To kick things off, we’ve compiled all of Magaret Brundage’s Weird Tales covers. At the peak of the magazine’s classic run in the 1930s, Brundage’s lush, sensual and controversial covers were as much a draw as the stories inside.  Long before Frank Frazetta, she was the first Conan cover artist. She depicted scantily clad damsels in distress, Doctor Satan, a “Bat-Girl,” and plenty of whips and skulls. She sold 66 original cover illustrations to Weird Tales from 1932 to 1945. (All of them are below.)

Fittingly, a book devoted to the groundbreaking artist, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage: Queen of Pulp Pin-Up Art, will be published next month.

Which of her covers below is your favorite (scroll over image for cover date)?

Click thumbnails for full-size photos.

Maurice Broaddus is the author of The Knights of Breton Court series of novels and the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthologies. His short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance and Apex Magazine, among many other publications. Visit him online at mauricebroaddus.com. Recently Maurice talked with Weird Tales about his writing process, doing research and combating writer’s block.

Tell us about your writing process.

I get up Monday through Friday and drive down to a coffee shop, arriving as soon as they open, to begin my writing day. I treat it like going to the office. I work for about four hours on whatever projects I have going on and then break. When my sons get home from school, I typically do the business stuff of writing or try to squeeze in a blog post. Then late at night, once the rest of the house has gone to bed, I try to get a few more words scribbled onto a page.

Typically, I get an idea (or pull one from my running idea file) and let sit with it for a while. I may do some free writing, jotting down snippets of dialogue or description, just so that I’m armed when I finally sit down to do battle with the blank page. I tend to outline my way through sections (because even if I outline the whole thing, especially in the case of a novel, by the time I’m halfway through so much has changed that I have to scrap the rest and re-outline anyway).

What are the most important questions to ask before writing a story?

Whose story is it? and what does the world look like? My favorite part of the writing process is figuring out the world the story takes place in. So a good chunk of my pre-writing involves figuring out the world and doing character sketches for some of the folks in it.

Another question I ask, but usually later in the process, is “what’s the big idea?” Sometimes I start a story wrestling with some question or issue, but other times I like to wait until I’ve at least done most of the first draft to see if there’s some central idea I can build on in the next draft.

How do you approach research? Do you tackle it before you write, during?

I am a trained research scientist and that was my career for twenty years. So research is one of the things I love to do. It’s one reason why I enjoy writing alt-histories so much. Any excuse to learn about a people, their history, their culture, I seize upon it.

I’m also pretty relational, meaning I love to get out and meet folks. Getting to know people is my favorite way to research. Two quick examples:

1) My Knights of Breton Court series sprang from me working with homeless teenagers, which was how I was able to capture the vibe for those stories. But I still went out to some…questionable areas of town to watch drug dealers in action. Not a recommended way to conduct research, by the way.

2) My current project is a middle grade detective novel. So I find that I’m spending more time with middle schoolers and actively listening to their conversations, the way they speak, and the situations they find themselves in.

How do you combat writer’s block?

My wife often reminds me that we have bills to pay and can’t afford my writer’s angst.

What is your biggest stumbling block when it comes to crafting a story?

Ending well.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

1) Writers finish things. Plant your butt in a chair and write until it’s done.

2) Don’t be afraid of the process. Don’t short cut it, take your rejections, and keep improving.

3) Be careful who you take advice from.

By Michael Reyes

Published in Weird Tales #360 | 7,534 words
Image by Danielle Tunstall

It’s late July when I get the letter. Hand in my mailbox fishing around for the latest Netflix and Con Ed bill when I pull out a burgundy envelope with the name Robert Blake written on it in jagged script. Specialist Blake of 2-37 1st Armor Division … we were stationed in Freiburg ten years back, went to the Middle East together during the first year of the war. He’s been a distant memory since then. To the best of my knowledge completely out of circulation since the middle of the last decade. No family. No close friends. No trace of him on any social networking sites … last thing anybody heard was that he was out of the service and living in Rotterdam with some woman.

I walk upstairs to my cramped studio apartment. I turn on the lights, then collapse onto my green bean bag. I open the letter and the heavy scent of Paprika wafts out. It reminds me of Baghdad street vendor food and scorching Iraqi heat. I read –

Buddy!
Long time no hear. I’m back state side. Been living abroad this entire time. The sights I’ve seen … THE SIGHTS I’VE SEEN! In Wyoming now. Come on out to visit me. All expenses paid … because I’m independently wealthy! I’m not kidding. Will get you caught up when I see you. We can go backpacking in The Red Desert and take psychedelics. Trippy man …The Blue Bus is calling us! It’ll be fun. Just like old times in Amsterdam. Shrooms and William Burroughs’s Dream Machine! I got one. Lets make it happen!

Warmest Regards,
Robert Blake

P.S. If you’re wondering how I found you it’s because you’re easy to find.

P.P.S. My phone number is on the back of the letter along with something else. Turn it over.

I turn the gray construction paper over. On the top left hand corner is a stapled plane ticket. There’s a sharply drawn map of an area called the Kill Pecker Dunes in the middle of the paper. A small illustration of a smiley face with two devil horns on the bottom left hand corner and what looks like an inverted Ankh underneath it …

I place the letter down and go to my fridge to get a beer. I crack it; take a heavy swig – look the letter over again. Blake has always been a strange guy. Only time he ever seemed normal was when he was tripping. He was a great tank mechanic but kind of a space cadet at the same time. Never knew if you were going to get manic chatter or dead silence. We were born the same year on the same day, and we both loved 60’s Prog Rock and psychedelics, though my interests were just recreational … Blake’s were not. He read books about mind expansion and the occult; he believed psilocybin allowed access to other dimensions. We were the only soldiers from North of the Dixon line in our platoon. I think he was from Providence, Rhode Island. An interesting guy, kind of a head case, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy his company. We traveled around Holland with some buddies from our battalion the weekend before we deployed to Kuwait and partied like our lives depended on it. When I lined up in formation Monday morning I was still tripping hard enough to see indigo trails kissing the brow of our Brigade Commander as he called us to attention then sent us off to war.

I tap my bottle again and examine the inverted Ankh. I remember riding into Baghdad after a 22-hour convoy. The starving refugees … One young boy watched me sternly as I pointed my M-16 at the beggars, directing them away from my Hemmet … the silent child had a red inked tattoo of the inverted Ankh under his left eye …

I banish the memory, down the beer and light up a joint as I sink into my beanbag, all the while trying to visualize exactly where Wyoming is on the map. I can’t. Exhaling the smoke I decide I’m going to visit Blake and take mushrooms with him at a place called The Red Desert.

In between gulps of tasteless airline lasagna I think about the wasted years I’ve spent trying to create a life for myself back home. Nothing sticks, I go in and out of each day like a confused extra on a low budget movie set, knowing every second the camera will never roll long enough to capture me. No contact with family. They’ve frozen me in their minds in Class A uniform and put me out of their hearts after seeing what I’ve come back as. Maybe just because I’ve come back, guilty of fighting in a war that’s produced no summer blockbuster movies or ticker tape parades. It’s been menial jobs and one-night stands that shouldn’t have even gotten beyond bar bathrooms, friendships that rely on virtual status updates … I wouldn’t change any of it, though I don’t know why. I don’t know my mind that well any more. Sometimes it seems like I’m thinking someone else’s thoughts. My own name seems strange in my mouth so I no longer say it.

I finish the lasagna and sleep falls over me.

I’m walking with Blake down a street in Amsterdam. We look at the naked prostitutes standing behind glass in the red light district. They press their bodies against the windows and call us; their voices sizzle, acid rain splashing across a rancid pool’s surface. I try to leap through the window of one whore with giant breasts, but Blake holds me back. He points at her cloven hooves and filthy goat legs, the fur caked in dry shit. I look up at her face and see a hexagonal hole … the eyes, nose and lips strung loosely along the edges of the opening. Blake pulls me away from the thing. He shows me a yellow metal box he’s carrying. Its covered with pictures of bizarre creatures … he tells me he’s learned all of their names. They’re his to command. The city pavement gives way to desert sand and I see a platoon lined up in formation a few yards away. We watch quietly.

