Tag Archives: Children of Lovecraft Country

Skook Words (and Pictures) #47

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It’s Newsletter Day! Huzzah!

These Days …

Nothing to see. Move along.

Lovecraft Kids

The Lovecraft Country (Eldritch New England) Holiday Collection Kickstarter was a two part project. There was the main RPG manual and then there was The Children of Lovecraft Country, an anthology of short stories featuring each of the Morgan Family Cousins. I got to do an illustration for each story!

Blood and the Deep Blue Sea (Innsmouth) by Oscar Rios – Alice Sanders has a lot of questions in her life, mostly about the father she never got to meet. These are all questions her family just won’t answer until she’s “older”.  But time moves slowly for a thirteen year old girl who’s in a hurry to grow up.  Then, one chaotic and bloody afternoon in Innsmouth, everything suddenly changes.


Dreams of Dunwich (Dunwich) by Glynn Owen Barrass – A child of farming stock, Gordon Brewster lives a simple life, though life in Dunwich is often very far from simple. Darkness hangs over the decaying hamlet, something which spreads its insidious tentacles towards every soul in the vicinity… especially the innocent. Gordon has witnessed some of the worst terrors Dunwich has to offer, seen friends kidnapped and lost forever to the vile practice of cannibalism. If only those Dunwich Horrors were truly over. If only the nightmares that plagued him weren’t the harbingers of further doom.

Luck be With You (Arkham) by Brian M. Sammons – Edward Derby is not your average 12-year-old boy. Inquisitive and wise beyond his tender years, he started reading shortly after walking, has mastered Latin, and notices things others don’t (or choose to ignore). When he notices someone scribbling strange symbols across Arkham in places where soon after a mysterious death occurs, his curiosity is piqued. To prevent more such deaths Edward reluctantly takes it upon his slim shoulders the solve this mystery.

George Weedon and The Mystery of Emily Keane (Arkham) by Lee Clark Zumpe – According to authorities, little Emily Keane fell down a well one autumn afternoon, never to be seen again. On the fifth anniversary of her disappearance, George Weedon and a ragtag group of plucky Arkham kids try to find out what really happened to the girl. Their investigation takes them to some of the city’s most feared locales and reveals a centuries-old secret.

Ghosts & Monsters (Kingsport) by Peter Rawlik – Donald Sutton has a secret: his imaginary friend Simon isn’t imaginary at all. Simon is just one of many ghosts that haunting Kingsport that Donald is somehow able to see. When the ghosts of Kingsport begin vanishing from their haunts, Donald discovers them trapped in the most unusual places. When Simon himself vanishes, Donald must work to free him, and accept help from a frightening source, with terrifying consequences.

Witchlights (Dunwich) by Christine Morgan – Down in the woods, down in the hollow, pale and eerie lights appear. Nothing to worry about, Dunwichers say. Nothing to fear… Fireflies… Marsh gas… Foxfire… That’s all. But, if there’s nothing to fear, why do people warn their children to stay away? Why do those who ignore such warnings sometimes go missing? Little Gerdie Pope may only be ten, but she is determined to find out.

Talking to Myself (An Ongoing Dialogue)

Scene –
The Studio. A fat orange cat lays belly up on the carpet. A long-haired black cat sleeps atop the computer. The Salesman sits in front of the computer looking at images.

The Cartoonist enters. He carries a mug filled with a mix of coffee and a brand of eggnog no one wanted to drink by itself. He steps carefully over the orange cat.

Cartoonist – “You’re sitting at my computer. Why are you sitting at my computer?”

Salesman – “I’m doing research.”

Cartoonist – “You’re looking at my illustrations for Sunk Cost Elegy. How is that research?”

Salesman – “I’m trying to figure out how to brand manage this comic.”

Cartoonist – “Brand manage?”

Salesman – “Of course. Everything you produce is part of your brand. I’m trying to figure out if this is on brand or if I’ll need to tweak your brand’s vibe to include it.”

Cartoonist – “Tweak my brand’s vibe?”

Salesman – “Everything is brand management now. Everyone is online. Everyone is a brand whether they plan it or not. The big question is – are you in control of how your brand is perceived?”

Cartoonist – “Wasn’t ‘Branding’ a last decade thing?”

Salesman – “Branding is eternal. I might be a bit behind in the lingo but we can make that part of the Brand.”

The Cartoonist sits on the couch. The fat orange cat stretches and yawns but remains on its back. The Cartoonist sips the stuff in his mug.

Cartoonist – “Okay genius, what’s my brand?”

The Salesman frowns.

Salesman – “Ozthulhu.”

Cartoonist – ” … ?”

Salesman – “That’s better than ‘mostly obscure’. Your most public work has been for Call of Cthulhu RPGs and Land of Oz related things. When you met Brandon Graham he recognized you from you having inked Oz Squad. I know you did more work on Misspent Youths but that was thirty years ago and it was a mess.”

Cartoonist – “It was the best work I could do at the time.”

Salesman – “It was still a mess. And it made so little impact on the comics scene that Wikipedia deleted the entry because it ‘wasn’t culturally relevant’.”

Cartoonist – “I’m over that. Now.”

Salesman – “It’s fine. It’s part of your brand’s story. You’re punk. You’re underground. You’re weird and obscure and not ready for prime time.”

Cartoonist – “I’m pretty sure that’s part of someone else’s brand.”

Salesmen – “I checked. It’s available.”

Cartoonist – “Okay. Whatever. That’s your department. Could you get out of my seat? I’d like to get back to work.

The Cartoonist and the Sales … er … Brand Manager exchange places, each stepping over the fat orange cat in the process. The Cartoonist puts stylus to Wacom tablet and starts work. The Brand Manager stares at the ceiling. He picks up the mug that the Cartoonist left on the floor in front of the couch. He gulps down the remainder of the contents.

