Naughty Netherworld Press's Blog: Naughty Netherworld Press on Goodreads, page 101

Weekend Writing Warriors 29 December 2019 (PA, SF)

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“My answer may seem overly simplistic and not terribly pragmatic,” the great creature replied. “It is only this. You have befriended me. I have never had a friend, and you are the finest of friends that I could have ever imagined. Most of my kind, as I have previously stated, do not utilize the sensibility known as compassion, and they see me as lesser for doing so. I struck out on my own to conduct scientific studies for the sake of science. But then I encountered you, and I felt that it would benefit us both were your mission to become my mission. I can certainly continue to collect samples during the course of our adventures, and you and I can serve as consultants for one another.”
~Cie for Naughty Netherworld Press~
Artist Unknown
Notes:In this week's snippet, Yitzy answers Ketil's question regarding why Yitzy is interested in assisting him on his "potentially fruitless quest." Last week's snippet can be found here.
The story ended up being either a short novella or a long novelette. It is currently in the process of being formatted, and I am agonizing over finding or creating a suitable cover. It's difficult to find free-use Lovecraftian art. I am aiming for publication in January.
The Great Race of Yith is the creation of H.P. Lovecraft. Ketil Nagel and Yitzy Yithian are original characters created by Team Netherworld.

Friday Flashback: Dungeons and Dragons: Satan's Game

I originally published this on 27 December 2010 in the first incarnation of Encyclopedia Netherworld, a blog that has since been retired. This date was just a day shy of the one-month anniversary of my father's passing. I imagine I was trying to take my mind off that fact. The beige-colored Creature from the Black Lagoon character made me think of an adolescent version of my original Netherworld character, Geoff Ghast, so that was kind of fun. 
This character might be Geoff's nephew or such since ghasts are a very long-lived species. It's rather certain that he isn't Geoff's offspring. Geoff isn't exactly the most mature fellow, regardless of his probable longevity. No self-respecting female ghast would want to start a family with this eternal Peter Pan of a mythos horror.
I know that canonically ghasts die quickly in the light. I don't adhere closely to canonical rules when writing things that are just for fun.

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As Geoff once said: "I've got the moves like Jagger, totally."

Happy Xmahanukwanzyule 2019

Click to enlargeCreated with PixlrBackground image:Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
Tidbit Tuesday will return in 2020

Good Stuff For Monday: Win Free Vanilla and More

Disclosure: I am an independent affiliate for Watkins Products
This post originated on the Good Stuff from Grover blog. However, I am sharing it with some of my other sites in case the opportunity may appeal to readers there as well.
Howdy, Grover Gang! It's the Ornery Old Lady here with a great giveaway and opportunity for my U.S. and Canadian readers, with apologies to my readers in other countries.
Every month, Watkins Products gives away $100 worth of extracts and spices. Wouldn't it be wonderful to win a free bottle of vanilla?
Click here to check out the free vanilla giveaway from Watkins.
Watkins Products have been around since 1868. Choose from high-quality spices and extracts for cooking, grooming and home remedies made with pure and natural ingredients, and household products without harsh chemicals. These products are never tested on animals.
Click here to visit my consultant page, where you can order products or sign up to become a consultant yourself. 
Unlike some home businesses which have monthly sales quotas and cost an exorbitant amount to join, Watkins consultants pay only $29.95 per year for access to the training website and their own page. You don't even have to recruit anyone or sell anything ever if you don't want to. You can simply use the membership to purchase products for your household at a reduced cost. This opportunity is only open to residents of the United States and Canada.
Happy Holidays from Cie the Ornery Old Lady and the entire crew at the Grover Hotel.

