Down at the Bottom of Everything by E.R. Knightsbridge
I wrote this when I’d just come back from spending a few months living on the biggest and wildest of the Bahamian islands, Andros. In Andros, there are surreal natural phenomena called “Blue Holes” which are inland, water-filled, vertical caves that appear just like lakes when you stumble across them in the woods and forests but they’re actually hundreds of metres deep. There’s also a local legend about a giant sea monster called a Lusca. I suspect that those two things combined inside my mind to form the basis of the story.
Spore by Amanda Downum
The original seed of “Spore” (sorry) came from watching nature documentaries and thinking of Fungi from Yuggoth, but it wasn’t until Orrin Grey asked the world for fungus stories that it started to grow a plot (sorry) and characters. It took a few more years and many conversations about the chemistry of emotions before it germinated fully (I give up).
Pippa’s Crayons by Christine Morgan
I think the inspiration for “Pippa’s Crayons” started with a random thought, something about “the coloring book out of space.” That got me musing about Lovecraftian stories from a child’s perspective. Then I wondered about the interesting challenge of approaching it only through dialogue; from there, the weird and creepy conversation just sort of fell into place.
The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
“The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward” is the third of a series of stories we have written in this universe (the other two being “Boojum” and “Mongoose”), which seems to be half Lewis Carroll and half H. P. Lovecraft with a side of Frank Belknap Long, served on a bed of space opera. We hope our love for Lovecraft shows, as well as our efforts to reimagine his universe into something where women have voices, subject positions, stories of their own. Where women, too, can be Mad Scientists, with all that entails. Also, this universe has giant living ships that are sort of like an interdimensional cross between a pufferfish and an octopus. Neither one of us has ever been able to see the bad in that.
From the Cold Dark Sea by Storm Constantine
One of the aspects of Lovecraft’s work I’ve always found intriguing is that of mysterious denizens of the sea interacting with unsuspecting land-dwellers, and in some cases interbreeding with them. All the Cornish words in my story are “made up” in that I simply used a Cornish-English dictionary to create new words, such as Morbenyn Farm, a term that roughly means sea-woman, and the village Mordarras, which is Gate of the Sea. Lovecraft was also fond of writing about powerful, ancient books that affect humanity, so my story had to have one of its own. However, I did want to turn the Cthulhu genre on its head a little, which I can’t really explain without giving spoilers. I’ll just say that the outcome isn’t typically Lovecraftian.
Mnemeros by R.A. Kaelin
When I was a child, I hitched a ride with our neighbor, a withered old rancher with enormous glasses. He pointed out into a field where a rotting farmhouse leaned against a tree.
“That’s where I grew up,” he said.
I was deeply disturbed. I couldn’t imagine watching a meaningful place die away. Surely every time he saw it he compared it to the mental image of what it had been initially. Worse, there was a point where he had to realize that it couldn’t ever be put back together again. Horrified, I suddenly realized that my own home would befall the same fate. Someday I would be the one sitting in the rancher’s seat. This story pays homage to that memory.
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The supporters in this list are the reason Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror contains an original color illustration by Daniele Serra to accompany every story.
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