Brand Manager – “So, when are you going to be done?”

The Cartoonist doesn’t look at the Brand Manager.

Cartoonist – “It will be done when I’m done.”

Brand Manager – “I get that creation takes time but Brands can’t just disappear. They have to keep producing content for the fans. Pick a release date so your peeps have something to look forward to.”

Cartoonist – “I don’t think I have ‘peeps’. And I’m not going to claim this will get done by any certain date. I’ve made too many pronouncements about too many projects. It will get done when it gets done. The best I can do is work on it.”

Brand Manager – “That was an on brand answer. Very good. What are you doing right now?”

Cartoonist – “I’m editing art.”

Brand Manager – “What do you mean? I thought Sunk Cost Elegy was mostly finished. Don’t you just have to write a new script? Maybe rearrange some pages?”

Cartoonist – “It’s turned into more than that. The original story was mostly a gag with a basic plot. The more I work on it, the more I look at the art, the more I see that can be adjusted.”

The Brand Manager makes an “Oh, god, not again” face.

Brand Manager – “So you’re making more work for yourself? Wasn’t the art good the first time?”

Cartoonist – “It was the best I could do at the time with the material and time I had within restrictions I agreed on. Ten years from now I’ll probably look at this stuff and see ways I could improve on it.”

Brand Manager – ” ‘Always improving!’ Good Brand Strategy. Show me.”

Cartoonist – “Show you what?”

Brand Manager – “Show me a before and after page.”

Cartoonist – “Nothing is done. It’s all a work in progress.”

Brand Manager – “Fine. Show me some befores and in-progresses.”

Cartoonist – “Will you go away if I do?”

Brand Manager – “I will go away if you show me three.”

Cartoonist – “Fine. Three. I’m going to pick at random.
One. Before –

In Progress –

Two and Three. Before –


Two and Three. In Progress –

Brand Manager – “Hunh. Why …”

Cartoonist – “If you want to have a Brand to manage, you’ll fuck off now.”

Thank you!

That is, thank you for reading and looking at the pictures. May the coming week bring you much joy and few annoyances!

See you in seven!

Skook Words (and Pictures) #46

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It’s BLACK FRIDAY!

Shop! Shop! Shop!

I am, at this point, constitutionally required to include a link to my Redbubble Store so you can, as also constitutionally required, buy gifts for all your loved ones. And yourself of course. Because you should be one of your loved ones. So I’m told. Repeatedly. So, if you love yourself, you will buy lots of things (featuring my designs) for yourself.

Or, you could, like me, ignore the marketing hype and remember Black Friday as the day in 1929 when the stock market crashed and stock brokers rained down from the upper windows of brokerages. But that would be both depressing and anticapitalist and unconstitutional. (Also, the big crash started and was bigger the day before, deemed as Black Thursday. But that means checking history before posting and I never do that. Mostly.)

(Also, that was in September. Almost one hundred years ago. Ancient history. This is November. The day after American Thanksgiving. In 2023. When we no longer have to go to a store to shop. We can run up our credit cards via online shopping experiences. Yay!)

These Days …

I’ll be at work today, delivering some mail and a lot of parcels. Some of my workday will be in the dark. Yay.

Lovecraft Kids

Everyone grows up. Even characters in Call of Cthulhu games. If you play one of the Morgan Family Cousins, you’ve got a choice of adulthoods.

You could grow up to live in a high octane pulp milieu –


The above illustration is in the Eldritch New England Holiday collection. For the fun of it I added some colors and mocked it up a comic book cover. That version is the illustration below. As I look at it now I think it would be fun to carry the design further and mock it up as an old pulp magazine cover. But that’s a project for another time.


Alternately you could grow up to live a more sedate life with less wild action and more normal activities. You’ll still deal with the occasional indescribable horror but that’s to be expected. The illustration below was used both in the original Eldritch New England Holiday Collection RPG manual and as the cover for An Eldritch Legacy, a collection of short stories each starring one of the adult cousins.

The physical art for this illustration was done in black and white with ink and markers. The critters that the portal Tillinghast Generator brings to light were done on a separate layer and added in Photoshop. I gave Oscar, the writer of the book, a choice of colors for the extradimensional wild life.
Oscar went against tradition and, instead of a standard purple, he picked the sickly green. Mark Shireman, the layout artist of the book, made this snazzy GIF of the image.
Shireman also designed the final cover of the fiction book.

An Eldritch Legacy: The Cousins Come of Age, Edited by Brian M. Sammons & Oscar Rios

Ten years later, we rejoin the six cousins of the Morgan Clan from Dunwich, Arkham, Kingsport and Innsmouth, now in their early twenties. Each continues to face challenges as the malevolent forces of the Cthulhu Mythos surround them and, in some cases, reside within them. We are proud to offer this sequel to Children of Lovecraft Country.