They stand at attention for the tattooed Iraqi child as if he were their company commander … He raises and drops his left hand. The soldiers fall to the sand, begin slithering on their stomachs like snakes. They rip their clothes off while piling on top of each other, screaming joyfully as they mutilate one another. In this dream I see it all and understand everything–

The sands scream the insane song of a half broken flute. The blind anarchy of Azathoth, its black lunacy wailing for primal stillborn death across the other side of creation’s void.

The child has changed its face. The head of a dark-skinned man with the same tattoo under his eye sits on top of the small boy’s neck. He raises his hand and the mad soldiers rise … cheering loudly as they rip each other apart in an orgy of blood.

Blake shakes his head and laughs. He points feverishly to the box he’s gripping, speaking to me with words I can’t understand. He takes a weird egg-shaped black crystal out of the box and there’s a pleading look in his eyes. When he opens his mouth, again the name Nyarlathotep is sent plunging into my mind.

When I wake up, the plane is experiencing slight turbulence and I’m about to vomit. I fight the airline lasagna back down as thick drops of sweat cascade off my chin onto my clenched, bone-white hands. I blink heavily and feel a strange haze wrap itself around my mind. It coils behind my eyes as plane meets runway and I shake my head wearily as we set down in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

Under a dozen people at baggage claim. The airport employees who stare at me like I plan to burn their ranches down and make off with their steer titter totter around the place like mannequins undergoing electric shock therapy. I’m wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, green camouflage pants and desert-issued army boots. I reclaim my huge camping backpack; take a snack out from one of its pockets. I snap into a Slim Jim and wink at a petite blonde who passes by like a figure skater on sandpaper.

“Aloha.”

She blushes crimson, chucks a brown-toothed smile at me. I walk out of the airport feeling like a million bucks.

Blake’s waiting for me in front of a black Ford pickup truck. Looking younger than the last time I saw him, sandy blonde hair pushed back on top of his large head. His algae-green eyes flash brightly for a moment, his mouth does something close to a smile. We shake hands. He looks me up and down.

“Hey buddy. What’s up with the Hawaiian shirt? We ain’t in Honolulu. This is cowboy country.”

I laugh.

“Only clean shirt I have.”

“Good to see you’re still trying.”

“You couldn’t pick me up in a Benz? You said you were rich.”

“Lexus is in the shop.”

“Shit.”

“You need to catch up on some sleep? There’s a hotel along the way that will put us up for nothing. I’m screwing the owner’s daughter. She’s podunk as hell.”

The strange nightmare flashes briefly. The name Nyarlathotep remains.

“No, that’s fine. I got some sleep.”

“A fucking Hawaiian shirt,” he says as he shakes his head and opens the driver’s door. I get into the passenger seat.

“There isn’t much sightseeing to do around here, so I guess we’ll be on our way.”

He hits the gas and we accelerate, on our way.

When Blake tells me how he made his fortune we’re pushing 70 on an empty stretch of I-90. We pass a herd of wild horses on a distant butte as they thunder along on parched red soil. The sagebrush hugging the edges of the road look like they crept out of a John Wayne movie still, and somewhere not too far I’m sure ghosts on the Oregon trail continue a spectral exodus past fierce Shoshone.

“Diaz? He was a Warrant Officer in HHC. Remember him? Short, gray- haired guy.”

“Yeah.”

“I ran into him in Amsterdam about a year after I left the army. Tells me he got a job working for a military contractor back in Iraq.”

I nod quietly as we roll on past an oil field. A hundred-foot-high derrick stands like a corrupt and solitary skyscraper in a land of dirt and open sky.

“At the time I wasn’t really doing much besides wasting the money in my savings account and living with some chick I wasn’t really all that into. Diaz tells me he can get me a job as a mechanic for the PMF. Tells me its big money. In a month I’m out of Holland and working for Stalwart Securities, back in Baghdad.”

Blake pauses, points at the glove compartment. “Want a shroom? I take a gnarled brown top out of a zip lock bag and devour it.

“So I’m in Baghdad working as a mechanic but all the while I feel like I should be doing something a bit more active, you know? Diaz mentions the raids I went on in ’03 to management and in about six months time I’m organizing security convoys for puppet government people all over the country. Making good money. When I get sent to Tikrit a year later I’m told I’ll be doing something a bit more exciting then playing chauffeur for Hajji.”

I can feel the psilocybin begin to work its magic. The sun’s rays reflect strangely off of the silver sagebrush as Prickly Pear cactus grin at me. Bands of brown desert elk zoom past us at incredible speed, perhaps chased by the ancient spirit of some long dead predator. Serpentine clouds slither across the blue sky; a pale ghost moon hovers nearly as transparent as a spider web near the blunt sun’s radiance.

“Our boss gives us a list. He tells us the people on it made off with some very important artifacts when the museums were looted first year of the war. He wants us to get them back.”

“So you could return them to the museum –- ”

He laughs. “Fuck no. So they could be sold to personal collectors for millions of dollars. Stalwart Securities worked something out with C.P.A., who in turn worked something out with D.O.D. All the pieces were in place and everyone involved would come out with full bellies and clean as a whistle if we pulled it off. Most of the artifacts were swiped up by ass backwards-Iraqi peasants … they had no idea what they had and how much it was worth. The first five names on the list were like that. Easy. All we had to do was toss them a few dollars and they were more than happy to part with the pieces. Wasn’t like that with the last guy on the list, though …”

Blake pauses and reaches into the glove compartment. Pulls out a mushroom, nearly swallows it whole.

“Seyeed Mahmood. He lived in a heavily guarded two-story house close near Mosul. No simple payout – we had to rush his compound and kill all of his bodyguards. We tied him to a chair in his kitchen and beat him, but he wouldn’t tell us where the artifacts were. Turned the house upside down, eventually found a large door in the basement hidden behind a rotting armoire. Fucking place looked like a dungeon. There were weird symbols painted all over the walls. My teammate started dismantling the door and I saw something moving slowly out of the corner of my eye. It was a huge camel spider. It stopped walking and it kind of leered at me, then its mouth pincers started moving really fast, shit, it was surreal. The hairy bristles on its yellow body were a blur; it was gyrating really fast … I stomped the shit out of it. When the steel door fell I turned around and almost screamed … there were a dozen camel spiders nearly pressed up against my teammate’s back. I raised my rifle and they receded all at once into the shadows in one really quick motion …I wiped my eyes and when he said, ‘That should do it,’ the basement’s light bulb shattered. We turned on our flashlights, raised our M-4’s and walked through the darkness … Bright lights flashed on and we were in a large room with furniture that looked like it belonged in a castle. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Persian carpeting with a huge lacquered mahogany table in the center with all sorts of gemstones on it. All over the floor were half open chests with jewelry spilling out. There were gold crosses, coins and pendants … There were other stranger; older looking objects as well … some that had the weird glyphs from the basement wall on them. We found the items we were searching for quickly, they were near the entrance of the door next to a tapestry that depicted Jesus praying to his own image. It was by the blasphemous pictures of Mohammed that I found the really bizarre shit. A half open chest with a pentagram engraved on its top. Deformed figurines inside of it carved out of Red Jasper and Cinnabar … they weren’t human or animal but a combination of both and I could feel them staring at me with an intelligence that belonged to neither … a black music box that opened to show a leprous Jesus on a spinning inverted crucifix. There were old books that looked like they were bound in flesh with locks that would require keys I never even thought could exist. I found a yellow metal box covered with strange pictures …”

Blake stops himself short, glances at me and smirks. My eyes feel watery, my mind hazy.

After a moment he says: “My co workers and I decided this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to get rich and never look back. We’d return the artifacts we were ordered to, and split the rest. Figured it’d be best to kill Seyeed and burn the house down. We passed him in the kitchen as he watched us steal his fortune. There was a camel spider the size of a small rat perched on his shoulder. He didn’t seem to care. We spread gasoline all around the house. We started the blaze and when we passed by Seyeed once again he was …”

Blake stops. He twitches hard. “He was covered in them … There must have been over a hundred of those fucking things on him. They were biting and tearing … Seyyed didn’t scream. I shot him in the head. The spiders seemed to slide off of him onto the floor. We splashed gasoline all over his corpse, struck the match and left.”

