An excerpt from my YA horror novel, Sagebriar' Poets.
A newly admitted student attends his first Fringe Science class at a psychiatric boarding school and gets his first glimpse of the top student in the class, Herbert Alexander West the Second.
“Today we’re going to discuss the ethical ramifications of a cure for death,” Dr. Douglas said. “Assuming such a thing existed—something to cure any and all ailments—would we then classify death as a disease? Mr. Carter, why don’t you take a stab at it? No wrong answers.”
Being called on already? Evan had barely sat down and was being asked existential questions about the longevity of the human race. All he wanted right now was to remove as much attention from himself as possible.
“No.”
“And why is that, Mr. Carter?”
“He doesn’t believe you,” Tucker said. “He thinks you’re a killer and a liar.”
Evan wasn’t sure how to word what he was feeling since half of his mind was taken up trying to drown out the hallucinatory Tucker. He tried anyway.
“‘Cause it happens to everyone. It’s a natural stage of life. A disease suggests it’s a . . . I dunno, a mistake?”
Dr. Douglas began to pace the front of the room. “Mr. Carter believes death is not a mistake. He believes it is a natural course of life. How many here agree?” A few hands went up including Demi’s, the girl with the white hair, and her studious boyfriend. “Religion would disagree. Many Christian traditions believe death is part of a curse, a direct result of sin and something that didn’t exist for a time.”
Evan suppressed a groan. What did this have to do with treatment? When was he finally going to get some kind of pill that might shut Tucker up? Was he going to receive any kind of help here for his condition, any kind of guidance for coming to terms with what he did to Tucker? Or were they just going to roleplay as a school until it happened again?
The doctor pointed at Demi’s raised hand with his marker. She sat up straight to answer.
“But not all religions. What about people who believe in reincarnation? They see death as a natural part of life. Even then, it’s not the last step.”
“Very astute, Ms. Stokes. Yes, I think we can agree death is not a disease or a curse. However, we still wish to ‘cure’ this natural stage of life. And what of the ethical considerations for something that could effectively make you immortal?”
Dr. Douglas’s gaze lingered on the studious boy and flashed with something Evan couldn’t identify. Curiosity, perhaps? Or maybe envy.
“Mr. West, please enlighten us with your point of view on this matter.”
The girl with the white hair nudged her boyfriend. He looked up from scribbling notes for the first time.
“Death should not be cured.” His voice was thick with confidence but flat and emotionless. “It is a natural stage of life and all must bear it. Skipping that stage stunts the growth of the species as a whole.”
“Is that so?” Dr. Douglas turned to look at West from his periphery before failing to hide a smirk. “And what of your father, Dr. Herbert West? What of his work?”
Whispers spread through the class.
“They’re talking about you again,” Tucker said. This time, though, Evan knew better. He could hear some of the whispers, and they were talking about the boy named Mr. West.
“What of it?” West’s tone was robotic, like everything he bothered to say was irrefutable fact. “He thought he did cure death, and now he’s unfit to be a part of our society. But the key difference between us is that I know it’s ethically wrong. The only reason I’m trying to recreate his work is so I can undo it.”
The doctor considered this for a moment. “And the best reason to cure death is so you can undo what he nearly accomplished?”
“Did accomplish,” West corrected to the laughter of a few. “And I have my reasons, but the point is moot. This is just a thought exercise. I would prefer to cover more practical subject matter and not to discuss my father’s inane and dangerous work.”
Dr. Douglas gave a nervous laugh, but his demeanor relaxed entirely. “Then open your Fringe Science textbooks to page fifty-four and we’ll begin discussing limb regrowth.”
Sagebriar’s Poets is a YA horror mystery about a teenager who struggles to trust his own perceptions after he is sentenced to a secretive treatment facility in Arkham, Massachusetts. When another student is killed, he begins investigating whether the institution is hiding something or if his symptoms are just worse than he thought.
This novel is complete at 101,000 words and is the product of six drafts. It is currently being prepared for querying, and I am accepting unpaid volunteer beta readers who can help identify potentially problematic, insensitive, or harmful material.
Please state clearly in your opening message that you are offering to beta read as an unpaid volunteer. Messages advertising paid beta-reading services will have their accounts blocked.
I require help for my final college project about Lovecraftian Horror!
