{"id":5523,"date":"2019-01-17T21:25:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T21:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/?p=5523"},"modified":"2019-01-20T14:59:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T14:59:11","slug":"lovecraft-on-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greydogtales.com\/blog\/lovecraft-on-my-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Lovecraft on My Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or\u2026 The Trials Of A Sort of Mythos Author. <\/em><\/strong>The jobbing writer knows no fear; accepts no shame. Literary purity is not for the likes of us, beggin\u2019 yer pardon, guv\u2019nor. Run off a young adult horror story? Index a quick textbook? Draft a missing cat advert? Write a Lovecraft Mythos story? Well, why not, given that you\u2019re trying to earn a living? Was it not St Catherine of Alexandria who said \u201cBetter a sold Nyarlathotep story and a new gas cooker, than snobbery and half a box of matches.\u201d<\/em>? No, it wasn\u2019t, but still\u2026<\/p>\n

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a very enjoyable audio version<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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If it comes from anywhere, my writing probably springs most deeply from British stock \u2013 William<\/strong> Hope Hodgson<\/strong>, the Brontes, Blackwood, James (M R), Wells, Austen, H H Munro (Saki)<\/strong> and Jerome K Jerome<\/strong>. Not that I grew up unfamiliar with the US Weird Tales gang. I read almost every H P Lovecraft, Robert E Howard<\/strong> and Clark Ashton Smith<\/strong> story I could find in the seventies and eighties. And I could find a lot, because I worked in a bookshop.<\/p>\n

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Howard was crammed with rumbustious adventure, albeit I could only take so many exploits of pseudo-Celt\/Norse\/Gael barbarians at a time. Ashton Smith was far more appealing, partly because he went so well with one of my favourites, Jack Vance<\/strong>. Those opulent and richly word sentences, strewn with words like jewels (and strewn with jewels, for that matter); those glorious described ancient cities with their deranged sorcerers and screaming spires\u2026 and Averoigne. Always Averoigne.<\/p>\n

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True fear, however, and real disquiet, lay elsewhere in classic weird or supernatural fiction. Primarily in Hope Hodgson; secondarily in the best tales of Robert W Chambers<\/strong>, and in Charlotte Gilman<\/strong> – The House on the Borderland; The King in Yellow; The Yellow Wallpaper.<\/em> Only thirdarily came H P Lovecraft, <\/strong>though \u2018At the Mountains of Madness\u2019 fascinated me, more than any of his other works.<\/p>\n

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my original panther UK edition, which I still read<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But I never had any intention of writing like Lovecraft, Howard or Smith \u2013 or writing anything related to their subject matter. Hope Hodgson was closer to my ambitions \u2013 though you might not want to ape some of Hope Hodgson\u2019s extravagant and occasionally miscalculated styles. A dash of Gilman wouldn\u2019t go amiss, either. But not Lovecraft.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unknown for emerging writers to go Lovecraft early, and then abandon ship later on. Having interviewed many other writers of weird fiction, we occasionally talk about how many authors slide away from the Mythos zone as they develop \u2013 maybe a few Lovecraft pastiches and homages in the formative years, a deeper or more critical work or two, and then the Dwindling, as the habit recedes. Reasons cited? They vary:<\/p>\n