Blake takes another shroom out of the glove box and munches on it.

“We’re almost there,” he says between chomps.

“So you guys got away with it?”

“If they got caught, neither snitched because nothing came back to me. We brought what we were supposed to, got promotions and vacation time. I took my stuff to somebody I got hooked up with while I was on leave in Vienna. Cashed out at about 5 mill. I decided to keep a few artifacts, though … After I returned to work I found out the others never came back from vacation. I waited two months, then put in my final two weeks. Left Iraq for the last time.”

“Wow,” I say after a moment of silence, “that sounds like a bunch of bullshit. The whole story.”

Blake laughs. “But you know it isn’t, right?”

The haze coiled behind my eyes swirls around my mind. I nod at him quietly, but I say, “Camel spiders, huh? The size of rats? I’m not high enough to believe that. Multi-Millionaire? With your fucking Indiana Jones story. Please.”

He takes out his wallet and tosses it at me.

“Open it.”

I pull out an American Express Centurion credit card. I laugh.

“I want to see a million-dollar bill. Then I’ll believe you.”

I toss his wallet into the backseat.

“Why did you move out here? You can live anywhere in the world.”

“This land is special. It has a certain energy.”

“Energy?”

“Yeah. And I’m not just talking about the oil deposits. Ley lines. Spiritual energy.”

“We’re talking crystal magic and Deepak Chopra?”

He laughs.

“The dream machine we’re going to use is one of the artifacts I kept.”

He motions towards the back of the truck. “It’s Babylonian.”

“Is it in good enough condition to spin at 78 rpms on a record player?”

“Yeah. I’ve done it before. And let me tell you …. The shit you see …”

Blake trails off. He stares ahead blankly. After a moment –

“You have to see it for yourself. I’m pretty sure Burroughs and Gysin never saw anything like this. It’s going to be the most important thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”

When we first spot her she’s walking with great effort and it seems like she’s about to collapse. Her blonde ponytail swings lethargically over her ripped green backpack. Her face expresses neither surprise nor relief when we pull up next to her. She’s beautiful. Heart-shaped face and full lips, brows that arch over large electric blue eyes. She tells us her name is Trudy and her voice is smoky. Her Volkswagen broke down a few miles back, been wandering the desert for hours. Her eyes sparkle intensely, my pulse races. She was driving to Yellowstone to meet up with some friends. We tell her we’re going to the sand dunes to trip. She says wouldn’t mind tagging along if we drive her back into Rock Springs. Blake doesn’t seem to care if she comes or goes but I need Trudy to come along because the sweat on her smooth neck and her bright flashing eyes are making me ache. She jumps in the back of the Ford.

When we reach Boars Tusk on foot we’re covered in sweat and peaking. The jeep’s a mile back and it feels like we’ve been walking outside of time. Under clear blue sky we’ve meandered past butte and mesa, we’ve ambled down hills following dry steam beds, walked past weird spires and dwarf canyons. Drunk off the earthy perfume of sage, clumps of prickly pear and juniper look cartoonish to our dilated pupils. Ancient Boars Tusk dominates the landscape; Pleistocene aged volcanic neck raised 400 feet in the air. We drop our gear in exasperation in front of it and drink water. Trudy smiles at me. I smile back and as she drinks from her canteen a few feet in front of me I somehow feel her standing right behind me, blowing into my ear. She winks at me. I glance down at her backpack and see the name Mabel written on it. Her eyes change from violet to green back to blue. I’m about to ask her what her real name is, but I stop myself when I hear Blake laughing.

He picks up a bison’s skull and places it in front of his own. He’s a prophet whose God belongs to an older order. He wants to sacrifice me; I know it. I’m tripping hard and I realize I’m trapped. I don’t understand my own mind at all; someone else is thinking my thoughts for me. Did I want this to happen? The nightmares warned me but I still came … I look at the woman who calls herself Trudy. Her face has changed. No longer beautiful and alert, her eyes have slanted, become dull. Her skull has shrunken; become broader … Her face sags as she smiles at me uncomprehendingly. I look away. She’s not who she says she is. She’s a demon who haunts the desert. They’re planning to bring me to a place worse than death … Blake lowers the skull and glares at me. At that moment I feel like murdering them both. Reality is ripping apart and it’s his fault. I’m tripping hard but I force myself to take back my mind and the world it perceives …

“Let’s get to the sand dunes and set up camp,” I manage to say with great strain. They nod. Trudy’s blue eyes shine electrically, the symmetry’s returned to her face. Blake throws down the bison’s skull, then winks at me. We pick up our gear and head to the dunes.

It’s near dusk. We’ve pitched a tent and made a campfire on an outcrop of vegetation. The low hum of the portable generator drones on as we sit around the circle of stones containing the fire. We feed sagebrush to it. Blake tells us we’re in between the continental divide, and the rain that falls here doesn’t flow to the Pacific or Atlantic oceans. It settles into the dirt and feeds the chthonic spirits that dwell deep under the oil reservoirs. He speaks about the special soils and waters that house a great race of beings called the Great Old Ones. The ground feels alive; it’s vibrating underneath me. I pick up a clump of it and it flows like mercury over my hand. I fling it at the fire.

Boars Tusk stands sentinel over the dunes as Blake tells us about a dimension once named Yuggoth, now something deemed less than a planet called Pluto. He talks about its ancient black cities of windowless towers, its fungoid gardens. At this point it hits me that there’s no turning back. There’s no escaping here.

Blake doesn’t look like himself any more. He seems taller, skinnier. His pupils are so dilated that his eyes seem to take up most of his face. Trudy whispers something to me but I can’t make it out. She moves closer and I see the name Dolores tattooed on her neck. She kisses me then sits on my lap.

Blake tells us that when Yuggoth entered the eighth sign 28 years ago the seeds were sown for the return of an older order. Tonight the stars are right for the messenger of the profoundest wisdom to usher in the Aeon of The Great Old Ones.

He shows us the ancient cylinder seal. Taupe-colored and a foot long, strange letters carved onto it. He walks into the tent and we follow.

Blake hangs a light bulb over the record player. He places the seal on the turntable, sets it to 78 rpm’s. I gaze into it and the weird letters dance. They transform into our faces; they smile then cry. I inhale heavily, then shudder as they break apart, the pieces of bone turning into blood-covered calcium comets racing past alien planets, diseased and dying in graveyard nebulae … past the skeletal remains of ancient space travelers sealed in meteor tombs forever sailing across a multiverse of realities and finding destitution in them all. An orgy of mad celestial spheres locked in an endless process of destruction and rebirth – I approach a blue planet, look onto its ancient Triassic seas teeming with a horrific race of creatures who dwell in ammonia and methane oceans across a swathe of ghost planets lost in the shadow memory of The Big Bang’s first exhalation. The seal spins faster and I’m sure they sense my presence across an impossible span of time – they want to rip my soul apart and feed on the primeval stardust that marks me as a being on the brighter side of the Big Bang. They reach towards me but I feel myself being pulled up into a collapsing sky … spit into the darkest stretch of space with only the sound of a broken flute. Lost in the center of absolute madness, Azathoth.

I feel a hand on my back. I force my eyes open, look away from the dream machine. I turn around to see the face of the Iraqi child. The record player stops. Blake takes his hand off my shoulder.

I’m completely sober now. Something’s seeped into this world because of us. I can feel it.

I look over at Trudy. Her thick lips are impossibly red and when she licks them, her blue eyes strike like lightning.

“You guys should get some sleep,” a frightening remoteness in his voice.

“What the hell just happened?”

“Everything that was supposed to.”

He takes out a small yellow box from his pocket.

“I’m going to sleep by the fire,” he says heavily. “Don’t disturb me. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

He walks out of the tent.

I turn toward her.

“Trudy …”

“My name isn’t Trudy. It’s Caroline.”

