I have the privilege of my novelette, “The Deepwater Bride”, appearing in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. This is obviously awesome in every single way. Check out this beautiful object. Get it in your eyes. I would heartily recommend you also getting it as a physical thing in your life and home (click on the PayPal button if this seems opaque). Editor C.C. Finlay gives a whole bunch of excellent reasons as to why you should, and I want to join my voice in saying that completely apart from reading a thing by me there is a fantastic line-up. I was particularly taken by Rachel Pollack’s Johnny Rev, and on my to-read list went immediately the other stories in her Jack Shade universe. I hadn’t read them at all, and now I want to fix errors made by my incorrect lifestyle. Check out further reviews here:
I won’t talk too much about Deepwater because I already gave an interview. It really is one of those stories where if I talk about it, I will give away the plot. All I can say is that if you want girls solving Lovecraftian mysteries and finding out the real mystery is… friendship*, Deepwater’s your huckleberry.
*is the real mystery friendship??? read to find out
Or an inspirational quote, or anything you can imagine as the first slide in a PowerPoint about working smarter, or written in cursive font over a photo of someone cycling in the rain.
Your creation must look right and sound right, and yet remain so shatteringly banal and devoid of utility that it could not possibly help or inspire anyone in any context. If you deploy it in conversation, a listener should go ‘wow, that’s deep’, and then five seconds to a minute later, go ‘wait, what?’.
Credit yourself. Points are deducted if you accidentally come up with a real saying.
‘You can’t cut a string in the same place twice’ - paraTactician
‘A full cup may spill more water’ - ArcticKayla
‘The sky is only blue when you’re looking at it’ - gymnopaedy
‘There are a multitude of stars, but only one universe’ – tazmuir
Hi...haven't yet read "The Deepwater Bride" (I'll probably tackle the issue this weekend), but did read your F&SF interview. I was amused by your mention of stories where shoggoths are killed by bullets, and I was wondering: did you have any particular piece in mind? I ask because I actually published a story last year in which two people do indeed kill a shoggoth with firearms. I've no problem with the criticism; in fact, I'd be tickled if my work was reaching that wide an audience. Thoughts?
Hello! I did have a particular piece in mind when I talked about win-loss narratives and Lovecraft, but it wasn’t actually a piece of written fiction: it’s Lovecraft narratives as we’ve had to apply them in the world of video games and board games. Arkham Horror was the first one that sprang to mind, and I say this as someone who loves Arkham Horror a lot. If you’re not familiar, in Arkham Horror the entire point is to shoot increasing waves of Lovecraftian monsters and take down the Big Bad before the time runs out. It’s excellent. It’s also not scary, simply because it does predicate itself on the idea that the way to take down the Old Ones is through a boss battle. Arkham Horror is not scary in all the ways that, say, The Shadow Of The Comet or the glorious Anchorhead is; both games cleave to a more truly Lovecraftian idea of outrunning and slowing down evil, rather than a finality through bullets. (And having now read “The Only Game In Town”, I won’t say much about it, but I feel it gives much more narrative weight to prayers than firepower and thus escapes all of my criticism!)
I’d wanted to talk in-depth about weaponry in Lovecraft, text adventures and the red herring of the fight, but I realised that what everyone could be doing, right at this moment, is playing Michael S. Gentry’s “Anchorhead” which has a female protagonist and a huge reversal of the “save your wife” narrative, so the words have been blessedly taken out of my cake hole.
