This past weekend the Eraserhead Press crew was at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon. In case you are not aware of the event, the fest is a Portland institution that been happening for more than a decade. It is a celebration of films, literature, and all things H. P. Lovecraft and Cthulhu. Eraserhead Press has been tabling the event for more years than anybody can remember (really! I asked around).

Cameron Pierce and Jeremy Robert Johnson

The festival also holds dear importance to me. When I first moved to Portland four years ago, and didn’t know anybody, I volunteered at the event. There I met people like Jeremy Robert Johnson and Alan M. Clark for the first time. Two people with whom I’m still friends. The next time I went it was as a vendor for Eraserhead Press. This year, I was a guest author and editor. Words can not express how much it meant to me to be an official part of the festival.

I’m behind the Eraserhead Press table!

Friday night was spent hanging out with friends and catching a few movies. The fest shows films both new (The Ruins, Monsters) and old (Horror Express, The Skull). What they specialize in is showing blocks of independently made short films inspired by Lovecraft or the Cthulhu Mythos. There is where you can find the real gems of the festival.

STAY AT HOME DAD directed by John Skipp and Andrew Kasch and written by Cody Goodfellow was the highlight of the fest for the bizarro fans. A strange, funny, and perverse cosmic horror take on fatherhood. Distribution of the film is still unannounced but here’s the trailer:

BEDTIME FOR TIMMY was one of my personal favorites. A cute and funny stop-motion short of one small boy’s bedtime troubles. Watch the whole movie:

Artist Mike Dubisch had two films in the fest demonstrating his surreal live-art techniques. Check this out:

He also did a quick demonstration at the fest itself. I’m pretty sure the remark in the description on youtube, “I felt like I was tripping,” was me.

Saturday, I did a reading with two genre greats – Jay Lake and Wilum H. Pugmire. I did my Choose-Your-Own-Reading performance, which is where I read SUPER GIANT MONSTER TIME (my choose-your-own-adventure book) and had the audience vote on the choices. This was the longest version of the reading I have ever done. The bastards didn’t want to die!

Ross Lockhart and Wilum Pugmire

The rest of the day was spent selling books and catching films. I saw an awesome documentary named BARBARIAN DAYS about insane and obsessive Robert E. Howard fans in Texas. I had no idea there were people who took Howard so seriously. It was a real eye-opener, and a bit disturbing at times.

One of the coolest events of the day was the Pickman’s Apprentice competition, in which three attending artists were give two prompts (shoggoths and circuses) and two hours to create a work of art. The results were astonishing:

Nick Gucker won and became Pickman’s Apprentice!

Mike Dubisch went for a black-light vibe.

Lee Moyer included a little shout-out to Mother’s Day

The night ended with drinks and live stage magic (!!!!!) at Tony Starlight.

Sunday started off with the Cthulhu Prayer Breakfast, which was the coolest event at the con. While sitting in a movie theater at 12:30 pm and eating eggs, potatoes, and bacon, we listened to Robert M. Price and Cody Goodfellow deliver sermons and debate the place of Cthulhu in the modern world and how he can get more worshipers. It was absolutely insane and the perfect way to start the day.

Cody Goodfellow spreads the good word.

The rest of Sunday was a bit quiet as people were nursing hangovers in the safety of the dark theaters. I did a panel on horror publishing with James Beach, Ross Lockhart, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and E. Catherine Tobler.

Now Rose is behind the Eraserhead Press Table!

That night was the Awards Ceremony where DOCTOR GLAMOUR won the coveted fan favorite award. It was an absolutely insane Lovecraft, meets romance, meets German expressionism, meets eighties glam rock mini-epic. I loved it and any bizarro fan should check it out.

But then the fest ended. It was a great weekend and it was wonderful seeing so many great movies, old friends, and wonderful creative people. Thanks to Brian and Gwen Callahan for putting together such an awesome weekend. I can hardly wait for next year!

Eraserhead Press and Friends

Thanks to Ross E. Lockhart from whom I stole some pictures. You can see more awesome pics from the event courtesy of Thebes-inc here.

Link: http://fluxmachine.tumblr.com

Because the room caused seizures that seriously changed people, no one in the house but Butch the cat wanted to use it; so, Alister’s mom turned it into the guest bedroom.

Seeing how his pet had changed over the years, Alister wondered if the guests they’d had, most of whom had gone on to do big things, had changed the world for better or worse.

Artwork: “Jell Enhanced Dresser Drawer Dance and Rumble Ring” copyright © 1978 Alan M. Clark (painted while in college at the San Francisco Art Institute).
Poppy Z. Brite wrote the story “The Devil You Know” based on this image. The story and image appeared in IMAGINATION FULLY DILATED, VOLUME II, edited by Elizabeth Engstrom, published by IFD Publishing. Later this piece was used as cover art for Poppy Z. Brite’s collection, THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, published by Subterranean Press.

