A Lonely and Curious Country (38 page)

“Oh fuck...”
I whispered.

Then I jumped out of my chair as glass shattered and the room filled with noise, screams, wings, and whooshing air...

CONTRIBUTORS

Rebecca Allred
lives in Salt Lake City, working by day as a doctor of pathology, but after hours, she transforms into a practitioner of macabre fiction, infecting readers with her malign prose. Her work has appeared at Hellnotes, Freeze Frame Fiction, Sirens Call eZine, in
Vignettes from the End of the World
, and
Gothic Fantasy: Chilling Horror Short Stories
. She hosts a weekly flash fiction writing challenge at The Angry Hourglass and is a proud pack member of the Flash Dogs, contributing to their annual charity anthology. When she isn’t busy rendering diagnoses or writing, Rebecca enjoys reading, drawing, laughing at RiffTrax, and spending time with her husband, Zach, and their kitty, Bug. You can keep up with Rebecca at
diagnosisdiabolique.wordpress.com
or follow her on Twitter @LadyHazmat.

Cliff Biggers
first discovered the wonders of H. P. Lovecraft thanks to a 1965 Belmont paperback; two years later, he bought his first Arkham House hardcover, and thus began a lifelong addiction to horror fiction. Cliff has written for a variety of comics publishers, including “Earth Boys” for Dark Horse and Isaac Asimov’s I•Bots for Tekno, and is the author of the upcoming novel 1967 Wayside. in addition, Cliff has written for DC Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, and IDW Publishing; he is also the editor and co-publisher of Comic Shop News, a comics industry promotional newsmagazine that recently released its 1470th weekly issue. 

Matthew Carpenter
is a practicing radiation oncologist. He has been a devoted fan and collector of all things Lovecraftian for more than 40 years. After writing numerous reviews of Cthulhu Mythos books on Amazon, for a few years he wrote a column about the state of US Lovecraft fandom for the Japanese magazine Night Land. He has had one story published in a chapbook by Rainfall Books but it was a terrible pun that no one understood but him (And he still thinks it’s funny.), and no one else would accept (Maybe they didn’t get it?). Lately he has appeared as a regular panelist on the Sunday webchat for the Lovecraft eZine. This is his first effort at editing an anthology (Thanks Ulthar Press!). He lives in Peoria, IL with his wife, Isabelle, and two teen age sons, Ethan and Sam
.

Brett Davidson
describes himself as an eclectic dilettante, perennial opsimath and practitioner of cat fu while his friends describe him as Hannibal Lecter’s nicer sibling. He is a New Zealander who grew up in Edinburgh’s southernmost clone, Dunedin, and now lives in his country’s capital, Wellington. In fact, ‘New Zealand’ is only the name given to the exposed highlands of a sunken continent called Zealandia (it’s true, look it up). Moreover, giant squid are frequently caught in its waters. All of this delights him.

As for the bare facts of this temporary concatenation of transient cells, an entity had the name ‘Brett’ bestowed upon in some time in 1967 and has continued to accrue mass since. Since some of those cells are neurons, they have been put to use in education and academia so that he now has qualifications in fields as diverse as industrial design, architecture and English literature and he has taught in all of these areas to make a meager excuse for a living.

Long fascinated by weird fiction and science fiction, Brett has turned his hand to writing and has a number of creative and critical works to his name, a number inspired by that other writer of weird fiction, William Hope Hodgson. His first novel,
Anima
, has recently been published by Utter Tower. Naturally you are advised to buy it.

Seán Farrell
is a 25 year old human from Killeshin, Ireland, who currently works in advertising in Dublin. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin (the same college that features in The Horror at Red Hook) with First Class Honours in English Studies. In Trinity he discovered the works of H.P Lovecraft, and has never looked back since. He also managed the famed Sellotape for a period, while simultaneously acting as trequartista/box to box dynamo in a fabled partnership with John Colthurst. He counts this as his crowning achievement in third level education.

His favourite writers are Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and Karl Peters. His favourite person is his girlfriend Laura. He lives in Ranelagh with his housemate (also his favourite pig farmer) owenfrog. In his spare time he likes to read, play football with 50 year old men, cycle with delusional Newcastle fans and settle.

He’s finding it hard to fill this 500 word bio, so he’s going to quit while he’s ahead, and ask that anyone wishing to contact him can do so at
[email protected]

Aaron J. French
is a book editor for JournalStone Publishing and the Editor-in-Chief for
Dark Discoveries
magazine. He has edited several anthologies, including
Songs of the Satyrs, Monk Punk & Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus
, and
The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft
(Winter 2015) from JournalStone Publishing, which includes new Mythos work from the biggest names in horror fiction, including Adam Nevill, Laird Barron, Bentley Little, Christopher Golden, Jonathan Maberry, Joe Lansdale, and Seanan McGuire. 

2014 saw the publication of
The Chapman Books
, a supernatural thriller collection from Uncanny Books featuring Aaron's novella "The Stain." His single-author collection,
Aberrations of Reality
, was published by Crowded Quarantine Publications and it is the first book to collect Aaron's fiction focusing on the occult, metaphysics, and the weird. His zombie collection
Up From Soil Fresh
was published by Hazardous Press in 2013; also in 2013 "The Order," an occult thriller novella about a Lovecraftian secret society, was published in the
Dreaming in Darkness
collection. Look for Aaron's brand new hard-boiled Lovecraftian novella "The Dream Beings" forthcoming from Samhain Publishing in January of 2016.