Hello fellow Lovecraft fans! I'll get to the point- I am a graphic design student and I am currently in the middle of my Final Major Project for my second year of my graphic design course. You can see on my page what my project was about for last year was about. My project for this year is going to be my last one, so i want to make it my best!
My project for this year is about adapting H.P Lovecrafts works into various physical formats (eg, illustrated and hand bound books, miniature recreations of locations, or an animatic video).
A major part of the project's criteria is to define a target audience as well as ask them for feedback during the project.
So, these are some polls with questions that will help me determine the target audience. If you don't want to answer some of them, you are welcome to skip them. I will also be posting more polls in the future about my ideas for this project for feedback so look out for those!
The polls will be open for 3 days. Don't worry if you miss them, there's a link to a microsoft form you can fill out instead. There are also more options and answering styles on the survey. You can find the link on my blog.
You don't have to answer all the questions, but it will help me greatly if you at least to the story ranking and the product options.
I have often felt that it was expected of me to “grow up and stop trying to be H. P. Lovecraft.” Writing Lovecraftian fiction is seen as a youthful phase that we pass through on our way to writing our own thing. I reject that mindset. For me, writing Lovecraftian weird fiction IS my own thing, and I am never more MYSELF than when I am Lovecraftian. Being Lovecraftian is my identity as an artist, and it becomes more important the older I grow. I want my work to prove that one can dedicate oneself to writing Lovecraftian horror and yet still make a real solid vital contribution to the genre, with fiction that is audaciously one’s own. Part of my uniqueness is that I bring in all of the other writers with whom I am obsessed, Wilde and Shakespeare and Kafka and Henry James, and stir them into ye mix. And then I add a pinch of punk rock and drag queen fabulousness, and oh girlfriend, look what we have!
A framed drawing in ink depicting a scene from Lovecraft's masterful tale, THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH. The story was the basis for a fairly interesting movie adaptation called DAGON. The Esoteric Order of Dagon was also the name of an early organization of Lovecraft aficionados which included many of the pioneers of Lovecraft related writers, fan mag publishers and critics. These individuals were the very core of the first underground Lovecraft fan base of the 1970s. Some members formed a direct link between the origional 'Lovecraft Circle' and the new Avant-garde of Lovecraftian research. (Exhibit 200)
More and more I'm starting to find Lovecraft's fandom, especially the history of the old fandom, almost as fascinating as Lovecraft himself. This person doesn't delve deep into these subjects, but his personal experiences as a Lovecraft's fan in the 1970s and 1980s are fun to read about.
"When I returned to school for third grade, I asked my teacher about H. P. Lovecraft and was quickly informed by her that Lovecraft was an inconsequential hack. I was dutifully scandalised by the statement. I asked if she had ever actually read anything by him, she said she hadn't but there was no making her see it any different. I was some time coming to the conclusion that she had to know who he was and what he wrote in order to inform me that he was, in her lofty opinion, an inconsequential hack. It meant that she had likely read his work and was lying about it. I asked myself why would she lie about it... then my seven year old brain went ablaze with the realisation, to save me from the maddening truth! There was a Necronomicon! We will now take a brief pause for you to laugh at the unblemished logic of a seven year old.
What followed is moderately embarrassing to recount. I searched the school library and the public libraries for all I could find by H. P. Lovecraft, but more especially, the Necronomicon. I was undaunted by the absence of his work from the shelves of the libraries, it further proved my belief in the conspiracy. I looked as deep as a seven year old may into the maw of madness, hoping to find the truth, the forbidden wisdom. In my searching, I discovered that Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, had been a close friend of H. P. Lovecraft's, so I hurried to a table and wrote a letter to Mr. Bloch in care of his publisher, asking him how I might contact Mr. Lovercraft and for insider information about the dread tome. For reasons that I may only ever conjecture, Bloch played along with my conceit and wrote in his reply that he himself had sought it his whole life, but alas, HPL—as he named him—had left this world for another, perhaps only reachable by agency of the dread Necronomicon and enclosed a xerographic facsimile of the History of the Necronomicon in Lovecraft's own handwriting that Bloch had received in a letter from Lovecraft "oh so many years ago." I was amazed, horrified, moved beyond words, as though Bloch had revealed the ultimate truths to my young mind. I was vibrating with dread and excitement for weeks after. I was by other letters from Mr. Bloch and others guided to the right source for securing copies of Lovecraft's work and the works of those who knew the secret mysteries."