  • Dreams and Nightmares by Peter Rawlik—Artist and gallery owner by day, secret paranormal investigator and spirit medium by night, Donald Sutton does his best to make sure these parts of his life are kept separate. After a particularly frightening investigation he decides to take a break and begins spending more and more time in the Dreamlands. However, when taking photographs at a Kingsport Congregational Hospital for their annual Christmas party, he encounters the beautiful and mysterious stranger, Ms. Aspinwall. Not only does she know his secret, but she desperately needs his help with a haunting in the hospital’s Mariner’s Ward. But the winter solstice is a dangerous time for spirit mediums, especially in Kingsport, because the veils between realities become perilously thin.
  • Warden of the Dark God by Glynn Owen Barass—The rolling hills of Dunwich have always been a mysterious, sometimes dangerous place. When children go missing, Gordon Brewster is the one who finds them. While still working on his family’s farm, he’s become an expert hunter, tracker, and a member of the Believers, a local collective of arcane practitioners dedicated to defending the people of Dunwich from eldritch threats. However, things come to a head as an ancient evil, slumbering and once locked away in an alien ruin, begins to awaken with a need to sate its endless hunger. Donald teams up with his best friend, Pauly Johnson, and Marie Bishop, leader of the Believers, to put a stop to it.
  • Separate Lives by Christine Morgan—After spending her youth struggling with memories of past lifetimes, Gerdie Pope has learned to control her gift to become a world renowned clairvoyant. Now living in Lily Dale, New York, a haven for mystics, psychics, and practitioners of folk magic, her peaceful life is interrupted. First by a challenging client, a young girl with vivid “memories” of another life, one far stranger than any Gerdie has ever lived. Next by an unwanted visit from a relation on her mother’s side of the family, the degenerate side of the Whateley Clan. They want her to return to Dunwich and continue her grandfather’s, the late Wizard Whateley, work.
  • A Dark Legacy by Brian M. Sammons—Edward Derby, the youngest associate professor at Miskatonic University, must respond to a sudden personal matter while on his first summer break. After receiving a call from Marblehead, he learns that a house once owned by his long deceased father suffered damage during a recent storm. While the house belongs to Edward, he’s until now refused to explore it, afraid of what he might learn about his enigmatic father. He learns he has a lot in common with his father, a fellow mythos investigator and scholar, as mysterious deaths begin. To resolve this crisis, he must defeat a foe his father never could.
  • George Weedon and the Secret of Infinite Horizons by Lee Clark Zumpe—Life is good for George Weedon, starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, some things never change, and dark mysteries somehow keep finding him. This time he’s asked by his team’s owner, “The Chief” Art Rooney, to locate some friends who’ve gone missing while staying in their newly built vacation house in the Allegheny Mountains, a strange sprawling mansion called Infinite Horizons. The designer had a mental breakdown shortly after the building was completed and was committed to an asylum. George sets off with a small team in hopes of solving yet another eldritch mystery.
  • Blood and the Turning of the Tide by Oscar Rios—For Alice, a Deep One Hybrid and leader of a band of Innsmouth refugees, things keep getting more complicated. While she established her band successfully in Port Jefferson, New York, keeping them safe is another matter. Her band struggles under the rules she’s placed on them. Some desires, it seems, are just too strong to deny. As she struggles to maintain control an old friend shows up with a dire warning. A federal agent is on their trail, threatening everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve. Alice must bring her people together to face this threat when they’ve never been more divided.

Also – Cats!

The new, updated edition of Cathulhu is available now at drivethrurpg.com.


Both Michael Bukowski and I contributed new color illustrations to the book. He did most of the eldritch horrors. I did more mostly mundane (but still dangerous!) menaces – like little yappy dogs!

And that’s it for this week.

What are you waiting for? Go buy things!

Or don’t.

It’s okay. Giving your cat a lap, taking your dog for a walk or hanging out with friends is better for both you and the environment.

Stay warm. Stay well.

See you in seven!

 

Skook Words (and Pictures) #41

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‘Tis Friday and thou art reading mine newsletter anon. Blessed be.

These Days …

I’m noticing that I’m liking Autumn. I’m not crazy about the extra darkness (and I will really complain when Daylight Savings kicks in) but I am enjoying the cooler-but-not-yet-cold weather and the extra colors that the fall leaves are providing. Plus the Halloween decorations that have sprouted up everywhere. Halloween is the best holiday. It’s not religious, it offends fundamentalists and it celebrates imaginary scaries. The only way it could be better would be if I got a paid day off.

The only medical appointment this week was for Kemo, our older cat. He’s been overgrooming the base of his tail, enough so there’s no hair and some of the skin is raw. The vet thinks he may have allergies to something in his cat food. She gave him a steroid shot, an antibiotic shot and recommended some high end cat food. She also fitted him with a cone-of-shame. We’re keeping him isolated in our bedroom in order to speed up the healing.

Work at the Post Office was only really eventful on Wednesday. Someone forgot to unlock the station’s gates for the sorting clerks Tuesday night/Wednesday morning so they couldn’t get in to throw parcels and divide up the palettes of flats (magazines/catalogs/random printed things). The clerks called around, no one answered, so they went home. When I came to work the loading dock was filled with pallets and bins of unsorted parcels. For the next three hours the supervisors and a tag-team of carriers got everything distributed. It was almost fun.

I had yesterday off. The vet appointment was in the morning. I alternated between chores and doing art. We got word from the publishers that they’re starting to build the Kickstarter page for Billi 99. We might have something to look at next week.

The Lovecraft Kids’ BFFs

For the Tails of Valor Kickstarter, Golden Goblin Press offered a reward tier by which backers could have their cat drawn into the book as a player character. For The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection Kickstarter they offered backers the chance to have themselves (or someone of their choice) drawn into the book as a best friend of one of the Morgan Family cousins.Then the poor folks got their portraits drawn by me. The characters were adolescents so the backers were asked to send a photo of themselves at the approximate age as their character. Three folks were able to provide those. Two folks didn’t have any age appropriate photos so I had to subtract a few years from the photos they did provide and then guess. One person wanted to give new life to a passed loved one. They had a photo of their chosen one as a very young boy and a few of him as an adult so I had to conjure of version of him somewhere in between.

Digital Sketches

I’m having a blast practicing Clip Studio Paint with my Wacom tablet. Remember the movie The Karate Kid? Daniel, the protagonist goes to Miyagi, an old man, and asks him to teach him karate. Miyagi agrees. And then he has Daniel paint his house and wash his car. Wax on. Wax off. Daniel does this for a while, expecting Miyagi to start teaching him soon. When days go by and Miyagi keeps having him do chores, Daniel gets upset at the old man. Miyagi strikes out. Daniel blocks him with one of the moves he’s learned from waxing the car. Miyagi demonstrates that every chore he’d been having Daniel do was teaching him a karate skill.

