It is with great pleasure that I announce Overdue: Mystery, Adventure & The World’s Lost Books, the new anthology from 18th Wall Productions – an anthology of stories revolving around the quest for history’s lost or legendary books.
And, when I call Overdue “my latest work,” I mean that in three different ways…
…yes, it contains my near-novel-length story, “Provenance.”
…it also marks the first time I am receiving an editing credit, having co-curated the anthology with the ever-excellent M.H. Norris (and an occasional silent but steady hand lent by 18th Wall’s CEO James Bojaciuk).
…but what really makes this special for me is the concept behind Overdue: a shared-universe anthology bringing together the world of my Bel Nemeton series with the world of M.H. Norris’s All the Petty Myths. So, all the stories in Overdue have some element of my handiwork: a fragment of my world, sometimes my characters. And that was something really special for me.
I was incredibly flattered when M.H. approached me with the idea of a shared universe anthology – and very excited by how supportive 18th Wall was about the idea. But it was a bit of our journey to get from the “hey, wouldn’t it be neat if…” kernel of an idea to a finished anthology. While Bel Nemeton and All the Petty Myths have many similarities, they also have differences. M.H. and I put our heads together to see what we could make out of the similarities: quirky, cerebral protagonists and an obsession with history – whether that “history” is the relatively recent urban folklore of All the Petty Myths or the dusty old manuscripts from Bel Nemeton’s 6th century historical-fantasy Arthurian Britain.
We imagined the three principal modern-day protagonists of the shared universe teaming up to launch an initiative to recover, discover, or rediscover the world’s lost, forgotten, or rumored books. That framework would give authors the opportunity to use their imaginations to create such books or to weave actual works of history or legend into their tales. It also created opportunities for a wide range of protagonists: archaeologists, historians, linguists, anthropologists, antiquarians, and book scouts – all, more or less, on the up and up. But it also left space for mercenaries, morally ambiguous archaeologists, treasure hunters, gentleman and gentlewoman rogues, warlords, and even the street kid who got lucky (or unlucky) and snatched the right backpack. If anyone really wants to nerd-out, you can read the full submission call here.
Page from a surviving volume of the Yongle Encyclopedia(in Overdue‘s “Perpetual Happiness” by Heidi Hewett, readers may encounter a previously lost volume)
The Overdue curation team was floored by the response – not just the quality of the submissions we accepted, but the sheer diversity of the nine stories we accepted: “Wicker Man” by M.H. Norris, “Wholly Holy” by Kara Dennison, “Perpetual Happiness” by Heidi J. Hewett, “Loredana’s Challenge” by Liam Hogan, “The Book of the Ways” by R.C. Mulhare, “Bring the Fire” by Michael O’Brien, “Under Cover” by Sean Michael O’dea, “Clue to the Past” by Karen Thrower, “Provenance” by Jon Black, “In the Hearts of Lads” by Fio Trethewey
Within the parameters of the shared universe, our authors wove tales that count as Mythos horror, neo-Gothic, supernatural techno-thriller, Arthurian magical realism (no, not mine, surprisingly), fine-dining intriguing, clock-punk-adjacent YA slipsteam, YA coming of age, and even romance-adventure.
Ubar, in present day Oman, may have been the real-world inspiration for the fabled Iram of the Pillars. Visit Iram’s ruins in Overdue’s “Under Cover” by Sean M. O’dea.
That being said, I’m also very pleased with my own contribution, “Provenance.” In one important way, it is unique from the other stories in the anthology. While spelling out that difference would probably be an unwelcome spoiler, the story’s title gives at least a bit of hint. Fans of the Bel Nemeton series, and my work in general, will likely appreciate the story for several reasons. It sheds some light on Jake Booker’s shady pre-Bel Nemeton past. It gives me a chance to write “linguistics-porn” about a language family other than Celtic, and it includes some Easter eggs establishing that the Bel Nemeton series, Gabriel’s Trumpet, and my Junzt County stories all take place in the same world. (I also need to give a very grateful shout-out to Jeremy Brett and Alexandra Hubbard for serving as authenticity readers on “Provenance.”)
That was one of the greatest joys of Overdue for me: seeing what other authors -including some who are better-known, or just plain better- did with worlds and characters I had created. (Interesting observation: our authors have many different interpretations of Myths’ Dr. Rosella Tassoni and Nemeton’s Dr. Vivian Cuinnsey. But everyone sees Nemeton’s Jake Booker the same way!)
Overdue: Mystery, Adventure & The World’s Lost Books is available in Kindle and paperback on Amazon and multiple eBook formats through 18th Wall.
Hebrew text printed in 16th century Prague, evocative of the fictional Sefer Bohem in Overdue’s “Provenance” by Jon Black.
If you’re a fan of scifi, fantasy, horror, mystery, or any other corner of speculative fiction/genre fiction, don’ forget to vote in the annual Critters Readers Poll – a reckoning from fandom of the most interesting, most exciting, or just plain best offering from indie publishers during calendar year 2023.
VOTING ENDS 6:00 a.m. (Eastern USA time) MONDAY, JANUARY 15. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
A great honor for me
I’m a little sad that, because of publishing schedules, I didn’t have any eligible titles come out in 2023 (hold on to your proverbial hats, 2024 should more than make up for that). My successes in the Critters’ Poll over the years have been very important for establishing my career as a writer, both critically and commercially. But, even without yours truly, some amazing works have received nominations this year.
As a way to get really easy blog content, I thought I’d talk about some of the nominees I vote for (and why).
For Best Mystery Novel:Radcliffe by Madeleine D’Este, from Deadset Press. If you’re someone I talk about books with or if you follow my blog (where she’s a regular guest poster, including the excellent “official playlists” for her titles), you’re already familiar with Madeleine. She writes Australian-focused fiction, often with a supernatural element, and has true gift for stories exploring the intersection of quirky personalities and bizarre locations. Radcliffe, the story of eccentric residents of a lonely apartment on the outskirts of Melbourne, is her superlative work in that regard. (She’s also an upcoming 18thWall Productions author!)
For Best Steampunk Short Story: “The Falcon and The Goose” by David Lee Summers, in the anthology Grease Monkeys: The Heart and Soul of Dieselpunk from eSpec Books. Summers is southwestern author whose work does several things I adore: including weaving historical events into his fiction and using historical figures in cameos or even not-so-cameos. “The Falcon & The Goose” pits one of the turn-of-the-last-century’s greatest rail engineers against two of its most notorious outlaws in a life-or-death rail vs. airship race.
For Best Anthology: the aforementioned Grease Monkeys: The Heart and Soul of Dieselpunk from eSpec Books. Among all the various [x]punk genres, Cyberpunk and steampunk are favorites (and I may have some interesting things to say about clockpunk in a year or two), but Dieselpunk has a special place in my heart. But, like all the other [x]punks, Dieselpunk has style-over-substance problem. By focusing on the folks who make the technology go, “Grease Monkeys” sidesteps that problem and delivers an anthology of solid stories about the nuts, bolts, and grease of a different reality.
Additionally, all other things being equal, anything from Third Flatiron Publishing is usually going to have both the quality and the spin to get my vote.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Go vote! And I’ll see you on the nomination list next year. 😉
(For fans and friends voting in the Critters Readers Poll, you can scroll down to instructions at the bottom of the post)
Discover the story behind the strange obsession of Camelot’s strangest knight.
Two volumes of “Camelot vs. Cthulhu?” You know you want it.
As an author, the two things I hang my proverbial hat on are Arthurian mythology (via my Bel Nemeton series) and Mythos-infused historical fiction. So, when 18th Wall Productions put out a call for “Camelot vs. Cthulhu” stories for an upcoming anthology, I knew I had to be involved.
As it turns out, 18th Wall got so many quality submissions that the resulting anthology, Shadows Over Avalon, encompasses two volumes, both edited by the ever superb Nicole Petit. Volume I focus on tales of traditional Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and it’s filled with names who do not disappoint, such as Simon Bucher-Jones, Edward Erdelac, and Josh Reynolds. Volume IIchannels Lovecraft’s other side, stories of shifting perceptions and realities, fantastical journeys, and dreams. There, you will find my novella “The Dreamquest Beast” along with stories by worthy authors such as Georgia Cook, Kara Dennison, Lukasz Furmaniak, Sophie Iles, and C.L. Werner.
