Waiting on the Cthulhurotica to be released? So are we, and we can’t wait! To share a little more of what we love about this book, please download the free PDF below:
Tag: blurb
A Taste of Our Tales
Wondering what each of the stories in Cthulhurotica is about?
* “The Cry in the Darkness” – After Wilbur Whateley’s death, young Mamie Bishop pins her hopes for a happy life on a simple farmhand. He soon discovers his new wife isn’t satisfied at home, and makes her way through the darkness each night to an unspeakable mate.
* “Optional on the Beach at the Festival of Shug Niggurath” – Nyarlothotep was expecting nothing more than a pleasant weekend in a seaside tourist town, but instead finds a charming young distraction.
* “Le Ciél Ouvert” by Kirsten Brown – Five years after the rift opens in the skies above Arkham, the last sane survivor decides to renegotiate her relationship with the abyss, on her terms.
* “The Summoned” by Clint Collins – After Henry Wilcox’s unexpected breakdown, his college friends discover his strange obsessions. Pamela, a young sculptor with a taste for the unusual, uses Henry’s designs to build herself a firm and fleshy monster of her own.
* “The Fishwives of Sean Brolly” by Nathan Crowder – Linda thinks her submissive husband makes a better assistant than a lover, but while she’s distracted by her latest writing project, he discovers the women of his dreams.
* “Between a Rock and an Elder Goddess” by Mae Empson – Dennis has spent his whole life studying ancient texts, searching out mysteries. When he finally finds one, she’s tentacled, seductive, and far more mysterious than he’d imagined.
* “Ipsa Scientia” – Kara finally meets a man whose knowledge of physics is out of this world.
* “Infernal Attractors” – When sexy Shirley comes to him with a handful of government secrets and a taste for danger, Marc builds a strange machine to win her love.
* “The Descent of the Wayward Sister” by Gabrielle Harbowy – A curious sister with a taste for the underbelly of society comes visiting her wealthy, educated, brother, and finds his secrets are not as well-kept as they should be.
* “Tuning In, Turning On, and Dropping Out at the Mountains of Madness” – Euphoria thought spending in the 70s in Ashland, OR, would be a far-out trip, man. She soon discovers a god among men, and a star in the stone.
* “The Dreamlands of Mars” – Far in the future, a young woman’s life on dry, boring, Mars changes when her father’s mysterious silver key arrives to take her to a greener place.
* “Riemannian Dreams” – An academic’s dreams turn unbearably erotic, and as he struggles to understand their meaning, he receives a pair of visitors who want something more than sex from him.
* “Sense” – A tempting wife and a missing professor fuel this gritty noir adventure through car chases, motel sheets, and betrayal.
* “Song of the Catherine Clark” – Dryden’s been searching his whole life for the mysterious Catherine Clark. When he finally finds the Clark, and her provacative masthead, he discovers the ship’s terrible hunger can’t be denied.
* “Flash Frame” – A freelance reporter in Mexico City discovers a rare art film with mysterious powers. As the film plays, a dream invades the viewers’ lives. The dream is yellow.
* “The C-Word” – Elliot left Anna Waite-Saothwick, and Innsmouth, behind when she broke off their relationship. A massive storm reunites the lovers, but Elliot finds Anna’s connection to the ocean, and Devil’s Reef, is more profound than he’d ever guessed.
* “The Lake at Roopkund” – When Isha’s college roommate at Miskatonic U comes to India for a visit, resentful husband Jaswinder insists on inviting himself to their party, but doesn’t get what he came for.
* “The Assistant from Innsmouth” – In the fall of 1937, a young clerk is sent to catalogue the Whateley estate. He discovers, amongst the strange objects and ornate books, a woman whose presence puts him in a position he didn’t expect.
* “Transfigured Night” – When Vic’s ship crashes on a desolate island, and his friend’s life is lost, he thinks things can’t get any worse. Then he discovers a beautiful dead boy, an underground temple, and what comes after “worse”.
* “Amid Disquieting Dreams” – Jim’s Fisheater has been coming to him, in dreams, for years. The dreams are terrible, filled with blood, fear and death, and eventually, Jim can’t tell the difference between dream and reality any longer.