Impressions of reading the letter column in Crypt of Cthulhu
I read through about twenty issues of the Crypt of Cthulhu, Lovecraft-themed fanzine from the 80s-00s (the ones I read were mostly from the 80s), mostly the letter column, and these are my impressions so far:
- Brian Lumley really likes stirring shit. He's constantly saying something hostile and controversial even in the few issues I read, often humorously, but the message stays clear. The peak of it was a rant about critics and how the job of critic is useless that ran for several issues and exasperated many readers.
- Lots of people hate on Brian Lumley and Lin Carter. Nevertheless, they are everywhere in the zine. Apparently, they were some of the most famous Lovecraftian writers in the 80s, which is jarring today when they are not even that well-remembered.
- I wouldn't say that August Derleth and the concept of Cthulhu Mythos are universally disliked, but some people have major hateboners for them. It seems it was a common feature of the zine Lovecraft fandom in the 70s and 80s, at least a more "highbrow" part of it.
- Speaking of highbrow, Donald Burleson is another controversial author precisely because of that. There was a discussion with a lot of complains that his essays were hard to read, while he was defending post-structuralism, modern approaches to Lovecraft and such. I felt kinda sorry for him, but his essays were indeed hard to read. :D
- Sprague de Camp provides some interesting "DVD commentary" to his biography of Lovecraft, mostly answering to complaints about it. He sounds admirably calm (especially considering how widely disliked his book was in the zine fandom) but very rigid.
- S.T. Joshi is a rabid Lovecraft fanboy. But of course, one doesn't need to read the zine to learn this.
- The humor, in particularly cartoons and columns by Robert M. Price, is boomer from the capital B. I didn't come across any "wife bad" jokes with Lovecraftian spin, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there were any.
- The treatment of some issues is exactly as one would imagine it. The two-page essay "Homosexual Panic in “The Outsider”, published in the issue #8, had been receiving criticism as far as in the issue #25. The zine has some essays as far-reaching as the one comparing HPL with Isadora Duncan yet such important theme as Lovecraft's racism, while awknowledged, is discussed very little. The letter criticising the zine for being a sausage fest brought largely defensive replies (to be fair, when someone aswered with a long argument that women are just not interested in horror, readers mostly disagreed). And so on and so forth.
I collected the quotes for a friend, but I like Pugmire enough myself and I like his letters so why not post them here too.
Issue #38, March 1986
"I loved this issue. Crypt #37, especially for the material concerning Charles Dexter Ward. And Will Murray, who is always a delight, charmed me with his wee piece on shoggoths.
I am learning much dark wisdom from Crypt, which is just as wonderful a treasure as any copy of the Necronomicon would be.
The cartoon on page 45 was splendid."
#46, March 1987
"Will Murray's delight for research is infectuous. Mr. Lotus, in his letter (Crypt #45, pp. 42/43) brought this topic up, the sense of community and friendship one feels while reading Crypt. We are the legacy handed down through the aeons by the original Lovecraft Circle. We are our own peculiar prize. Our spirit will live on as we pass from view, leaving to those who are now babes-in-arms the task and joy of continuous Lovecraft study. "That is not dead," indeed.
Leon L. Gammell's article on The Rod and the Snake was great. Gammell writes very well, keeping his prose flowing as he described plot and connection to HPL's fiction. Crypt of Cthulhu continues to attract a growing body of able-minded critics who write as well as they think."
#49, August 1987
"In his "Notes" on ye translation of Dee's Necronomicon, Carter writes how members of ye Lovecraft Circle "...obviously had access to a copy of Dee's Necronomicon..." How can this be so? I always understood that one copy of this translation existed, and was given to Wilbur Whateley by his grandfather. If so, how could those other gents have access to it? If it never was translated, how did Lin Carter get ahold of it? Did he steal it from ye Whateley Farmhouse? Did Wilbur have it with him at ye scene of his death, and did someone get it then and, by means unknown. Carter discovered this and obtained it? I want some answers.
"Vastarien," literally, is a haunting tale. Ligotti is superb. His prose is beautiful, and his imagination unique. When I read something this wonderful, I want to think and work with all my might to, hopefully, produce a tale half as good.
I was amazed at Charles Hoffman's suggestion that "The House in the Oaks" should have been included in Baen Books' Cthulhu; but then I thought that perhaps a Derleth pastiche in a Howard book called Cthulhu wouldn't be so unsuitable. Such nonsense!