“The Dreamquest Beast” is a non-canonical story set in my Bel Nemeton universe (leading my beloved wife to observe “So, you’re writing your own fanfic now?”).
Taking place a generation before the start of Bel Nemeton, when Arthur is an infant and Merlin still known as “The Wanderer,” northern Britain bakes under an unending drought unlike any in memory. As brave warriors and shield maidens take up the quest to discover what afflicts the land and set matters to right, the would-be champions invariably fail and fall. After the quest claims his much loved older brother, Prince Pelinyr (or “Pellinore” in more contemporary renderings) of Damnonia becomes the unlucky 13th to take up the challenge.
“So, you’re writing your own fanfic now?”
My wife (who, and I say this not only because it’s true but also because she may be reading this, is my biggest fan)
On the surface an unlikely hero, Pelinyr has all his life been plagued by nightmares and strange occurrences surrounding his dreams. In this desperate endeavor, he is joined by his friends: the gregarious Prince Cynfarch of Gorre, the clever Prince Tuadel of Alclud, and Jana, Pelinyr’s childhood playmate, now a shunned sorcerer and seer haunting a cursed Roman amphitheater. Together, the four will cross the wild frontier into the kingdoms of the dreaded Saxons before descending through a black tower without name or builder into the land of dreams themselves.
Once in the Dreamlands, the challenges and dangers only grow. The company will meet gods, battle monsters, take caravans into deadly jungles and endless deserts, pour over tablets written in unearthly tongues, and solve riddles that are a matter of life of death for the companions and for millions back in the waking world.
The Questing Beast drinks from a river (perhaps the good, strong Adamandara) – illustration by Arthur Rackham (1917)
Pelinyr has always been one of my favorite members of the Round Table as well as, to me, one of the most fascinating. Along with Galahad and Percival, he is one of the knights that is “touched” in a way Arthuriana usually reserves for its Druids/Magicians/Whatever you want to call them. For Galahad and Percival, that mania is clearly religious in nature. With Pelinyr, however, its source is never clearly defined. Certainly, it seems to be connected with the “Questing Beast,” the strange creature which he is sworn to follow but which only he can see – but whether the beast is a cause or effect of Pelinyr’s madness is unknown.
This characterization of Pelinyr is surprisingly consistent throughout Arthuriana: from Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, where it is implied he is afflicted by his relation to the Fisher King, to the eccentric and slightly senile figure of T.E. White’s Once and Future King.
This aspect of Pelinyr has been incorporated into my Bel Nemeton series. Pelinyr is a minor yet significant figure in the second book, Caledfwlch. The book opens with a friendly duel between Arthur and Pelinyr, as Merlin looks on and frets about Pelinyr’s instability manifesting during the combat. And Caledflwch ends with, in a fit of inspiration, Pelinyr being the one who finds the true name of Arthur’s new blade and becoming the first significant British noble to pledge fealty to Arthur.
So, the idea of “Dreamquest Beast” (a kind of titular portmanteau of Arthuriana’s “Questing Beast” and Lovecraft’s “Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath”) as a thought-experiment exploring how Bel Nemeton’s Pelinyr “got that way” and the origins of the Questing Beast was extremely appealing. Like many previous authors, scholars, and artists, I connect the Questing Beast with the mythical creature known as the camelopardus or camelopardalis. Additionally, I thought it would fun to take two of the foils from Caledfwlch (both based on historical 6th century British rulers), make them Pelinyr’s boon companions in “Dreamquest,” and explore the roots of their own transitions from friend to foil.
I am Cameleopardus From the Serpent, Master of Cunning, comes my Head. From the Leopard, Lord of Fleetness, is taken my Body From the Lion, King of Bravery, are drawn my Haunches From the Hart, Emperor of Virtue, are given my Feet. And from Sacrifice, I take Breath and Mind and Life
The Riddle of the Questing Beast, from “Dreamquest Beast”
As a writer, I’ve dropped elements of Lovecraft and the Mythos into my stories dozens of times. Doing it with “Dreamquest,” perhaps because I was cutting from the whole cloth of the Dreamlands rather than picking and choosing an element or two for what was essentially my own world, was different. I felt a tremendous sense of pressure, even obligation, to be “good enough” and “get it right.” For all that, it was enormously exciting, one of the most exciting things I’ve done as an author, both to be able to use my favorite elements of the Dreamlands and to add more than a few things of my own.
I also peppered “Dreamquest Beast” with Easter eggs, weaving in nods and shout-outs to stories, myths, and legends from Herodotus to Jim Henson, which also play with the dreamlike, the surreal, or the radically fantastic. Likewise, I endeavored to keep things fresh by occasionally using established Mythos creatures without naming them or renaming them in accordance with cultures involved in the stories (such as using the Saxon “barrow wights” for Lovecraft’s ghouls).
Play along at home! Use this card to track the Easter eggs, shout outs, and obscure references I’ve tucked into “Dreamquest Beast.”
As part of giving “Dreamquest Beast” a distinctive and appropriate atmosphere, I also played with the language of the story. For those of you familiar with my other work, no part of “Dreamquest” is quite in my usual authorial voice. In the first and third acts, taking place in the waking world of 6th century Britain, I have leaned hard into the conventions of epic poetry. For the second act, occuring in the Dreamlands, I have attempted to channel the distinctive language Lovecraft used in the Dream Cycle.
I am very gratified that “Dreamquest,” despite only being released in December, has already been nominated for “Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Short Story of 2022” in the Critters Readers Poll. For fans and friends interesting in supporting me, I’ve included directions for voting below:
“‘With the Exquisite Corpse we had at our disposal – at last – an infallible means of sending the mind’s critical mechanism away on vacation and fully releasing its metaphorical potentialities“
— Andre Breton
NOTE FROM JB: The Parisian avant-garde, notably Dada and Surrealism, are long standing enthusiasms of mine. Occasionally this fascination finds its way into my historical fiction and on those rare occasions when I indulge in making art other than prose, it leans heavily on those two movements. When I discovered author/creator A.A. Rubin’s Cadavre Exquis project, reviving the classic surrealist concept of Cadavre Exquis (French for “Exquisite Corpse”) , I wanted in. It was a delight to be able to participate in an actual Cadavre Exquis exercise, and it is even more of a delight to have A.A. here to talk about the project.
(TL;DR: Check out the results of A.A. Rubin’s contemporary revival of the Cadavre Exquis, a classical Surrealists’ collaborative artistic exercise, here)
Q: Can you explain the concept of Cadavre Exquis and how did you come to fall in love with it?
A.A. Rubin
A: The Cadavre Exquis is a surrealist exercise wherein an artist would fold a piece of paper, like a letter, and draw only in the top section. They would then send the project to another artist who would continue the piece by drawing on the next section, with no knowledge of what the previous artist drew save for the ends of their lines which are visible at the fold. The process would continue until the paper (sometimes multiple papers stuck together) was filled and the piece was complete.
I had learned about the practice a while ago, but was reminded of it during a recent trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Surrealism Beyond Borders exhibition. The show had an extensive collection of surrealist cadavres, and a large portion of the initial gallery was devoted to the practice. Reading the excellent gallery cards made me think about how the practice might be adapted to writing, which is my main creative medium.
Visual Exquisite Corpse (Joan Miro, Max Morise, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, 1926/27). Museum of Modern Art.
Q: Tell us a little bit about your Cadavre Exquis project and what motivated you to undertake the exercise?
A: When I saw the Surrealism exhibit, I immediately began to think about how it might be adapted to writing. In a way, it reminded me of the old John Gardner collaborative writing exercise where one person begins a story and then passes the story to the next person in the group, and so on, the obvious difference being that in the surrealist cadavre, the second (and subsequent) artists had little-to-no knowledge of what the previous artist has done. The other, less obvious difference is that in the Surrealist exercise, the composition is done in private, where the creator is alone with their subconscious.
I wrote a blog post on my website detailing my encounter with the surrealist at the Met, and put out a call for other writers to undertake it with me as well.