* “Daddy’s Girl” – Milleu’s father is a half-human, half-tentacled monster, and the family business is a special kind of slave trade. When forced to rush her latest project on account of a deadline, her dark humor pushes her to make a monstrous decision of her own.
Interview: Don Pizarro
Name: Don Pizarro
Author of: “The C-Word”
Age: As Dennis said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m 37, I’m not old.”
Geographic Location: Upstate New York
Original Hometown, if different: A small ‘burb on the shores of beautiful Lake Erie–which did not catch fire by the way. That was the Cuyahoga River.
Twitter: @DonP
Website: www.warmfuzzyfreudianslippers.com
Past publications: My most recent are “Sublimation,” Rigor Amortis, October 2010, “Combat Stress Reaction,” Crossed Genres, June 2010, “Intermezzo,” Everyday Weirdness, May 2010, “Tough Love,” Reflection’s Edge, July 2009, “Good for the Gander,” Fantasy Magazine, May 2009
What’s your favorite H.P. Lovecraft story or other Mythos story? Actually, it’s Rod Serling’s adaptation of HPL’s non-Mythos story “Cool Air” for the series Night Gallery — a subject I plan on delving into for a future nonfiction project!
What comes to mind when you think “Lovecraft” + “Erotica”? I had the image of C’thulhu’s tentacles in various orifices. Which, because of my lack of familiarity with the Mythos, actually turned me off. Not that I’m against things in orifices by any means, but the thought of writing “‘Lovecraft’ + ‘Erotica'” required a knowledge that I just didn’t have – at the time.
How did you hear about Cthulhurotica? Right on the heels of my last “weird erotica” publication, I heard about this other one through the editor talking about it on Twitter. I guess my eyes were just peeled for anything called <genre-trope>-rotica.
What inspired your story? Having resolved that I wasn’t going to write for Cthulhurotica, I decided it was long past time that I at least found out more about H.P. Lovecraft. Especially since, several weeks before I heard of the anthology, I’d taken the name “D.P. Lovecraft” for my role as a Non-Skating Official in my local roller derby league. Anyway, I started by looking up “Deep Ones” on Wikipedia, and then the ideas just started rolling in. So much for my resolve.
What music or movies helped you to write this story? My soundtrack for “The C-Word”:
- The New Pornographers, “Failsafe”
- Eleni Mandell, “Bigger Burn”
- Manic Street Preachers, “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”
- Arcade Fire, “Ocean of Noise”
- Air, “The Word ‘Hurricane'”
- Cassandra Wilson, “A Little Warm Death”
- The Blue Nile, “Body and Soul”
- Genesis, “Domino, Pt. 1 – In the Glow of the Night/Pt. 2 – The Last Domino”
How many rewrites did you do before submitting? Three or four, at least.
What is your favorite bit? The point at which the main character, Elliot, starts to get a glimpse of everything he was inadvertently fighting for:
Anna slipped her hand from mine and faced out toward Devil’s Reef. She cupped her hands and shouted some words I couldn’t understand, but that reminded me of her mumbling last night. And unless I was hearing things, she was answered, from the Reef, with the most bizarre and disturbing sound I had ever heard.
Interview: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Name: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Author of: “Flash Frame”
Age: Unspeakable. Sorry!
Geographic Location: Vancouver, Canada
Original Hometown, if different: Mexico
Twitter: @silviamg
Website: http://silviamoreno-garcia.com
Past publications: Fantasy Magazine, Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction, Tesseracts 13, Futurismic, Shimmer and lots, lots more
What’s your favorite H.P. Lovecraft story or other Mythos story? “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” ( that’s probably why I am one of the founders of Innsmouth Free Press) and “The Colour Out of Space.” There’s something about evil- glowing meteorites that makes my heart go a bit faster. Non-Lovecraft, I think “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner is very scary. It just creeped the hell out of me and I don’t even understand why. Something about the bizarre constructions made out of twigs.
What comes to mind when you think “Lovecraft” + “Erotica”? Um … tentacles? I am actually very afraid of Cthulhu mixed with erotica, and I’m note quite sure what to expect when I crack open my contributor’s copy, but I think I ended up overcoming my fears because I had an idea that just wouldn’t let go. I’m not sure if the final result is erotic, though. I think of it as deeply paranoid and confused. In a good way.
