Greetings, dear listener. Today we enjoy interviewing a guy with a small press but with some stunningly large ideas, Scott R Jones. A poet and writer, Scott founded Martian Migraine Press, a Canadian publisher with “a focus on the weird, unusual and occasionally transgressive. Fiction that plays with boundaries before ignoring them altogether; erotica with dark humour and a taste for the outré; and poetry for people from other planets.”
On the grounds of public interest, we will admit that greydog is rather pleased to have a story in MMP’s latest anthology, just out. Fortunately we had read some MMP beforehand, so we would have done this anyway. Honest. Here’s Scott…
greydog: Scott, welcome to greydogtales. We don’t know you well, but with the recent release of your anthology Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis, it seemed timely to have a word.
So, you’re a writer, an editor and a publisher. You’re also a young (by our standards), thrusting Canadian deeply into Lovecraftian matters.
scott: Oh, that’s rather personal right out of the gate, isn’t it? But yes, I take your meaning, and sure, I’ve been banging away at the ol’ Mythos for a longish while. At least since the mid 90s.
greydog: We are old, Yorkshire-bred, and stand in the William Hope Hodgson trenches. Can two such clans ever meet in peace? Do you like the work of our patron WHH?
scott: You know, I’m not sure I can say that I do with any confidence. I’m currently working my way through The House on the Borderland and I’m sorry to say that it’s feeling a little too much like work, but that could be down to my generally fatigued state these days. Hodgson is very big on atmosphere, clearly, and his landscapes are well formed (honestly, I feel the descriptions of the caverns, and the rockfalls, and the floodings and so on are some of the best bits for me so far) but the narrator and his sister… I’m finding them more irritating than anything else. Their behaviour is all over the place! That being said, I have not yet finished the book, neither do I need characters with explainable behaviour, necessarily, so, I am preparing to be surprised and delighted!
greydog: We call WHH the Grandfather or Grand-Uncle of the Weird, so be kind to him if you feel able. But as far as Lovecraftian matters go, greydog might never have written a Mythosian tale had he not read your book When the Stars are Right. It’s a religious tract, a philosophical exploration and a handbook. We loved it, but what sort of response have you had in general?
scott: Generally, there’s been a lot of love. I seem to have tapped some kind of nerve, certainly. Personally, I think that in writing the book I wanted to read (ie. a nihilistic philosophy that managed to point toward a positive, transhumanist imagining of the world) I discovered that I wasn’t the only one.
greydog: You hit some very deep veins in there. Quite fittingly, When the Stars are Right is also the inspiration behind your Cthulhusattva anthology. You seem to have managed to do something different yet again with Lovecraftian themes. How difficult was it to find stories which followed your philosophical thread?
scott: It ended up being far more difficult than I hoped, really. There were over 400 submissions to Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis, and many of them were simply brilliant but couldn’t make the cut because they missed the theme by that much. Which is to say, not by a lot, but enough to make the difference.
For instance, there was one story, set in feudal Japan, tone perfect, setting and details and characterization sublime, writing bordering on gorgeous … the thing took my breath away as I was reading. But, at the end of the day, the story was, at base, a fairly standard “Lovecraftian scholar/investigator uses their superior knowledge to defeat a cult and the Great Old One they serve”. So, it was Armitage on Sentinel Hill taking down the Whateley Boys… in Japan. And it killed me to have to say ‘no’ to this, because of course I wanted stories from the enlightened perspective of the cultists.
There were also plenty of stories featuring standard robe-wearing, knife-wielding, gibberish-chanting cultist. I had a lot to read. For nearly a year. But that’s the biz!
greydog: MMP’s earlier anthology Resonator also made an impact, all built around the one HPL story From Beyond. Why did you pick that particular tale?
scott: Well, it’s a favourite of mine, to start. And it’s a tidy little gem of a story, that manages to condense so many of Lovecraft’s themes (which he did tend to go on about at length elsewhere!) into a single scene, which I believe was rare for him.