Captions are original to this post and have nothing to do with the literary project with which the artwork first appeared.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

-Sam



Michael A. Arnzen (The Gorelets Omnibus) and Jason Jack Miller (Hellbender) will be joining the publisherto read their work. A limited number of Raw Dog Screaming Press books will be available for purchase.

Public parking is available near the MAC in the parking garage at the corner of Pleasant and Chestnut Streets and at the city lot behind 142 High Street (enter off Spruce). The MAC is accessible to individuals with special mobility requirements; schedule ahead at least two days prior to the event by calling 304-292-3325, or write to info@monartscenter.com.



Morgantown Poets is an informal not-for-profit, all-volunteer community group that meets 7-9 p.m. the third Thursday each month at the MAC, providing literary enthusiasts in north-central West Virginia the opportunity to express themselves, share their work, network and to connect up-and-coming writers with more established authors. New writers are welcome.

Join on Facebook by entering “Morgantown Poets” in the search or join the mailing list at morgantownpoets@gmail.com.

Follow us on Twitter(@MorgantownPoets) or watch videos of past events on our YouTube channel.

A winner of the World Fantasy Award and numerous Chesley Awards, Alan M. Clark has been a professional artist since the eighties. He has created covers and interior illustrations for Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale, Poppy Z. Brite, Jack Ketchum, Brian Lumley, Richard Laymon, F. Paul Wilson, Brian Keene, William F. Nolan, Tom Piccirilli, and in recent years, bizarro authors Cody Goodfellow, Cameron Pierce, Robert Devereaux, Andersen Prunty, and Bruce Taylor.

In addition to being an accomplished visual artist, Alan is a brilliant writer. His latest novel, Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim, was published last fall to much acclaim. He is also the author of Siren Promised (w/ Jeremy Robert Johnson) and Boneyard Babies, among others. Two anthologies featuring stories inspired by his artwork have also appeared. Imagination Fully Dilated Vol. II (edited by Elizabeth Engstrom) includes stories by Ramsey Campbell, Hugh B. Cave, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others.

Thank you, Alan M. Clark, for being who you are. Here’s to many more years of gorgeously surreal art and fiction.

From Jordan Krall, author of BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE APOCALYPSE DONKEYS, comes a novella in the tradition of early J. G. Ballard, later William Burroughs, and Barry Malzberg.

From Amazon: Exploring the concepts of personal and public tragedy, this is a book unlike anything Krall has written before: a collection of brief chapters in an infinite universe of physical and mental illness, urban destruction, and the cracks in society we fight to ignore.

Featuring cover art courtesy of the brilliant Matthew Revert, it’s the first in a trilogy. The next one BAD ALCHEMY will be a Kindle book and the next YOUR CITIES, YOUR TOMBS will be a paperback release from COPELAND VALLEY PRESS.

Get yours now for $1.99 on Amazon!

After an all-nighter banging away to break a month-long block on his novel, Alister was exhausted and fell asleep, whereupon the elusive solutions he sought presented themselves in dreams.

As he struggled to awaken, to get them down on paper and shackle them with copyright, the spontaneous, ephemeral, and independent ideas fled.

Artwork: “Of Course He Hadn’t an Inkling” copyright © 2007 Alan M. Clark.
Front page and sub-pages for shortshortshort.com, a web site devoted to the fiction of Bruce Holland Rogers.

Captions are original to this post and have nothing to do with the literary project with which the artwork first appeared.

—Alan M. Clark

Eugene, Oregon

It happened again a few weeks later and, well, I was less amused. I was ashamed and I was terrified that there was something wrong with me. I panicked. I was convinced I had dick cancer. I decided to see the doctor.
While was waiting in urgent care I picked up an issue of Time magazine. I flipped through and spotted a short article about one of my favorite writers, Harry Crews. I was excited. Harry Crews never got any attention. His books had once been hip. Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth had a satellite band she named Harry Crews. But nowadays, most of her books are out of print. Nobody knows who the hell Harry Crews was anymore. Finally, people were starting to give the old guy some recognition. Then I read the article. It said he had died on March 24th 2012. He had been dead for over month and I had not known. The anxiety I felt about being an adult bed wetter turned into tenderness and I started to cry.

Harry Crews was a southern writer and like many writers from the south, he could be so down to earth that it seemed psychotic at times. He wrote about body builders and dog fighting and men that ate cars (yes, he actually wrote about a guy that ate a car). He wrote about the pathetic and the worn out and the obsessed and the mangled.
And Crew’s was just as strange as his characters. He had a haircut like Mr T. I have seen a few videos of him being interviewed. In one of the interviews he talked about orange soda. He loved orange soda. He said he was addicted to it.

