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Ruthanna Emrys

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Fiction and Excerpts [11]
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Fiction and Excerpts [11]

Deep Roots

Thu Jun 14, 2018 2:00pm
2 Favorites [+]
|| Book 2 in the Innsmouth Legacy series. Aphra Marsh, descendant of the People of the Water, must repopulate Innsmouth or risk seeing it torn down by greedy developers, but as she searches she discovers that people have been going missing...

The Opposite of a Skeleton in the Closet: Alyssa Wong’s “What My Mother Left Me”

and
Wed Aug 5, 2020 3:00pm 2 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Alyssa Wong’s “What My Mother Left Me,” first published in Ellen Datlow’s 2018 anthology The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea. Spoilers ahead (but well worth reading first if you can get a hold of it).

[“But instead of bearing the fish back into the ocean, the water tugs gently at its body…”]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Learning to Be Reptilian: Jamaica Kincaid’s “My Mother”

and
Wed Jul 29, 2020 1:00pm 9 comments 5 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Jamaica Kincaid’s “My Mother,” first published in her 1978 collection, At the Bottom of the River. (You can also find it in The Weird.) Spoilers ahead.

[“She grew plates of metal-colored scales on her back, and light, when it collided with this surface, would shatter and collapse into tiny points.”]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

The Elder Things of Kilimanjaro: Maurice Broaddus’ “The Iron Hut”

and
Wed Jul 22, 2020 3:00pm 7 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Maurice Broaddus’ “The Iron Hut,” first published in Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles’ 2014 Sword and Mythos anthology. Spoilers ahead.

[“Like living scrolls, the men had words—old words not meant to be pronounced by human tongues, carved into their flesh.”]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

An Ecstasy of Arrows: Craig Laurance Gidney’s “Sea, Swallow Me”

and
Wed Jul 15, 2020 3:00pm 7 comments 2 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Craig Laurance Gidney’s “Sea, Swallow Me,” first published in Ashé Journal in 2006; you can find it more easily in Gidney’s Sea, Swallow Me collection. Spoilers ahead—but we encourage you to go read it first.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Journalism More Yellow Than Most: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Flash Frame”

and
Wed Jul 8, 2020 3:00pm 10 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Flash Frame,” first published in 2010 in Carrie Cuinn’s Cthulhurotica anthology; you can more easily find it in Ross E. Lockhart’s The Book of Cthulhu. Spoilers ahead.

[“I looked at my steno pad and the lined, yellow pages reminded me of leprous skin.”]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Potluck Devils: Stephen Graham Jones’s “The Spindly Man”

and
Wed Jul 1, 2020 3:00pm 7 comments 6 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Stephen Graham Jones’s “The Spindly Man,” first published in Ellen Datlow’s Fearful Symmetries anthology in 2014 and available in the September 2016 issue of The Dark. Spoilers ahead. (Also spoilers for Stephen King’s 1994 story “The Man in the Black Suit,” which you can find in The Weird.)

[“Proof,” he said. “We’ve all got proof, man. I bet every one of us has a story like this kid’s. Don’t we?”]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Love in the Time of Parasitic Breeding Strategies: Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild”

and
Wed Jun 24, 2020 3:00pm 11 comments 5 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild,” first published in the June 1984 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Spoilers ahead—but seriously, if you’ve never read this, go read it first. You can find it in The Weird and probably in five other anthologies already on your shelves, or on audio here.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Maybe I Wouldn’t Have These Scars From the Octopus Deity: Autumn Christian’s “Shadow Machine”

and
Wed Jun 17, 2020 3:00pm 9 comments 3 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Autumn Christian’s “Shadow Machine,” first published in Robert S. Wilson’s 2018 Ashes and Entropy anthology. Spoilers ahead.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Lovecraft’s Model? Robert Barbour Johnson’s “Far Below”

and
Tue Jun 9, 2020 2:30pm 28 comments 3 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Robert Barbour Johnson’s “Far Below,” first published in the June/July 1939 issue of Weird Tales. Spoilers ahead.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Safer Meat: Amanda Downum’s “The Tenderness of Jackals”

and
Wed May 27, 2020 3:00pm 21 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Amanda Downum’s “The Tenderness of Jackals,” first published in Ellen Datlow’s Lovecraft Unbound anthology in 2009. Spoilers ahead.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Cribbage and Elder Gods: Manly Wade Wellman’s “The Terrible Parchment”

and
Wed May 20, 2020 3:00pm 21 comments 3 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Manly Wade Wellman’s “The Terrible Parchment,” first published in the August 1937 issue of Weird Tales. (Note that there are several places where you can ostensibly read it online; all have serious errors in the text. We found it in The Second Cthulhu Mythos Megapack.) Spoilers ahead.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Beware the Crib: Ray Bradbury’s “The Small Assassin”

and
Wed May 13, 2020 3:00pm 19 comments 2 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Ray Bradbury’s “The Small Assassin,” first published in the November 1946 issue of Dime Stories. Spoilers ahead. Trigger warning for harm to, and from, babies.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Don’t Talk to Strangers After All: Shirley Jackson’s “The Witch”

and
Wed May 6, 2020 3:00pm 6 comments 6 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Shirley Jackson’s “The Witch,” first published in 1949 in The Lottery, or, The Adventures of James Harris. Spoilers ahead.

[Read more]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

One Channel and Literally Nothing On: Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life”

and
Wed Apr 29, 2020 3:00pm 53 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life,” first published in 1953 in Star Science Fiction Stories #2, edited by Frederik Pohl. Spoilers ahead.

[“Oh, don’t say that, Miss Amy… it’s fine, just fine. A real good day!”]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

Henry James is Not Amused: Gertrude Atherton’s “The Bell in the Fog”

and
Wed Apr 22, 2020 3:00pm 15 comments 3 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

This week, we’re reading Gertrude Atherton’s “The Bell in the Fog,” first published the August 1903 issue of The Smart Set. Spoilers ahead.

[“Of course you’ve fallen in love with Blanche, sir,” said one of them. “Everybody does.”]

Series: The Lovecraft Reread

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