The basic idea was to adapt the Surrealist Cadavre for writers. I came up with the idea to have each writer compose a paragraph continuing from the last line of the previous writer. Writers would only have knowledge of that last line, and would send only their last line to the next writer.
When the surrealists did their cadavres, they mailed their physical drawings to each other. For this project, I decided to use modern technology like email and google docs. Each writer emailed their final line to the next, and pasted their paragraph into a group google doc where the full story was compiled. The writers were instructed not to peek at the google doc with the previous paragraphs until after they had completed their own. This required the writers to be honest to experience the true effect of the exercise, but it is really no different than the original cadavre project, where the surrealists relied on the honor of fellow participants not to unfold the paper and peek at the previous drawing.
Why “Exquisite Corpse?”
The first time the surrealists engaged in an exercise intended, by its collaborative nature, to remove the rational mind from the creative process and liberate the subconscious, it resulted in the sentence “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.” (The Exquisite Corpse Shall Drink the New Wine). In time, the Surrealists came to refer to all such verbal or visual exercise as “Exquisite Corpses.”
Q: How were the participants in the project selected?
A: As mentioned above, I put out a call on my website and promoted it on through my social media platforms (Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook). I asked writers for a statement of interest and bio. There ended up being enough interest for three groups. I had originally conceived the project as a prose writing project, but I got some interest from poets as well. We ended up with two prose groups and one poetry group.
Participants in the first “official” Exquisite Corpse exercise in 1925: (clockwise from left) Andre Breton, Jacques Prévert, Benjamin Péret, Marcel Duhamel, Yves Tanguy.
I divided the writers into teams randomly, and then selected each team’s “batting order” randomly as well. I also decided to participate in each group myself. I was hoping to experience the exercise from each position, and while I got to be in the middle and at the end, I never got to lead off (and I didn’t adjust the random order in my favor).
Q: What are your thoughts on the completed exercises? Were there any things which surprised you? Any things that precisely met your expectations?
A: I think the exercise went well. People seemed to enjoy participating, and everyone completed their work in a timely manner. I was a bit worried about it becoming unwieldy, but it was surprisingly cohesive, at least in process. I think the pieces came out well, too. The various paragraphs are divergent in style, as one would expect, but there’s still a coherence to them, and they read well.
I am pleasantly surprised by the talented writers who chose to join me for this project. When I put out the call, I did not know who would respond, but, considering this was basically a shot-in-the-dark, it’s amazing to me how many really strong writers chose to join me in this endeavor. I am grateful to them all.
Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself, when you’re not invoking the serious games of the surrealists, and about your past and future writing projects?
A: I write everything from serious literary fiction to comics, formal poetry to science fiction and fantasy and almost everything in between. My first published work was a short story back in 2002, and I’ve been publishing pretty consistently ever since. I’ve had recent pieces in Ahoy Comics, Love Letters to Poe, and Flying Ketchup Press, among others, and I am currently working on two novels as well.
I am a teacher by profession, but I am currently on a childcare leave. I am also an experienced martial artist with a blackbelt-level rank in multiple styles.
You can find out more about me by visiting my flowpage.
Q: Do you have any plans for future surrealist activities?
A: You know, when I first chose my social media moniker, @TheSurrealAri, it was a bit of a joke. At the time, twitter was relatively new, and there were many fake celebrity accounts. “Real” celebrities would often choose handles that began with @TheReal before their name to differentiate themselves from the fake accounts that were taken (and held unless the celeb paid an exorbitant price). I came into that environment and said, I’m not going to be “The Real Ari,” I’m going to be “The Surreal Ari.”
Over time, however, I’ve come to embrace the surreal moniker. The surrealist project, which involves accessing the subconscious mind through art, meshing the real and dream worlds, and a heavy use of symbolism actually meshes with much of what I do pretty well. Some of my recent writing has had a decidedly surrealist bent.
Q: Has your experience with the Cadavre Exquis project catalyzed broader realizations or observations?
A: Only that there is a great value to working on art for art’s sake. Not everything has to be commercial and/or marketable. This was a weird project, one no one got paid for, and one that was definitely unconventional and weird, and yet each of the the writers who participated got something out of it, had fun doing it, and connected with like-minded artists whom they may not have known before. There is a value in the strange and the uncomfortable (a very surrealist thought) and it is fun to try something new. Too often today, art is treated as a business, but there is a value to making art that goes beyond the commercial. Make art; get messy; be weird. You’ll grow in ways you couldn’t possibly have imagined.
Q: How can my readers find the completed Cadavre Exquis pieces from the project?
I’m honored that my story “Pioneer House” has been voted Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Short Story of 2021 in the annual Critters Readers’ Choice Poll. My heartfelt thanks to all the fans and friends who made this possible.
Set in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, “Pioneer House” brings big Stranger Things energy to a classic weird-fiction tale inspired by Lovecraft’s “Strange High House in the Mist.” It is my third published story to be set in Junzt County, a fictional Texas Hill County country that is my answer to Lovecraft’s Arkham.
Told through the eyes of Essie Parr, an archetypical ‘80s small-town Texas girl who dreams of escaping the narrow confines of her small town and the life that seems foreordained for her there, “Pioneer House” is story of her closest friend, Gavin Sadler. One of those sublime creatures who is in the world but not of it, possessing an uncannily broad vision even as child, Gavin finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Pioneer House, a local landmark wrapped in mystery. The structure becomes Gavin’s true passion and obsession.
Gavin was an extraordinary person in an ordinary world. I think he felt connected to Pioneer House, with all its mystery, wonder, and terror. It was a window to something beyond the banality surrounding him. His nature wouldn’t let him choose otherwise. I doubt he even wanted to.
Essie Parr, Pioneer House
And what about Pioneer House, the ‘strange, high house’? In the 1830s, when the non-native settlers first arrived in what would become Junzt County, Pioneer House was already there. The Georgian-style mansion, two and half stories tall, with its steeply-sloped roof, wrap-around porch, and diamond-paned windows, sits empty atop Brockenburg, a lonely granite dome towering over the surrounding hills.
The Brockenberg Lights
As Gavin and Essie dig deeper into the riddle of Pioneer House, they discover a legacy of ghost lights, anomalous fog, strange electrical effects, and unexplained disappearances. Along the way, they confront high school bullies, gatekeeping librarians, janitors with mysterious pasts, and an enigmatic man donning the attire of centuries past – building toward a climatic encounter with the ultimate threshold guardian, Pioneer House itself.
Behind the Story
Junzt County originated as the setting for a Call of Cthulhu campaign I ran in 2014. I wanted a fictional setting in a region I know well (in this case, the Texas Hill Country) that I could populate with people, places, and folklore that felt authentic in the same way Arkham feels authentic. While, over time, I found Junzt’s County’s own distinctive flavor and heartbeat, my earliest strokes of world-building following strongly in Lovecraft’s footsteps. Inspired by the eponymous dwelling in Strange High House in the Mist, Pioneer House became one of the first data points to appear in my mental map of Junzt County. But, other than a name and image, Pioneer House took years to flesh itself out in my mind – the details, the history, the enigmas.
Enchanted Rock, the inspiration for Brockenberg.
Brockenburg, the granite dome that is home to Pioneer House, is based on Enchanted Rock, a real-world geological formation in Gillespie and Llano Counties, Texas. Of course, having the chance to remake it in accordance with genre conventions, I made it bigger, lonelier, weirder.
When I began writing fiction in 2016, I realized Junzt County made a very natural setting for a certain kind of story. To date, I have about ten Junzt County stories published, penned, or in progress. While the original Call of Cthulhu campaign that birthed the region was set in the ‘80s, the Junzt County stories’ settings range from post-Civil War to the present day.
The ‘80s also felt right for “Pioneer House,” contemporary enough that most of its elements of childhood and adolescence would feel familiar to readers, yet enough removed from the present to allow it a certain dreamlike or fairytale quality. On a more pragmatic level, technology available in the 80s and early 90s allowed some interesting narrative possibilities…but not so many possibilities as to make the protagonists’ task too easy.