I’ve been working with Photoshop for a couple of decades now – mostly to color my work but also to make corrections and adjustments. CSP has a different interface than Photoshop. Some short cuts are the same but mostly I’m having to find the locations of various features (that I’m sure are there) on a regular basis. I won’t dive into the weeds as to what exactly I’ve done with Photoshop – suffice to say, every skill I’ve developed using that program is translating smoothly to CSP. Even when I have to DDG (DuckDuckGo) for the location of a feature.

These are this week’s pencil sketches.


And these are the digital finishes.

I’ve now started sketching right in CSP, no physical pencils first. I’ll show off some of the results next week.

I hope that the eventfulness of your week has been pleasant. I hope the coming week is pleasanter. Say “hi” to all the ghosts and goblins that cross your view.

See you in seven!

Tuesday Night Party Club #32

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Gallery: The Cousins, Young and Older

The Kickstarter for the adult adventures of the Morgan Clan Cousins is now in its second week. Part of the job of running a kickstarter is the marketing the heck out of it. I’m not running the campaign but I am trying to help with said marketing. I had a great time illustrating the Eldritch New England Holiday Collection and its companion fiction anthology Children of the Lovecraft Country. The stories in An Eldritch Legacy take place about a decade after the stories in the first book.That first book is currently available as an ebook at the above link. It’s also available as an add-on in your preferred format at the Kickstarter.

To help with marketing I created these banners of the Morgan Clan Cousins and I’m posting them individulally, along with the synopsis of that character’s story on my various social medias. I’m posting them all here with the blurbs for their stories in the both the books/ 
Blood and the Deep Blue Sea  by Oscar Rios——Alice Sanders has a lot of questions in her life, mostly about the father she never got to meet. These are all questions her family just won’t answer until she’s “older”. Time moves slowly for a thirteen year old girl who’s in a hurry to grow up until one chaotic and bloody evening in Innsmouth, everything suddenly changes.

Blood and the Turning of the Tide by Oscar Rios – Who would have thought escaping the federal raid on Innsmouth would be the easy part? For Alice, a young Deep One Hybrid leading a small group of Innsmouth refugees, things keep getting more complicated. While she established her band successfully in Port Jefferson, New York, keeping them safe is another matter. They struggle with learning to live among “normal” people. Federal agents still hunt for Innsmouth residents who escaped the raid. Then her Aunt Margie, kept in hiding in her attic, nears the end of her “Change.” A federal agent arrives in town asking questions, a member of her community asks permission to marry a Port Jefferson boy, and a local mechanic even asks her out to dinner! When just surviving isn’t enough and the refugees want more out of life, can her community’s secrets and their safety survive much longer?

Ghosts & Monsters by Peter Rawlik—Donald Sutton has a secret: his imaginary friend Simon isn’t imaginary at all. Simon is just one of many ghosts haunting Kingsport that Donald is somehow able to see. When the ghosts of Kingsport begin vanishing from their haunts, Donald discovers them trapped in the most unusual places. When Simon himself vanishes, Donald must work to free him, and accept help from a frightening source, with terrifying consequences.

Dreams and Nightmares by Peter Rawlik – Artist and gallery owner by day, secret paranormal investigator and spirit medium by night, Donald Sutton does his best to make sure these parts of his life are kept separate. After a particularly frightening investigation he decided to take a break from ghost hunting. He begins spending more and more time exploring the Dreamlands, a skill he learned as a child from his cousin Melba Sutton. However, when taking photographs at a Kingsport Congregational Hospital for their annual Christmas party, he encounters the beautiful and mysterious stranger, Ms. Aspinwall. Not only does she somehow know his secret work as a paranormal psychic but she desperately needs his help with a haunting in the hospital’s Mariner’s Ward. But the winter solstice is a dangerous time for spirit mediums, especially in Kingsport, because the veils between worlds and realities become perilously thin.

Luck be With You  by Brian M. Sammons—Edward Derby is not your average 12-year-old boy. Inquisitive and wise beyond his tender years, he started reading shorty after walking, has mastered Latin, and notices things others don’t (or choose to ignore). When he notices someone scribbling strange symbols across Arkham in places where soon after a mysterious death occurs, his curiosity is piqued. To prevent more such deaths Edward reluctantly takes it upon his slim shoulders to solve this mystery.

A Dark Legacy by Brian Sammons– Edward Derby, the youngest associate professor at Miskatonic University, was looking forward to catching up on reading during his first summer break as a member of the faculty. When he gets a call that a large house once owned by his birth father, Leon Derby, has been damaged in a storm, he’s called to Marblehead to deal with the repairs. Edward’s technically owned the house for years now, but has avoided visiting the property, afraid of what he might find. Leon Derby died before Edward was five years old, and the son has no real memories of his father. Edward does know that his father battled dark and unknowable forces, much as Edward, himself, does now. While exploring the house and beginning to learn its secrets, Edward discovers he has a lot in common with his late father. However, a long dormant evil begins to stir, and kill, forcing Edward to finish something his father started many years ago.
George Weedon and The Mystery of Emily Keane by Lee Clark Zumpe—According to authorities, little Emily Keane fell down a well one autumn afternoon, never to be seen again. On the fifth anniversary of her disappearance, George Weedon and a ragtag group of plucky Arkham kids try to find out what really happened to the girl.