The issue reads very well, and I enjoyed ye diversity. I was thrilled to see yet another article on "The Hound," one of my favorite HPL tales. I also enjoyed the large number of letters published this time."
#51, November 1987
"Crypt #49 from the cool cover to the promise of "Next Time" was pregnant with marvels.
It's too bad that H. Warner Munn burned his letters to HPL when he came to the Northwest (he would shake his head sadly when telling of destroying the letters due to space limitations). On a few occasions he mentioned that he was planning a sequel to Arthur Gordon Pym, got nowhere with it, and passed it on to HPL. I suspect that Lovecraft might have had this idea on his own, but didn't pursue it, knowing that Harold was at work on it. I never asked Harold if he kept what he had attempted of his sequel, but one doubts it.
Cerasini's article was meaty and read very well. I love articles of this type, showing as they do a love of subject matter and a bubbling intellect.
Cannon and Quale both contributed ideas and insights that I appreciated and that testify to wide reading.
One thing I found interesting in the HPL postcard to Hornig is the line, "I wish I could call on Farnsworth Wright and come away with a regular job." It made me think of Grandpa's refusal to move to Chicago so as to edit Weird Tales. I wonder: if HPL accepted the editorstiip, would he have included his own fiction in Weird Tales? Does a gentleman publish his own fiction?
I quite enjoyed Burleson's essay on "The Outsider." His is an impressive mind, and 1 hope to see many such articles from him in future issues.
I loved Rutherford's exquisite "Edgar and Helen."
#53, February 1988
"I loved the new Crypt. My favorite item was Mike Ashley's "Lovecraft and Blackwood: A Surveillance." Reading it made me regret that I've yet to find a collection of Blackwood's tales. Ashley writes very well, and the article seems well-researched. Shawn's piece on Kuttner's Mythos tales reveals yet another side of Ramsey's writing talents (he has composed many excellent poems, written some swell stories, and edited a great first issue of Revelations from Yuqgoth).
I hope you will soon realize that Ligotti deserves a special issue dedicated to him, filled with rare tales and articles. He continues to stun and fascinate me with his titanic abilities as a writer. Thanks for including "The Mystics of Muelenburg" in this issue. The other articles were all interesting and entertaining, and as usual the letters section was great.
In my letter, it should have been "his letters from HPL..." that Munn burned."
#61 1/2, December 1988
"The Barlow issue is a gem, one of your finest efforts. His fiction is quite worthy of publication, at times reaching poetic beauty.
The essays were brilliant, full of facts, and of feeling. I was astonished by Mr. Faig's continually revealed warm feelings for Barlow, HPL, and Mrs. Gamwell. One seldom finds this kind of concern in such an essay, and it is a heartwarming testimony of Kenneth's personal nature. He has been staying in the background, — silent, for far too long. I applaud his return to publication as witnessed in the new issues of Crypt.
Robert's cover was splendid."
#68, November 1989
"I really enjoy'd #65. Will's article seem'd a bit too cruel to something that was obviously an amateur production created by fans. I remember thinking it a hoot that Vernon Shea was in the film. He had very strong links to Lovecraft fandom at the time, so it is not surprising that he was in the film. Will must remember that for those of us who were young starry-eyed Lovecraft fans, to know someone who had corresponded with HPL was a kick in ye behind. "The Whisperer in Darkness" was Shea's favorite Lovecraft tale, and he was highly amused to star as Akeley. Vernon had no pretentions about the film, and described it as "crude" in his letters to me, saying that the cast was "cruddy." Vernon had just finished writing his own screenplay version of "Thing on the Doorstep" at the time, which I never got to read. Whatever this fannish film lacks, and I'm certain it must be quite lacking, it was a sincere attempt by Lovecraft tans to film HPL. That point was completely overlook'd by Will, and it should be pointed out. Sincerity in matters Lovecraftian is important to me. (Also, Will is mistaken in saying that Shea was publish'd in Weird Tales.)
"Fun Guys" was a delight. I was overjoy'd to read that someone else loved "The Outsider," as it's one of my favorite HPL yarns, and I've always hated how so many people dismiss it as a minor story.
David's wee piece on Tremaine was wonderful, and I admire how there are people out there who are dedicated to setting records correct and giving people their due. Justice is a great and valuable thing.