Currently, Pioneer House is available in “Pizza Parties & Poltergeists,” an anthology of ‘80s-themed supernatural and horror stories from 18th Wall Productions. Later in 2022, it will be rereleased as part of a collection of Juznt County stories, also from 18th Wall (I’m very grateful for their ongoing support for my Junzt County endeavors). In addition to “Pioneer House,” the collection will contain two previously published stories: “Totmann’s Curve” (now expanded to novel-length) and “So Lonesome I Could Die.” It will also feature three new stories: “The Eyeteeth,” “Family Style,” and “Everybody Needs a Friend.”
(TL, DR: Check out the Kickstarter for That Which Cannot Be Undone, an exciting anthology of Ohio-themed horror upcoming from Cracked Skull Press)
Note from JB: Although I’ve lived most of my life in Texas, my earliest years were spent in Ohio – born in Columbus and toddling around Mansfield. I remember feeling overwhelmed and unnerved by the imposing Romanesque edifice of the Ohio State Reformatory (not that, as a four year-old, I was using phrases like “imposing Romanesque edifice”), still in operation at that time.
Then there are odd bits from my family’s history, more than a few of them touched by the mysterious or the horrific. My maternal great-great grandmother, the automatic writer – a devout Methodist fearful her hand was possessed by the devil himself. My paternal great-grandfather, hanged by his brothers and sisters from the barn door (supposedly because he’d gone to bat and then refused to play the field in one too many games of cornfeild baseball — but I’ve always suspected there is more to the tale), his father returning from town and cutting him down in the nick of time.
Several years ago, I had the pleasure of being involved with Soteira Press’ Horror USA project. Since then, I’ve had an appreciation and affection for state-themed horror anthologies. Combined with the personal history outlined above, I was delighted to discover Cracked Skull Press’ That Which Cannot Be Undone project. They were kind enough to make the time to talk with me about the upcoming anthology.
Q: Cracked Skull Press is a new publishing house. Tell me a little bit about the press, its team, and how it all came together.
A: Cracked Skull Press is comprised of Ohio-based horror authors David Day, Randall Drum, Ray Pantle, and Rami Ungar. The press was formed because each team member shares a desire to promote horror literature and raise awareness of lesser-known talent within the horror community. The team came together through shared connections in the (horror) writing community.
Q: Your first publication, scheduled for release in October of this year, is an anthology of Ohio-themed horror stories entitled That Which Cannot Be Undone. Tell me how the idea for that anthology came about and what the title means in this context.
A: We wanted our first anthology project to feature horror authors who were born in, or currently live in, Ohio, and it made sense that Ohio should be the setting for each story. We had several concepts in mind, but what really resonated with us was the theme of “that which cannot be undone.” We feel this provides our contributing authors a lot of space to exploit a theme that does not put in place any limitations. In this instance, the theme also makes for a compelling title for the collection.
Q: What are some of your favorite bits of Ohio folklore and urban legend (ghost stories, cryptids,creepypastas, eerie locations, whatever) which inspire you and that you might be hoping will make an appearance within the anthology?
A: Ohio has no shortage of dark legends and equally creepy locations. Legends such as the melon head children–disabled children who were experimented on and now live in the woods outside of the Cleveland area–have provided inspiration for many tales destined to frighten and mystify readers.
Moonville Tunnel
David: I have a special love for The Moonville Tunnel and The Ridges, both in Southeast Ohio. I spent several years living in Athens while in school at Ohio University, and have visited both locations on several occasions. I’ve never had any kind of supernatural experience, but the mood and tone of both places are very evocative.
Rami: I’ve been to several haunted locations in the state, and I experience stuff all the time. My own story takes place at the Ohio State Reformatory, which I can attest to is haunted to the brim. And the Bellaire House in southeast Ohio has a really nasty feel to it. Anyone who goes there is likely to come away a little changed. And there are so many more worthy of writing stories about! Hopefully we’ll see some of them in the anthology.
Ohio State Reformatory (Mansfeild Reformatory)
Q: You already have some excellent authors lined up for the anthology, tell me a little bit about them and, if you’re willing, maybe a few hints about what we’ll see from them in That Which Cannot Be Undone.
A: Ohio has a grand literary tradition and we’re fortunate to have so many wonderful horror authors who made themselves available for our first collection. While we can’t provide a full bio for each author here, we do have several Bram Stoker Award-winners, such as Tim Waggoner, Lucy Snyder, Gary Braunbeck, and Gwendolyn Kiste. We do not yet have the submissions from our contributors, so we can’t provide any insights to their stories.
Q: This year, Michigan beat the Buckeyes 42-27. Can your authors come up with anything more terrifying than that?
A: Challenge accepted!
“Ohio has no shortage of dark legends and equally creepy locations.”
Q: The Kickstarter for That Which Cannot Be Undone has some really unique incentives, especially at the higher levels. Tell us a little bit about that.
A: We are really grateful for all of our contributors who have helped us create some very special rewards and incentives for pledging. Many of them have promised signed copies of their work, such as Tim Waggoner’s novelization of the recent movie “Halloween Kills.” But our favorite might be the Baphomet Bash reward, where you and a plus one can come to our release party in October and hang out with the authors who made this anthology possible. Talk about a horror fan’s dream!
Q: Has Cracked Skull started looking beyond That Which Cannot Be Undone? If so, what’s on the horizon for you?
A: Our focus right now is doing everything we can to put together the highest quality collection of stories we can, with equally high quality put into the production of the anthology. Beyond this first collection, we anticipate our future in publishing to include collections, novels, and more in print and online.
Q: It takes so many things to bring an anthology like this together, what’s been the key to success for That Which Cannot Be Undone?
A: We are grateful for the support we have received from our friends, families, and most of all, our backers on Kickstarter. We hope they are as excited as we are about “That Which Cannot Be Undone” and the future of Cracked Skull Press.
Q: How can my readers engage with Cracked Skull Press online?
A: At this time, Cracked Skull Press can be found on Facebook,Twitter (@CSkullPress) and Instagram (@crackedskullpress). Our online presence will expand later this year.
Check out the Kickstarter for That Which Cannot Be Undone, and look for more great things in the future from Cracked Skull Press.
It was true pleasure to moderate a panel of delightful guests such as Julie Barret, Tim Morgan, and Sue Sinor for the FenCon “Alternative History” session.
It’s funny, I spent a week preparing for this panel and telling people I’d never published AH – before realizing I had. But, because of the filters of perception, it took me until the night before the session.
In 2019, I have the honor of contributing to Defending Earth: The Adventures of Sarah Jane Smith, a charity anthology of Dr. Who stories revolving around the eponymous companion, raising money for cancer research in memory of the late, great Elisabeth Sladen. My contribution, Swinging Londons, involves the space-time around London becoming dangerously unstable, shifting into alternate versions of itself every couple hours. Sarah Jane and the Doctor have to navigate their way through a panoply of Londons, some delightful, some demented, some dangerous, as they attempt to identify and halt the disturbance.
So, as it turns out, I’m going into moderating this panel significantly more qualified than I thought.
The Greatest Hits of All Time(s)
So, let’s talk about a couple of AH titles that have really influenced me both as a writer and a reader.
Lest Darkness Fall: “Rome Never Falls,” is one of the most hackneyed, cliché divergence points in AH. And yet this 1939 classic from L. Sprague de Camp doesn’t suffer for it in the least. There are several reasons for that. First, its focus is on why and how the Empire is preserved. Second, it takes as its starting point the late Roman Empire, when Gothic influence is already strong and a variety of Christian sects battle via polemic (and occasionally via pommel) in the streets, which is a very different beast from the “Salad Days of the Caesars” Rome that dominates AH. Third, while technically retro, its tone of innocence and clear-eyed optimism feels fresh and novel and against a genre that is often gritty and pessimistic. Finally, of course, with a 1939 publication date, the cliché that Rome Never Falls later become doesn’t really apply to Lest Darkness Fall (except, perhaps, for being such a brilliant book that it spawned countless imitators). (Bel NEMETON)
The Difference Engine: Often considered the first great Steampunk novel, or at least the first to successfully marry critical acclaim with commercial success. Some purists reject the idea of Steampunk and subset of AH because it often utilizes (or at least implies) variant physical laws rather than a possible (in not plausible) divergence point. The Difference Engine offers neat refutation of that argument for at least some steampunk. Its divergence point is a simple matter of a plausible invention that did not work in our world being designed just a little bit better: specifically, what it Charles Babbage’s “analytical engine” had worked, thus creating an effective mechanical computer in the 19th century. The Difference Engine’s world is understated, looking much like the Victorian Era we knew rather than the self-aware, over-the-top aesthetic that has come to characterize much of steampunk. For all that, I find the question of “what if the Victorians had the same ability to collate, process, and analyze data that we do?” much more provocative and far reaching than “What if airships were everywhere?” (And, no, I’m not hating on airships – they’re awesome).
