Chock filled with chilling stories of spine tingling horror, Goat Mother's illustrated, 450 plus pages contain 19 tales based on the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and includes such hard to find classics as “The Deep Cellars,” “The Dreams of Yig,” “Second Death,” “The Legacy of Acheron” and, of course, its infamous title story “Goat Mother.”
This once in a lifetime offer allows fans both of the Cthulhu Mythos and Pierre V. Comtois to own all of the author's contibutions to the Mythos in a single handy volume to be placed and cherished alongside similar volumes collecting stories by Henry Kuttner, Robert W. Chambers, Lin Carter, and of course H.P. Lovecraft himself.
(Visit Chaosium at chaosium.com to learn more about Goat Mother and Others)
This once in a lifetime offer allows fans both of the Cthulhu Mythos and Pierre V. Comtois to own all of the author's contibutions to the Mythos in a single handy volume to be placed and cherished alongside similar volumes collecting stories by Henry Kuttner, Robert W. Chambers, Lin Carter, and of course H.P. Lovecraft himself.
(Visit Chaosium at chaosium.com to learn more about Goat Mother and Others)
Author's Note for Goat Mother
Believe it or not, I wasn't always interested in the Cthulhu Mythos. No, really! Before high school, my reading endeavors were divided mainly between science fiction and non-fiction (when I wasn't reading Marvel Comics of course). By the time I did get to high school, it was the golden age of Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback reprints and it was from the back pages of one of those volumes that I discovered the wonders of the mail order form. Soon after, I latched onto J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and became an avid reader of the Conan the Barbarian comic book which led me to the sword & sorcery worlds of Robert E. Howard whose work was also being massively reprinted at the time. Meanwhile, LOTR served as an introduction to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series all of whose volumes I devoured but no doubt it was likely Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Spawn of Cthulhu that first clued me in to H.P. Lovecraft. The real closer though, was Lin Carter's Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos with its appendix listing of nearly every Mythos tale written by the Lovecraft Circle and beyond. From that point on, I had to read everything there was and having exhausted what was immediately available in local stores and mail order, reached out to Arkham House for some of its super expensive hardcover volumes including Lovecraft's letters. For the first time, I felt compelled to read an author's non-fiction output, his letters, essays, and articles not just his fiction. And as a would be writer, it wasn't long before I had a yen to make my own contributions to the Mythos (following in the footstep of many other fans before and since). Of course, it took many years before I had any results that would be worth anyone's time but with a self imposed apprenticeship in my own small press mags Fungi and Cthulhu Codex, I managed to improve (if I do say so myself) to the point where other publishers began to search me out for contributions to their own projects. The results of those efforts (for good or ill; the reader will have to be the judge), spread over the last two decades, are contained in this volume.
By way of a few words about the stories in this collection (which are not necessarily presented in any published or compositional or chronological order), “The Secret Name,” “High and Dry,” “The Legacy of Acheron,” and “Masks of the Puppet Lord” are all unpublished with the first three having been written expressly for this collection and the last for an anthology that was to have been produced expressly for the Japanese market but never came to anything. “The Secret Name” features Dean's Corners, located next door to Dunwich, which I've made the setting for many of my later Mythos stories. This might be insider baseball, but my conception of Dean's Corners is based on the real life Massachusetts town of Groton (with next door Dunstable standing in very loosely for Dunwich). In fact, they fit the profile so well, I've often wondered if Lovecraft himself had those two towns in mind for Dean's Corners and Dunwich?
“The Old Ones' Signs,” “Take Care What You Seek,” (published as “Zombies From R'lyeh”), “Country of the Wind,” and “Footsteps in the Sky” first appeared in Chaosium's Tales Out of Innsmouth, Cthulhu Cycle, and Ithaqua Cycle respectively, all edited by Robert M. Price.
“Aqua Salaria,” “The Dreams of Yig,” “What the Sea Gives Up,” and “Zzzzzzzz!,” all appeared in my own small press magazine, Fungi. “Dreams of Yig” was written with Henry J. Vester and the title “Zzzzzzzz!” was a remnant of that tale's origin as a satire on horror stories written as a radio drama; actually my earliest attempt at writing a Lovecraftian type tale.
