Why I Love Lovecraft

As most of my readers now I’m am a very large fan of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Ever since I first saw “Dagon” sitting on the shelf of my local video store I have been entrapped by the wonder that is Lovecraft. Recently I have been reading a lot of Lovecraftian fiction. Some very good, T.E.D. Klein’s “Black Man with a Horn” for example. But a lot of what I have read just didn’t grab me like H.P. does, I find myself go back to the original stories and wondering why they seem so much better than more modern stories. It’s certainly not the writing itself, Lovecraft might of had one of the greatest creative minds of the last 150 years but he lacked in the actually technical art of writing. And let’s not think about his dialogue.

So why do I love his work so much. A few simple reasons. First if all, so much hopelessness. I get so sick of the hero always winning. Lovecraft laid it out simple. Life sucks than you die or go insane, or both. I love a good hopeless ending. I mean a truly hopeless ending not a “Bitter Sweet Ending”. I don’t want my hero to die having dented the villian’s armor and back-up comes to finish the villian off. NO, I want the hero in a cage being poked with a sharp stick. 

Secondly- because of the hero failing- the stories are in a sense left unfinished. I always finish a Lovecraft story wondering what else is going on. In a story where the hero wins I’m left with a feeling of “Well that’s good, and if anything else comes up I’m should s/he will fix it.”, I’m not worried for the world. Lovecraft makes me fear for the earth

Dust to Dust

Ok first of all this is aimed more toward my Christian fans (ha ha, me acting like I have fans now that’s a good one). I say this not to wave my non-Christian fans away, more just to say “Hey you are awesome and I love your fan ship, but this might not be up your alley (hell it might not even be in the same town). But you still might find something you like.” Ok now that it’s out of the way, on with the show

  
I feel that so many times we as Christians forget ourselves and think that we see the world folding out before us. But we do not, we see only a tiny strip of this beautiful thing called “Life” that was given to us by our Father. Only The Lord God sees all and knows all. The red light that made you late for work could very easily be God preventing us from ending up in that wreck on Carter Road (true story ). God works in ways that we can never understand, but he works for our good. We most remember to be like Saint Peter and be humble before God. This is why I have made this picture my home screen wallpaper on my phone. So that ever time I pick up my phone (which is a lot, I just love the Kindle app) I am reminded that I am but human and can never fully understand God’s will.

Pretend Cookies

First of all you can thank Michael Frost for this, he got me thinking. So go check out his blog. He seems like a pretty cool guy.
Ok on to business. I often give out Pretend Cookies on Twitter and less often on Facebook. It’s just my way of saying attaboy (or attagirl or attawhatever). Maybe someone said something that I thought was awesome. And I want to show that it was awesome enough to actually reward.

Well today I gave Mr. Frost five pretend cookies for following my Twitter and my blog. And then two more for showing me how to make a mug [_]3. Well this started me to thinking about my cookie system. Why? Simple it’s three in the morning and I have been up for….well let’s just say to damn long. Anyway I started to think about how my pretend cookies started and how thing evolved over time. In the beginning I was being a smart ass. A friend would be something and brag on theirselves. I would respond with “Do you want a cookie?” Which was my way of saying “Big smuckin deal”, but people started to say “Yes please” so I changed it to pretend cookies. That lasted for awhile and crossed over to Facebook. But when I joined Twitter I started be a much nicer person (I blame the character limit) and less of a smart ass. That is when pretend cookies morphed into Pretend Cookies. A snack that is low in fat and high in awesome.

So long story short, if I give you Pretend Cookies it’s because you are awesome. Peace and I’m out of here

P.S. I really hope this made sense. I’m half asleep

Good News/Bad News

So as some of you know I have be bugging my local bookstore for awhile trying to have them put in a horror section. Well the good news is this, they finally did it. YAY YIPPIE SCORE ONE FOR THE (INSERT AWESOME NICKNAME HERE). Now for the bad news. Their horror section is very small and pretty much only includes the big name horror writers. It’s four shelves. Two shelves of Stephen King, one and a half shelves of Dean Koontz, and half a shelf of reprints of classic horror tales (Lovecraft mostly) and two new horror novels from mid-level writers.