When I left the urgent care that day, I called Heather, my fiancé, and told her about Harry Crews. She didn’t care. She had never liked his books. She had figured he was already dead. All she wanted to hear about was my dick.
“It’s fine,” I told her. “I guess I just wet the bed sometimes.”
“Oh thank God.”
I drove home and bought an orange soda and I sat at my kitchen table and I drank it slowly. It wasn’t diet. It was loaded with calories. What am I doing? I thought. I’m too fat to be drinking regular orange soda. And why am I grieving this man so hard right now? I didn’t know him. Not really.
Well the answer was simple. He would not write any more books for me to love.
I went onto my computer and watched a video of him on youtube. He rambled on and on about orange soda. I loved his voice. It gave drinking orange Soda dignity and importance.

__________

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of flash fiction last week. To make it up to you, I’m offering you this super great portrait of Garrett Cook I drew, in addition to his amazing flash piece, “All About the Sheriff”.

-K. Alene

There is nothing to be known in this donut shop. But every day he comes in with his questions and his pliers and his high beaver count ten gallon hat. And he comes around and keeps on asking questions and twisting the fingers of local low-lives until everything they know comes pouring out. It’s inconsequential that it’s never what he needs. What’s he supposed to do? He’s the sheriff.

There was a time when this city was just a bare whitewashed wall that walked around with him, interposing itself between him and those he loved, in particular this one woman whose name he has forgotten, but if you ask the wall, it will tell you. You just have to know which wall to ask. And that information doesn’t come cheap.

In the beginning, she could sneak behind the wall, trick it into looking away, pole vault over it or approach him from the sides. It was just one wall and she was brave and beautiful and optimistic and used to men and their sad, secret places. Every man has them, after all. They could carry on their life and love almost as if it wasn’t there. But it was.

The first wall attracted a second wall, as walls often do. While it is hard to get around a wall that doesn’t want you getting past it, it’s twice as difficult getting around two of them. Physical contact becomes exhausting, lovemaking virtually impossible. That’s what the walls tell me at least. And I have no reason to believe they didn’t perform their tasks admirably.

Though the man who would be sheriff wasn’t getting any, the walls found time to breed and gave birth to twins. Walls grow up quickly. It was only a matter of days before the man who would be sheriff found himself in a box. The box had almost no cellphone reception, just enough to hear her pick up the phone, say his name, a name he has since forgotten and ask “is that you?” and God help the poor bastard, by the end of the week, he wasn’t sure. A week in a box that you know you’re responsible for does that to a man. Had he not known from the cellphone calls that there was a girl out there somewhere, there would have been nothing left of him.

At last, a door appeared in one wall. Was it the will of the man who would be sheriff? It’s difficult to say. What the man who would be sheriff knew was that he was grateful for it. He opened the door and walked out into a snowbound city, born during his seclusion. There was a cowboy standing in the street, face wet with tears red as a stoplight from misery.

The cowboy hugged the man who would be sheriff. He placed his cowboy hat on the man who would be sheriff’s head and a tin star on the man who would be sheriff’s chest. The cowboy turned, took a few steps, put his sixgun up to his head and blew his brains out. I meet a lot of people here in this donut shop and I haven’t met a single one that knew who this cowboy was or where he came from. There are some folks who are adamant that the cowboy doesn’t exist and others who will scream out “by the cowboy!” as an oath.

The man who would be sheriff found himself wearing a tin star and a high beaver count hat and wandering the streets of the city that grew around him during his time in the box. Petty crimes stopped at the sight of the desperate tinstarred gentleman whose loneliness was poison and whose fear turned quickly into a rain of lead that would cleanse the criminal souls of their impurities. And it wasn’t long before his loneliness and fear spread across this whole damn city.

There is nothing to be learned at this donut shop, although he comes here often enough. The criminal types that congregate here only know about crime. It’s what they do. They’re criminals after all. There is nothing that can be learned in this donut shop. I make sure of that and he could twist my fingers off and not hear a word he doesn’t already know.

I’ve seen her a couple times. Late at night when the criminals have left and the sheriff has already made his rounds. Yeah. The one he built the wall to protect himself from, the one he built the city to avoid, the one he’s still trying to find. She gets a lowfat muffin and a coffee and she tells me “don’t tell him that I came.” And I never do.

__________

Garrett Cook is the author of the Murderland Series, Archelon Ranch and Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective. Find out more about him: http://thegarrettcook.blogspot.com