Weekend Writing Warriors 22 December 2019 (PA, SF)

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The ghost and his alien friend stood before a squat house which vaguely resembled a toadstool with its overlapping roof. Behind them, they could hear the lapping of waves on the shoreline of a beach littered with debris and decaying fish. All around them in the gloomy twilight, they could hear the tittering of ghouls. The air reeked of putrefying flesh.
“Shall we enter this structure, Ketil?” Yitzy inquired. “I cannot say whether it would allow us safe  harbor from the potentially nauseating odors in this unpleasant environment, but I believe it shall take us to the next point in our destination.”
“Yithian, make no mistake, I am most grateful for your assistance,” Ketil declared. “Only I have a curiosity to know why you have taken it upon yourself to join me in my potentially fruitless quest.”
~Cie for Naughty Netherworld Press~
Notes:This snippet comes from Team Netherworld's WIP "Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure in the House of Lost Dreams." This will be the first published installment in our flagship series, "The Yadira Chronicles." It is slated for publication in early 2020.
Last week's snippet can be found here.
Ketil Nagel is the spirit of a Swedish extreme metal musician who sacrificed himself to the vampire goddess Mormo on June 6, 1991; his twenty-fifth birthday.
Yitzy is a renegade member of the Great Race of Yith, exiled by his fellows for embodying compassion and empathy. The majority of the Great Race of Yith are known for their coldly scientific natures and belief in the superiority of their species.
Earth's Dreamlands, Mormo, Nyarlathotep, and Xura are the creations of H.P. Lovecraft. The Xura Dream House appears in the Call of Cthulhu RPG scenario, The Land of Lost Dreams, in the Call of Cthulhu Dreamlands supplement. Ketil and Yitzy are original characters created by Team Netherworld.
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Friday Flashback + Fat Friday: Dreaming of a Mythos Xmahanukwanzyule

This post was originally published on 20 December 2011 on the Miskatonic University Netherworld Annex blog, which is currently in use as one of my private cataloging blogs. I am updating the post to include reactions to this lovely Xmahanukwanzyule tree, which is currently set up in President Cthulhu's office at the Miskatonic University Netherworld Annex main branch in Nightmare Heights, Netherworld.

Beavis: Hey, Butthead, that tree touched my butt!
Butthead: Beavis, that tree would kick your butt, you bumhug.
Visit the Artist
Cactus Clem: Grover, I feel a kinship with this here tree. It speaks to me!


Visit the Artist
Ghost Town Grover: When Cactus Clem says this here tree speaks to him, I'm purty sure he means that literal-like. It ain't said nary a word to me, but I kinda feel like it's watching me.
Sketch of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
So, why are we making this a Fat Friday post?
Because EVERY BODY deserves to have a Happy Xmahanukwanzyule free of body-shaming bullshit. That includes everyone from the mighty Cthulhu to YOU!
Happy Xmahanukwanzyule to AllAnd to all a good XHAGRALLLGHHHNZZZZ!
IÄ, IÄ!
Special thanks to the handy Alt Codes page.

Tidbit Tuesday 17 December 2017: The Good Wife

Image by Marlene Bitzer from Pixabay
Here is a chapter from the forthcoming first book in Team Netherworld's flagship serial, Fetch.Please share a Tidbit if you wish. No hard and fast rules. Any length, published or WIP, prose or poetry, flash fiction, even a picture.

A note regarding the image:
The model is probably 20 or more years younger than the character portrayed in this chapter, but it is nearly impossible to find pictures of middle-aged models. This model embodies something of the attitude I was trying to portray in the chapter and has a similar appearance to what I envision for the character as well.
The Good WifeAnne Faith Harris Clifford had been a good wife as far as she was concerned. Being married to a musician wasn’t easy. Gerry Clifford wasn’t your standard fare, of course. He held himself to high standards, including not giving in to the plethora of available temptation on the road. He was a good provider, there could be no denying.

However, despite his admirable qualities, Gerry’s high standards tended to make him unavailable in other regards. Although he was no chauvinist, often lauded for treating female musicians with a more than commendable amount of respect, his long periods of absence tended to pigeonhole Anne into the role of caregiver for the couple’s two children, Amber and Daniel.