“Why did you lie about your name?”

“Don’t know.”

Her raspy voice grows frail. Something in her eyes change.

“Were you really going to Yellowstone?”

“No.”

She pulls in close to me. She shifts again. Her eyes turn black then hazel.

My head feels foggy.

“I just finished visiting my hometown. Table Rock. It’s a ghost town now. I wanted to see it one last time before the desert swallowed it. Afterwards, I drove up around this way and felt like leaving my car. I don’t remember why. It’s like a dream. I left the car and wandered around –- ”

“Were you waiting for us?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“I don’t understand.”

She grimaces violently and then stares at me with the expression of a very slow child. “I want to go back to the hotel with Mommy. He tricked me.”

I push myself away from her as I hear Blake chuckle outside of the tent. I wipe my eyes and when I open them Trudy’s naked.

“Just come to me. Stop asking questions.”

I crawl over to her on my knees.

“It’s OK,” she says as she kisses the side of my neck. She grins luridly and her eyes bulge. I can’t look away and she pulls me in completely. I can hear Blake speaking to someone outside the tent when she straddles me …

I wake up naked. There’s no tent around me and the sun’s beginning to set. I brush sand off, spring up, look around. The tent and gear have been scattered several feet away in every direction. I find my canteen and gulp down hot water. My stomach knots in fear.

“Blake!”

Silence. I walk around the camp and find my clothes. I dig my wristwatch out of my Hawaiian shirt’s pocket – 7:35 pm.

I’ve been asleep for over 18 hours.

“Trudy!”

No response. Still herds of Prong Horn observe me quietly from atop a butte.

The camp wasn’t struck. It was disturbed. I walk over to the stone circle where we set the fire and find Trudy’s Jansport. The names Kathy, Dolores, Bechard, Hiepacht, Zepar, and Mara are written on it. It’s half open and when I reach inside I pull out a naked Barbie doll, a thick black marker and picture of a young woman with Down syndrome standing next to what are probably her parents on a street with identical white split-level houses. I place everything down where I found it and see the shattered cylinder seal next to Blake’s rucksack a few feet up ahead. There’s a large hunting knife coated in blood as well. I grab the rucksack and drop all of its contents onto the ground. Blackened ears and fingers covered in purple tattoos fall out along with a stack of photographs bound together with rubber bands. I pick up the photos and see …

Me back in New York. Coming out of my apartment building, at work, buying groceries, on a date …

I shake my head in disbelief as I find photos of the woman with Down syndrome standing by a sign that says Yellow Stone National Park … another with her smiling, holding Blake’s hand in front of a motel called Rock Springs Lodge.

I hear sobbing coming from the direction of Boar’s Tusk. I drop the photos, pick up the hunting knife and follow.

He’s wheezing heavily, back propped up against its black volcanic neck. I stand in front of him and he looks past me without recognition. There are tears in his eyes. I put the knife next to his throat.

“What’s going on?” I stick the point of the knife into his neck lightly and break skin, draw blood.

“He had me, then denied me. I summoned him in preparation –- ”

“What are you talking about?”

I push the tip of the blade further in. He doesn’t react.

“A shade of Nyarlathotep; an echo of the Haunter. I summoned it through the dream machine for consul before using the trapezohedron to release its greater essence. It attacked me.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?“

“It raped me –- ”

I pull the blade away from his neck.

“I lost control of the unclean spirit I placed inside of the woman … and it stole the trapezohedron.”

“Why do you have those pictures of me?”

“I picked the wrong location for the process … It needs to be further southeast. The ley lines and stars that unlock the deluge are underneath and above a ghost town named Table Rock …”

My blood’s rising. I slap him hard.

“The pictures!”

“The ceremony needed three born on the same day in the same year during the same hour. You were born to be a part of this.”

“You stalked me. You set this all up –- ”

“I’ve summoned the Haunter twice before …and it’s given me knowledge in exchange for blood sacrifice. I fed it what it needed so it brought me here. It needs to be released on this soil under these stars to herald in the new Aeon.

“Who is she?”

“She’s a simple woman named Kathy. Her parents run a motel not too far from here. I befriended her family and took up residence. They didn’t care about her. She was their burden. Two nights ago I took her to the desert and placed a spirit of lust inside of her to seduce you. I commanded it to wait for us. For the ritual to be effective I needed both of you to physically consummate. Three in union, the cylinder seal lifted the veil, your penetration summoned the Shade; an avatar of Nyarlathotep, on this sphere to prepare for the final release of its greater essence . . . ” He spits blood. “I was an idiot to think I could be their liaison. They’ll come as annihilators. The spirit I placed in the woman plans to open it. I lost control of the Succubus after I was attacked. She drained you, then slithered onto me. I couldn’t command it. I stabbed her but she still drained me and traveled to Table Rock in a sandstorm. I woke before you and walked to Boars Tusk … I was wrong to think I could be their liaison …”

He stares at me with eyes that look like cracked glass.

“There’s still time to escape to a place in death. Come kill yourself with me.”

“No.”

He stands up, nearly falls. I don’t help him.

“You caused all this. Can’t you stop it?”

“Not if she opens it. But I –- ”

“What?”

“If we catch her I can cast the spirit out so she’s no longer compelled –- ”

I look at the thing once called Blake.

“I can try,” he wheezes.

He glances down at the ground and picks up a small lizard. He snaps its neck and puts it in his pocket.

“She’s going to have to open the trapezohedron during the first hour of nightfall. After that time the stars will shift and the opportunity will pass.”

I grip the hilt of the hunting knife tightly as we walk toward Table Rock, sky growing darker.

When we see It sitting on top of the truck’s hood it stares at us lethargically like a lizard tanning itself on a rock. Its giant head rests impossibly on the neck of a small child’s body and though its face is vaguely human, the huge eyes have no iris and the way it positions itself is monstrous. It sits on its knees and absurdly long legs stretch back and curve, hanging over its head like two scorpion stingers. Its long black toenails are as sharp as knives and it flexes them rapidly, rubbing them lightly across its coarse white fur. The penis above its naval is erect, the slit underneath open and pulsating …

We freeze.

Its mouth opens and a grotesquely large tongue rolls out. It swings rapidly in every direction. The sound of ripping fabric and a muffled thunderclap boom behind the thing.

The creature bellows horrifically, and then its mucous voice is in our heads.

“Pledge. Appease Azathoth.”

Flesh is invisibly ripped from the palm of my hand. I scream.

“Forward.”

I begin walking toward it, knife in hand.

“Don’t!” Blake shrieks.

I’m a few inches away from the hood. I stare down at the soil and see the outline of an open book.

I want to place my bleeding palm down. The urge is stronger than hunger.

I’m struggling –-

The creature’s tongue wraps around my arm and I slice it. It comes off and lands on the dirt. A huge thunderclap booms and It’s no longer on the hood. There’s only burnt sagebrush where its tongue writhed a moment before.

“I can feel its children moving in me,” Blake screeches. Blood pours out of his mouth and his stomach swells.

I toss him into the truck’s backseat. He hands me the keys and I start it up, hit the gas, and speed off toward the highway.

We’re pushing 80 when the GPS goes black. The Red Desert begins to resemble Iraq. I shake my head hard and I-50 comes back into focus.

“Keep your mind here with me,” Blake rattles, “or you’ll be off somewhere you don’t belong.”

We pass oil derrick after oil derrick and I can’t stop my mind from roaming back toward the Middle East. I feel things grow thinner again … something snaps. I’m driving on a dirt road near the Tigris River. I stop the truck … trying to regain my senses.

“Keep driving!” I close my eyes, prepared to keep them that way until absolute darkness engulfs me.

“Mister, Mister, give me food.” I open my eyes. A dozen Iraqi children are gathered around the Ford. They put their small dirty hands up to their mouths to punctuate their demands.

“Drive!”

