How can any fan of HP Lovecraft not pick up a book with a title like “The Mall of Cthulhu”? For those who aren’t familiar with Lovecraft’s work, one of his more famous writings is called The Call of Cthulhu, and deals with a tentacled monster from another dimension that’s so mind-numbingly horrific that to even describe it would drive you mad, mad I say, so as I public service I won’t describe it.

The cover art is top-notch, causing the book to damned near leap off the shelf at me. So with a quick run through my nearly foolproof book pre-screening system, and I was ready for some tentacle-laden, Lovecraftian, horror-comedy.

Publisher’s Synopsis

A decade ago, college student Laura Harker was saved from a fate worse than death at the hands (and fangs) of a centuries-old vampire priestess and her Satanic minions. Her rescuer, an awkward, geeky folklore student named Teddy, single-handedly slew the undead occupants of the Omega Alpha sorority house, spurred into heroic action by fate itself, inexorably intertwining his and Laura’s destinies.

After navigating her way through law school, Laura is now a junior FBI agent assigned to the Bureau’s Boston office. Unfortunately, she finds her job involves more paperwork than adventure. Ted, on the other hand, has spent the past decade perfecting the ultimate latte, and works as a barista in a nearby corporate chain coffeehouse named for a character in Moby Dick.

When Ted stumbles onto a group of Cthulhu cultists planning to awaken the Old Ones through mystic incantations culled from the fabled Necronomicon, calling forth eldritch horrors into an unsuspecting world. He and Laura must spring into action, traveling from Boston to the seemingly-peaceful suburbs of Providence and beyond, all the way to the sanity-shattering non-Euclidian alleyways and towers of dread R’lyeh itself, in order to prevent an innocent shopping center from turning into… The Mall of Cthulhu.

-From http://nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=119

My Review

At 235 pages, The Mall of Cthulhu was a quick read. The pace was snappy. The writing was clean and error-free.

The plot flowed well, although there were a couple leaps of faith that require you to not suspend your disbelief as much as tie it up in a rubber gimp outfit. I know Providence, Rhode Island isn’t very big, but running into a Cthulhu cultist (one that you are looking for, no less) buying bayberry spice candles at Ye Olde New England Candlery in the mall isn’t a stretch, it’s a tear in the space-time continuum. However, running into a Cthulhu cultist buying bayberry spice candles at the Ye Olde New England Candlery is damn funny. Seamus does a good job of using comedy as an effective plot-patching, hand-waving, rubber-chicken-waving tool. When the plot jumped, I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to get mad about it.

The story is written from 3rd person limited POV, bouncing back and forth between two protagonists: Ted, the scruffy and emotionally damaged barista with the inner resources to lop vampires heads off with an axe when necessary, but not the ability to cope with the memories of his actions, and Laura, the hot and proper, emotionally damaged, lesbian FBI agent. The dynamic between these two is great, and the way it changes through the story (when a little red pepper is added…) is well done.

Those expecting a HP Lovecraft clone may be disappointed. This is a parody. However, fans of Lovecraft will get more laughs out of this story. The part where Ted is stuck in R’lyeh and ponders “…his own reality with its comforting, Euclidean geometry…” had me laughing so hard my stomach hurt. And the name dropping of August Derleth and such… well, if you don’t get it, it won’t ruin the book for you, but it adds to the humor if you’re in on the jokes.

Yes, HP Lovecraft was a Racist

Many of the reviewers on Amazon.com gave this book poor reviews because of references to racism and politics. The Mall of Cthulhu has plenty of references to HP Lovecraft as a racist / white supremacist. There’s no question that he was racist in real life. If there was any doubt, a little poem discussing the Gods creating African Americans should clear this issue up:

“…A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure, Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.”

- HP Lovecraft ‘On the Creation of Niggers’

Q.E.D. HP Lovecraft. Racist. But we can all agree that he wrote some amazing stories, and I don’t understand why it’s such a task to separate the artist from the art. Walt Disney,  Wesley Snipes, and Phil Spector might each have some whacked-out values that few sane people would agree with, but do we need to disclaimer all their art: Warning – Contents created by a nazi / tax dodger / psychotic, homicidal maniac! Of course not.

Seamus had the opportunity to show us by example that he didn’t approve of Lovecraft’s views by leaving that kind of segregation and hatred out of his own work. Instead, he chose to “hate the haters” and he created bad guys who weren’t bad enough because they were trying to destroy the world, they also had white supremacist pamphlets in their bathrooms, and called those opposed to their plans “Race traitors” (Huh? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call people trying to destroy the world “Species traitors”?)

Whatever. I would have enjoyed the story more without the racial and political undertones. They were unnecessary and took away from the plot and humor of the story. But they didn’t ruin the story for me as they did for some people. If you are sensitive to these issues, beware. If you are secure in your political and racial views, then this book won’t upset you.