From Beyond is almost a one-act play, really. Two fellas sitting in chairs with a table between them. Well, and the resonator machine, which, by virtue of not really being all that well described by Lovecraft, lent itself to multiple uses and interpretations. What could we do with a device that altered perception and revealed new levels to reality? What are the practical applications? What would the military use it for? Private investigators? Fetishists? And so on.
greydog: Do you feel there’s further mileage beyond this, still more new twists to be explored, or are we about done with the old gent from Providence? He is a somewhat controversial topic in some quarters.
scott: He’ll remain so, so long as the reasons for that controversy continue to plague society. No, I think there’s life in the old boy’s work yet, if not in himself per se. The themes of his work I feel are just coming into their own, especially as (Western) society begins to come to terms with its true place in the universe. Lovecraftian fiction as it’s been known will cease to be engaging as we move forward, but the underlying weirdness of it, and the questions it raised, will continue to drag new work up from the depths, gasping and vibrating. Probably sticking us with toxic, hallucinogenic barbs. You know, the good stuff!
greydog: We’re not averse to prodding the Abyss now and then, so that seems good to us. Moving on, Martian Migraine Press is your child. Are we right that you look to put out one quality anthology a year, and that’s your main task? Do you see MMP expanding in other areas, such as more novellas or single-author collections by others?
scott: My answers are yes, yes, no and gosh, I’d love to but until I can find people who can stand to work with me on a regular basis and/or clone myself, I can’t see that happening quite yet. Or at least not within the next year and a bit.
greydog: And what’s this we hear about erotica from MMP? Sensual Mythos, Lovecraftian porn? Do enlighten us.
scott: Yes, well, nudge nudge wink wink, bills must be paid and authors remunerated for their hard work, so needs must! There’s really just the one imprint, Justine Geoffrey’s Blackstone Erotica books, which are an energetic and loving tribute to Robert E. Howard’s original story The Black Stone, as seen through a kind of Heavy Metal/Penthouse Letters prism. At first we released them as electronic books only, but then we had to go and make a collection in trade paperback form, and that does alright. I recommend that for your more prurient readers.
There was also a short-lived “magazine of weird erotica”, NECRONOMICUM, that ran four issues over the course of a year and a bit. We loved it, Justine and I, but at the same time, it was an incredible amount of work and we found that by the third issue, we weren’t able to do it the justice it deserved, and even that was taking energy away from other projects, like Cthulhusattva. Kudos to folks who can pull off a regular magazine, print or electronic!
greydog: What’s your next project for MMP, or is that a secret?
scott: It is a secret, but I’ll let on that the MMP anthology for 2017 will have a theme of “non-traditional possession narratives”. And yes, there will be a Lovecraft tale as the thematic tentpole, but, as with Resonator, things will blossom from there.
greydog: Looking forward to that. We mentioned that you’re a writer yourself, and you have a number of stories in various anthologies from other presses. Do you favour Lovecraftian themes in your own work, or do you head into other territory?
scott: I tend to favour the Weird more than anything else, which of course means a lot of my stuff is Lovecraftian (thematically, not stylistically) but I try to branch out now and again. I’ve been dipping into weird military horror, recently, and I have a small tale appearing in Eternal Frankenstein (from Word Horde Press) that’s certainly a departure from my usual. But even paddling around in HPL’s seas, I try to write those tales with different voices than he (and many of his admirers) used. I don’t want to read about learned old white guys getting the shock of their narrow lives when they come up against cosmic knowledge! I’m a learned old white guy, myself! Onward, and outward.
greydog: We have to ask – who is Skawt Chonzz? A Beat poet, a beaten poet or an enigma from the past?
scott: He is me, or at least the Martian name I used when performing in competitive poetry competitions (ie. SLAMS) from 2008 through 2011. As for the last question, the answer is yes. Heavy emphasis on the beaten part. Beaten down, mostly. I won quite a lot, but the slam environment takes its toll on the sensitive. Or the competitive. Guess which one I am.
greydog: Finally, we are of the heretical opinion that Cthulhu is OK in his place, but Nyarlathotep rules. Are we wrong?
scott: Nope! See, here’s the thing about Nyarlathotep. Of all the nasties of the Mythos he is a) conscious of his role, cosmically speaking; b) is as close to a Platonic ideal of the principles of “communication” and “meaning” – The Mighty Messenger – as anything (something which you used yourself to great effect in your story for Cthulhusattva, John, which got so many things right); and c) the only one of them who is awake all the time!
Every other god-thing sleeps and dreams or is otherwise being lazy in dimensions beyond time and memory, but Nyarlathotep has to work! Constantly. For literal idiots. Honestly, I’d love to see a mash-up of the Cthulhu Mythos and the film Office Space with Nyarlathotep in the lead role. I think it would be harrowing in the extreme.
greydog: As long as it doesn’t have Jennifer Aniston playing Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. Scott, thanks for joining us, and our very best wishes for you and MMP’s future.
You can find out more about Martian Migraine Press and their back catalogue on their website – martian migraine – and a link to purchase the fascinating Cthulhusattva: Tales of the Black Gnosis is up on the top right of this site.
We have a busy week, so we’ll run away now, but we’re back in a couple of days, fear not. Or fear a lot. It depends what you’re into…