Desert of Zin

I had a deadline for Duality 2, a book produced locally, that was today.  The story I was working on didn’t quite work and while I had a good beginning and ending, the middle just didn’t work out.  So no submissions for Duality 2 for this boy.  I’ll wait until Duality 3 and see if I have anything in mind that would work.

Now that’s out of the way I’ve been thinking of working on something a bit longer.  Recently my story lengths have been getting shorter and shorter and after a comment by mrBen I thought that something with a bit more story to tell was on the cards.

So now I’m working on a sequel of sorts to Living on Reputation, something that was submitted recently for Mythaxis.  And, hopefully, it should be a bit more weighty than I’ve been producing.  It has the working title of Towers Over The Clyde.

To give you a hint, think of Glasgow cop-show Taggart but with wizards and a hint of H.P. Lovecraft.  Lovely.

- Alistair

Totally forgot to mention that I finally passed the 50k barrier on Desert Of Zin (book one)!

Quality!

Of course I celebrated the occasion by attempting to gut the sty that is my study.  Getting there but it’s a second behind the priority of writing.  Had a crazy dream last night that the book was 100k in length.  So only half way there!

Joking aside, I’m really chuffed with myself.  I’ll be even more chuffed once the damn thing is finished but 50k was a line i desperately wanted to cross and now that I have I hardly look at my word count.

That can’t be a bad thing?

Oh, on a side note, with the big clear out of the study, does anyone want to buy the a complete set of the Horrorclix base set?  And the Horrorclix Great Cthulhu?  I’d even be willing to make a trade if you had Mythos or Call of Cthulhu ccg stuff you didn’t want any more.  Hey, what can I say?  A boy has to prioritize and card games are so much easier to store… 

(Found a old draft post after the last game of Cthulhu we had, in March!  Thought I’d post it anyway…)

So, no Call of Cthulhu adventure last night, but there was one last week.

The adventure – The Madman from the 6th. edition rulebook – was done in one night and almost saw Edgy (Logan Fletcher, investigative journalist) and Enzo (Montague Summers) meeting a rather unfortunate end…

Old Harny Rooger has gotten a touch eccentric. Tales are told off his involvement in mysterious rituals on hilltops and the possible involvement in goat sacrifice.

Oh dear, whatever can be done…

Enter Summers and Fletcher, the latter of whom knew a retired journalist who died mysteriously while investigating the aforementioned hilltop rituals.

Highlights of the game included Fletcher using his fake cop ID and failing every roll associated with using it. And his potential incarceration after it has been discovered as a forgery. And events leading up to that with Summers getting a bit physical with everyone on the way…

Anyway our intrepid investigators saved the day with what can only be described as the jammiest of dice rolls when dealing with Harny Rooger and a hilltop full of mi-go.

Hello Cthulhu.

It is both helplessly cute and infinitely terrifying at the same time.

Burrowers is the first book in a series of six that he wrote for the Cthulhu Mythos.  Lumley is is better known for the Necroscope series of horror novels (it’s what I knew him for at any rate).

The Burrowers Beneath is my favourite of Lumley’s Mythos work but, even then, I feel that it’s not as good a Cthulhu Mythos tale as it could be.

The story deals with Titus Crow, who has interests in the more uncanny aspects of the world around him, and his erstwhile Dr Watson, Henri-Laurent de Marigny, and their involvement in discovering and thwarting the hideous machinations of the Great Old One, Shudde-Mell.

I’ll admit that, while it’s a great read, it doesn’t really fit in with my visions of the Cthulhu Mythos.  Lovecraft heroes were scholars or artists, and tended to reel in terror against the unescapable insanity of what they faced.  I always prefered this, the realisation of their being helpless in the face of unspeakable evil.  All my favourite Mythos stories followed that theme.

But with Lumley, his characters are able and well-versed in occult lore.  They are aware, for the most part, of what they’re up against and are armed with incantations, elixirs, the Star Stones of Mnar (the mere presence of which repels even the most foul of creatures) and the resources of an organisation, The Wilmarth Foundation, dedicated to the eradication of all things Mythos.  This is no bad thing but I think it reduces the scale of the cosmic horror they’re up against.  It becomes manageable and controlled.

And that just isn’t the Mythos.

So, I would recommend the book heartily.  It’s a great read.

But as a Cthulhu Mythos story?  It could have been better…