The Author – Seamus Cooper

You won’t find much online about Seamus Cooper. This interview of Seamus Cooper on brendanhalpin.com makes him out as a Luddite when it comes to the internet and a Harlan Ellison-ite about most everything else. But he seems to have come around since then, since he can now be found on Twitter and Facebook:

• Seamus Cooper on Facebook
• Seamus Cooper on Twitter

Free E-Book Sequel

Seamus has posted a free e-book sequel to The Mall of Cthulhu called Dog Walk Of The Dead, and depending on interest in the free e-book, he just might write/release more material for The Mall of Cthulhu mythos.

Free E-book of The Mall of Chtulhu

Due to a falling out with his publisher, Night Shade Books, Seamus decided to release The Mall of Cthulhu for free on Scribd, and for $2.99 on Amazon’s Kindle, in an attempt to undercut his unpaying publisher.  I can’t find either version now, 17 July 2010. This might be related to Seamus and Night Shade Books coming to some resolution, which you can read about here.

Yours Darkly,
-Conrad Zero

It isn’t supposed to happen like this, or so I’m told.

Back in Mar 2009, I tripped across a call for submissions to an anthology titled The Blackness Within.

The idea sounded refreshing and I needed a break from The Demonslayer’s Handbook. So, I took a week off to write up almost 5000 words, and sent it off, thinking no more about it than the fact that I should clear a virtual place for the rejection e-mail I was sure to receive.

On 2 May 2009, I discovered that I’d made the “Short List” whatever that means, and on 5 June I received the following e-mail:

‘Big Game’ is a great story, fast paced and quite different…I’d love to accept the story for inclusion in ‘The Blackness Within’.

Like I said, it’s not supposed to happen this way. The first story I’ve shown outside my circle of friends and relatives, written in a fit of spontaneity… not to mention my first submission ever… accepted?

The princely sum of 15 Pounds is probably enough to buy myself a copy of the book when it comes out, with enough left over for a lovely cuban cigar to smoke while I read it. But the real prize is that I will forevermore be able to say that Conrad Zero is a published author. (And I just might refer to myself in third person when I do it. Adds to the importance, don’t you think?)

So now, with a 100% acceptance rate, I’m terrified to ever make another submission. Don’t want to tarnish that perfect record, eh?

Meanwhile, The Blackness Within anthology should be out later this year by Apex Book Company.

Stunned,

Last week I tripped across an interesting opportunity over at Apex Book Company. (Click on their banner below to visit the site.)

On their Submissions page, they are accepting short story entries for an anthology called The Blackness Within. All stories in the anthology will involve the Celtic pig-deity, Moccus.

I know, I’ve never heard of Moccus either. Neither has the internet. It didn’t even come up on GodChecker.com so this is like some seriously under-the-underground hidden knowledge.

Or a hoax.

Either way, I found the lack of information on Moccus to be refreshing. Finally, a deity that hasn’t been analyzed from all angles and run right into the ground. Authors are given a few guidelines and a few restrictions regarding their submissions, but for the most part left alone to explore and expand on this overlooked god.

So, I cooked up a story called “Big Game.” It’s a cross between The Office (sans humor), Scary Spice (sans music) and all those Cabin-by-the-lake horror films.

I can’t print any of the story here, because the publisher is asking for FNASR (or, First North-American Serial Rights) which precludes me from releasing it before they do. But fear not, if my submission is rejected, or after the limits of the contract have expired, I’ll post the 4866 words of “Big Game” here at conradzero.com for your edification.

Demons by John Shirley is actually two half-stories under the same cover. There is a 9-year jump between the stories, but it’s not a problem. They both sport the same feel, mythos, and primary characters.

The Setup

Both stories in Demons have a ‘near futuristic’ feel. In the first story, several species of demons appear on Earth and attack humans, killing them off in very unpleasant ways. The seven different clans of demons might correlate to the “Seven Deadly sins,” but this was never confirmed in the book.

In the second half, corporate research into ‘psychonomics’ coupled with the research of a new pesticide are about to open the door for the Demons to re-enter the world.

The Good

Really good writing.  good turns of phrase and wonderful analogies. The first book is gritty, and well-paced. Mr Shirley uses an interesting hybrid of first-person/direct-objective that I really enjoyed, taking me into the subject’s head when appropriate, but stepping out for the remainder to make the story ‘bigger’. The Demons are truly monstrous; their actions are truly horrific, and each clan of demon is distinct from the others.

The Bad

Word choices are sometimes ostentatious. [Editor's Note: And *that* observation isn't?] Keep a thesaurus nearby. The first story merely hints at the ‘industry==evil’ theme, but the second book will make you choke on it. In fact, the second book isn’t so much about Demons as it is about how chemical research and third world countries are Evil, and self-awareness is Good. The demons play such a small part in the second book that all references to them could be removed without significantly changing the story.

The Short Version

A pair of sly, well-written stories about how industries, corporations, and third world countries are evil. And Demons.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Don’t believe the mediocre rating on imdb.com, Gabriel is a pretty amazing film. Great storyline, and fantastic set design, on a tight budget and tighter schedule no less. Ah well, what movie doesn’t cry about budget restrictions when they *only* have two-hundred grand to make a feature film? Ha! In Australia, no less.

