Dave Higgins's Blog, page 44

Advent Ghosts: Uncountable Sorrow

A joyous Yule or other festival of choice to everyone. As in previous years, I am participating in Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts 100-word scary story project. This year, a story inspired by a Wiltshire legend: Uncountable Sorrow Twelve stones. It was silly; a story made up by locals to get outsiders to buy drinks. But … Continue reading Advent Ghosts: Uncountable Sorrow

Outsiders Within Release

Outsiders Within, containing twelve tales of the dark gulf behind our pretence of a rational universe, is now available in ebook and paperback from major retailers. Summon forth your copy today. We fear discovery when we should fear what there is to discover. Lovecraft and his successors show a world where human civilisation is only … Continue reading Outsiders Within Release

Lock by Jordan Elizabeth

Blending the classic fantasy tropes of prophecy and travelling to another realm with a more complex view of saviours, Elizabeth creates a young adult novel that offers a grittier perspective on a chosen one facing evil without reducing everything to moral relativism. Having spent most of her moving from Renaissance Fair to Renaissance Fair, Sarah … Continue reading Lock by Jordan Elizabeth

Dreaming of the Red King

One of the many contested perspectives on Lovecraft’s Yog-Sothothery is the idea that Azathoth currently sleeps and the world will end when he wakes. Lovecraft’s own works do not state this, so where might it come from? Perhaps our own tendency to live in a dream of purpose rather than a reality of explicit facts. … Continue reading Dreaming of the Red King

Ancient Vampire Death Cults and Other Annoyances by Matthew S. Cox

Cox blends contrasting possibilities on the creation of vampires with action and suspense to create a tale of vampiric maturation that has both depth and pace. This novel is the twelfth volume of Cox’s Vampire Innocent series. Your mind would retreat to the comfort of a dark age at the spoilers beyond this point… so … Continue reading Ancient Vampire Death Cults and Other Annoyances by Matthew S. Cox

Giant Ball of Fun?

Could one keep a shoggoth as a pet? The authorities in their blindness make no reference even to their existence, so there is certainly no legal barrier. But is there a practical one? The answer depends on which sort of shoggoth one speaks of. Whilst the most well-known shoggoths are those described in Lovecraft’s At … Continue reading Giant Ball of Fun?

The Unnamed Country by Jeffrey Thomas

Collecting stories that span science-fiction, fantasy, and realism but are connected by a shared fictional Asian country, Thomas offers both a series of character-driven individual narratives and an engaging gestalt vision of the liminal zone between beliefs and reality. This collection contains nine short stories set in a fictional Asian country shaped both by religion …

The Meanness of Raiko

Between many years of playing Legend of the Five Rings and Nicki expanding her collection of Zen texts, I’ve picked up a reasonable number of Japanese folk tales; thus, a little while ago, I made a comment to a friend about the ‘Meanness of Raiko’ and then had to explain the story. As many of … Continue reading The Meanness of Raiko

Vampiress Unleashed by Thomas Green

Blending vast magical effects with sudden reversals, Green creates a tale with gritty look of urban fantasy but epic scale. Casey Laen’Ash has lived her life in her mother’s estate, never leaving without her mother at her side and speaking to no-one else. Believing her mother’s claims that—as a high vampire—the world will hate her, … Continue reading Vampiress Unleashed by Thomas Green

No Masks Here

Yesterday I came across an untitled poem by Upashna that refused to quite let go. Dusk pours her dregs of light on the weary bones draped in a corrugated yellow skin threading the silk suture A melange of reverberations in the air- a distinct chirp of hatchlings calling it’s dame at prey, the yellow tailed … Continue reading No Masks Here