“The King in Yellow” and “The Pallid Masque” have an interesting history. While not directly connected to the Mythos, they are present here due to Robert W. Chambers' most famous weird stories having been retroactively included. Though neither “story” is directly linked to the Mythos, I, at least still consider them to be a part of it. Anyway, the first has the most interesting publication history: having been concocted by myself and Gregorio Montejo for Fungi, it was later reprinted in Crypt of Cthulhu before being enshrined in the 2001 Arkham House volume Book of the Dead. “The Pallid Masque” while not a direct sequel, was the second part in what I had planned as a trilogy of tales, the third part of which I may yet visit some day. I don't mind admitting here that a great influence for the approach I take in these tales was Karl Edward Wagner's classic “The River of Night's Dreaming.”
“The Deep Cellars” appeared in Anton Zarnak: Supernatural Sleuth, a collection of original tales based on a character created by Lin Carter and edited again by the ubiquitous Robert M. Price. I liked Zarnak and with permission, used him as a supporting character in a couple other stories featured in this collection.
“A Question of Meaning,” an attempt to tie in the Mythos with William Hope Hodgson's Night Land appeared in the first issue of Sam Gafford's Sargasso magazine while “Second Death,” my sequel to Lovecraft's “At the Mountains of Madness,” will be appearing in Robert M. Price's forthcoming Return to the Mountains of Madness. “Final Plea,” is also scheduled for inclusion in David Conyers' Cthulhu's Dark Cults II due out from Chaosium but the version presented here is considerably different than the one solicited for Dark Cults. Is it better? Worse? You be the judge!
Finally, “Goat Mother,” perhaps the most disturbing tale in the collection, has been called by some the greatest Tcho Tcho People story ever written. Well, you be the judge of that. Although written to fulfill the requirements of a collection called Eldritch Blue, it was my attempt at trying to come up with a “fate worse than death” for its female protagonist. Although women have not been absent from my Mythos tales, rarely do they take the traditional male role of inheritor of a strange house filled with secrets left by its former owner. So this tale was a bit of a departure from the formula for me.
Which is not to say I prefer formula to originality. It's just that in my approach to writing Mythos tales, I never had any desire to expand or push the boundaries of what Lovecraft, his immediate Circle, and the first round of disciples had established. All I ever wanted to do was to play in the same sandbox they did, while along the way, tying elements they created closer together in new stories. Beyond that group, contributions to the Mythos exploded and became impossible to keep straight let alone to keep up with. So, mainly, in my own stories, I wanted to capture what it was about the Mythos that first captured my youthful imagination. But to learn more about my thoughts on Lovecraft and Mythos fiction, check out “Thoughts on Lovecraft and His Mythos” that brings up the rear in this collection.
The stories presented here cover about 20 years in my writing career and, I hope, a full range of style and subject matter (including a diverse choice of Cthulhuoid menaces!). So if you like your Mythos fiction close to the bone, in the tradition of, and boundaries set by Lovecraft and his disciples, you should have no trouble enjoying (if that's the right word) these choice offerings.
Believe it or not, I wasn't always interested in the Cthulhu Mythos. No, really! Before high school, my reading endeavors were divided mainly between science fiction and non-fiction (when I wasn't reading Marvel Comics of course). By the time I did get to high school, it was the golden age of Edgar Rice Burroughs paperback reprints and it was from the back pages of one of those volumes that I discovered the wonders of the mail order form. Soon after, I latched onto J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and became an avid reader of the Conan the Barbarian comic book which led me to the sword & sorcery worlds of Robert E. Howard whose work was also being massively reprinted at the time. Meanwhile, LOTR served as an introduction to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series all of whose volumes I devoured but no doubt it was likely Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and The Spawn of Cthulhu that first clued me in to H.P. Lovecraft. The real closer though, was Lin Carter's Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos with its appendix listing of nearly every Mythos tale written by the Lovecraft Circle and beyond. From that point on, I had to read everything there was and having exhausted what was immediately available in local stores and mail order, reached out to Arkham House for some of its super expensive hardcover volumes including Lovecraft's letters. For the first time, I felt compelled to read an author's non-fiction output, his letters, essays, and articles not just his fiction. And as a would be writer, it wasn't long before I had a yen to make my own contributions to the Mythos (following in the footstep of many other fans before and since). Of course, it took many years before I had any results that would be worth anyone's time but with a self imposed apprenticeship in my own small press mags Fungi and Cthulhu Codex, I managed to improve (if I do say so myself) to the point where other publishers began to search me out for contributions to their own projects. The results of those efforts (for good or ill; the reader will have to be the judge), spread over the last two decades, are contained in this volume.