I snap out of it, accelerate … as the truck moves they turn monstrous. They throw their bodies against the Ford. I hit 60 and can’t shake them. From the rearview mirror I see their faces tearing and peeling off. One launches itself into the passenger side window. The truck swerves dangerously from left to right and its almost completely inside of the truck now as the others chuck their small bodies at the side of the Ford in full stride; bouncing off and getting back up, bouncing off and getting back up –-

Blake leaps forward and he’s wrestling with the thing, when I manage to steady the wheel and grab the knife off the dashboard – he yanks it out of my hand, stabs the creature square in its skeletal face –

It tumbles out of the window.

I look forward and the Iraqi child with the inverted Ankh is glaring at me in the middle of the highway. I accelerate. He disappears and drifts away like smoke. We crash into a sign that reads, “Table Rock Road.” I press down hard on the brakes … look into the rearview mirror. The swarm of dead children has disappeared. There’s an empty gas station fifty feet in front of us.

“We’re here.” Blake throws up and the smell of blood fills the truck.

The sun is beginning to dip below the horizon as we pull into town. Underneath the decay and grime, an ideal suburban street frozen in its Eighties Reagan-era glory. Lonely pieces of tumbleweed flitter across the cracked concrete as the dry wind pushes them past smashed windows and decrepit doors hanging off their hinges. We drive on past a sand-covered playground; sagebrush chokes a rusty swing set and a metallic slide has a hole the size of a bowling ball in it.

We see a skinny brown horse pacing back and forth in front of a very dilapidated house. It stops moving once it sees us.

Blake manages to sit up, wiping blood from his mouth.

“Are we going to have to search every building to find her?” I ask.

“No. The spirit in her will be compelled to find us so it can feed.”

The horse ambles toward the truck. It starts jerking its head from left to right. We stare transfixed. It rears up on its hind legs and whinnies as its head rattles like a Diamondback’s tail. Front to back left to right, impossibly fast. It leans back, then lurches forward, all the while doing this weird dance. I put the truck in reverse. The horse abruptly stops after we hear a fearsome tear. Its head lashes violently one last time then slides off its neck and lands onto the concrete. At that moment we see her materialize in front of the broken down house.

“She’s carrying the trapezohedron,” Blake says.

She smiles at me.

“Stop staring into her eyes.”

I avert my gaze.

“The sun’s going down. We have to grab her.”

She walks into the house and leaves the door open behind her.

Blake spits into his hand.

“Close your eyes.”

I don’t blink.

“Try to trust me. Please …”

Something in his voice moves me. I’m reminded of the friend I once had many years ago. I catch déjà vu and see the hidden karmic thread laid bare –- I try not to understand as I close my eyes. He spits and rubs his saliva over my eyelids. He chants briefly in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own.

“She won’t fascinate you as much now.”

We both get out of the truck and walk past the headless horse. The legs of its shadow kick at us. Blake picks up its head and takes the dead lizard out of his pocket. He drops it.

“I was going to use the lizard to trap the spirit, but the horse’s head will be better.” I nod absently at that as we enter the house, hot desert wind pushing us forward.

The thick scent of lilac disguising decay: still bright enough to make out a staircase leading up to a second floor, some dusty half broken furniture in the large living room.

My heart’s thudding in my chest. Framed pictures on a bureau. I pick one up to see Kathy standing with her sullen parents in front of this house. I place the frame face down and I’m instantaneously hit with a surge of arousal. She’s inches away from me.

“Hold her!”

Her huge blue eyes try to pull me but I back away. Her face morphs, the feeling disappears.

“Hold her!”

I stare at her uncomprehending face. I can’t hurt her … she looks so lost. Her eyes suddenly spark electric blue again …the same pull, more intense than ever. I can’t help myself – I’m on top of her, kissing her mouth, rolling my tongue over her jagged teeth. She’s ripping my pants off, desperately trying to feed –

I hear Blake chanting loudly behind me.

My legs get weak. She’s killing me … I fall backwards, still holding onto her hands. I yank and she tumbles forward, lands hard on her chest.

“Pin it!”

I jump onto her back and pull her head up. Blake takes the horse’s head, places it next to hers and chants. The horse’s face become animate, its eye-color changes from brown to electric blue. Blake hurls it across the living room. Kathy sits up and starts to sob. She rocks back and forth, crawls into a tight ball, then goes silent.

For a moment there is an absolute stillness as darkness descends upon Table Rock.

I notice the small yellow box lying next to the couch a moment after Blake does. He shakes violently and screams like he’s splintering in half. I know at that moment the person once called Robert Blake is now completely gone. It scrambles toward the couch and picks up the box. Rips the top open, takes the trapezohedron out, gazes into it …

I feel it rip into this world. The heavy thud of flapping wings above the house as certain as the panicked heart beating in my chest …

Blake begins to jerk about violently and he drops the trapezohedron … His stomach swells and he begins to give birth to his children. The camel spiders cascade out of his mouth by the dozens … he picks them up and tries to shove them back in. Blake drops and hundreds of the disgusting things pour out of his carcass. My mind nearly breaks as the smell of the Haunter infiltrates the house … the beating wings growing louder all the while.

I need to close the box –

I rush over to Blake as the camel spiders crunch under foot.

I need to close the box –

I grab the filthy thing from his hand but … I can’t help myself …

I look into the black stone and see …

Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, whom in antique and shadowy Khem took the form of man along with all of the infernal domains of the Great Old Ones. I feel them stirring from their long sleep. Umr At-Tawil The Ancient One, Hastur The Unspeakable, his wife Shub-Niggurath, Cthulhu Lord Of Rlyeh and Yog-Sothoth The Lurker At The Threshold all awaken as I struggle to know my own mind but can’t, it’s no longer mine as the deafening sound of Azathoth’s flute reverberates through my center … The beating of its wings becomes the thud of my heartbeat, its madness my overpowering logic. I drop the trapezohedron and sprint past Blake’s corpse and poor, lost Kathy. I burst out of the house running at a full tilt, as the beating of its wings grow louder. There’s a great thunderclap, a huge tear of fabric as the moon’s light fades from the sky completely. I run until I collapse near the town’s deserted road. I stare up at the now alien sky. The stars blotted out with a hatred nurtured on the other side of creation … The others will appear soon now, after this Messenger. I screw my eyes tight and chant an empty prayer to a lesser god as final darkness descends on Table Rock Road.

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Michael Reyes lives in New York, where he writes fiction and plays. He is an Iraq War vet and he currently works at a bookstore. His short story “The Priest of Stillwell Avenue” was recently published in 31 More Nights of Halloween by Rainstorm Press.

By Lynne Jamneck

What inspires you to write?

A strange compulsion.

Your short story “The Darkness at Table Rock Road” is a Mythos story set within the context of the war in the Middle East. How has your own experience in the military influenced your connection to the work of H.P. Lovecraft?

Got some of the ideas for “Table Rock” while convoying from Kuwait to Iraq. A lot of dread and darkness. Heavy sense of history and death.

Nyarlathotep is a key entity in the story. What I love about him, in general, is that you can never truly get a sense of what/who he is. Why do you think you chose him as the antagonistic presence in the story?

He enacts the will of the Outer Gods. Very important. Son and servant of Azathoth, the ultimate chaos and primordial being. Nyarlathotep can walk earth in the form of a man. He has a thousand different forms. While some of the other Elder Gods are unfathomable, he delights in cruelty. Compelling Elder God, multi-dimensional. In a different way than the others.

There are references to the Pandora’s Box myth in the story that might be interpreted as symbolic of the story’s war context. Was this intentional?

Not consciously.

You have written several plays and have done theater directing as well. You’ve stated before that you do not feel comfortable working in the short story format. What do you find are the pros and cons to each?

Gotten a little more comfortable writing short fiction over the years. It’s a medium that demands precision. Weaknesses and strengths are exposed easily. Not always the case with longer works of fiction. I like the immediacy of theater but not always the collaborative process. On the other hand, greater control while writing prose but no safety net. You succeed or fail alone.

What does the word “weird” conjure up for you?

Consensus reality.

You have the chemical symbols for various hallucinogens tattooed on your hands. Is this a reminder or expression of something good or bad?

Just one. Chemical structure of psilocybin on my forearm. Tattoo of a nativity chart on my left hand. Both reminders of something good.