Harry Turtledove: Okay, normally when I hear an author described as “The Master of” anything, I role my eyes and take it with a grain of salt. But the “Master of Alternate History” earns his stripes. Most of his oeuvre could justly claim a place on a list of The Best of Alternative History. His Worldwar series and Timeline-191 series are remarkable achievements in AH, rivaled only by Eric Flint’s 1632 series. Turtledove’s Crosstime Traffic AH series, while well-crafted YA, pulls no punches either intellectually or emotionally.
To cite a lesser known but fully worthy stand-alone title. Ruled Britannia is tale of intrigue, occupation, and … theatre, in an England where Spanish Armada was victorious and Britain is now a Spanish possession. The tale unfolds largely through the eyes of each power’s greatest dramatist, William Shakespeare and Lope de Vega. As characters, they are wonderful and their interactions with each other are delightful to behold.
Anatomy of an Alternative History
Every AH has two components.
The Divergence Point, is the moment at which the world’s history begins differing from our own.
The Affect (not the Effect) is the world which results from changes accumulating and compounding since the divergence point which the author wishes to portray in their story.
Stories about the Divergence Point itself, merging Divergence Point and Affect into a Singularity, are certainly possible: Lest Darkness Fall and Turtledove’s How Few Remain are examples that immediately come to mind.
The two main approaches to developing Alternate History stories are derived from the relationship of these components.
Approach #1: the author starts be selecting a Divergence Point and then extrapolates out the Affect.
Approach #2: the author already knows the Affect they want a retro-engineers a divergence point that plausibly brings it to pass. All my AH work, published or allegedly in progress, has used this approach.
Running Out of Steam?
From my perspective, steampunk has become to AH what zombies have become to horror. While there is still really good, ground-breaking work being done in the genre, it has become something of a “default setting,” leading to a field crowded with unimaginative offers retreading the same well-worn tropes. Some of the most exciting work I see being done in the genre mines the potential of settings and times away from the clichés of Victorian Britain, the American West, etc. For example, the Antics of Evangeline, by Madeleine D’Este, uses the very Steampunk-friend but underutilized setting of Melbourne, Australia at the height of the Australian gold rush as the setting for a series of fresh-feeling YA steampunk novellas.
“Missed it by that much.” Babbage’s analytical engine.
I like steampunk, but I still don’t entirely understand why it became such a phenomenon. I am curious whether any of the AH “baby punks” (atomic punk, clock punk, deco punk, diesel punk, steel punk, stonepunk, etc.) can or will become a literary and cultural phenomenon akin to steampunk. Personally, I hold out hope for clockpunk and diesel punk because I like the aesthetic (Brenden Carlson’s Night Callis an excellent recent example of diesel punk, with noir-ish nods to Blade Runner, American Gangster, and the Untouchables). Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been toying with ideas for a clockpunk series. Want a teaser? It…get ready for it…involves Da Vinci (wasn’t I complaining about over-worn tropes just a paragraph ago?)
And continuing on that theme, what of the three tired old monarch of divergence points: Confederates Win, Nazis Win, and Rome Never Falls? Given that, in addition to being cliché, two of them are potentially problematic if handled improperly, is there still a future for them in AH. For at least two of them, I think the answer is yes.
Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle shows there is still a public appetite for examining the grim consequences of Axis Victory. I am, however, more interested in the possible future for the other two.
We are seeing a reckoning and frank reexamination of the history of race and racism in America. The stories we tell ourselves about the Civil War is perhaps the fulcrum of the debate. Some intriguing work has already been done in the area. After his stand-alone novel Guns of the South (arguably as much a character study as an alternative history), Harry Turtledove’s Timeline-191 takes a brutally frank look at the consequences of a Confederate victory, extrapolating it to an absolutely dystopian conclusion in the modern day. But I feel the current reexamining and awakening opens even more possibilities for AH on this theme. There will no doubt be some AH “Lost Cause” apologies offered in the mix, but I hope the vast majority of new works will reflect the more honest accounting we are seeing emerge.
With America’s place in the world changing, and seemingly changing very fast, Rome Never Falls store have a new relevance. As a generation of US global hegemony seems to be fading into a world where America is just one superpower among several, I wonder if we are going to see a flurry of new “Eternal Empire” AH. And I wonder how many of these will be the vessel for some a kind of thinly-veiled FTFY narrative about American’s changing stature; and how many will be genuine if allegorical examinations of the choices available to us, and their consequences.
The Paradox of Alternate History
While ostensibly about the past, AH is really about the present in future. When authors chose divergence points and design effects, we are really commenting about what we believe is significant in the present, and broadcasting our hopes and fears about the future. Moving toward the close of 2021 and the birth of 2022, what trends do I see for AH in the near future?
First, yes, lots of pandemic and disease stories. Look for a plague (ha-ha) of Black Death stories, but also some potentially cannier AH outliers about the 1917 flu, the plague of Justinian, malaria, cholera, maybe even one where the 1970s Swine Flu outbreak proved as bad as few experts predicted. Oh, and if anyone wants to write a story was St. Vitus’s Dance was actual contagious disease…I will read the hell out of that.
And, of course, look for widespread use of themes of alienation, political and social division, unrest, and tyranny.
A lot of great AH…on either side of this wall.
I would love to see a move away from political, military, and technological divergence points toward a greater embrace of social and cultural divergence points. Some of this can already be seen at work, Apple TV’s For All Mankind, while using the space race as the inciting event, is really an AH about gender roles, inclusivity, and diversity. But my poor little music journalist heart is always asking “Okay, but what does this alternate history sound like? Does it have a good beat? Can you dance to it?”
But my biggest wish for AH would be a broader and deeper range of voices contributing to the genre. Even when the divergence point or effect are not explicitly Western (as with Kim Stanley Robinson’s Years of Rice and Salt or Harry Turtledove’s Through Darkest Europe, AH authors remain overwhelmingly of European descent and predominantly male. It would hard to refute allegations that the genre skews Eurocentric. All genres benefit from increasing the range of voices among their authors, but I believe such diversity would be especially valuable (and is especially needed) for AH.
It was great pleasure to moderate FenCon’s “Liminal Spaces” session for two pannels as eriudite and insightful as Mark Finn and Carolyn Kay.
“Liminal Spaces” and “liminality” are powerful words, ones we often seem to appreciate intuitively rather than consider rationally. Despite, or perhaps because, of that, it can mean many different things to different people, especially depending on one’s primarily lens into liminality. With that in mind, here are some discipline-specific definitions:
Anthropology: The quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete” – Victor Turner.
Psychology: A space in our lives where the old self-narrative does not fit any longer and the new narrative has not yet emerged. – Dr. Vincent Deary
Architecture: …the transitional threshold between two fixed states in cultural rites of passage or between two dissimilar spaces in architecture … from which principles can be drawn for the design of a transformative space. The characteristics that define liminal space include layering, dissolution, blurring, and ambiguity and have the ability to transform the occupant of that space as they move through it… – Patrick Troy Zimmerman
Western Magical Tradition: Witches walk between the worlds, with one foot in the world of force and the world of form — The Gardnerian Librarian
Literature: “The state of being on a threshold in space or time” – A Handbook to Literature
Popular Culture #1: On the surface, liminal spaces can be defined by their in between-ness. Places like airports, hotels, and train stations can be described as liminal, but it can also describe existential feelings of being neither here nor there. In the context of the pandemic, liminality takes on a metaphorical meaning, as we sit in our homes contemplating what life was like before and what it will become again in the future. – Günseli Yalcinkaya
Liminality: The history of an Idea
Arnold van Gennep, looking very liminal.