George Weedon and the Secret of Infinite Horizons by Lee Clark Zumpe – Life is good for George Weedon, starting quarterback for the Pittsburg Pirates, living his dream of playing professional football. However, some things never change, and dark mysteries keep placing themselves in his path. This time he’s asked by his team’s owner and founder, “The Chief” Art Rooney, to track down some close friends who’ve gone missing while visiting their newly built vacation house in the Allegheny Mountain, a large but strange structure called Infinite Horizons. Expected to take years to build, it was completed it just 10 months, and the designer had a complete mental breakdown shortly afterwards and was committed to an asylum. So George sets off with a small party, the missing couple’s daughter, a boxer, and a professional baseball player to solve yet another mystery. Witchlights by Christine Morgan – Down in the woods, down in the hollow, pale and eerie lights appear. Nothing to worry about, Dunwichers say. Nothing to fear… Fireflies… Marsh gas… Foxfire… That’s all. But, if there’s nothing to fear, why do people warn their children to stay away? Why do those who ignore such warnings sometimes go missing? Little Gerdie Pope may only be ten, but she is determined to find out.

Separate Lives by Christine Morgan – After spending most of her life struggling with memories of past lifetimes, Gerdie Pope has learned to channel them into a gift allowing her to help people. Now a world renowned clairvoyant, she lives in Lily Dale, New York, a haven for mystics, psychics, and practitioners of folk magic. Then her peaceful life is interrupted by a challenging client and a visit from distant relations. Her client, a young girl with vivid “memories” of another life, one far stranger than any Gerdie has ever lived. The child’s parents are desperate for help, after doctors recommended she be committed to an asylum. But when relatives from her mother’s side of the family turn up, the degenerate side of the Whateley Clan, things quickly spiral out of control. They want her to return to Dunwich and use her gifts to continue her grandfather’s, the late Wizard Whateley, work. Dreams of Dunwich by Glynn Owen Barrass —A child of farming stock, Gordon Brewster lives a simple life, though life in Dunwich is often very far from simple. Darkness hangs over the decaying hamlet, spreading its insidious tentacles towards every soul in the vicinity… especially the innocent. Gordon has witnessed some of the worst terrors Dunwich has to offer, seen friends kidnapped and lost forever. If only those Dunwich Horrors were truly over. If only the nightmares that plagued him weren’t the harbingers of further doom.

Warden of the Dark God by Glynn Owen Barass – The rolling hills of Dunwich have always been a mysterious, sometimes dangerous place. Every so often children go missing and when they do, Gordon Brewster is the one who sets out to find them. While still working on his family’s farm, he’s become an expert hunter, tracker, and a member of the Believers, a local collective of arcane practitioners dedicated to defending the people of Dunwich, and all mankind, from eldritch threats. However, things are coming to a head as an ancient evil, slumbering in alien ruins, begins to awaken with a need to sate its endless hunger. Donald gathers up a couple of allies and goes on the hunt once again, only this time the fate of every man, woman, and child in Dunwich hangs in the balance.

The Kickstarter ends on August 31st. Stretch goals include illustrations for both An Eldritch Legacy and Between Twilight and Dawn. I’d love to hang out with the Cousins one more time. I’d love to see the illustrations Ian MacLean would do for BTaD. So if the above summaries sound like stories you’d like to read, please back the campaign! Thank you!

Story Seed #51
Atlantis Rises

Atlantis. Lemuria. Mu. The Deep Ones. Every culture that has lived by the sea had stories of people who lived under the sea. There has been plenty of fiction about Atlantis and other underwater civilizations. Comics have given us both Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner. The basic premise is that there are powerful people (or creatures) down in the deep.

Oddly, those powerful underwater people seem to be okay with us land people dumping our trash all ower their homeland and stripping the fish and minerals out of their seas. A century ago our poking around in the ocean might have been just annoying. Now? It’s catastrophic.

The sea people haven’t responded because they’ve been waiting. They are a deeply religious people who follow the signs of their gods. And their gods are real. And they have finally spoken. Take back your world.

Recommendation

A Christmas Witch’s Candy Cookbook by Meredith McClaren is currently Kickstarting. It’s probably a bad idea to recommend another Kickstarter while I’m participating in one but I love McClaren’s illustrations. The book is also already fully funded so, YAY!

Local News

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’ve spent a lot of time creating products for my Zazzle store. I’ve currently got over 75 different items available. That part was fun. I’ve sold a few things to friends who came over from Facebook. (Thank you friends!) The less fun part is getting those products in front of complete strangers so they might be inspired to purchase some of them. It’s marketing but it’s not actually marketing to human beings. I can write entertaining and enticing copy for human beings. The thing I now have to learn is how to title and tag items in such a way that my products show up in searches both at Zazzle and through internet search engines. That’s a whole other skill set. I’ll learn it but it will take time. I’m going to keep making things but I’m limiting myself to one or two new products a day.

Beyond the need to learn key word stuff I’ve also got another book illustration project on my plate. This one involves pirates and the Cthulhu Mythos. It’s in the development stages so I can’t say much more than that. I spent a good chunk of Friday just doing bad sketches. That’s a stage I have to go through with every new project. I have to get my imagination to switch gears from whatever the last project was and make room for the new one. Everything I try to draw at this stage looks like crap to me. I’m used it. I just keep drawing. Eventually the work starts to look serviceable and I can start thinking of doing actual illustrations.

Thank you for dropping by. I hope your week has gone well. I hope the coming week looks even better. Be sure to reach out to friends whether you think you need to or not. Because you do. You’re a social monkey. The monkeys that tough it alone are all crazy.

