Greetings!!

 Why hello there!

It's been quite a while since i've blogged, hasn't it? It feels good to be back! What brought on this sudden return to the blogosphere, you ask? My newest project! Don't worry, I'm still working on my NaNoWriMo story but "Demonatrix" and my beloved Sadie are being put on a brief hold so I can breathe life into an idea thats been kicking around the ol' noggin recently. In order to clear some space for MORE Sadie ideas, I've gotta get this story out! Now, onto the new idea:

H.P. Lovecraft was, and still is, one the greatest horror writers of our time. The monsters and atmospheres he created are unmatched. To this day, writers are still creating pieces set in Lovecraft's universe that add another branch (or tentacle, I guess) to the "Cthulhu Mythos". It's truly a shame that when he was alive, he never reached the level of popularity he has today. He was loved by his contemporaries, and through them his work and legacy lived on. My new story "The Lovecraft Paradox" is my contribution (even if it's minuscule and nowhere near as phenomenal as the stories that have preceded it) to that ever growing world.

Lovecraft is, along with Edgar Allen Poe, responsible for my interest in writing supernatural fiction. The ability to surround the reader with a feeling of dread and impending doom just with a few choice words is a rare ability and one that Lovecraft himself perfected with ease. In his 32-page essay "Supernatural Horror In Literature", he writes:

"This type of fear-literature must not be confounded with a type externally similar but psychologically widely different; the literature of mere physical fear and the mundanely gruesome. Such writing, to be sure, has its place, as has the conventional or even whimsical or humorous ghost story where formalism or the author's knowing wink removes the true sense of the morbidly unnatural; but these things are not the literature of cosmic fear in its purest sense. The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain -- a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

Nothing matches the feeling of dread the reader feels when the crew of the doomed schoonerEmma awakens the Great Old One, Cthulhu. The terrifying image Lovecraft conjures up of the invisible Dunwich horror stays with you long after you've finished the story. Lovecraft truly understood what it took to be a writer of the unusual and strange!

My newest tale "The Lovecraft Paradox" basically turns everything about the Cthulhu Mythos on it's ear. The main character is Aloysius Baxter Cunningham. He's a twenty-something Boston resident stuck at a dead end, boring job who fills up his free time writing stories and attending Steam punk conventions and parties with his friends. While doing research for a story based in the Lovecraft Universe, he encounters a mysterious young lady named Charlotte who leads him into a world of cults, paradoxes and an end-of-the-world scenario he thought only existed in the world of Lovecraft he loves so much. Will he succeed in helping the mysterious Miskatonics prevent the return of the Old Ones? Or will the heads of Arkham House succeed with their plot to destroy the works of the author they were once meant to protect? Is this all happening in Aloysius's head?

For the answers to these questions and more, stay tuned! Chapter 1 is coming soon!