The term liminality (From the Latin, limen, a threshold) was first used in 1909 by ethnographer and folklorist Arnold van Gennep in his book Rites of Passage, focusing on liminal rituals in small-scale traditional societies. This strong focus on liminality in the context of Rites of Passage continues throughout its early anthropological use.
The concept was reinvigorated by British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner, who began exploring its role in other kinds of societies (for which Turner coined the term liminoid, a distinction which has not generally caught on) and examining its impact on those experiencing liminality in a way which prefigured its adoption by psychology. Anthropologist Agnes Horvath further refined the use of liminality in the discipline by pointing out problems with the concept as used by Gennep and Turning, including identifying liminal/liminoid as a false dichotomy and questioning their portrayal of liminality and liminal experience as universally positive phenomenon.
Jungian psychologists (and to a lesser extent, other schools of psychology) were quick to pick up on liminality’s applicability to individual, internal growth and development as well as external social relations. Once seeded in two academic disciplines, to concept of liminality rapidly spread to other academic disciplines including folklore, literature, and architecture.
While the ideas of liminal space and liminal experience had already been filtering through to popular culture, the internet drastically accelerated the process, to the point that in 2021 liminality is broadly understood concept even if its release into the wilds of popular culture has expanded or muddied (your preference) its meaning – including the idea of a liminality as aesthetic and a focus on mood and atmosphere. It has found an especially potent home in the realms of urban folklore and creepypasta, most notably the “Backrooms” and their purported (liminal) ability to be reached by no-clipping through regular reality.
Perhaps it’s only because the other panel I’m moderating at Fenon this year is on Alternate History but, I wonder in particular about a modern understanding of liminality might have impacted the world of two well known scholars.
For Jung, liminality was an individual phenomenon, the process in the psyche’s development when it could not return to what it had been…but did not yet know what it would become. Jung passed in 1961. I would be very curious what he would make of the word’s evolution over the following half-century, and why kind of conceptual leaps he might have made with the word’s greater flexibility.
The anthropologist Sir James Frazer died in 1941, and his most fertile period was around the turn of the century when “liminal space” wasn’t even a blip on the radar. I am very curious what he might have done with the concept of liminality if could have been part of his mental universe while compiling The Golden Bough.
Liminality as Storytelling
Liminality is inherent to most of the major models of storytelling.
In Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey,” liminal space begins when the threshold his crossed (notice that Campbell uses the term ‘threshold,’ from which its Latin equivalent WORD, liminal is derived) and arguably does not end until returning across the threshold. Though a case could certainly be made that the liminal period of the Hero’s Journey ends with the rebirth/renewal event.
In Victoria Lynn Scmidt’s “Heroine’s Journey,” liminality begins with the phase of descent/passing the gates of judgment and does not end until either rebirth or returning to the world with new eyes.
Maasai Rite of Passage
“Rules” of Liminality?
Unlike mundane space, in liminal space there are very few rules. Gennep posited that liminal experience or ritual had three distinct phases:
Preliminal: A kind of metaphorical death, as old statuses and ways are broken and left behind.
Transitional: The truly liminal moment of transition, when an individual undergoing liminal experience is neither one thing nor the other.
Postliminal: When the individual is reincorporated into society reflecting their new status or experience gained through undergoing the liminal rite.
Note that the idea that liminality is simultaneously destructive and creative (like the dance of Shiva and Vishnu) is inherent to Gennap’s three phase model.
The model for liminal event or rite is easily portable to liminal space, with two boundary zones wrapped around a core area of pure liminality.
In formal Rites of Passage, rituals and order events are rigorously detailed and may occur under the supervision of an elder or master of ceremonies with almost dictatorial powers. In some ways, the role of therapist/psychologist in liminal psychology mirrors that role. In broader usage of liminality, however, the idea of a prescribed order of events or master of ceremonies may be irrelevant or even nonsensical.
That there are few rules to liminality only makes the ones that do exist even more important (notice that the punishments for violating the few rules of ancient liminal festivals such as Saturnalia were often incredibly harsh).
Varieties of Liminal Space and Experience
The Natural World: Caves (Think of “The Goonies,” where the characters’ quest takes them on descent into the underworld that is inexorably linked with a Rite of Passage toward adulthood. Natural Springs, Running water, shores.
Caves are liminal spaces. So, I imagine, are shirtless Pat Boones.
“We’ve Got to Close the Beaches” If the shore is considered a liminal space, “Jaws” can be seen as quest to defend liminal space, and those who use it for their vacations (itself a modern kind of liminality), from an external threat that could otherwise create a hard border between the realm of land and sea.
Artifacts of Human Agency: Borders, Bridges, Crossroads, airports, bus terminals, hotels, theaters and performance spaces (more about that one later).
Borders do not get enough attention as liminal spaces. This includes between “civilization” and “the wild” (the frontier, etc) but also borders between political or socio-cultural groups. The treatment of these as liminal spaces in science fiction and fantasy is so ubiquitous that we often don’t even think of it as such. These borders between worlds of the mind are where new ideas and possibilities emerge, where danger and opportunity can be found, and where ADVENTURE! happens.
Seen from this perspective, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, almost the whole damn things, from the first footstep outside of the shire until the return, are liminal journeys. Which raises a curious question, if liminality persists long enough with no clear end in sight, does it cease to be liminal and, instead, become the new normal. Is that why, in Tolken, peaceful interludes like the visit to Rivendell or Beorn’s freehold feel like liminal spaces within liminal spaces?
Astronomical Phenomena: Solstices & Equinoxes, Dawn & Dusk (literal “twilight zones”). Comets and meteor showers (interruptions of the established order of the nighttime sky). Eclipses (the intrusion of darkness into daytime is extremely liminal…and possibly terrifying).
Midsummer Night Bonfire
Holidays: In almost every calendrical system, the equivalent of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are seen as liminal (the period between the death of the old year and the birth of the new). Other holidays have strong liminal aspects. These include the great pre-Lenten festivals (Mardi Gras, Carnival, Fiesta de las Flores y de las Frutas, Fastelavn, etc.) where the border between the regular year and the restrictions of Lent are marked by a celebration of excess. It also includes days when the barrier between the living and the dead is thinned or removed (All Souls’ Day, Dia de Los Muertos, Midsummer Night/St. John’s Day, Twelfth Night, Walpurgisnacht). Some of those are also seen as periods of liminality between the mortal realm and the Lands of the Faerie (or equivalent).
Phases of Life: Adolescence is a prolonged period of liminality, trapped awkwardly between childhood and adulthood. Teenagers are trapped in prolonged liminality. I believe this is why “coming of age” stories are so popular. And I think may at least in part explain the popularity of YA beyond its titular demographic: coming of age stories are liminal stories.
In art as in life, the liminality of adolescence is often paired with liminal Rites of Passage. In The Hunger Games, the Games function as a Rite of Passage of the most absolute sort, with the only outcomes Adulthood or Oblivion. In Shadow & Bone, the Unsea (in the books) or Shadow Fold (in the TV series) is a tangible and very lethal liminal space separating the world’s nations from each other. Of course, this is YA, so as the young protagonists brave the perilous journey through the Unsea/Shadow Fold, it also become a (guess what?)… Rite of Passage into adulthood.
High School, a four year long Rite of Passage, is fertile ground for storytelling, and especially long-form storytelling (everything from Freaks & Geeks to Glee to Buffy).
I think there is another island of liminality in the human lifetime, middle age: that period between adulthood and old age. It does not received as much attention as adolescence in media, but it is still there. It is why we thrill at seeing Henry Jones Sr. acting as foil to his son Indiana, why we have a love-hate relationship with Walter White – who subverts the norms and expectations of his age, and why we are so fascinated by Hobbits (to say nothing of Dwarves and Elves) whose longevity is so different from our own brief spans.
Performance Spaces: Cinema, the stage and music venues are all extremely liminal. Places with no permanent residences, they are a place apart from daily life where a transient population comes and goes to interact with a diversity of stories (many of which are themselves liminal).
Liminal Technology? Looking at liminality in the context scifi, and specifically Star Trek, is the transporter liminal? What about the Holodeck?
