« Posts tagged HP Lovecraft

Original Fiction: Lure by P.A. “Pat” Humphreys

December 25, 2009 / uhwhat posted in Fiction / No Comments

Yeah it’s Christmas, and we are running a Christmas story. However, its not your normal one.  Based on a very short flash fiction piece, this is an amalgam of lots of things running through my head, like the season finally of Dexter and a comment that I am not real big on Christmas.

Ok, well, I’m not. It’s very commercial, industrial, and reeks of false cheer. I do enjoy the holiday though. I love making merry with friends and family and that’s what the holiday really is to me.

But I also write really fucked up stuff as a way to deal with the bleakness of winter in Wisconsin, so here is “Lure” by P.A. “Pat” Humphreys.

Remember folks, there is always a bigger fish.

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Rant: Looks Like Tuesday is Horror-ble at bkI

December 8, 2009 / uhwhat posted in Pat's Rants / No Comments
Adventures into Darkness, horror stories
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«BEGIN RANT»

I realized the other day that a big chunk of my contribution to bkI content has been “horror”: I have 2 articles about vampires and our tag cloud contains HP Lovecraft, horror, vampires, Robert E. Howard, and Pseudopod.  The first thing that crossed my mind after that was “I bet these people think I’m one of those weird horror guys,” which was quickly followed by “Do I care?”

For the record, I both am, and am not, one of those guys.

See, when people ask me what I write, I say I’m a non-genre specific genre writer. In English, that means I jump genres for fun.  I try to write stories I want to read, and I want to read Horror.

…and Sci-Fi.

….and Urban Fantasy, and Crime Stories, and Noir Mysteries, and-

Well, you get the idea.

I’m just on a horror kick is all, writing-wise, mostly because of my Twilight rants. However, I watched the director’s cut of Payback the other night followed by Monsters vs. Aliens, and I’m worried I’m getting behind on my Deadpool comics.

I don’t understand people that limit themselves to a genre. There is too much stuff out there, good stuff, and your genre prejudices are going to get in the way of that.  One of the best Sci-Fi stories I ever read was written by a Horror writer. My Favorite fantasy stories were written by Sci-Fi writers.  One of the best Comic Book movies was directed by a guy that broke out thanks to Horror, and the next movie I want to see is a theater is Steampunk directed by a Crime guy.

Life is too short not to leave your comfort zone. You wouldn’t want to die without ever leaving your home town, not even for a vacation, would you?  I sure as shit don’t, so I moved 1200 miles away from home.  Yeah, it’s a little drastic, but even just a trip to the zoo in the city is a good enough change of pace for most folks.

Variety is the spice of life folks. I dare you to try something different today, be it a different hat, trying sushi, or just having one non-diet Dr. Pepper just to remind yourself what you are missing. At the very least, it’ll just make you appreciate life just a little more.

«END RANT»

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Love for Lovecraft at Tor.com

December 1, 2009 / uhwhat posted in Fiction, Writing / No Comments
A closeup of memorial plaque, built in honor o...
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I grew up in Texas, the land that gave Robert E. Howard so much inspiration, and now live in Wisconsin, home of August W. Derleth, the land that gave him inspiration.

But part of my mind lives somewhere else, some where that also provides inspiration. It’s a dark place of non-euclidean and cyclopean architecture dripping with foul ichor that can cause insanity, nay, total psychic destruction at the mere site of it. It’s a place of formless things from outside ye spheres, ancient monstrosities from the stars, and ghouls casually munching a mouldering skull it found in a long forgotten tomb.

It’s the Dreamland of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Any writer or reader of horror has been influenced by H.P. Lovecraft whether they know it or not. Take John Carpenter’s The Thing. While not a direct adaptation of Lovecraft (it was actually a remake of a movie based on a story by John W. Campbell), the cold desolate paranoia created by the shapeless alien in the movie was all Lovecraft.

All modern horror writers, and a lot of sci-fi writers, love Lovecraft, and at some point attempt to write in Lovecraft’s anachronistic style. Hell, Stephen King has even written Mythos stories. An argument, which I may make at another time, can be presented that he was the most important horror writer of the 20th century.

But I’m not going to do that right now, nor am I going to talk about his other importance, or the importance of Mythos literature. Why? Cause it’s Lovecraft Month at Tor.com and I wanna read the stuff they are putting up.

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