What if Lovecraft had taken mushrooms?

Trips with Aldous Huxley. Creeps him out.

What’s up next for you? Any exciting projects you’d like to tell us about?

Short story about a creature that carries the shattered tower of Babel across its back. Trio of urban horror stories that take place in the South Bronx during the blackout of ’77. Story about an ate up soldier who gets chaptered for misconduct and finds his destiny at the bottom of an absinthe bottle.

Lynne Jamneck is a South African who lives in New Zealand. She holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Auckland, and has been short listed for the Sir Julius Vogel and Lambda Awards. Lynne has published short fiction in various markets, including Jabberwocky Magazine, H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, Fantastique Unfettered, and Tales for Canterbury. She edited the SF anthology, Periphery, and is writing her first speculative novel.

By Lynne Jamneck

Danielle Tunstall is a horror photographer and graphic designer from the UK. Her art is featured in Weird Tales #360.

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Why photography?

By accident. I always loved art but never wanted to be a photographer. I thought it was very boring. I got a camera in 2009 at the same time as I got a computer. For the first time ever I went on the Internet; as a stay-at-home mum I wanted a way to make money, so I started doing eBay. While browsing the net, I found a photography competition with great prizes (it was to photograph circles). To my horror, I came last out of over 300 people. I’m a very competitive type of person, so I went away photographing any thing and every thing. I won the next competition I entered :) After that, I entered two texture competitions and did rubbish. I thought, I need to think about this in a different way, so I bought three packets of mud face mask. At the time, they were £1 a packet and I really wanted four packs but couldn’t afford another one. I covered my boyfriend’s face in the mud, waited for it to dry and got him to snarl and pull faces. OMG — I came first, won a $500 prize, and the outtakes got spotted by another company who bought one for a price that paid for a brand-new camera (replacing the Sony in my mug shot with a Canon 500D; I recently purchased the Canon 5D mark II) and a new couch. (To this day it’s still the most I have ever been paid for one photo.) From that moment on I gave up cleaning and became a photographer!!

You describe yourself as a “horror photographer.” How does the aesthetics of horror influence your subject?

I see beauty in every thing from a dead bird to a fresh flower. To me, my job is to create photos so other people see beauty in the horror, a balance of calm and noise.

Have you always gravitated toward darker, destructively inclined imagery?

Not really, but it’s funny, even though I didn’t want to do photography, when I was little, I got my brother to put some tights on his head like a bank robber and point a gun at the camera. I was only little; wish I could find that photo. When I was little, I did want to be a bank robber when I grew up, not a princess or ballerina. So I suppose my mind sees the world in a different way to a lot of girls, and my photos are very masculine on the whole.

Zombies are hot right now. Your portfolio contains a number of striking zombie-inspired images. What is it about the walking dead that makes them so fascinating?

I’ve always preferred zombies to vampires, even before they were hot. I just love zombie films; I love the rules, I love the look, I love that they’re dead and still alive. In the UK we have only just started having zombie walks and Halloween, it’s not so huge a deal as in America. But we’re catching up. Hopefully, soon there will be zombie walks everywhere here, too.

How do you go about creating a relationship with your models in order to get them to convey what it is you want to photograph?

First we talk through ideas on the Internet so they know what they’re letting themselves in for. When they arrive, first thing is a cup of tea/coffee, or in some cases, something stronger so we can have a chat and get to know each other. My shoots are chaotic. I have no studio, I do all my shoots in the back garden, so models often have my backdrop falling on them and my crazy dog jumping up at them. If my kids are there, even more chaos, lol. To get the right look I say to the model, give me some aggression/show me some teeth/act like you want to fuckin’ kill me. I go on and on shouting, swearing until I get the right shot. I also pull faces and do the expressions for the model to copy. Only some models can do anger; for the ones that can’t we have no expression, or fear. Some are naturals.

What does the word “weird” conjure up for you?

My dreams and daydreaming, sleep paralysis, which I have always had. “Weird” also conjures up from my childhood Tales From the Crypt, Eerie Indiana and Twin Peaks, lol. And now, every time I hear that word I will think of this amazing magazine :)

Is there anything about photography that can be restrictive in terms of getting your perspective across?

The fact that I’m self-taught and rubbish with technology doesn’t help. I can’t even work the TV if the kids aren’t here so it’s a miracle I can use a camera and Photoshop. So I wish I knew more about the technical side. Also, things I see in my dreams are so vivid but impossible to recreate as I see them.

What is the one thing you want to photograph, but haven’t yet?

A person — well, three people really. Rick Genest the zombie boy, Rob Zombie and a UK magician called Dynamo. Then all my dreams would have come true and all my hard work will have been worth it. (Being a mum, I have to work into the night every night after being on my feet all day with kids, but I’m doing this to make a better life for them hopefully, and I’m exhausted!!!)

What’s next up for you? Any exciting projects you’d like to tell us about?

As long as all goes well, coming to LA to do stills photography for a new TV show based on an old comic called Hell Hunters. I will be photographing people like Bill Moseley, Michael Berryman and Lin Shaye to name but a few, so for me it’s amazing to be photographing people I have been watching in films for years. Also working on a few album covers, which is exciting, but about which I can’t really say anything ;)

Danielle Tunstall Online

danielletunstall.com
twitter.com/d_tunstall
facebook.com/danielletunstall

Artist Gallery

Lynne Jamneck is a South African who lives in New Zealand. She holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Auckland, and has been short listed for the Sir Julius Vogel and Lambda Awards. Lynne has published short fiction in various markets, including Jabberwocky Magazine, H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, Fantastique Unfettered, and Tales for Canterbury. She edited the SF anthology, Periphery, and is writing her first speculative novel.

FICTION: THE ELDER GODS

• “The Long Last Night” by Brian Lumley
• “Momma Durtt” by Michael Shea
• “The Darkness at Table Rock Road” by Michael Reyes
• “The Runners Beyond the Wall” by Darrell Schweitzer
• “Drain” by Matthew Jackson
• “The Thing in the Cellar” by William Blake-Smith
• “Found in a Bus Shelter at 3:00 am, Under a Mostly Empty Sky” by Stephen Gracia

FICTION: UNTHEMED

• “To Be a Star” by Parke Godwin
• “The Empty City” by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
• “Abbey at the Edge of the Earth” by Collin B. Greenwood
• “Alien Abduction” by M. E. Brines

POETRY

• “Mummified” by Jill Bauman
• “In Shadowy Innsmouth” by Darrell Schweitzer
• “The Country of Fear” by Russell Brickey
• “Country Midnight” by Carole Buggé

DEPARTMENTS

• The Eyrie
• The Den
• Lost in Lovecraft

SPECIAL RAY BRADBURY SECTION

• “The Exiles (Original Version)” by Ray Bradbury
• “My New Ending to Rosemary’s Baby” by Ray Bradbury
• “Personal Memories of Ray Bradbury” by Marvin Kaye
• Review of “Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury” by James Aquilone
• “Remembrance” by Ray Bradbury

Subscribe to or buy an ebook of Weird Tales here.

Darrell Schweitzer is the author of about 300 short stories and the novels The White Isle, The Shattered Goddess and The Mask of the Sorcerer. Along with George Scithers and John Betancourt, he refounded Weird Tales magazine in 1987 and continued to co-edit the magazine until 2007. He won a World Fantasy Award as co-editor of Weird Tales, along with Scithers. Darrell has edited numerous anthologies, including The Secret History of Vampires (2008), Cthulhu’s Reign (2010) and Full Moon City (2010, with Martin H. Greenberg). He has a story collection called Echoes of the Goddess and a historical Cthulhu Mythos anthology titled That Is Not Dead coming out soon. Darrell also has a story, “The Runners Beyond the Wall,” in Weird Tales #360. Below, he talks about the craft of writing.

Tell us about your writing process.

I wish I had more of it. I am doing too many things and really wish I could write EVERY DAY the way so many writers do, but then I have never been a 9-to-5 sort of writer, even when I have a novel going. I once did write two chapters of a novel in a single sitting. I am usually fairly fast when I am going good. My preferred method is to write whole stories or at least whole chapters in a single sitting.

