Cthulhu and "__": Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together
We’re undeniably in the middle of a Lovecraftian renaissance, but most calls for stories include a caveat asking writers to avoid pastiche. Editors obviously want to see Lovecraftian ideas used in new and intriguing ways, and applied to other genres. What does that say about the state of the field? Is pastiche tapped out, or are we just living in a post-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies world? Stross, Tanzer, Goodfellow, Glancy, Koch, Griffin
Charles Stross, 50, is a full-time science fiction writer and resident of Edinburgh, Scotland. His modern Lovecraftian series, The Laundry Files, includes the Hugo-award winning novellas "The Concrete Jungle" and "Equoid", the Locus Award-winning novel "The Apocalypse Codex", and has been shortlisted for numerous other awards; "The Annihilation Score" (Laundry Files book six), was published by Ace in July 2015.
Molly Tanzer is the author of the weird western Vermilion (Word Horde, 2015) and the forthcoming historical novel The Pleasure Merchant (Lazy Fascist, 2015). Her debut collection, the Lovecraftian mosaic novel A Pretty Mouth, was nominated Sydney J. Bounds and Wonderland Book Award. Her other Lovecraftian short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine was well as on the Lovecraft eZine, and in such anthologies as the forthcoming Cthulhu Fthagn!, The Book(s) of Cthulhu, Future Lovecraft, and The Book of the Dead. Her forthcoming Lovecraftian stories include "The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad" (She Walks in Shadows) and "But Only Because I Love You" (Dreams From the Witch House). She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Swords v. Cthulhu, with Jesse Bullington. Molly lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and a very bad cat. She tweets @molly_the_tanz, and blogs — infrequently — at http://mollytanzer.com.
CODY GOODFELLOW has written five novels, and co-wrote three more with New York Times bestselling author John Skipp. His first two collections Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars and All-Monster Action, each received the Wonderland Book Award. His latest, Rapture Of The Deep & Other Lovecraftian Tales, is out now from Hippocampus Press. He wrote, co-produced and scored the short Lovecraftian hygiene film "Stay At Home Dad," which can be viewed on YouTube. As a bishop of the Esoteric Order of Dagon (San Pedro Chapter), he presides over several Cthulhu Prayer Breakfasts each year, from Comic-Con to the Queen Mary. He is also a cofounder of Perilous Press, an occasional micropublisher of modern cosmic horror, which recently published Mystery Meat, an underground horror graphic novel drawn by Mike Dubisch.
In 1998 Scott Glancy left a perfectly functional career as an attorney to join up with the role-playing game publisher Pagan Publishing, the nerd equivalent of running away to join the Foreign Legion. Today Scott is the man in charge of Pagan Publishing (much in the same sense that the last surviving legionnaire can be said to be in command of Fort Zinderhoff). Pagan’s most recent project is “Horrors of War,” an anthology of scenarios set during the Great War for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Scott is a contributing author on the award-winning Delta Green series of Call of Cthulhu rpg supplements and has had Lovecraftian fiction published in several short story collections including the recent "Book of Cthulhu II," "Shotguns v. Cthulhu," and the upcoming “Swords v. Cthulhu.” You can hear his recorded games sessions on Role-Playing Public Radio, and listen to him bloviate on the Unspeakable Podcast and Podcast at Ground Zero.
Some say Derek M. Koch was born 30 years too late. Some say he spends too much time watching classic monster and science fiction movie trailers on YouTube. And some just want him to take off his luchador mask and stop talking about fighting monsters. Since 2013, Derek has been producing Monster Kid Radio, the weekly podcast devoted to the classic, and sometimes not-so-classic, genre cinema of yesteryear. After nearly 400 episodes, Derek has interviewed classic monster icons like Julie Adams and scions like Victoria Price and Sara Karloff, horror hosts like Dr. Gangrene, and indie filmmakers like Christopher R. Mihm. Derek loves his classic monster movies so much that in 2016, he launched MonsterKidWriter.com as his home for all his writing in the classic and retro monster vein. As far as he's concerned, vampires, aliens, mutants, mad scientists, and monsters of all kinds all look better in black and white. (Unless it's a color movie is by Hammer Films . . . or American International . . . or Toho . . . or Universal . . . or . . . )
Michael Griffin has released a novel, Hieroglyphs of Blood and Bone (Journalstone, 2017), and a short fiction collection, The Lure of Devouring Light (Word Horde, 2016), and the novella "An Ideal Retreat" (Dim Shores, 2016). His short stories have appeared in magazines like Apex, Black Static, Lovecraft eZine and Strange Aeons, and the anthologies The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Autumn Cthulhu, the Shirley Jackson Award winner The Grimscribe's Puppets, The Children of Old Leech and Eternal Frankenstein. He's an ambient musician and founder of Hypnos Recordings, an ambient record label he operates with his wife in Portland, Oregon. Michael blogs at griffinwords.com. On Twitter, he posts as @mgsoundvisions.