Relationship Between the Liminal and the Supernatural in Folklore and Fiction
Because liminal spaces are places where the normal order is suspended, things can happen there that can’t happen anywhere else (summoning the Devil, or various trickster entities at the crossroads, for example). Conversely, liminal spaces can hinder or even bar the supernatural for exercising powers it would otherwise normally possess (vampires’ inability to cross running water).
Supernatural Horror’s enduring archetypes: part of this liminal breakfast
Most of supernatural horror’s enduring archetypes are liminal. Vampires, ghosts, and other intelligent undead are neither truly living nor truly dead. Werewolves are neither fully human nor fully beast. Frankenstein’s Monster and its countless analogs inhabit the liminal uncanny valley occupied by the imperfect creation of an imperfect creation.
The only real exception I can think of are zombies, at least in their modern post-Night of the Living Dead incarnation. Traditional zombies are different matter. If you want a pre-NotLD zombie flick that oozes liminality, check out 1943’s I Walked With a Zombie.
Vampire fiction seems especially aware of its inherent liminality. Whether something to be sought or something to be avoided, “the embrace” is often portrayed as Rite of Passage, a moment when on is neither truly human nor truly vampire, the death of an old life and the beginning of a new. Anne Rice does a very good job of capturing this in The Vampire Chronicles. So, too, does True Blood/The Southern Vampire Mysteries (which is very good at capturing the liminality of the supernatural in general). Though, in my opinion, the TV series highlights the sense of the liminal better than the books.
In Cosmic Horror/The Mythos, it can be argued that space between the first hint that “all is not as it seems” and the final, horrible, madness-inducing revelation, represents a journey through the liminal. Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow sometimes reads like one giant liminal space…and therein lies both its glory and its downfall. Lovecraft’s “Dream Cycle” uses liminality in multiple, sometimes interlocking ways.
Faith and the Liminal
Just starting with the Abrahamic Faiths, liminality and liminal space are central to their foundational accounts:
Moses climbing Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments and establish the covenant.
Jesus spending 40 days in the desert before formally beginning his mission.
Mohammed visiting a cave to hear the Quran dictated by the Archangel Gabriel.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead: Handbook for a Liminal Journey
Purgatory is a liminal space. So is the soul’s journey to the afterlife in Pharaonic mythology. In many cultures, the souls of the dead are believed to linger on earth for a period of time before transitioning to the afterlife. Persephone is more than a liminal character, she is the embodiment of liminality itself. Mystery Cults made use of physical liminal spaces like caves for Rites of Passage such as initiations.
Religious ritual is often a liminal space itself. And many religions treat places of worship as liminal spaces, separate from and subject to different rules than, mundane space. While he does not explicitly use the terms liminality or liminal space, Mircea Eliade’s landmark book The Sacred & The Profane is an excellent examination of this phenomenon.
Contemporary Liminality
Is the Internet a Liminal Space? I don’t know. From a retro-futuristic angle, the internet as conceived by Gibson, Sterling, ‘80s-’90s ttrpgs, etc. certainly was. But the internet we know and live with? I think that is more of a question. It is certainly interstitial. But has it become too ubiquitous and too mundane to truly qualify as liminal space.
Liminality in the Time of Covid (with apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez). The pandemic meets the definition of liminal space in a surprising number of ways, even conforming to more academic definitions of a Rite of Passage…with behaviors, prescriptions, lexicon, and even “ritual garments” that can be fully understood only in the context of the liminal event.
FIN: Thanks for stopping by on your way to someplace else.
“Do you like getting right up in a monster’s face and giving it what for? Do you prefer to stand waaaay back and throw fireballs or shoot arrows? Or maybe healing up your comrades is more your style? Let’s discuss how to choose the right personality for your RPG character.”
It was a great honor to participate in FenCon’s “What’s my Role” panel with Chaz Kemp and Rie Sheridan Rose. Special thanks to Sarah Brigdon for successfully wrangling a panel whose passions ran to so many different yet worthy aspects of roleplaying.
Conversations along the lines of “Okay, I’m the frontline fighter. You’re the rogue. But we need a caster. And who is going to play the cleric?” are as old as gaming itself. Yet, the more analytical approach of party composition and conflation of combat role with personality is relatively recent, only making its way into the gaming community in the past 15 years or so (yes, my friends, against the long history of gaming, that qualifies as “relatively” recent).
Fourth-Edition D&D gave us the terms “Controller, Defender, Leader or Striker” and the part breakdown of “The Tank, The Damage, The Healer, The Support, The Control, The Face, The Scout” has become pretty ubiquitous. Sometimes, MMO terminology like DPS even makes its way into table top gaming.
We don’t “Murder-Hobo” anymore (much).
That this is a recent development is the more curious as, over the long line of gaming history, there is clear trend toward less time in combat and more time in other activities/challenges. There are, of course, exceptions. In seeking to emulate online gaming, 4E D&D was very much a throwback — and certain systems, including Traveler and the various Warhammer RPG products, can lend themselves to combat heavy games. But, for most gaming in 2021, it is important to look at PC roles beyond combat. Below, I take a brief look at three alternate lens for this issue.
Functionality: This lens considers a PC’s preferred approach to problem solving. Cyberpunk 2020’s use of “roles,” is a good example of this. A given “role” provides skills, experiences, and abilities reflecting an attitude and approach to the meeting the world on the PC’s terms. To cite a few examples: Yes, solos are “kill it with lead and monofilament katanas” kind of people. But there are fixers who, if they can’t do something or find something, know someone who can. Techies believe if a machine can’t solve your problem, any problem, it’s to sit down and build a better machines. Conversely, nomads feel there is no problem than can’t be solved by inviting along another sibling our cousin. This lens ensures party are well covered for a variety of challenges and settings, not only combat.
Archetypes: This lens considers the internal landscape and emotional constitution of PCs. One of the most obvious examples is the Nature/Demeanor system from White Wolf’s World of Darkness universe. Players chose both a nature (true self) and demeanor (exterior persona) from a large preset list of archetypes (Autocrat, Bon Vivant, Child, Loner, etc.) for their character. These are more than just guides for roleplaying, acting in accordance with one’s nature and demeanor is the main method for regaining Willpower, which is important in World of Darkness. Having diverse natures and demeanors in the party helps ensure that someone is always regaining Willpower. Even in systems where this is not explicitly rewarded through game mechanics, there is a qualitative advantage to party of diverse mental states and emotional constitutions to respond to a variety of situations.
A happy party…
Narrative Dynamics: Roleplaying is collaborative storytelling. So it is little surprise many of the tropes and dynamics that are effective in other forms of storytelling work in roleplaying as well. The right party dynamic, or even dynamic between two or more players within a party, can really bring an adventure to life. The dynamics between characters in other media can serve as inspiration or conversational shorthand for party composition. I’ve seen a party who, six sessions in, realized their Call of Cthulhu campaign was a cosmic horror Scoobie Doo. I’ve seen Shadowrun street samurai who might as well have been Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. I’ve seen two Vampires go “Winchester Brothers in reverse,” tracking down hunters in a black van with blacked out windows. I’ve even seen a concept campaign inspired by Sartre’s “No Exit,” with characters designed to hate each other but be unable to escape each other. Nobody wanted to push it beyond three sessions, but those sessions were fascinating and entertaining.
No one of the lenses discussed above is inherently superior. And, yes, even in combat light games, the combat lens still has its place. Most parties will get the best results from using a mix of all of them, and the doing what sounds fun. These lenses are means to an end, not ends in themselves. The goal is to create compelling characters with rich stories that allow them to engage with the world on multiple levels. Whether they gel in combat is not trivial, but is a secondary consideration. As a GM, I would happily taken on trying to design fights for a party that is sub-optimized for combat if it means I have a party full of compelling, three-dimensional personalities that let me create opportunities for rich and meaningful collaborative storytelling.
With so many types of characters to choose from in RPGs, does playing a character that is different from your real self give you empathy for that type of person in Real Life?
In 2015, a study administered the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a standard psychological instrument for measuring empathy, to 127 frequent roleplayers. These gamers significantly outperformed a control group.