Jamie D. Jenkins
is a fan of all horror mediums and has devoted over a decade to celebrating the genre in one form or another. She began writing film reviews, soon transitioned to conducting interviews, then to having her own editorial column where she enjoyed stretching her legs in research and non-fiction writing. From there, she became the editor of The Chainsaw Mafia, then the Director of Marketing for Viscera Film Festival, a festival dedicated to highlighting women horror filmmakers, which led to her writing and directing her own critically acclaimed short film “Secret Shopper.” For the past several years, she has been behind the mic as host or co-host of a half dozen genre-related podcasts including her labor of love, Lycan It!, a podcast which strictly discusses werewolves. Most recently, Jamie has begun to tap her inner storyteller via fiction prose with this tale and one that will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Summer of Lovecraft.

Paul R. McNamee
was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his wife, kids and cats. He discovered H. P. Lovecraft during college, drifted, found other literature, then stumbled into Robert E. Howard. All things pulp and weird (with the help of friends) brought him back to horror and the Cthulhu Mythos. A few of his stories appeared in online venues, and he had a sword-&-planet tale in the illustrated print anthology
Strange Worlds
. He is very happy to be appearing in a Lovecraftian anthology. His blog can be found at;
http://paulmcnamee.blogspot.com

Christine Morgan
works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility, which plays havoc with her sleep schedule but allows her a lot of writing time. A lifelong reader, she also reviews, beta-reads, occasionally edits and dabbles in self-publishing. Her other interests include gaming, history, superheroes, crafts, cheesy disaster movies and training to be a crazy cat lady. She can be found online at
https://www.facebook.com/christinemorganauthor
and
https://christinemari
emorgan.wordpress.com/

Robert M. Price
, a fan of H.P. Lovecraft since the Lancer paperback collections of 1967 appeared, began writing scholarly articles and humorous pieces on H. P.L and the Cthulhu Mythos in 1980. His celebrated semi-pro zine
Crypt of Cthulhu
began as a quarterly fanzine for the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association in 1981 and made it to 109 issues. Contributors included most of the rising stars of Lovecraft scholarship as well as renowned Cthulhu Mythos writers. In 1990 Price began editing Mythos fiction anthologies for Fedogan & Bremer, Chaosium, Inc., and others. His own fiction has been collected in
Blasphemies and Revelations
from Mythos Books. He has continued the adventures of Lin Carter’s Sword-&-Sorcery hero Thongor of Lemuria, as well as those of Carter’s occult detective Anton Zarnack.

Steven Prizeman
is a freelance writer and graphic designer based in the small town of Amersham, Buckinghamshire, southern England – the last home and final resting place of Arthur Machen, who, like H. P. Lovecraft, is a strong influence on his short stories.

His fiction springs from a variety of sources – love of history, the landscape (and what it might conceal), the writers he admires, and a constant stream of odd ideas for which he has no one to blame but himself.

He has published three novels, all available from Amazon: 

• Arise, Black Vengeance
  : a blood-soaked, Renaissance-set, Young Adult epic.
  
• Huck
  : a reworking of the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, based on the premise that the ghosts and superstitions in which the protagonists believed were real.
  
• Nietzsche Against Dracula
  : a confrontation between the world’s most egomaniacal philosopher and the definitive literary vampire.
  

His short story ‘Books (Misc)’ was published in the December 2014 edition of
The Lovecraft eZine
.

Sample chapters from Steven Prizeman’s novels, and several of his short stories, may be downloaded free of charge from his website:
stevenprizeman.com
.

Pete Rawlik
, a long time collector of Lovecraftian fiction, and is the author of more than twenty-five short stories, a smattering of poetry, the Cthulhu Mythos novel
Reanimators
,
The Weird Company,
and the forthcoming
Reanimatrix
. He is a frequent contributor to the
Lovecraft ezine
and the
New York Review of Science Fiction
. In 2014 his short story
Revenge of the Reanimator
was nominated for a New Pulp Award. He lives in southern Florida where he works on Everglades issues.

Damir Salkovic
is an aficionado of weird and macabre tales, presently residing in Arlington, Virginia. His short stories have been published on the Tales to Terrify podcast, the Lovecraft ezine, in the Schlock! Bimonthly magazine and in anthologies by Schlock! Webzine, Source Point Press, Parasomnia Press, Apokrupha, Villipede Publications, Miskatonic Press, Mad Scientist Journal, Thirteen O'Clock press, the Black Library Bolthole and Emby Press. He earns his living as an accountant, a profession that lends itself well to nightmares and harrowing visions.

Brian M. Sammons
has been writing reviews on all things horror for more years than he’d care to admit. Wanting to give other critics the chance to ravage his work for a change, he has penned stories that have appeared in such anthologies as Arkham Tales, Horrors Beyond, Monstrous, Dead but Dreaming 2, Horror for the Holidays, Twisted Legends, Mountains of Madness, Deepest, Darkest Eden and others. He has edited the books; Cthulhu Unbound 3, Undead & Unbound, Eldritch Chrome, Edge of Sundown, Steampunk Cthulhu, Dark Rites of Cthulhu, Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu and Flesh Like Smoke. He is also the managing editor of Dark Regions Press’ new Weird Fiction line. He is currently far too busy for any sane man. For more about this guy that neighbors describe as “such a nice, quiet man” you can check out his very infrequently updated webpage here: http://brian_sammons.webs.com/ and you can follow him on Twitter @BrianMSammons.

Jonathan Titchenal
has been reading and writing weird fiction for many years, both in the Lovecraftian genre and others. In recent years he has been published in the Das Krakenhaus collection
The End of the World as We Know It
, and is currently at work on an epic fantasy novel. His favorite horror movie is
John Carpenter's The Thing
. He lives in Milwaukee.