Letters to Lovecraft

by Jesse Bullington

  “Oh, darn it,” she said. She went back to the big switch, cranked it counterclockwise to turn off the gas, and hustled over to the living room. Nigger-Man watched her go, then ran to the corner and cowered in his litter box as she came back.

  “You know, I always end up using one of these things in the end,” Lurlene said as she leveled the rifle at the door. “One little hole won’t matter.”

  “Nothing does!” said Nigger-Man. Then he covered his ears with his paws as best he could.

  Biographies

  Kirsten Alene is the author of three books, most recently Japan Conquers the Galaxy (Eraserhead Press, 2013). Her fiction has appeared in a number of publications in print and online, including In Heaven, Everything Is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch; Innsmouth Magazine; and New Dead Families. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, dog, and cat.

  David Yale Ardanuy, a native Floridian and American history graduate student, is an avid hiker of forbidden and lofty places, a known trafficker of hidden wisdoms and a dream weaver. His story in this collection reflects both the nature of his scholarly endeavors and his love of weird and terrifying fiction.

  Asamatsu Ken is a writer and anthologist born in Hokkaido and presently residing in Tokyo, Japan. His pseudonym, a Japanese rendering of “Arthur Machen,” reflects both his keen interest in the supernatural and his decidedly global literary tastes. Asamatsu was a 2006 nominee for the short story division of the Mystery Writers of Japan Award and is the editor of the four-volume Cthulhu Mythos anthology Lairs of the Hidden Gods. Also available in English is his novel Queen of K’n-Yan, as well as short stories appearing in Cthulhu’s Reign, The Mountains of Madness, and the 2011 charity anthology Kizuna: Fiction for Japan.

  Nadia Bulkin writes scary stories about the scary world we live in. Two of her stories have been nominated for Shirley Jackson Awards, and one won the 2010 ChiZine Short Story Contest. It took her two tries to leave Nebraska, but she has been in Washington, D.C., for three years now. She works in research and tends her garden of student debt sowed by two political science degrees. For more, see nadiabulkin.wordpress.com.

  Jesse Bullington wears the influence of Lovecraft on the pages of his three award-nominated novels: The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, The Enterprise of Death, and The Folly of the World. He has published numerous short stories, some of them Mythos-themed, as well as various articles and reviews; a full bibliography can be found at www.jessebullington.com. Letters to Lovecraft is his maiden voyage as an anthologist.

  Chesya Burke’s 2011 fiction collection, Let’s Play White, was featured in io9 and received praise from Samuel Delany and Nikki Giovanni. She is also recognized for her critical analysis of genre and race issues, such as her articles, “Race and The Walking Dead” and “Super Duper Sexual Spiritual Black Woman: The New and Improved Magical Negro,” published in Clarkesworld Magazine. Chesya is currently getting her MA in African American studies at Georgia State University and is a juror for the 2013 Shirley Jackson awards.

  Brian Evenson is the author of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, the novel Immobility and the short story collection Windeye. Three times he has been a finalist for a Shirley Jackson Award, and he is the recipient of an International Horror Guild Award for his collection The Wavering Knife. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s award for best horror novel of 2009. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife Kristen Tracy and their son Max.

  Former film critic and teacher turned award-winning horror author Gemma Files is best known for her Hexslinger series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications). She has also published two collections of short fiction (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, both from Wildside Press) and two chapbooks of poetry. Her next book will be We Will All Go Down Together: A Novel in Stories About the Five-Family Coven (2014, CZP).

  Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life and Crackpot Palace. Ford has published over one hundred twenty short stories, which have appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies, from MAD Magazine to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, Shirley Jackson Award, Edgar Allan Poe Award, Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France) and Hayakawa Award (Japan). His fiction has been translated into over twenty languages. In addition to writing, he’s been a professor of literature and writing for over twenty-five years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA program, the Richard Hugo House in Seattle and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. He lives somewhere in Ohio.

  Orrin Grey is a writer, editor, amateur film scholar and monster expert who was born on the night before Halloween. He’s the author of Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings and the coeditor of Fungi, an anthology of weird fungus-themed stories. You can find out more at orringrey.com.

  Stephen Graham Jones is the author of sixteen novels, six story collections, two novellas and a hundred and seventy or so stories in magazines (Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Prairie Schooner), anthologies (The Weird, Creatures, Fearful Symmetries), and multiple best-of-the-year annuals. Stephen’s been a Bram Stoker Award finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a Colorado Book Award finalist, and has won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction, This is Horror’s Novel of the Year and an NEA fellowship. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and kids and various old trucks, and teaches in the MFA programs at CU-Boulder and UCR Palm Desert. More @SGJ72 and demontheory.net.