Tuesday Night Party Club #26

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Gallery: The Lovcraft Country Cousins Grow Up
On Aucust 1st, Golden Goblin Press will launch its next Kickstarter – Growing Up Overnight. It’s a two book offering. An Eldritch Legacy is a collection of novellas featuring adult versions of the kids from the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. Between Twilight and Dawn is an athology of short stories that takes place between sunset and sunrise. An Eldritch Legacy features stories of the individual cousins in their early twenties.I did the cover illustration and Mark Shireman worked his design magic so that this cover will be a match for Children of Lovecraft Country. If all goes as planned I will be providing an illustration for each of the stories. And what are the stories, you ask? Take a gander at these blurbs:

Dreams and Nightmares by Peter Rawlik – Artist and gallery owner by day, secret paranormal investigator and spirit medium by night, Donald Sutton does his best to make sure these parts of his life are kept separate. After a particularly frightening investigation he decided to take a break from ghost hunting. He begins spending more and more time exploring the Dreamlands, a skill he learned as a child from his cousin Melba Sutton. However, when taking photographs at a Kingsport Congregational Hospital for their annual Christmas party, he encounters the beautiful and mysterious stranger, Ms. Aspinwall. Not only does she somehow know his secret work as a paranormal psychic but she desperately needs his help with a haunting in the hospital’s Mariner’s Ward. But the winter solstice is a dangerous time for spirit mediums, especially in Kingsport, because the veils between worlds and realities become perilously thin.
Warden of the Dark God by Glynn Owen Barass – The rolling hills of Dunwich have always been a mysterious, sometimes dangerous place. Every so often children go missing and when they do, Gordon Brewster is the one who sets out to find them. While still working on his family’s farm, he’s become an expert hunter, tracker, and a member of the Believers, a local collective of arcane practitioners dedicated to defending the people of Dunwich, and all mankind, from eldritch threats. However, things are coming to a head as an ancient evil, slumbering in alien ruins, begins to awaken with a need to sate its endless hunger. Donald gathers up a couple of allies and goes on the hunt once again, only this time the fate of every man, woman, and child in Dunwich hangs in the balance.
Separate Lives by Christine Morgan – After spending most of her life struggling with memories of past lifetimes, Gerdie Pope has learned to channel them into a gift allowing her to help people. Now a world renowned clairvoyant, she lives in Lily Dale, New York, a haven for mystics, psychics, and practitioners of folk magic. Then her peaceful life is interrupted by a challenging client and a visit from distant relations. Her client, a young girl with vivid “memories” of another life, one far stranger than any Gerdie has ever lived. The child’s parents are desperate for help, after doctors recommended she be committed to an asylum. But when relatives from her mother’s side of the family turn up, the degenerate side of the Whateley Clan, things quickly spiral out of control. They want her to return to Dunwich and use her gifts to continue her grandfather’s, the late Wizard Whateley, work.
George Weedon and the Secret of Infinite Horizons by Lee Clark Zumpe – Life is good for George Weedon, starting quarterback for the Pittsburg Pirates, living his dream of playing professional football. However, some things never change, and dark mysteries keep placing themselves in his path. This time he’s asked by his team’s owner and founder, “The Chief” Art Rooney, to track down some close friends who’ve gone missing while visiting their newly built vacation house in the Allegheny Mountain, a large but strange structure called Infinite Horizons. Expected to take years to build, it was completed it just 10 months, and the designer had a complete mental breakdown shortly afterwards and was committed to an asylum. So George sets off with a small party, the missing couple’s daughter, a boxer, and a professional baseball player to solve yet another mystery.
A Dark Legacy by Brian Sammons– Edward Derby, the youngest associate professor at Miskatonic University, was looking forward to catching up on reading during his first summer break as a member of the faculty. When he gets a call that a large house once owned by his birth father, Leon Derby, has been damaged in a storm, he’s called to Marblehead to deal with the repairs. Edward’s technically owned the house for years now, but has avoided visiting the property, afraid of what he might find. Leon Derby died before Edward was five years old, and the son has no real memories of his father. Edward does know that his father battled dark and unknowable forces, much as Edward, himself, does now. While exploring the house and beginning to learn its secrets, Edward discovers he has a lot in common with his late father. However, a long dormant evil begins to stir, and kill, forcing Edward to finish something his father started many years ago.
Blood and the Turning of the Tide by Oscar Rios – Who would have thought escaping the federal raid on Innsmouth would be the easy part? For Alice, a young Deep One Hybrid leading a small group of Innsmouth refugees, things keep getting more complicated. While she established her band successfully in Port Jefferson, New York, keeping them safe is another matter. They struggle with learning to live among “normal” people. Federal agents still hunt for Innsmouth residents who escaped the raid. Then her Aunt Margie, kept in hiding in her attic, nears the end of her “Change.” A federal agent arrives in town asking questions, a member of her community asks permission to marry a Port Jefferson boy, and a local mechanic even asks her out to dinner! When just surviving isn’t enough and the refugees want more out of life, can her community’s secrets and their safety survive much longer?
I will provide links once the Kickstarter goes live. In the meantime, here’s a gif of the cover art. Hats of to Mr. Shireman for putting it together!

Lest I forget, here is a description of the contents for Between Twilight and Dawn:

TUMSHIEHEID by William Meikle – There are older traditions than pumpkins and candy, more basic traditions. Jack of the lantern does not like being mocked, especially on a night when the veil is thin and the old ways can return, with their vengeance.

FORGETTING by Richard Lee Byers – Out of sight, out of mind. Out of mind, out of life. A son learns this bitter lesson when trying to help his sick father work through some issues one night.

KAMLOOPS LAKE by Neil Baker– Unseasonably cold weather means that Kamploops Lakes in British Columbia is a viable ice-fishing spot for the first time in decades. Unfortunately, it is not just the plump rainbow trout that are being lured and caught, as Ethan and Mel are about to discover in a tale of beer, ice, and cosmic dread.

BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON by Pete Rawlik – Two dead men, one old and blind, the other pale as chalk, both died struggling for the book that lay between them. That aged volume was blank, just like every other book in the immense private library. Why would one man kill for a blank book, and why would another die to keep it?