I suppose it should be little surprise that gaming can correlate to high levels of empathy. That, I think, is part of roleplaying’s appeal for many of us – the opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes for a while. And, while people have different baselines for empathy, it is a learnable skill that strengthens with use.
Psychology and counseling make extensive use of free form roleplaying. Frequent uses include confronting phobias and managing stress, anxiety, or trauma – with the goal of patients gaining insights or experiencing emotional catharsis. In Relationship Counseling, role reversal is often used to promote exactly those kinds of insights and sympathy – the building of empathy.
Of course, just because roleplaying can build empathy, doesn’t mean it always does. Most gamers have stories about “That one player” or “The GM who delights in torturing their players.” If you’re lucky enough not to, or just want to indulge in some top quality schadenfreude, Google “Worst D&D player ever” (or equivalent), makes some popcorn, and settle in. Or, if you want more curated account of gaming with terrible human beings, check out Al Bruno III’s roman a clef “The Binder of Shame.” (TWs for just about everything).
Don’t tell the 1E Elves multiclassing is a bad idea (you’l get stabbed and zapped)
Multi-classing: Yay or Nay? And Why?
Somewhere between a “provisional yes” and “it depends.”
Personally, I enjoy multi-classing because my character concepts often do not fit neatly into the boxes of class-based which system (which is why I often gravitate to classless systems like FATE, Savage Worlds, or GURPS which are on a point-build or concept-build rather than a class-build.
But there are things to consider before creating a multi-class character. I think the biggest one is to be sure that it’s actually your character concept…rather than that you have two concepts you’re having difficulty choosing between. In my experience, splitting the difference between two competing concepts through multi-classing is an emotionally unsatisfying compromising, giving too little of what attracted me to each class in the first place.
And while this, in itself, is not a reason to say “no,” it is worth remembering that, in many systems, including D&D and Pathfinder, a character who is Level 5 in two things is less capable that a character who is Level 10 in one thing.
But, for all my high-minded “only do it if it feels right,” rhetoric, sometimes multi-classing is a choice that is forced on you. When you’ve got two or three people around the table for a D&D game, it may make sense for someone to be the cleric/rogue.
How important is it to “stay in your lane”? Do you play your character as just a healer? Or do you try to pick the lock with the metal wire you happened to find on the ground?
Any one of them could surprise you.
Honestly? Those are the moments roleplayers live for.
When the fighters are unconscious on the ground and the wizard is out of spells but manages to land that last blow, knocking the giant unconscious with a staff.
When the Dex 8 cleric evades an entire castle of guards to find the treasure room.
When the Barbarian is the only one who remembers the words to the secret chant.
Those are the kind of gaming stories that keep getting told…
In the best case scenario, such moments can serve as catalysts foe new directions of growth and development – enriching the charter, the party, and they player’s experience.
It only becomes a problem when it turns into what my gaming group always called “stepping on someone’s shtick.” Players want time in the limelight for their characters, that’s one of great appeals of roleplaying. Each PC having things they are uniquely good at helps ensure everyone gets the spotlight. So, when the party’s rouge suddenly starts dumping points in diplomacy, which, until then, has been the bard’s shtick, it can create tension and reduce enjoyment unless handled very carefully.
Six words constitute the highest praise one author can pay another: I wish I had written this.
Edward Erdelac’s Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against the Lovecraftian Mythos is rooted in a well-researched and multi-dimensional biography of the eponymous writer, anthropologist, and leading light of the Harlem Renaissance. It then reimagines that biography to include eight encounters with the Cthulhu Mythos occurring at various points in Hurston’s life, from relative youth to literal deathbed, all united by a broader metanarrative.
The tales track Hurston’s real-life wanderings, from New York City to other points in America, Haiti, and Central America – as well as a Mythos-obligatory Dreamlands sojourn. Erdelac’s narrative unfolds in an engaging style that might most properly be called “magical realism with a Mythos twist” rather than horror or supernatural mystery.
First, a curious TL;DR. Presumably most people reading my blog are at somewhat familiar with my work, including Gabriel’s Trumpet, my supernatural mystery revolving around the 1920s jazz scene. Rainbringer and Gabriel’s Trumpet are very different stories, but they play in the same sandbox and I feel confident in saying that anyone who enjoyed Gabriel’s Trumpet will enjoy Rainbringer as well.
Using a historical figure as a protagonist is a daring move that requires both formidable research and exceptional skill. If I may be forgiven one more comparative, I have some familiarity with the required chops via my pulp-mystery novella “A Scandal in Hollywood,” a tongue-in-cheek love letter both to Sherlock Holmes and Hollywood’s Golden Age. “Scandal” required considerable research and notetaking on actor Basil Rathbone. Erdelac’s portrayal of Hurston, however, goes beyond a competent mastery of the facts of Hurston’s life, moving in the direction of intuitive understanding. It feels as if he somehow has a relationship with Hurston, even if such a relationship can go only one direction in time and space. Rainbringer works because Erdelac breathes life into Hurston, makes readers believe her actions and reactions even in the face of cosmic terrors.
I also appreciate Rainbringer’s approach to the Mythos. Erdelac is clearly comfortable and familiar enough with the source material to wield it adroitly throughout the work. Readers should be on the lookout for a delightful Easter egg offering a retelling of one Call of Cthulhu’s seminal arcs…from a very different perspective (but you will need to pay close attention, Erdelac doesn’t set up a neon sign). Just as importantly, he is also comfortable and familiar enough to adroitly deviate from canon, adding his own compelling touches and engrossing sub-mythologies. Of particular note is one of the most innovative, evocative uses of Yig I’ve ever encountered.
Zora Neale Hurston
Rainbringer showcases more than a layperson’s knowledge of Voodoo and hoodoo, and is careful to delineate the two, even diegetically delivering a short primer for unfamiliar readers. Drawing on various strands from Voodoo, Abrahamic traditions, and the Mythos, the story weaves a seamless, and delightfully unsettling, cosmology.
There was a special delight for me in Rainbringer. In Erdelac, I feel I have finally found an author who enjoys a cleverly-executed historical cameo as much as I do. The rendering of a young Orson Welles at the height of his creative prowess and iconoclasm is especially memorable. And, with my background in music journalism, the appearance of folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax warmed my heart.
While there are no weak vignettes in the collection, each reader will no doubt have their favorites. For me, three tales truly stood out:
Ekwensu’s Lullaby sees Hurston participating in a WPA field-recording expedition to the Gullah communities of St. Simons Island.
The Shadow in The Chapel of Ease plays with the ever-delightful question of what happens when the conventional religion gets caught up in the Mythos.
But, in my opinion, King Yeller is the collection’s crown jewel. If Erdelac is taking requests, I would certainly not shy away from reading a novel-length treatment of this story…and there certainly seems to be enough material to support such an expansion. The premise is delightful: what do you do when writing a Mythos story about the vibrant theatre scene of the Harlem Renaissance? Drop in a copy of TheKing in Yellow, of course. The devil (or the Great Old One), of course, is in the details and the delivery. And King Yeller, set against the backdrop of the Federal Theatre Project’s performance of Macbeth (one of the most celebrated productions in the history of the American stage) shoots for the moon…and hits.
As a side note, several remarkable incidents in King Yeller, including Orson Welles being attacked by a razor-wielding assailant only to be rescued by boxer-turned-actor Canada Lee and the death of theatre critic Percy Hammond shortly after a cast member stuck pins into a Voodoo Doll of Hammond, are the province of history, not fiction, which Erdelac deftly incorporates into the narrative.
As a final note of praise for this Rainbringer, Erdelac should be commended for his frankness in portraying the many layers to issues of race and racism experienced by Hurston throughout her life. He remained steadier in addressing this challenge than I did with Gabriel’s Trumpet.
Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against the Lovecraftian Mythos builds a remarkable set of stories around a remarkable and very real protagonist. It will be a worthy addition to the collection of any fan of horror or Mythos, but will be especially welcomed by those whose interests also include 20th century American History, The Harlem Renaissance, and American literature or anthropology.
(Rainbringer is available for Kindle and in paperback from Amazon. Find Edward Erdelac on his website on or Twitter. Remember to rate and review your favorite authors’ works on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you review books.)
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Jon Black Writes 