Daniel, born on New Year’s Day 1981, was the reason that Anne and Gerry married. They had been friends for four years previously, and the friendship turned romantic. Dallying with groupies had become hollow for Gerry; that it had ever held that much appeal for the sensitive modern-day bard was questionable in the first place.

Still, Anne often found herself questioning whether Gerry truly loved her or if marrying her just seemed the sensible thing for the pragmatic guitarist. Gerry told Anne that he loved her. He brought her flowers and jewelry. He did everything a good husband should do. Yet it seemed there was always some part of himself that he held back, and over the years this reticence to fully give his heart caused resentment to build in Anne’s soul.

Daniel was a well-behaved child, but from the beginning, his epilepsy made him fragile. Because of their son’s special needs, Anne and Gerry agreed that it was best that they never have more children. Anne went on birth control and Gerry always used a condom when things became heated, so it seemed as though having more children would never factor into their lives.

Gerry had a kind heart, but he also had periods of depression which rendered him emotionally unavailable. Using alcohol to combat his social anxiety rendered the rock and roll prodigy an addict. However, Gerry was nothing if not responsible, and the day after Christmas 1981, he checked himself into rehab. He had just turned thirty years old two weeks prior.

Reflecting on things, that moment may have been the point when the quiet undercurrent of resentment in Anne’s relationship with Gerry began building. He was trying to be responsible to his wife and his baby son, so Anne could never bring herself to outwardly admit that she seriously resented being left alone with a medically fragile infant.

Upon Gerry’s successful rehabilitation, Anne felt that the most appropriate gift for her husband was a night of passion that she didn’t really feel. A month later she would decide that this gift to her husband was one of her stupider ideas.

Anne had neglected to take her birth control pills for almost a week while dealing with a crisis with Daniel’s health. Gerry had used a condom during the encounter, but it failed.

When Anne discovered that she was pregnant, she considered aborting without telling Gerry. However, she realized that she couldn’t live with the guilt of doing so. Thus, on March 29, 1983, Amber Freya Clifford was born.

That Amber was a perfectly healthy baby was a great relief to both of her parents. That Gerry went on the road a month after her birth was both a source of relief and a source of resentment for Anne. Although Gerry was a more than competent parent, in some ways his presence made Anne feel as if she were having to care for another child. Gerry’s hypersensitivity once seemed charming; at this point, his fragile personality and his very presence were a burden.

Gerry was often lauded for his monogamous nature in an industry that not only accepted but condoned caddish behavior on the part of its men. Anne sometimes wished that her husband had been less noble. Gerry’s fidelity was commendable, but his valiant behavior made it impossible for Anne to justify divorcing him although the marriage had become stale.

During the thirty-five years that Anne and Gerry were married, she had a dozen lovers. It was understood by these men that Anne had no intention of divorcing Gerry and that they would have no part in her children’s lives. Being in a seemingly perfect marriage with rock and roll royalty afforded Anne multiple amenities that she had no intention of giving up. She and Gerry worked well together, and as Anne’s late maternal grandfather, Harald Mathiasen always said, “If it is not broke, there is no need to fix it.”

When Gerry began showing signs of cognitive deterioration during his fifty-seventh year, Anne’s many years of caring for a special needs child served her well. She loved Gerry in her own way although the romance between them was long dead. People lauded her for being a good wife.

Anne never mentioned to anyone that when Gerry’s cleverness combined with his confusion made him a danger to himself and rendered her unable to care for him at home any longer, she was relieved to leave him at Candlelight Ridge Care Home for good.

Anne was free. The husband whom she cared for but hadn’t loved romantically in years was being tended to by professionals. Her children were grown; her son’s condition was stabilized. Daniel lived with Amber and her husband Vance. He had a special seizure dog named Scarlet.

For the first time in years, Anne wasn’t worried.