I am old enough to have been trained on a typewriter. I wrote the novels The White Isle and The Shattered Goddess on manual typewriters. It took me a while to fully adjust to computers, because I would often write two drafts, or one and a half anyway, rather than just go through a first draft and mark up a word here and there. I want to retell the story AGAIN, and this process involves pacing and free invention and considerably more than just touch-up. It’s the difference between “Remember that joke I told the other night? Well the punch line should have been this ____” and actually telling the joke again, with your timing and delivery in place. There was a period when I would write the first draft on a typewriter and then take it to the computer, revising it as I retyped it. Nowadays, still, I will sometimes begin a story on the computer, go on for several pages, realize that this isn’t quite working and then stop. I may wait a day or so. Then I will print out the fragment, open a new file, and start over, using the text before me as a rough guide until I have built up enough momentum to leap right over what stymied me the first time, and make for the ending. Usually what was wrong with the first version is that the pacing was off or I had not authentically captured the narrator’s voice (I do a lot of first-person).

You have probably deduced I am not much of an outliner. Indeed, I don’t do outlines. I also NEVER tell anyone in any detail what a story I propose to write is about. Many writers are like this. You need to tell the story on the page (or screen), not verbally, or else you will lose it. On the contrary, though, there are writers like Larry Niven who insist that if an story isn’t worth talking about and maybe worth starting an argument over, it isn’t worth writing. I suspect this is more true of idea-driven science fiction writers, than horror writers who are more interested in atmosphere and texture and often plot by something close to subconscious association. I bet mystery writers are outliners and talkers too, but I don’t know enough mystery writers to be sure. I am otherwise an expert on this subject. I have interviewed over a hundred writers over the past 39 years and almost always I ask about writing methods, even as you are doing now, so I have in effect made an extensive survey.

What are the most important questions to ask before writing a story?

I am not sure we consciously “ask” them but we develop a sense of who is this story about and why does it matter to him/her? The other one is what does this story “sound” like. That is, what is its narrative voice. This is particularly true in first-person narratives, but true in all of them. You will note that, say, The Once and Future King does not sound at all like Titus Groan. The narrative voice is totally different. But that is what gets a story started, a convincing and appropriate tone and voice.

How do you approach research? Do you tackle it before you write, during…?

Well, if I need a specific fact, I will look it up beforehand. If I am writing some sort of pastiche, I will reread the relevant material. Thus when I recently wrote a story set in Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborea for an anthology, I reread some of the Hyperborean stories, of course. But that is obvious. Otherwise, I usually write about things I already know something about. If I set a story in a historical era, I will pick one I already know something about. I have written two mystery stories in which the narrator is Pliny the Younger, writing to the emperor Trajan. I am already familiar with the book of Pliny’s letters, and I know something about the period, but I would do such things as look at a map to figure out which cities Pliny was visiting in his tour as governor. I also looked at some guidebooks of Turkey to get some idea of what the landscape of Bithynia (northwestern Turkey) looks like. It wouldn’t do to describe it as forested if it’s desert. I also asked my brother, who lives in Istanbul and has lived in Ankara, to describe the landscape for me.

Much research is actually memory. When you read my story (forthcoming in WT) “He Speaks Through Those Who Do Not Die” you should be able to tell that this is written by someone who has been in the woods at night, in the winter, and done it as a child. Someone who spent all their life in a big city would have to “research” that, but I already knew it.

Since I usually write stories quickly, in a single sitting, any research is done beforehand, except maybe some fact-checking if something doesn’t look right. You also do that sort of fact-checking as an editor. As editor of The Secret History of Vampires I had to find out (because of a reference in one of the stories) if there were still gaslights in New York in the days of Conan Doyle and Houdini, for instance. (We concluded it would be unlikely.)

Everything a writer does or reads is “research.” That is because everything you know or experience can eventually find its way into a story. To mention the Pliny mysteries again, I would not have written about “The Stolen Venus” if I had not known about the multi-breasted cult statues of “Diana” from Asia Minor. I’ve seen one, in the Vatican Museum. I then went on to bend the research a little, hypothesizing that this statue represented a purely Asiatic goddess, who was identified as various Graeco-Roman deities in various places. So my characters encountered this goddess as “Venus” and somebody said, “Yes, they have one of those in Ephesus and call it Diana.”

It is very important when you go out on a limb like that to be correct, or at least cover your tracks. By that line I reassured the reader that I was at least aware that this statue is usually called the Diana of Ephesus. Or, for example, in “The Adventure of the Hanoverian Vampires” (my alternate historical Sherlock Holmes vampire cat story, which was published in Sherlock Holmes MM) I used a German phrase (to describe the wicked Hanoverian pretender, Victoria) and asked someone whose German is considerably better than my own to make sure it was right.

More generally, my favorite sort of research (for historical matters) is material written by people in the period in question. What you’re looking for is the “everybody knows” assumptions from that time and place which are different from our own. You want to know how your characters should think and what they regard as commonplaces of life. You can go as far as Gene Wolfe did in Soldier of the Mist, a novel set in ancient Greece. He learned classical Greek. I myself have never gone quite that far. The one thing I have in common with Shakespeare is that I too have little Latin and less Greek.

How do you combat writer’s block?

Ted Sturgeon (who was an expert on writer’s block, having battled with it for many years) once said that it is often a DOING block. He said if you can’t write, wash the dishes, mow the lawn, do SOMETHING. There are times when I cannot write a story because it has not come to me yet. But I have never been so “blocked” that I can’t write, say, a book review, or this interview response, for instance. It is one thing to create something out of your subconscious. Sometimes you can’t do that just now. But I at least am always able to respond to something. The best thing I can advise is try to avoid commitments for things you have not written yet. The ideal situation is to write the story first, then sell it. This is admittedly harder to do with novels. If your fictional inspiration seems to have dried up, go write non-fiction for a while.

What is your biggest stumbling block when it comes to crafting a story

I suppose I have some difficulties writing to order. I am not quite the sort of writer who can fill an assignment of “Write me a story about A, B, and C by Tuesday.” When faced with that sort of assignment I tend to get silly. Sometimes I get really inspired this way, though. I was once asked to write a vampire conspiracy story. It was for Ed Kramer’s Dark Destinies III, one of a series of anthologies involving conspiracies, new world orders, secret societies, and that sort of thing. I had already contributed the somewhat silly “One of the Secret Masters” to the first volume. Now this third volume was to be about VAMPIRE conspiracies. The result was “Kvetchula,” which is not only one of the (I dare say) best Jewish vampire stories every written in dialect voice by a Gentile, but it also did involve vampire bureaucracies, conspiracies, etc. etc. Oy vey, did my kvetching vampire complain that the coffins were cramped, the Gypsies told lousy jokes, Castle Dracula was such a mess…until finally the Count had enough, nailed her into a box, and shipped back to New Jersey by Transylvanian Express. You would think that this time I really rose to the occasion and saved myself, but, no, the editor told me he ALREADY HAD a Jewish vampire conspiracy story and so turned down mine. Fortunately it later had ‘em rolling on the floor at Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, and the story was published there to great acclaim and merriment.

My biggest “stumbling block” occurs when I find myself trying to write material which is not my own. See my essay “My Career as a Hack Writer” (in Windows of the Imagination) on this. The two real catastrophes of my career have involved novels based on other people’s material. One was a novel written around a calendar done by a famous pair of artists (the project collapsed, leaving me with an unpublishable novel) and the other was a Conan novel, Conan the Deliverer, commissioned by the de Camps, accepted and paid for by Tor, and suppressed ever since when they (entirely too late) changed their mind about the book. Neither of these is likely a great loss to literature. The Conan novel was not a very good Robert Jordan pastiche, and it wasn’t very good Schweitzer either, though there were inventive bits in it. But it mostly involved this muscular cardboard cut-out wandering through interesting landscapes. The one good thing that came out of this was that the story was set in Stygia and the Stygian underworld (the land of the dead, not gangsters) and this got me thinking about Egypt and pseudo-Egyptian settings and, once freed of all constraints, I wrote The Mask of the Sorcerer on the rebound, although Mask has nothing in common with the Conan novel other than imagery evocative of ancient Egypt. (And there is a character named Sekenre in the Conan novel, a Stygian prince, a very minor figure, bearing no resemblance to my boy-sorcerer character. I had cribbed the name from a book called The Literature of Ancient Egypt.)

