February 2008 Archives

Lovecraft invented a river named the Miskatonic. "Miskatonic" is the code name for my novel. I plan to reuse a lot of bits and pieces from various Lovecraft stories. In my youth, I read a great many of Lovecraft's stories, but my memories of them are fuzzy.

My plan is to re-read a bunch of the stories, then do a close reading of a half dozen of them. I hope to take those stories apart, and understand how Lovecraft made them. It should also spark some ideas.

Most recently, I read The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I've been going back over the text, and already found a couple of ideas for my book. I have a boy-meets-girl, boy-looses-girl, boy-sacrifices-humanity love subplot. Also, I want to do something with a small population of Fiji Islanders living in Cape Cod.

I'm working on two novels at the moment. Actually, I'm mostly working on one. I have a general intention of writing a mystery novel, but I need to do more reading in the genre. I've actually been doing more work on my just-for-fun project, a Depression-era Lovecraftian novel codenamed "Miskatonic".