Mr. Brower's article was interesting, but what I really enjoy'd was how you preceded it with Ligotti's "The Voice in the Bones." Thomas is the supreme Lovecraftian surrealist.
I fear I found Eddy's tale somewhat dull. I rarely enjoy these tales that begin with two tired old men placidly discussing the wonders and terrors of life. I cannot relate to those kinds of characters, and if I were to write such a tale one of the men wou'd be applying vermilion lipstick while the other carves Lovecraftian adjectives into his flesh."
#105, August 2000 (from the Pugmire's personal column "Lustcraft")
"Just how perverse was Lovecraft? I ask this because I have been oddly disturbed—nay , distressed—by an essay by that rad old thing, Stanley Sargent, in which he states his revolutionary theory that "The Dunwich Horror" is one of Lovecraft's most autobiographical prose pieces. One would think, perverse old queen that I am, that I would welcome such a theory, that I would applaud the idea that Wizard Whateiey, as sexual proxy for Yog-Sothoth, had carnal relations with his daughter, the offspring of which were Wilbur and his noxious twin. To Stanley it is obvious that Wilbur is HPL's representation of himself, Lavinia represents his mother, and Wizard Whateiey his grandsire. (Wilbur's twin, Stanley assures me—although he wasn't bold enough to proclaim this absolutely in his article—represents Lovecraft's buried homosexual desire.) I refuse to believe that Lovecraft was a closet homosexual, but that's not the point in Stanley's article that so disturbs me. I simply cannot believe that Grandpa would, even subconsciously, represent his beloved mother as an ignorant white trash hillbilly who gets raped by her father. The very idea has me foaming at the mouth in protest.
To give credit to his wild idea, Stanley has pointed out (and may be the first to do so) that Wilbur's twin, when revealed by the alchemic waving and chanting of poor old Armitage, had the "Whateiey look":
"...but they was a haff-shaped man's face on top of it, an' it looked like Wizard Whateley's, only it was yards an' yards acrost..."
Well, that is certainly an interesting point; yet I still refused to believe in the perverse idea of a sexual energy between Lovecraft and his mother. Thus I was quite astonished when my dear friend Alyssen Bills gave me a copy of Lovecraft Remembered, the Arkham volume edited by Peter Cannon (Alyssen had to get rid of the book because she found the brightly-lit cover illustration, depicting HPL as Jehovah gazing in serenity upon his friends and acolytes, offensively disturbing). I nearly fainted when I read, in Wilfred Townley Scott's opening essay in which he discusses Susie's mental health (page 16), "The psychiatrist's record takes note of an Oedipus complex, a 'psycho-sexual contact' with the son'...!!!
It is, of course, dangerous and probably foolish to determine what Lovecraft's characters are meant to represent. One of Stanley's theories that absolutely doesn't work is that Armitage is meant by HPL to represent the narrow-minded social system that would repress Wilbur's dark nature. This is refuted in Joshi's biography, page 450, where he quotes a 1928 letter from HPL to Derleth: "[I] found myself psychologically identifying with one of the characters (an aged scholar who finally combats the menace) toward the end." Still Stanley's distressing suppositions may hold more truth than I want to credit.
I have long been of the opinion that Lovecraft's best work contains much that is astonishing in its perversity; and in my own "Lovecraftian" writings, I have tried to honestly examine and express my own sense of personal depravity. (And, judging from Victor Hotep's charming review of Tales of Sesqua Valley in Crypt of CthuIhu #98, I've succeeded.) Thus I continually encourage those of you who pen Lovecraftian and Mythos fiction to dig deep into darkness of your secret souls, to bring to the pallid light of day those aspects of your private corruption, the revelation of which moves you to shameful trembling. Remember Quentin Crist's superb advice: if you have a secret of which you are deeply ashamed, don't hide it; reveal it on television. Then the world will love you. I first discovered the truth of this philosophy when I began to publish Punk Lust in 1981. I revealed to the punk community those aspects of my personality that I thought would horrify and disgust them—and as a result I became a punk rock hero. Those of my stories in which I convey my personal sickness, my sad and pathetic life, have been hailed as my finest work. I'm not saying that this is what Lovecraft intended to express in his fiction. But it cannot be denied that his fictive work is pregnant with dark, twisted perversity, sexual and psychological. Therein lies much of its power as literature."