By way of a few words about the stories in this collection (which are not necessarily presented in any published or compositional or chronological order), “The Secret Name,” “High and Dry,” “The Legacy of Acheron,” and “Masks of the Puppet Lord” are all unpublished with the first three having been written expressly for this collection and the last for an anthology that was to have been produced expressly for the Japanese market but never came to anything. “The Secret Name” features Dean's Corners, located next door to Dunwich, which I've made the setting for many of my later Mythos stories. This might be insider baseball, but my conception of Dean's Corners is based on the real life Massachusetts town of Groton (with next door Dunstable standing in very loosely for Dunwich). In fact, they fit the profile so well, I've often wondered if Lovecraft himself had those two towns in mind for Dean's Corners and Dunwich?
“The Old Ones' Signs,” “Take Care What You Seek,” (published as “Zombies From R'lyeh”), “Country of the Wind,” and “Footsteps in the Sky” first appeared in Chaosium's Tales Out of Innsmouth, Cthulhu Cycle, and Ithaqua Cycle respectively, all edited by Robert M. Price.
“Aqua Salaria,” “The Dreams of Yig,” “What the Sea Gives Up,” and “Zzzzzzzz!,” all appeared in my own small press magazine, Fungi. “Dreams of Yig” was written with Henry J. Vester and the title “Zzzzzzzz!” was a remnant of that tale's origin as a satire on horror stories written as a radio drama; actually my earliest attempt at writing a Lovecraftian type tale.
“The King in Yellow” and “The Pallid Masque” have an interesting history. While not directly connected to the Mythos, they are present here due to Robert W. Chambers' most famous weird stories having been retroactively included. Though neither “story” is directly linked to the Mythos, I, at least still consider them to be a part of it. Anyway, the first has the most interesting publication history: having been concocted by myself and Gregorio Montejo for Fungi, it was later reprinted in Crypt of Cthulhu before being enshrined in the 2001 Arkham House volume Book of the Dead. “The Pallid Masque” while not a direct sequel, was the second part in what I had planned as a trilogy of tales, the third part of which I may yet visit some day. I don't mind admitting here that a great influence for the approach I take in these tales was Karl Edward Wagner's classic “The River of Night's Dreaming.”
“The Deep Cellars” appeared in Anton Zarnak: Supernatural Sleuth, a collection of original tales based on a character created by Lin Carter and edited again by the ubiquitous Robert M. Price. I liked Zarnak and with permission, used him as a supporting character in a couple other stories featured in this collection.
“A Question of Meaning,” an attempt to tie in the Mythos with William Hope Hodgson's Night Land appeared in the first issue of Sam Gafford's Sargasso magazine while “Second Death,” my sequel to Lovecraft's “At the Mountains of Madness,” will be appearing in Robert M. Price's forthcoming Return to the Mountains of Madness. “Final Plea,” is also scheduled for inclusion in David Conyers' Cthulhu's Dark Cults II due out from Chaosium but the version presented here is considerably different than the one solicited for Dark Cults. Is it better? Worse? You be the judge!
Finally, “Goat Mother,” perhaps the most disturbing tale in the collection, has been called by some the greatest Tcho Tcho People story ever written. Well, you be the judge of that. Although written to fulfill the requirements of a collection called Eldritch Blue, it was my attempt at trying to come up with a “fate worse than death” for its female protagonist. Although women have not been absent from my Mythos tales, rarely do they take the traditional male role of inheritor of a strange house filled with secrets left by its former owner. So this tale was a bit of a departure from the formula for me.
Which is not to say I prefer formula to originality. It's just that in my approach to writing Mythos tales, I never had any desire to expand or push the boundaries of what Lovecraft, his immediate Circle, and the first round of disciples had established. All I ever wanted to do was to play in the same sandbox they did, while along the way, tying elements they created closer together in new stories. Beyond that group, contributions to the Mythos exploded and became impossible to keep straight let alone to keep up with. So, mainly, in my own stories, I wanted to capture what it was about the Mythos that first captured my youthful imagination. But to learn more about my thoughts on Lovecraft and Mythos fiction, check out “Thoughts on Lovecraft and His Mythos” that brings up the rear in this collection.
The stories presented here cover about 20 years in my writing career and, I hope, a full range of style and subject matter (including a diverse choice of Cthulhuoid menaces!). So if you like your Mythos fiction close to the bone, in the tradition of, and boundaries set by Lovecraft and his disciples, you should have no trouble enjoying (if that's the right word) these choice offerings.