  Robin D. Laws’s most recent works of fiction are his collection of Chambers-inspired weird stories New Tales of the Yellow Sign and the fantasy novel Blood of the City. Other novels include Pierced Heart and The Worldwound Gambit. As creative director for Stone Skin Press, he has edited such anthologies as Shotguns v. Cthulhu and The Lion and the Aardvark. He is best known for his groundbreaking roleplaying game design work, as seen in Hillfolk, The Esoterrorists, Feng Shui and HeroQuest. He is one-half of the Golden Geek Award–winning podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, and can be found online at robindlaws.com.

  Tim Lebbon is a New York Times–bestselling horror and fantasy writer from South Wales. He’s had almost thirty novels published to date, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. His most recent releases include the apocalyptic Coldbrook, Into the Void: Dawn of the Jedi from Del Rey / Star Wars Books, The Cabin in the Woods novelization, the Toxic City trilogy from Pyr in the USA and the official Alien tie-in novel Out of the Shadows. Future novels include The Silence (Titan UK/USA). He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, International Horror Guild and Shirley Jackson Awards.

  Twentieth Century Fox acquired film rights to The Secret Journeys of Jack London series (coauthored with Christopher Golden), and a TV series of his Toxic City trilogy is in development. His script Playtime (with Stephen Volk) is currently being developed in the UK.

  Find out more about Tim at his website www.timlebbon.net

  Livia Llewellyn is a writer of dark fantasy, horror and erotica. A 2006 graduate of Clarion, her fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Subterranean, Sybil’s Garage, Pseudopod, Apex Magazine, Postscripts, Nightmare Magazine and numerous anthologies. Her first collection, Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors, was published in 2011 by Lethe Press. Engines received a nomination for the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection, and “Omphalos” received a Best Novelette nomination. You can find her online at liviallewellyn.com.

  Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, including Love is the Law and The Last Weekend, and the Lovecrafti
an mash-ups Move Under Ground and The Damned Highway (cowritten with Brian Keene). His Lovecraftian fiction has appeared in ChiZine, Lovecraft Unbound, Shotguns v. Cthulhu and many other venues. Much of it will be collected in The Nickronomicon, to be published by Innsmouth Free Press in the autumn of 2014. His non-Lovecraftian work has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Best American Mystery Stories 2013 and a wide assortment of magazines, websites, and anthologies. Also an editor and anthologist, Nick’s latest editorial works include Phantasm Japan and the essay collection The Battle Royale Slam Book, both from Haikasoru.

  Cameron Pierce is the author of nine books, including the Wonderland Book Award–winning collection Lost in Cat Brain Land (Eraserhead Press, 2010) and Fantastic Earth Destroyer Ultra Plus, a fairy tale for adults illustrated by artist Jim Agpalza (Sinister Grin Press, 2014). He is also the editor of the popular indie publisher Lazy Fascist Press. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

  Angela Slatter writes dark fantasy and horror. She is the author of the Aurealis Award–winning The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, the WFA-shortlisted Sourdough and Other Stories and the new collection / mosaic novel (with Lisa L. Hannett) Midnight and Moonshine. Her work has appeared in such writerly venues as The Mammoth Book of New Horror 22, Australian and US Best Of anthologies, Fantasy Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Dreaming Again and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded. She was awarded one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships in 2013. She has a British Fantasy Award for “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” (from A Book of Horrors, Stephen Jones, ed.), a PhD in creative writing, and blogs at www.angelaslatter.com.

  Molly Tanzer is the author of the Sydney J. Bounds Award and Wonderland Book Award–nominated A Pretty Mouth, Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations, and The Pleasure Merchant (forthcoming from Lazy Fascist Press in 2015). She lives in Boulder, CO, where she mostly writes about fops arguing with each other. She tweets @molly_the_tanz, and blogs — infrequently — at http://mollytanzer.com.

  Paul Tremblay is the author of the novels The Little Sleep, No Sleep Till Wonderland, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye, the cowritten YA novel Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly (with Stephen Graham Jones), the forthcoming A Head Full of Ghosts (William Morrow), and the short story collection In the Mean Time. His essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, FiveChapters.com and Best American Fantasy 3. He is the coeditor of four anthologies, including Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (with John Langan). Paul is the president of the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, has a master’s degree in mathematics, has no uvula, loves his friends, and hates his many enemies.