar with the
"SubGenius Mythos" knows, Cthulhu and his nefarious
minions occasionally pop up in SubGenius mythology. This was one
of my earliest attempts at writing a "Mythos" story,
and it seemed if anyone could save the world from the Old Ones,
it would be "Bob." I only hope it isn't heresy to write
in first person from "Bob's" point of view. There are
some things in this story that don't make much sense unless the
reader is familiar with SubGenius lore. I hope the reader
realizes that this story was also written somewhat
tongue-in-cheek. I frequently get story ideas that begin with a
final sentence or sentences, and then I try to write a story
aiming for that final passage. This is one of them. Some readers
may also recognize in this story a sort of parody of the Biblical
David and Goliath.
Seafoam
I have had Internet access since about 1993, so it has been a few years since I first looked up H.P. Lovecraft in a search engine and found Donovan Loucks H.P. Lovecraft
Archive. I would re-visit it occasionally to read up on things
about HPL that were new to me, but other than that I never really
looked for anything else Lovecraftian on the web. In September or October of 1997 I got the urge to read HPL again, so
one day I got into a search engine and looked some stuff up. This
led me to the e-zines like Nightscapes and Mythos Online, which I
read eagerly, excited at the prospect of some new Mythos-oriented
stories. After reading some of the stories, I thought, hmmm, I
can probably do this. Out of this came what I consider my first
real Mythos story (pastiche though it is), Seafoam. I wanted to do something a
little different, but it seemed that there were way too many
black books lying around and turning up here and there, so I
decided to try for a new artifact instead of a book. From this
eventually came the strange black meerschaum pipe. Meerschuam is
an ancient material that spent a lot of time beneath the ocean
before ever being dredged up into the light of day, so it seemed
logical to me that there would be an ancient, cursed pipe
somewhere. I feel that many things are better left unknown, so I
didn't worry about the origin or the creator of this pipe, I just
tried to write about the consequences of using it. The character
Grimm is an old character. He began as a CoC character and was in
a couple of early writings that will probably not ever see the
light of day, but he will turn up in future stories (at least one
so far--"The Owls").
Darker
I tried to write this story several times since I first began
trying to write sometime in the late 80's. The different versions
of the story had several different kinds of characters and points
of view, but all were more or less based on the legends of the
strange entity that is said to dwell in Ottine Swamp and is
simply called "the Thing." This last time that I tried
this story, I just scrapped all the previous versions and started
over from scratch, which led to Darker. Some of the
encounters that the character of Uncle Jonas tells about are
adapted from "real life"--things which various people
have said they've seen in the swamp. Many years ago I had the
idea that it would be really neat to collect a lot of local
legends, and write a short account of the actual legend, followed
by a fictional work based on that legend. Darker is one
of two stories (see "The Owls", below) to come out of
that. Ottine Swamp lies between the forks of the Guadalupe and
San Marcos Rivers about 50 miles south of Austin, Texas, near the
small community of Ottine which is several miles northwest of
Gonzales, Texas, about an hour's drive from where I live.
Snake Oil
More of a vignette than a story, written after reading both
"The Curse of Yig" and Ron Shiflet's "The Serpents
of Tenoka." I had only recently acquired two Carroll &
Graf paperbacks that included a lot of the ghost-written HPL
stories (such as "The Curse of Yig"), and so had just
become acquainted with the snake-god Yig. I was trying to write a
Mythos story that took place in the Old West and Yig seemed like
a good candidate for such a story. The main character (Dr. A.
Herman Thripshaw) is supposed to be a Serpent-Man. I know almost
nothing about those critters so I don't know if anyone will
recognize him as such or not. I stole his name from a Monty
Python skit (Dr. E. Henry Thripshaw's New Disease).
Homecoming
This story could have gone two ways, but I won't talk about the
other option because I might still use it sometime. Still another
attempt to write a Mythos story that takes place in the Old West,
I got the idea from part of The Shadow Over Innsmouth
that mentions that the Deep Ones were probably in Innsmouth
before the war. I figured that it wouldn't be entirely unlikely
that a couple of human/Deep One hybrids actually fought in the
Civil War, and not only that, but why should there be only one
colony of Deep One hybrids in the United States? I had originally
titled this story "Deep South," but then decided that
it would probably give away the whole story just because of the
word "Deep" in the title. I also consulted an atlas
when deciding on where this family should live, and found that
there is an island off the coast of Louisiana called Marsh
Island. I briefly considered placing the story there but thought
that would also give it away as soon as the reader saw the word
"Marsh." So I just put them in an unnamed place
somewhere near the coast of southeast Texas.
The Caverns
Personally, I think I could have done this story better if I
hadn't messed around and waited until the last minute to finish
it up. I had the germ of an idea for a long time, but got some
writer's block until just a few days before the deadline (to
submit it for Ron Shiflet's Old West Mythos contest). This story
meant three Old West Mythos stories in a row for me, so I think
it will be a while before I do another one, unless a new idea
really strikes my fancy. All the rivers, creeks, and other
landmarks in this story really exist. The caverns of the title
are actually Longhorn Caverns, which are in the heart of the
Texas hill country several miles west of Burnet. It really was
used by the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and it also
was really used as a hideout by the outlaw Sam Bass (and he
really did die there). I took some liberties describing the
inside of the caverns, and didn't cover all the details. There
are actually three different openings in the ceilings of the
caverns (not including the main entrance), not just one. Before
it became a tourist attraction, it was the home of a great many
Mexican free-tailed bats. There is a small opening at the rear of
the last cavern, or room (which is not really one of the rooms
with a ceiling opening--I made that up), that is not part of the
guided tour and can only be explored by spelunkers--so I
personally have never been in there. According to the guide's
information, that last cavern opens up on what may be the largest
underground lake in North America, and as the guide said,
"no one knows how far back it goes." The tunnel that
the main character (Karl Sommer) thinks of as "the
Chimney" doesn't really exist. The lake is the home to two
unique species--one of crayfish, and the other of catfish--which
are both blind and nearly transparent. Karl Sommer is based very
loosely on my great-grandfather, who settled in the Burnet area
after emigrating from Germany and who used to green-break wild
mustangs so he could take them to San Antonio and sell to the
ranchers to turn into cattle horses. The upper parts of the
caverns were well known by many people such as Sam Bass, the
Confederate Army, and others, but my great-grandfather was one of
the first to explore the nether depths of the caverns and a
distant, long-departed relative of mine carved her name on a rock
inside one of the lower rooms. The monster in this story should
be recognizeable as one of HPL's unnamed creations. The site for
the big livestock auctions was adjacent to the Menger Hotel (the
hotel still exists). Enchanted Rock is also an actual place and
visiting there is always quite an experience. The last few
sentences of this story were stolen from another of my very old
stories, which had nothing whatsoever to do with horror or the
Mythos.
The Owls
This is another story (like Darker, above) that is based
on a local area legend and, like Darker, I first tried
to write a long time ago. It has gone through several
permutations before it became the version you see here. About the
only thing that remains from the original are the last few lines,
as I remember them. The typed copy of the original was lost at
some point, which probably isn't a bad thing. To read a short,
non-fictional article about the Lechuza that was written by
myself in the late 80's, click here.
Parts of this story were also inspired by owls that I have heard.