Tag Archives: Mark Shireman

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!

Tuesday Night Party Club #5

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Artstuff

I’m currently working on illustrations for The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. This book of four Call of Cthulhu RPG scenarios was successfully kickstarted last year. One of the stretch goals that we didn’t reach was a fifth scenario: The Mystery of April Snow. We did get close enough that Oscar Rios, the engine behind Golden Goblin Press, decided to offer the scenario as an add-on. Separate projects need separate covers so:

This is a scan of the physical black and white art. I guess you’d say it’s “mixed media”. It’s a combination of pencil, brush, Micron pens and Copic markers.

This is my finished art. Photoshop got used and abused.

And above is the finished version. Mark Shireman worked his design magic to turn a fairly simple image of a girl’s creepy stare into a compelling book cover.

Story Seed #29
What if the Martians hadn’t accidentally been killed by Earth germs?

A lot of folks have written sequels to H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds. As far as I can tell they’ve all worked from the same premise – the Martian’s initial invasion was a failure. The Martians’ first set of invadors died due to exposure to Earth’s diseases. The sequels are usually about a second invasion from Mars. A few of them are about Earth forces taking the war to the Red Planet.

But … what if the Martians expected to die from exposure to our germs? They had interstellar travel. They presumably were scientifically advanced enough to expect and prepare for infection. What if those first Martians brought their own diseases with them – on purpose? What if they were here less to beat us by blunt force than to begin transforming our world with their native biology? They’re observed draining humans of their blood. They plant the red weed.

In Well’s novel, the Martians are cyphers. We don’t know how they think. We don’t know their politics or religions. We don’t know if they consider themselves individuals. What if, once the technological warfare ceased, the biological warfare continued? At the time of publication, germ theory was commonly accepted but even the most medically advanced countries were unprepared to deal with epidemics from another world.

Other Newsletters

SCIOPS – this newsletter by Max Anton Brewer is often about how fucked up our technology and our economic systems are making us. I think about that stuff all the time. But Brewer has a different perspective about reality than I do and I find that useful. He has different understandings of the whys of the fuckedupedness. I need different understandings of the world to make navigating it more tolerable and to help me continue to be compassionate with my fellow humans.Give a few issues a read. Maybe his perspecitves will be useful to you as well.

Lifestuff

Most days at work we have what we call “stand-ups”. These are meetings where all the carriers gather together and the supervisors give us safety talks and pass on relevant information from upper management or the outside world. Most of what gets said has been said many times before.

Last Friday I got to be the subject of the safety talk. An hour earlier I had been walking through the station on my way to do my daily vehicle check and my feet got tangled in one of those plastic straps that are used to hold together bundles of magazines. Down I went.

I got up quickly because embarrassment is a more poweful motivator than pain. My right hand hurt from trying to brace my fall. My left thigh hurt a lot more. The concrete floor had slammed the phone and wallet in my pocket into my leg. I seemed functional and didn’t think anything was broken but I reported the accident to my supervisor and got the necessary paperwork just in case. Our station manager talked about the accident in our stand up and repeated (for the umpteenth time) the need to pick up those damned strap.

I delivered my route as usual. Mostly. My hand got more sore as the day went on. Sorting the mail wasn’t a big deal. Turning the key in the starter, using the gear shift, putting on seat belt, closing the truck’s door – all that hurt more as time passed. My leg also hurt more. The pain lessened every time I did a walking part of my route but the leg would stiffen up during the driving parts. Getting out of the truck got less fun by the hour.

I woke up stiff and sore on Saturday. My hand had some weird bruising. Disappointingly, my thigh looked fine. For the amount that it hurt I felt like I should have a glorious purple bruise. I drove down to Portland and back for a friend’s surprise birthday party. Three hours driving south, three hours sitting in a restaurant, three hours driving north. My leg really hurt by the time I lurched into bed.

Sunday I slept in. For me that was staying under the covers until 7:30. My leg hurt less. I’d taken some tylenol before I went to sleep. That probably helped. The bruising on my hand was a little more colorful but really only noticeable in good light. Sarah and I went out for a late breakfast and them mostly stayed at home.

Monday I was back at work. I expected my leg to hurt more as the day progressed but it stayed mostly a low throb with occasional “ow! ow!” moments when I had to bend it tighter than 90 degrees. I did a little overtime on my own route due to mail volume.

I’m writing this before 5 am on Tuesday. Both my leg and hand are sore but they’re feeling much improved. I expect to do a regular workday. Still no bruising on the leg. That’s disappointing. I’ve found bruises on myself plenty of times in the past and couldn’t remember what I’d done to get them. The discomfort of the last few days seems like it should be heralded by vivid purple and green. Ah well.

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That’s it for this week. Do something kind for someone who doesn’t expect it. Thank you for reading.