MARY IN THE MIRROR by Christine Morgan – For pre-teen girls in the 1980s, what would a slumber party be without MTV, mini-pizzas, and the latest magazines? Well, how about playing ‘Mary in the Mirror’ to see if the spooky stories are true? After all, it’s just a silly game…

SHARPE SHAVER by Glynn Owen Barrass – A missing person, a riot in New York City, and a private detective who may have bitten off more than she can chew. An Urban Myth becomes macabre reality as Cassandra Bane encounters a dark, underground world of nightmares in the flesh.

BLACK JACK by Lee Clark Zumpe – Audra Kramer leads her documentary film crew on a dangerous overnight mission to infiltrate the abandoned mining town of Black Jack. Inside the restricted zone, the team quickly discovers that the community’s downfall had been caused by something more ominous than an environmental disaster.

GRAVEYARD SHIFT by Brian M. Sammons – Jordan kills for the CIA. Monsters, mostly. What should be a quick, by the book extermination job takes an unexpected turn when one night he has to work a literal graveyard shift.

UNCLE CRAIG’S WAKE by Konstantine Paradias – When cancer took Uncle Craig, it was supposed to be forever. But Deborah weaved Mister Danh’s spell and spoke the words from his warped little book and now, something lurks in the fruit cellar, prodding from its otherworldly perch into our reality.

THE DOUBLE-GOER BY Orrin Grey – Who are you when you go out? Is it different from who you are when you’re at home? And what would happen if the two were ever to meet?

WHISKEY, BEANS AND DUST by John Linwood Grant – Mamma Lucy didn’t know the Rantons, or the nature of the storm that followed them, tearing the land apart. She surely didn’t know what they’d learned, and what she was supposed to do about it all. But then again, what came that night didn’t know Mamma Lucy…

RACE ROCKS by Paula R. Stiles– A frontier lighthouse is the first line of defense when a mysterious meteor shower turns deadly.

FERTILE GROUND by Oscar Rios – A Dunwich farmer’s sheltered daughter invites her beau over for an overnight stay when her family goes out of town for the night. Both are excited to be together but nervous their secrets might ruin their chances at happiness, when they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives.

Oscar Rios, the mastermind behind Golden Goblin, is still in the process of putting together this campaign. I will have more to say when there’s more to know.

Story Seed #45
The Title is the Seed

I have a writer friend who comes up with titles for his stories before he’s worked out their plots. He’s always willing to change the title if he finds out it’s already taken or he thinks of a better one but, for him, thinking of a title is an important part of the story creation process. Most of my ideas don’t arrive with a title. If an idea seems strong enough for me to want to turn it into a story I might play around with titles until I come up with something that seems to fit.

A interesting title can get a potential reader to pick up a book or, for a film or tv show, get a viewer to watch the preview. It’s gotten me to pick up books. And, as I’ve said, ideas come from anywhere.

Now, to me, an interesting title is one that suggests a story or a premise. Conversely, if the title is odd enough that I don’t get the premise I often feel curious enough to check out the story. A lot of authors, especially best-selling ones, get by with very generic title. The Judge. The Skrieking. The Lovers. The Count. The books are sold on the author’s reputation as a best selling author not as an individual story.

All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The Halloween Tree. Alex Driving South. All these titles make me curious about the story. Three of these titles suggest situations. I love titles like that. The Halloween Tree juxtaposes a couple of words that one wouldn’t normally think of in combination. Combining seemingly unrelated words is the exercise I’m suggesting today. It keeps the title short while piquing the curiosity.

The Dancing Monoliths
The Angry Butterfly
White Gravity
The Yellow Footprints
Finger Trigger
The Mismatched Staircase
Falling Skyward
Zoom Kitty
The Eternal Sedan
The Laughing Haircut
The Missing Shadow
Accidental Romance
The Impossible Heartbeat
Electric Bondage
The Slow Suspicion
The Other Other
The Prodigal Otter
Shark Dance
The Green Armadillo
The Rhinoceros Tiptoes

I wrote these out in just a few minutes. About half of them immediately suggested a premise beyond the title. Whether or not the inspired story would still fit to the title isn’t important. The title is just the seed.

And if a title doesn’t suggest a story it can always be used for the name of a band.

Recommendation : And You Thought It Was Safe

I used to read a lot of movie reviews online, particulary reviews of old scifi and horror b-movies. I don’t have the time for that much these days but there are a few sites I still frequent. I started reading And You Thought It Was Safe before the YouTube explosion. The reviewer, David DeMoss, started out posting written reviews and then moved into doing videos. He focuses more on blockbuster films these days and often his opinion differs from mine but he puts enough thought into his reviews that I often end up agreeing with his analysis. He posts both a video review and a transcript of that review.

Local News

It’s vacation season for postal carriers. That means I’m working overtime delivering parts of other routes. That adds some variety to my days. Mostly I’m volunteering for the extra. I’m not on the Overtime Desired List so I have more of a choice of whether to carry. I am low enough on seniority that if management mandates regular carriers to carry I’m likely to get tagged so volunteering gives me more say in which route I get. And volunteering often enough means I can say no if I really need to work a shorter day.

I had my Long Weekend this week and we got social.

On Friday we met friends at a park in Tacoma to celebrate a birthday. We wore masks, kept a distance from each other when eating and elbow bumped instead of hugging. We picnicked and enjoyed the sunshine.

Saturday I went shopping and worked on art.

Sunday we drove down to Lacy to see another set of friends. The excuse for the get together was to celebrate a high school graduation. The boys had graduated a couple weeks ago. I’d watched them pick up their diplomas live via streaming video. That was as exciting as high school graduations usually are. It was much more fun hearing the boys talk about it and catching up with them and their parents. The day started out grey and rainy but the sun came out and we spent a good part of the visit hanging out on the deck. Sarah got a sun burn.

