Lost Carcosa

I have several odd recurring dreams, but this is one in particular that seems rather Lovecraftian.  It involves… -dramatic pause- … a KittenWitch! Dun dun Duuuunnnnn!

In this dream, it becomes known to me that the cute little soft and purry kitten is in fact a witch or other being intent on the destruction of myself and those around me.  This creature may look all soft and cuddly, but it lives in the spaces between the walls plotting our demise.  This space, of course, is much larger than the actual thickness of the walls, and at an odd angle such that if you were to hold a mirror so that you could see the rooms reflection but off kilter at about 5 to 10 degrees, that space in the angled area; Thats where it lived and performed the evil rituals.

Now, like any good Lovecraftian dream, we have a problem.  I need to kill the KittenWitch to prevent it from killing us and possibly destroying humanity… But only I know the truth of the matter.  No one else sees the evil being in all its horrific ugliness superimposed on its physical kittenish exterior.  All anyone else sees is me choking a kitten.  Or at least that is all they would see if I were to attempt to extinguish said KittenWitch in the presence of others.  Instead I can only hold the thing and keep it from escaping back to its lair within the angles of the walls, while people continuously enter and leave the room.  So I sit there trying to save the world in the brief moments between interruptions by innocent and unknowing minds.

Or am I just slowly going insane?  Is it in fact just a normal kitten, trying to go about its kittenish ways?  Am I seeing something only a broken mind can see?  Or am I really seeing the truth, and by doing this deed, bring my own sanity into question for others?  Either way, it is an insane problem.

Art and comics.  Two great things, that often go hand in hand, much to the argument of certain elitist types.  ComicBookResources has a press release about Ben Templesmith’s soon to be released “Art of Wormwood”, a collection of artwork from the “Wormwood” comic series.

Templesmith’s visual approach, which has been described as “daring, horrific, and sometimes just plain perverse” has gained a cult following for his work in graphic novels including 30 Days of Night, Fell, Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse and more recently Welcome to Hoxford. He has said he is influenced by the science-fantasy cosmos of H.P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones and the work of H.R. Giger.

Read more details about the book and special edition hard cover at ComicBookResources.

In a move that just ruins days for other security guards of the world, one security guard had decided to not only tell a girl she couldn’t take pictures of Lovecraft’s grave, but then kicked it up a notch by adding in demands of image deletion, verbal abuse, and all around jackassery.

Found at BoingBoing

You would have been 118 years old today, Mr. Lovecraft!  Happy birthday to you!

I’m sure most of you who visit my site know who Howard Philips Lovecraft was (or is), and know that he is said to be one of the most influential writers in horror of the 20th century, but for those who don’t know, he has influenced more of our entertainment in the writing, music, and film fields than most of us really realize.  From Stephen King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot”, to the always entertaining “Herbert West: Re-Animator” movies, to Metallica’s “The Thing That Should Not Be”, Lovecraft has snuck his tendrils into immortality.

You can find a whole lot more to read about his life, philosophies, writings, and of course, his influence on contemporary works at Wikipedia’s entry for H. P. Lovecraft.

Comic(s) Relief has up a mini review of the French graphic novel “Les Mondes de Lovecraft”.  Read the review at Comic(s) Relief.

One of my favorite Lovecraftian blog sites on the Intarwebs just turned a year old this recent Saturday!  Happy Birthday Grim Reviews!

Penny Arcade’s Lovecraftian steampunk comic RPG game “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: episode 1″ is being followed up by part 2 in Fall of 2008!  I still have to check out Episode one, which may require me to buy a 120GB drive for my XBOX 360, as mine is completely full right now… Curse you small capacity 20GB drive!

Found at WorthPlaying

I’ve been a bit busy lately, so I’ve actually managed to finish two other books before even writing about this one… And this one in particular happens to be Chaosium’s “Frontier Cthulhu“.  As with most of Chaosium’s short story collections, I really enjoyed this one, although I will say that “Song of Cthulhu” and “Hard Boiled Cthulhu” were more enjoyable for me.  Maybe I’m just not all that big of a Westerns fan.

“The Long Road Home” by Paul Melniczek, is a great story to open up with.  Following a group of Viking warriors, the story creates a scene filled with the unknown and peril.  This one does a great job at not being the standard Lovecraftian story in setting, creating a world, and horror intriguing and new.

“In Waters Black the Lost Ones Sleep“, by Angeline Hawkes, is a great story stirring up the doomed colony of Roanoke with the Cthulhu Mythos.  Good story.  I enjoyed this one.

Now, “Where Men Had Seldom Trod“, by Lee Clark Zumpe, is a story of heroes, adventure, and fighting the evils of the horrific old gods.  We see this one set in the 1760’s following two members of a secret organization, one the teacher, and one the student.

And the stories just get better with “Something to Hold the Door Closed“, by Lon Prater.  This story actually has a good lesson in it.  Greed leads to one’s downfall.

Stephen Mark Rainey and Durant Haire’s “Terror from Middle Island” was a good read.  Nothing spectacular, but still worth reading.

Stewart Sternberg’s “Children of the Mountain” is another really good story.  A fur trapper traps something otherworldly and ends up paying for it.  I really enjoyed this one and the mixing of these unique creatures with Native American mythology.

“They Who Dwell Below“, by William Jones is anotherone of the better stories in this compilation.  One word, “Rage”.

Scott Lette’s “Wagon Train for the Stars” is a decent story about a wagon train and the odd religious group they’re carrying.

Ron Shiflet created a rather good story with “Incident at Dagon Wells“.  Its also fun to see Dagon used somewhere other than on the ocean coast.

Robert J. Santa’s “Ahiga and the Machine” is one of my favorite stories in the collection.  Robert does an excellent job writing about a Native American who comes across something from outer space.

And what is any compilation about the New World without a story about a gambler?  Jason Andrew’s “The Dead man’s Hand” does an excellent job injecting the Lovecraftian mythos into the old west, gambling, and a deck of cards.

“Jedediah Smith and the Undying Chinaman“, by Charles P. Zaglanis, is rather remeniscent of Robert E. Howard’s “Skull-Face”.  This story follows a gun slinging archaeologist who is hot on the heels of a Chinese priest of the dead gods who stole a disc from his museum.  The hero is strong and resilient, the Chinese priest dark and evil, and the girl, because what is any Howardesque story without a girl to fall for, is thin and beautiful.

Matthew Baugh’s “Snake Oil” pulls inspiration from the snake people.

Tim Curran’s “Cemetary, Nevada” takes place in… Cemetary, Nevada, a ghost town in 1892.  here we see a group of regulators following an outlaw only to find something got to him first.  This one is one of the star stories of the collection, and starts and ends in good ol’ Lovecraftian style with a letter written by the protaganist.

And for the last story, we have what has to be the most entertaining story of the bunch.  Darrell Schweitzer’s “The Rider of the Dark” takes Lovecraft’s mythos, smacks it across the head, dumps it in a pot, laugh’s at it, then stirs in a drunken aged cow poke, a young college student, Nyarlathotep, and zombie cattle.  If you only read one story, this one has to be it.

Over all, I enjoyed “Frontier Cthulhu“, and would recommend it to any fan of weird fiction, especially those with a hankerin’ for some old west stories.

You can find it over at Chaosium with a really decent price.