The story takes place in Purgatory, where a group of angels is sent from heaven to battle against a group of demons for dominance of this middle-ground. The angel Gabriel arrives only to find that the angels who came before him are doing Very Poorly: those who haven’t succumbed to their pathetic humanity have disappeared completely, and several powerful demons are in complete control of Purgatory.

Fans of Gothic films like Blade Runner and The Crow should definitely see this film. And filmmakers will want to watch the “behind the scenes” on the DVD, which are Real Behind The Scenes, and not Production Crew Kissing The Director’s Ass.

It was great to see the guy who wrote the music score for the film whine about getting ONLY ten grand and a year to do it! They should have talked to me, I scored a feature film in a month, on a budget one-ten-thousandth of his!

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Gothy places and events in the Twin Cities are difficult to find outside of Ground Zero. Not that the Heartland doesn’t have a dark side, far from it. It’s just that the cool events like the Zombie Pub Crawl and the Goth Prom get lost in the deluge of mook bars, DJs, and karaoke nights.

I try to help when I can, but even I miss out on things; for example, I didn’t hear about the Zombie Fashion Show until after it was over. And I’m sure there’s plenty of people who don’t want to wade through my slanderous movie reviews and delirious raving about DRM just to pick out the occasional gothy tidbit.

Therefore, the need for a website like darktwincities.com “Your source for all things Dark and Spooky in MSP”. They focus mostly on bands and clubs, but they also have music reviews and plenty of other goth-goings-on in the forums; fashion, news and whatever else your dark heart desires.

If you know of a Dark and Spooky event going on in the Twin Cities, make sure to stop over at darktwincites.com and post it in the forums, or e-mail their staff using the link on the homepage, they will even get your event flier posted on the frontpage.

Like the Jagged Spiral concert next Thursday, for example:

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

In a previous blog post, I raved about Neil Gaiman after reading Good Omens (which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett), and his blog, and starting on his latest work, Fragile Things.

I knew Fragile Things was a collection of short stories and poems, and I thought it would be a good way to cover more ground with Neil Gaiman and get a more definitive sense of his writing style. I was right, but I was wrong to approach his writing that way. In the end, Fragile Things was a slight disappointment.

Don’t get me wrong, Neil Gaiman is a very good writer. He has a marvelous tongue for storytelling. Fragile Things runs through past, present and future periods of fantasy and poetry, adult fairy-tales and Gothic nearly-horror. He writes with clever turns of phrase, alternate realities, twisted mythologies, and interesting points-of-view.

But, the Things inside Fragile Things are just too Fragile; unfinished snippets or unused plot branches from other works; roughed-out ideas collected and published once the name “Neil Gaiman” on the cover of the book would sell more copies than anything inside it. (Hint: Check the last few pages to see where all the stories came from and when.) Few of the stories let me in deeply enough to really enjoy them.

So I got what I wanted, but it turns out it wasn’t what I wanted after all. Like I said, the ideas were clever, but not very flushed out. Fragile Things is like walking past the bakery and having a look and a sniff of the whole lot, instead of a solid taste of anything in particular.

So, I can’t really recommend Fragile Things to anyone but the most hardcore Neil Gaiman fans who have read Everything Else and still want more. I’ve added ‘Neverwhere’ and ‘Death: The High Cost Of Living’ to my Christmas list, in the hopes of getting something a little less fragile…

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Marilyn Manson has been working on quite a few things: Fashion Shows, Art Galleries, A New Album, A New Religion (Celebritarianism), Marriage, Lawsuits, a new line of Perfume…

…and a horror movie called Phantasmagoria:

I want to bring back the experiments in terror, which is actually a DVD that documents the attempts of 1944 filmmakers to insert subliminal elements. Whether in sound or in frames of the film, to enhance whatever tense or fear they’re looking to create at that moment in the film. I think technology allows me to go much further than that. I’m going to do a lot of things that may end up being illegal. Until they are, I will do them. I think it will change people’s opinion about horror films and they will realize they’re not all about slasher.

No insult to Rob Zombie; People might predict that to be the type of film I would make. That’s absolutely the opposite of what I want to do. That’s not an interest of mine, anyway. If I had to pick, stylistically, people that I admire – it would be Ingmar Bergman, Roman Polanski, and modern filmmakers; Takashi Miike, who made the film Audition, and Gasper Noe who made I Stand Alone and Irreversible. It’s kind of a return to Hitchcock-style psychological horror about letting your mind do the damage and sometimes what you don’t see is scarier.

From http://www.mansonusa.com/celebritarian/?page=3

This is why I love Marilyn Manson. This guy GETS IT! Like him, I’m bored to tears with Hollywood films that trade off SFX shock and gore for real Horror. Films like that are only horrific in their Non-Horrificness.

Now whether M.M. can follow through on this big talk, or whether it turns out to be a pile of pretentious crap like Doppelhertz… I guess only time will tell. In the meantime, I would very much like to see him succeed.

Blog on,
-CZ