Maybe I’m just be whiny ( I am very grumpy today and have not ate yet), but this really seems point unless to me. We don’t need a horror section if it’s just going to be writers we all know. We need it for writers we don’t. That’s the main reason I still buy my hard copy books in stores. I don’t know how many times I have done to the store looking for let’s say the new King book and I see a book by someone I never heard of before and ended up getting it plus a few others by that author. 

It’s just seems to me that their horror section is not good for either them or us. Let me know what you think. Am I right? Or am I crazy?

Giving Bad Reviews on Amazon and Goodreads

I love a good story. Blaze by Richard Bachman, I once spent two months with the audiobook in my car’s CD player and it was the only thing I listened to on the way to and from work. I love a good bad story. Birdemic 2. I just love it, so bad it’s good. Basically porn acting and writing with the porn. I even enjoy a plain bad story if it has a nugget of good in it. And of course I’ll give all of those a positive review, even if that review is “Over it sucks, but the part with the samurai riding dinosaur in a all out battle with cowboys wielding light sabers but it worth the read” Which is a real review I have given. But then we have the bad bad stories. The ones with stilted writing that feels like I’m reading a textbook, and a bad one at that. The ones that have titles like ” You Are Dinner” that give the twist away. I don’t know how many times I have read a “Un-twisted” story hoping that I’m wrong, but I rarely am. (Side note: I think I just created the phase “Un-Twisted” to describe a story that gives away the twist in the title. If I didn’t create it someone please correct me). These that the stories that you see on the Kindle Marketplace selling for $5 and they are only 6 pages long. Basically they are the shittiest of the shit fiction. Yet I still have a hard time giving them a bad review. I have no place giving them one star, but actually typing a review. That is where I fail so many times. I think that it is because I’m a writer that sucks myself. I start to type out my review and I can just picture someone like me on the other side reading my review and just giving up like I did so many times. I know they worked hard on it and are proud of it. I feel like I am telling a mother “Damn your baby is fuck ugly”. So many times I just skip giving a review. There is actually only one time I’ll give a truly bad review, and that is when all the other reviews are along the lines of “OMG  5 star ain’t enugh, dis need like a kilbillion star. This is the best story evar. ” This is when I feel it is my duty to warn people that the story sucks and isn’t worth their $0.99. Ok ramble over, you may go about your lives.

Thinking About Lovecraft’s Letters

OK so I’m sure most of you know, I’m a large fan of Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The first time I read “Pickman’s Model” everything in my life changed. I like to think it changed for the better, but the jury is still out. The man wrote a few handfuls of stories in his life time (both wholly his own and ghostwritten) , multiple articles, and plenty of poetry. Not to mention the stories he “wrote” with August Derleth. But I have found that some people are not aware of the fact that he was a writer of numerous letters (100,000 by one estimate) about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. An it is from those letters that we have learned most of what we know of the man. Of his views on the world around him, and yes of the depths of his racism. It is those thoughts that bring me a sadness today. So few people write actually letters anymore. Now it’s all e-mail and facebook messages. I look at my twitter feed and see countless writers that remind me of Lovecraft. Maybe not in style or in content, but in heart. These that people that believe in what there are writing. People that are falling under the view of a lot of readers. I wonder where they will be in 10 years, 20 years, even 100 years from now. Will we remember who they were. How much will we know about them. In 2120 all the sites we visit today will be gone. The only information we will have left is the paper publications that survive. Sure a few will find their fame in the here and now, but others in end up much like Lovecraft. This is why I have decided to do something about it. Any writers that read this feel free to contact me and I will provide to you my mailing address. I will catalog the letters you send to me for future review. I ask only that you do the same.