The calendar novel wandered from image to image. It had a guy in a Buck Rogers type suit with a ray gun AND a girl in a loincloth AND dinosaurs AND wizards AND mammoths wandering around, and I had to try to force all this to make minimal sense. There was one funny bit set in an Atlantean fast food restaurant in which they had a T-Rex slowly roasting on a spit in the middle of the room. Most of it I can’t remember (this was written in the early ’80s) save that it wasn’t very good. I do not respond all that well to being forced to plug in arbitrary images like that. There was even a cute animal sidekick intended for the stuffed toy market.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

It may have been the one from L. Sprague de Camp who said that the key to writing is “The application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” That is, there is no substitute for actually doing it.

My own advice to writers is to be true to yourself, do not compromise your material, and do not quit your day job.

Cover image by Danielle Tunstall. Visit her at danielletunstall.com and like her on Facebook here

Jon Sprunk is the author of the fantasy novels Shadow’s Son, Shadow’s Lure and Shadow’s Master (Pyr Books). Jon, who lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife and son, is also a mentor at the Seton Hill University Writing Program. For more info about Jon and his works, check out jonsprunk.com. Jon talks about his writing process, research and writer’s block.

Tell us about your writing process.

I’m a planner. When it comes to novels, I outline the entire manuscript before I start writing, which takes me about two to three months. Then I just dive in at the beginning. I don’t edit as I write. I focus on getting to the end. Then, I let the manuscript rest for a week or two before I re-read it. That spurs a lot of note-taking and kicks off the first of a series of revisions. When the book gets to the point where I start to trust it, I hand it out to a few beta-readers for feedback. My agent also gets a look. After I collect their notes, I do another revision. Then it’s off to the publisher. The entire process from brainstorming to complete manuscript takes me anywhere from 12 to 18 months, depending on the length. I write in the evenings, aiming for a thousand words per day.

What are the most important questions to ask before writing a story?

What is the heart of the story? Is it a tale of love, revenge, loss, remembrance? Often I won’t know the answer to this question until I’ve started writing — sometimes not until after the first draft is done. Yet I try to keep that question in the back of my mind as I’m planning and writing. Another vital question is: Who is the best character to relate the story? I tend to write in multiple points of view, so I’m always concerned with who is in the best position to report on a given scene.

How do you approach research? Do you tackle it before you write, during…?

Mostly afterward. Research is addictive. I could lose myself in libraries, reading everything on a subject, and end up wasting weeks if not months of writing time. So I write the story first, and then go back to research the details I want.

How do you combat writer’s block?

I don’t think I’ve ever suffered from it (knock on wood), so I have no idea. I imagine I would take long walks with just a notebook and a pen, opening myself to the inspiration of the universe. But, realistically, I’d probably just watch TV.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?

Sit your butt in the chair and write. Writing as a career is as much about production as anything else. That may sound crass, but nonetheless I find it to be true. So drop the excuses, close the door to your writing space, turn off the phone and write. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Don’t wait for permission from your family. Just write. Oh, and read. A lot.

What is your biggest stumbling block when it comes to crafting a story?

Getting past my self-doubt. Whenever someone says they’ve read one of my books, I’m amazed they took the time. The greatest gift a reader can give me is a simple email saying they liked it. Those notes get me through the dark days when I feel that I’ve got nothing worthwhile to say.

This year’s Guests of Honor were Mike Resnick, Story Musgrave, Rowena Morrill, Jane Frank, Peggy Rae Sapienza, Sy Ligergot, Peter Sagal and toastmaster John Scalzi.

Best Novel

Among Others by Jo Walton (Tor)

A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin (Bantam Spectra)
Deadline by Mira Grant (Orbit)
Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan UK / Del Rey)
Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (Orbit)

Best Novella

“The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s September/October 2011)

“Countdown” by Mira Grant (Orbit)
“The Ice Owl” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction November/December 2011)
“Kiss Me Twice” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s June 2011)
“The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” by Ken Liu (Panverse 3)
Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA)

Best Novelette

“Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)

“The Copenhagen Interpretation” by Paul Cornell (Asimov’s July 2011)
“Fields of Gold” by Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse Four)
“Ray of Light” by Brad R. Torgersen (Analog December 2011)
“What We Found” by Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2011)

Best Short Story

“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March/April 2011)

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld April 2011)
“The Homecoming” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s April/May 2011)
“Movement” by Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s March 2011)
“Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” by John Scalzi (Tor.com)

Best Related Work

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls, and Graham Sleight (Gollancz)

Jar Jar Binks Must Die…and Other Observations about Science Fiction Movies by Daniel M. Kimmel (Fantastic Books)
The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature by Jeff VanderMeer and S. J. Chambers (Abrams Image)
Wicked Girls by Seanan McGuire
Writing Excuses, Season 6 by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Jordan Sanderson

Best Graphic Story

Digger by Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press)

Fables Vol 15: Rose Red by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham (Vertigo)
Locke & Key Volume 4, Keys to the Kingdom written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)
Schlock Mercenary: Force Multiplication written and illustrated by Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (The Tayler Corporation)
The Unwritten (Volume 4): Leviathan created by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Written by Mike Carey, illustrated by Peter Gross (Vertigo)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Game of Thrones (Season 1), created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss; written by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman, Jane Espenson, and George R. R. Martin; directed by Brian Kirk, Daniel Minahan, Tim van Patten, and Alan Taylor (HBO)

Captain America: The First Avenger, screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephan McFeely, directed by Joe Johnston (Marvel)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, screenplay by Steve Kloves; directed by David Yates (Warner Bros.)
Hugo, screenplay by John Logan; directed by Martin Scorsese (Paramount)
Source Code, screenplay by Ben Ripley; directed by Duncan Jones (Vendome Pictures)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

The Doctor’s Wife” (Doctor Who), written by Neil Gaiman; directed by Richard Clark (BBC Wales)

“The Drink Tank’s Hugo Acceptance Speech,” Christopher J Garcia and James Bacon (Renovation)
“The Girl Who Waited” (Doctor Who), written by Tom MacRae; directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
“A Good Man Goes to War” (Doctor Who), written by Steven Moffat; directed by Peter Hoar (BBC Wales)
“Remedial Chaos Theory” (Community), written by Dan Harmon and Chris McKenna; directed by Jeff Melman (NBC)

Best Editor, Short Form

Sheila Williams

John Joseph Adams
Neil Clarke
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan

Best Editor, Long Form

Betsy Wollheim

Lou Anders
Liz Gorinsky
Anne Lesley Groell
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Professional Artist

John Picacio

Dan dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Michael Komarck
Stephan Martiniere

Best Semiprozine

Locus edited by Liza Groen Trombi, Kirsten Gong-Wong, et al.

Apex Magazine edited by Catherynne M. Valente, Lynne M. Thomas, and Jason Sizemore
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Lightspeed edited by John Joseph Adams
New York Review of Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell, Kevin J. Maroney, Kris Dikeman, and Avram Grumer

Best Fanzine

SF Signal edited by John DeNardo

Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
The Drink Tank edited by James Bacon and Christopher J Garcia
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Christopher J Garcia, et al.

Best Fan Writer

Jim C. Hines

James Bacon
Claire Brialey
Christopher J Garcia
Steven H. Silver

Best Fan Artist

Maurine Starkey

Brad W. Foster
Randall Munroe
Spring Schoenhuth
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

Best Fancast

SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente

The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe
Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts (presenters) and Andrew Finch (producer)
SF Signal Podcast, John DeNardo and JP Frantz, produced by Patrick Hester
StarShipSofa, Tony C. Smith

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

E. Lily Yu

Mur Lafferty
Stina Leicht
Karen Lord
Brad R. Torgersen