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!