How did you hear about Cthulhurotica? Through the magic of Twitter.
What inspired your story? Several things. I was remembering what it was like being a journalist in Mexico City. I am a third-generation communications gal. My grandfather was a radio announcer during the Golden Age of radio, my parents both worked in radio, I worked at a newspaper and I married someone who studied journalism. This is a genetic ailment. But it does tend to give me lots of background on different time periods and how journalists worked in those times. For “Flash Frame,” my direct inspiration was a conversation I had in the 90s. I was meeting a friend who was a freelancer at the time, and he asked me if we could stop to pick up his paycheck for a story he had done for a magazine. The magazine we picked up (and I think his story) was about the cheapest prostitute in Mexico City. We ended talking about a large porno cinema, Cine Teresa, which had been a high-class “ladies” cinema back in the 50s. You know, one of those luxury movie palaces. I love old movie theatres and I kept thinking about journalists and movie theatres, and our conversation about the Teresa. Around this time, I also had a bizarre dream about a “yellow woman” and I decided to use her.
What music or movies helped you to write this story? I don’t listen to much music, to be terribly honest. I am very unhip, in that sense. But I did have a movie in mind. Caligula, to be specific. The bizarre film that gets screened in my story was inspired by that movie, and also some of the sword-and-sandals flicks I watched when I was a kid. There was always something sexy about those movies, even if the production codes of the time didn’t allow them to show too much. It was a way to get past the censors. I mean, Hedy Lamarr is sooo awesome in Samson and Delilah. We don’t give a crap about the good girl. We want Hedy to dance in her pseudo-Arabian Nights outfits and seduce Samson, damn it!
How many rewrites did you do before submitting? I don’t rewrite. Does that sound awful? I fix things as I go along, which sometimes makes it a longer process. I also felt if I thought too much about this story, I’d chicken out and never write it.
What is your favorite bit? I like the opening line:
The sound is yellow.
Interview: Jennifer Brozek
Name: Jennifer Brozek
Author of: “The Sexual Attraction of the Lovecraftian Universe,” an essay
Age: 39
Geographic Location: Seattle, WA
Original Hometown, if different: Military Brat. Didn’t have one. But I was born in Alaska.
Twitter: @jenniferbrozek
Website: http://www.jenniferbrozek.com
Past publications: Quite a few. Most recently “Family Duty” to M-Brane SF, “Eulogy for Muff” to Apexology: Horror, “Shanghai Vampocalypse” Savage Worlds RPG book, “Swallow It All” to Rigor Amortis. To see more publications, please go to: http://www.jenniferbrozek.com/bibfiction.html
What’s your favorite H.P. Lovecraft story or other Mythos story? I really like the language and imagery of “Nyarlathotep.” The “Cats of Ulthar” amuses me in ways it probably shouldn’t. But “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” is one of my favorites. It is gothic, gloomy and just wonderful.
What comes to mind when you think “Lovecraft” + “Erotica”? Tentacle porn and insanity. Really, “Lovecraft” and “Erotica” don’t seem like they should go together and yet they do, and I wrote an essay about that.
How did you hear about Cthulhurotica? Probably like most of the people in the book – Twitter.
What inspired your story? I was chatting with the editor about how wrong the concept seemed but how, upon further examination, there are a number of reasons for it to be. Then I pitched an essay about the topic and it got approved. Thus, “The Sexual Attraction of the Lovecraftian Universe” was born.
What music or movies helped you to write this story? None. I prefer to write in silence. Ok. That’s not true. I referenced a movie in the essay (The Dunwich Horror) but I did not watch it while working on the essay. Mostly, I re-read a number of Lovecraft’s works to back up my opinions. Also, I discovered that I did better writing about Lovecraft at night.
How many rewrites did you do before submitting? Two.
What is your favorite bit?
The stories H.P. Lovecraft told were not ones that incited arousal or encouraged promiscuity between mortals, mortals and servitors or mortals and the Old Ones. And yet, Cthulhurotica is not the first book that explores the sexual nature of this universe. There are other books (anthologies and novels), roleplaying games, movies and even (dare I mention it?) Lovecraftian porn. At first blush, this seems incomprehensible. However, after taking a closer look at the issue, the reason for the link between Lovecraft’s creation and erotica becomes clear.
Cthulhurotica 