The date of sixty-four-year-old Anne Harris Clifford’s emancipation was April 17, 2014.


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Weekend Writing Warriors 15 November 2019

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The tall, slender ghost's long, blond hair extended to the mid-back area of his black trenchcoat. The Yithian possessed a conical body made of a rigid, rubbery material. It had two great pincers extending from the shoulder area, and two long neck stalks. One of the neck stalks terminated in a round yellow head with three eyes, small, flowerlike ears, and a multitude of hairlike tentacles. The other neck stalk terminated in a cluster of four red trumpet-like projections. The Yithian slid like a snail on the great foot at the bottom of its conical body.
~Cie for Naughty Netherworld Press~
WeWriWa and Snippet Sunday friends and fiends, I still need voters in my Battle of the Poems! Please stop by the Horror Harridans blog to participate. The Battle will run till the end of the month. The purpose is to help me choose which poems will be going into my November PAD Chapbook Challenge final manuscript. Hope to see you there!
~
Earth's Dreamlands and Xura are the creations of H.P. Lovecraft.
The Zetar star system originates in the Star Trek universe and was mentioned in the original series episode The Lights of Zetar, written by the late Shari Lewis and Jeremy Tarcher. Zetar 6 (Zecor) is an expansion of the original concept and is the creation of Team Netherworld. 

What Pegman Saw: Expectations

Fort Walsh National Historic Site, Saskatchewan
It was early June 1988. Twenty-year-old Pepper Baiij and her twenty-two-year-old husband, Larry Velasco, were visiting the Fort Walsh National Historic site in Saskatchewan. Pepper hoped to find an answer to the constant unfulfilled feeling in her soul while on this trip. She and Larry both enjoyed taking road trips, but where Larry seemed content to take things as they came, Pepper longed for something more.
Pepper felt terribly irritable but was determined not to lash out at Larry. Her poor husband tried so hard to make her happy. It wasn’t his fault that her soul was a bottomless well that no ordinary man could ever fill.
Pepper had been feeling nauseous nonstop from the time that the couple crossed the border into Canada. She hoped that she wouldn’t spend the whole trip sick. The relentless noonday sun only increased the queasiness. Pepper stepped into the tall grass and vomited.
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Friday Flashback: Sly Speaks: Me Too: The Workplace Edition

Copyright Tara O'Brien


This post was originally published on 13 December 2018. It was penned by my political alter-ego, Sly Fawkes.
I was thinking back to a "wonderful" incident which happened while I was working as an assistant district manager at the Denver Post in 1986. One of the carriers became friendly with me, initially in a perfectly acceptable and professional way, and I enjoyed our little chats. But then one day he said to me: "I'd like it if I could give you a hug sometime and maybe a kiss."

A lot of you ladies, particularly of my generation or older, will be able to relate when I say that I was trained from a young age to "be a lady" when a situation like this arises and to "not hurt his feelings," so rather than asking him in what the hell universe hitting on his supervisor was appropriate, my first response was to say "I'm married," so I wouldn't hurt his feelings. As if doing this sort of creepy thing would have been appropriate if his target wasn't married.

My initial reaction is to think what a doormat I was for reacting this way. Plus I never even told my supervisor, because I didn't want to get the guy in trouble. But my next reaction is to be angry that I believed his feelings were more important than mine, which was disgust and betrayal.

So, yeah, not going to be angry at my younger self for being taken aback and not behaving in a more assertive fashion in this lurid situation. The guy displayed not only gross sexism in having zero respect for my position of albeit mild authority just because I was a young woman, but he displayed zero respect for me as a human being in seeing me as an object that he could potentially grope and slobber on.

For some reason, when I was younger I seemed to draw a lot of creepers like this to me, probably because I tried to be nice. I'm honestly not at all sorry that my current age tends to render me invisible to this breed of asshole most of the time.
~Sly Has Spoken~
Graphic copyright Juliahenze @123rf.com