H.P. Lovecraft
As part of the content-rich Resource Guide at the end of my supernatural horror short story, "It's Your Funeral," I offer five short essays on the masters of modern supernatural horror fiction—Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, Clark Ashton Smith, and Ambrose Bierce.
Lovecraft as his true 18th century self, captured by great Weird Tales artist Virgil Finley
Here are my insights on the towering, eldritch H.P. Lovecraft, a lasting influence on me; I discovered Poe when I was 10, Lovecraft when I was 12, and never looked back.
Virgil Finlay's cover for the first Arkham House book, Lovecraft's posthumously published The Outsider and Others (1939), now one of the most coveted books in imaginative literature
Lovecraft is certainly an influence on my short story "It's Your Funeral," which is about a certain famed Hollywood superstar who is alleged to secretly practice Santería—to further her career.
You can order it as an ebook here on Amazon for only $.99.
The man had one of the most amazing imaginations of all time. In an effort to break free of his early slavish imitations of Poe and Lord Dunsany, he fashioned the Cthulhu Mythos, drawing from scattered esoteric ideas by Robert W. Chambers and Ambrose Bierce to create a full-blown and frightening personal mythology of cosmic terror and otherworldly horror.
The thrilling climax of The Call of Cthulhu
If you don’t believe me, read his 1925 masterwork The Call of Cthulhu and watch how he takes the most unbelievable idea in the world—a modern-day Puritan’s retelling of the Last Loosing of Satan—and witness how, step by step, he creates a masterful suspension of disbelief. His brilliant short story The Haunter of the Dark will make you afraid to walk down a darkened hall late at night, even if you have to use the bathroom urgently (which happened to me as a teenager).
The evil church that haunts The Haunter of the Dark
Like The Shadow Over Innsmouth, it’s a brilliant retelling of the Golden Calf story, what happens when unthinking people turn away from the Lord in apostasy and worship dark unknown pagan idols.
They've got the Innsmouth look
Read the real Arkham House editions: The Dunwich Horror and Others, Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, At the Mountains of Madness and Other Macabre Tales—and see how this tragic New England genius (who nearly starved to death and couldn’t land a job in New York in the 1920s) became the twentieth century Poe.
A Cthulhu statuette
Deemed a failure in life, he's now heralded in the Library of America
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