I have three illustrations to finish for the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection and then I’ve got nothing on my plate until An Eldritch Legacy funds.

I hope your week has gone well and the coming week has good waiting for you. Cheers!

Tuesday Night Party Club #10

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Artstuff

My big project, at least for the first half of 2020, will be finishing the illustrations for The Lovecraft Country Holidays Collection. It’s an anthology of role-playing game scenarios written by Oscar Rios featuring a sextet of adolescent cousins living in (H.P.) Lovecraft Country i.e. legend haunted parts of New England featured in the Cthulhu Mythos. The project was successfully kickstarted in the fall of 2019 and I’ve been working images ever since.

Before it could run on Kickstarter, we needed promo art – a cover illustration and four interior illustrations. I did the cover first. Mark Shireman worked his design magic to create two great book covers. Above is the cover for the RPG collection. Golden Goblin’s publishing strategy is to publish fiction companions to go with its RPG collections. Below is the cover for the fiction collection. For the fun of it I’d done a monotone version of the cover illustration in the style of “olde tyme” photographs. Mark and Oscar went with it for the fiction anthology.
I like seeing process videos by other artists as they produce their work. I don’t yet have the ability to make an actual video of my work process but I thought it would be fun to put together a gif of some of the stages in making this illustration. The results are below.

Story Seed #34

A sequel needn’t be a rerun: Terminator

The Terminator was released was released in 1984. It tells the story of Sarah Connor, a woman who is destined to give birth to John Connor, the savior of humanity. A Terminator has been sent back from the future to kill her and prevent that birth. A soldier from that future has followed the Terminator in order to save Sarah.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day arrived in 1991. John Connor is 10 years old. Another, more advanced, Terminator has been sent back from the future to kill him. A reprogrammed Schwartzenegger style Terminator is sent back to stop save him. This film cements the pattern for the franchise – a killer robot time travels back from the future to kill a crucial human and someone else time travels back to stop it from succeeding.

One of the things I liked about The Terminator is that the time travel element is a closed loop. Skynet, the future computer system running the Terminators and other machines, has been defeated. It sends the Terminator back as a last ditch effort to save itself. Ultimately its effort to destroy John Connor ends up creating him. Time paradoxes are minimal. History is not rewritten.

Most of the Terminator sequels follow this formula – a Terminator comes back from the future to kill someone and someone else follows the Terminator to prevent it from carrying out its mission. The more times this formula is repeated, the more the flaws show. Both Skynet nor the human rebels act defensively. Skynet could simply send a Terminator back to establish itself sooner, to unlease a plague to wipe out humanity, or otherwise start its war before humanity has a defense. Killing single humans is inefficient. One would think an AI would have more imagination than that. Conversely, the future humans could send back agents with better operating systems to give Skynet a benevolent focus rather than a genocidal one. If they can reprogram Terminators they can reprogram Skynet, especially if they do it before Skynet launches.

To me, all the back-from-the-future stuff gets tiresome. If the future is not set, neither is the present. Skynet and the humans can keep creating new timelines but the conflict never really gets resolved. So, consider a sequel to The Terminator that doesn’t feature time travel.

Terminators takes place in 1997. John Connor is twelve years old. Unlike the John in T2 this John is a true believer. Sarah has taught him well. He’s well trained, he’s charismatic, he’s ready to be the savior of humanity. He’s ready enough that he wonders if it’s possible to stop Judgment Day. Kyle Reese told Sarah that Skynet would launch its attach on August 29, 1997. Sarah tries to convince him that the future is set. Trying to stop Judgment Day is pointless. John created himself by sending Reese back to save her.

John convinces Sarah to try. John and Sarah research Cyberdine, the corporation behind Skynet. They hack into its systems and discover that Cyberdine has already created Terminators by reverse engineering the model that tried to kill Sarah back in 1984. John insists that if Terminators already exist then the future is not certain and it might be possible to prevent Judgment Day. When Sarah remains unsure John sets out to take down Cyberdine on his own. Sarah pursues him.

From there? Well, this is a story seed, not a plot diagram. Perhaps the new Terminators have a plan to wipe out humanity in a less infrastructurally destructive way than a thermonuclear war. Perhaps the new Terminators are simply tools of the Cyberdine corporation and Cyberdine has its own plans for world domination. Perhaps John has been trained too ruthlessly by Sarah and is sort of a human terminator, willing to kill anyone who gets between him and his objectives. Sarah must deal with the human monster she has created. Perhaps Judgment Day is prevented. Perhaps it happens anyway.

Other Newsletters

Karavansara is the website of Davide Mana. Mana is a working writer (that is, he pays his bills with his writings) living in Italy. He writes in both English and Italian in a variety of genres. He also blogs about his projects, movies he’s watched, books he’s read, odd bits of history and politics, and many other fascinating things on a daily basis. He’s currently in a part of Italy that’s under quarantine for the Corona virus. Yuck.

If his blogging entertains you I’m sure he’d appreciate you supporting him via his Patreon.

Lifestuff

And speaking of the Corona virus – it mostly exists as background noise in my world. I’m not downplaying it and I’m not ignoring it. I live in Seattle. There are outbreaks and deaths as a result of the disease but no one I know has been infected. I’ve had to work more overtime that I planned because more carriers that usual have been calling in sick. Staying home when sick is more encouraged than usual. Most of our work is done solo but we are all in one place when we’re putting our routes together in the morning.

Whether or not I’m scared or cautious of danger depends on my statistical awareness of that danger. I spend a lot of time driving. I’m more likely to be in an auto accident than to catch Corona. I walk a lot. I’m more likely to be bitten by a dog than catch Corona. People who are elderly or have weak immune systems are in danger of infection from just about everything. I’m basically healthy.

So far. So good.

May you stay healthy. Take care of yourself and look after your friends. See you next week!