I just finished reading the classic collection of horror stories Can Such Things Be by Ambrose Bierce. I loved the ryness of Bierce’s prose and while the stories were hardly terrifying by modern standards there were gems in the collection that were memorable.
A couple years ago, I came across the Doves font. I fell in love with it for two reasons. Firstly, it is the most beautiful serif font I’ve ever seen. Secondly, the Doves font has a wonderful story of loss and recovery. The original steel typeset blocks (sorts) were hurled into the Thames river, lost for generations. In 2014 a subset of the sorts were recovered, allowing the re-creation of the font.
Fonts sit at the intersection of design, communication, and technology. I have a rather embarrassing collection of custom fonts that I’ve created, or edited. For this project, however, I immediately knew the font I wanted to use.
I have always loved the early radio serial drama’s such as The Shadow or anything produced by Orson Wells’ radio troupe. I’ve also enjoyed the dramatic audio adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories–one of my favorites being Pickman’s Model. So as I began thinking through how to package and present the stories I’ve been writing, I quickly gravitated toward this early 20th century form of story telling.
I’m not an audio engineer (although I’m learning fast). I also don’t have access to a deep bench of voice actors. Still, I’ve been able to get something close to what I’ve imagined by pulling audio from www.freesound.org. The most recent story, the Arabian Campaign, would not have been possible without the sounds provided. I rarely donate to random sites on the internet, but I threw $10 at Free Sound because it is such an incredible resource.
I’ve been playing around with a couple ideas for book cover art. The library itself remains central to all of the designs I’ve tried out. At the moment my favorite is a simple black and white ink sketch. As always, feedback is welcome and all designs are subject to change.
As I’ve dug into the occult history of Romania, I’ve become fascinated by the legend of the Scholomance and surprised that the Scholomance has not become more widely incorporated into fiction. The Scholomance , for those who have not read Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the devil’s school in which students descend into darkness for a full year while they learn the dark arts that allow them to bind dragons to their will and control the weather itself.
The kernel for the Chronicles of Chester Fritz was reading Fritz’s travel diary, which he published later in life as China Journey. The book is a fascinating read in its own right. I’ve re-written the events described in Fritz’s diary as one part of a novel. I’ve also introduced a traveling companion, Bellamy, who is the primary vehicle for my own story.
Several of the stories I’ve written reference the Yellow Sign. This is something from Chambers’ classic story “The Repairer of Reputations” in the King in Yellow. The sign is associated with followers of the Hastur’s avatars and features prominently in the Yellow Mythos.
So there has long been a connection between the Lovecraft’s Cthuluh Mythos and the Yellow Mythos based on Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow.
So for the past couple weeks I have been completely swamped with work and with home schooling children in the midst of a massive pandemic. Thus, my writing has pretty much ground to a halt. All the same, I’ve been devouring a really fun Lovecraft-adjacent series by Heide Goody and Iain Grant: Oddjobs