It was a dark and stormy night.  Really it was!  There came a knocking at my door and who do you think was there, soaking wet?  The Arkham Detective!  He was not packing his gun and knife!  Thank God! 
 
“Hiya, Mack,” he acknowledged stepping across the threshold ruining my carpet.

“I thought I was done with you,” I complained.

“Not on your life.  I just came off one helluva train ride, and you are going to write about it.”

“You’re crazy!”

“I’d rather be insane and alive, than sane and dead.  I need a drink.”

“No liquor in the house, will coffee do?”

“Forget it, the problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.  Sit down and start writing.  I lost my Roscoe and shiv, but you’ll do as I tell ya if you know what’s good for ya.”

The Detective is over six-foot and had at least fifty pounds on me, probably all muscle; I was too afraid to find out.  I sat down at my desk, him opposite straddling a chair with the back firmly against his chest, soggy and dripping.  He was wild-eyed, hurriedly rubbing his hands together as if struggling to find the proper words to start.

In due course, he declared, “It seems that destiny had taken a hand,” staring at the open space behind me.  “It was supposed to be a vacation for me, a first-class ticket on the Arkham Express.  A relaxing joy ride back home.  Providence has its way with me, a calling, that wherever I go, evil follows.”

First-class on the Arkham Express, as it unfolded, was once an elegant way to travel, but the Great Depression and time had taken its toll.  Of that journey, that he related, if only half-true, it would make the average individual jump off the speeding train screaming into the night.  He kept staring at me with those crazy eyes, never giving me a moment's rest.  By 2 a.m. I stopped taking dictation; I had an urgent call of nature.  When I rose he challenged, “Where are you going?”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“Sit down.”

“But I’ll wet myself,” I protested.

“I’m already wet.  Sit down and keep writing!” he bellowed.

I spent the rest of the wee hours cross-legged.  By sunup, we had completed the first draft, and he allowed me a bathroom break while he read.  It is a horror tale of unequaled comparisons.  The passengers of the Express met with such murder and mayhem that it makes “Murder on the Orient Express” pale by comparison.  The fate of the numerous victims made my skin crawl.  It made me swear off train travel for good.  Flying is definitely a safer way to travel.

I promised to put the finishing touches on the manuscript, and he promised not to wring my neck.  The clouds had parted, and the rain had stopped when he left.  At the opened door he turned my way, minus the crazy look on his kisser, smiled and said, “See ya in the funny papers, Mack.”

No spoilers here, the complete story can now be had at amazon, titled “Death on the Arkham Express.”  Check it out, if you dare! 

​       The Story.  A valuable lesson I learned years ago came from an essay by Robert Louis Stevenson. To paraphrase the great master, he once offered the advice that the three most important things when writing a book were, "the story, the story, and the story." As simple as this insight might seem it is an element that has sometimes gone astray among many of the indie authors of our time.
     "Pedestrian" is the style that we are often presented with that drags us along with the protagonist from one sequence of events to another. We are led to believe that the new wave of storytelling is the result of a tabletop game instead of a good yarn or narrative. The “pedestrian” method fundamentally fails because it does not advance with the most interesting material. Usually, with human stories, the more emotive the saga, the more people can relate and the better it will perform. The reader ultimately needs to take a journey and identify with your characters. Sometimes forward, sometimes backward, but rarely in a straight line.

     Grab your reader with the first sentence.   “This morning I put ground glass in my wife's eyes.” From Dennis Etchinson's 1979 story "The Dead Line." Gruesome? Yes, but it sure got your attention. Many years ago, while struggling with the creation of my first novel “The Cry of Cthulhu” I was fortunate to receive the same sage advice from Jim Steranko, the graphic artist, comic book writer, comic book artist, publisher and film production illustrator. Consequently, the opening in that novel became, “I am almost out of Valium, only one more pill left." It is like the opening scene of a great movie. You never forget it.

     Do you really need an introduction? Most books have an introduction. My novel, "The CRY of CTHULHU" has one. Introductions can be boring. Intros, many times, are what we skip over so we can jump right into the story. As tempting as it may be, don't go out of your way to tell us how you came to write your story. Nobody cares. So as not to be a hypocrite, I endeavored to make my introduction titled, "Warning," to be an integral part of my novel's story. It also grabs the reader’s attention like the warning label on a newly purchased product.  To drive this point home even further you can read the opening of, "The Cry of Cthulhu" . . . Here, in my blog titled 'Introduction to "The CRY of CTHULHU"

   The Arkham Detective is back!  I just recently published the second in a series of novellas about a hard boiled police detective in Arkham Massachusetts that is in charge of the Mythos Division.   A department that is mandated, by his superiors, to investigate things that go bump in the night . . . Lovecraftian things!  The series is a fun read and it was fun, for me, to write, except for the threats of force that have been put upon me.

   It all began a while back when I published the novel, “The Cry of Cthulhu.”  In that fright filled tome lurked the hideous little creatures I christened, “the Pilot Demons,” nasty pint-sized legless beings that crawled on their hands with razor sharp claws and fangs.  They were minor, albeit memorable characters that haunted a handful of pages in my book.

   Fast forward to the creation of the novelette, “Cthulhu’s Minions,” wherein I crafted a story chiefly about these diminutive life forms.  I thought they deserved their own starring roles because they were so creepy and needed more space to vent their revolting existence.   That was when the epiphany happened.  I needed a protagonist to interact/combat and stop them before they conducted one of the Cthulhu Mythos Old Ones to the back allies and streets of Arkham, likewise the entire planet.  Thus my detective, the Arkham Detective was born.  To make matters even more enjoyable and exciting I decided to place the story somewhere in the 1930’s.  A spot in time where H. P. Lovecraft and Dashiell Hammett could have possibly collaborated.  Henceforth the narrative began, through the eyes of my detective, of course.

   A problem occurred though.  It became unmanageable.  I couldn’t get my fedora and trench coat attired shamus to stop talking.  His ego is so supersized that he wanted his own series.  Looking down the barrel of his 1911, .45 caliber colt automatic I was forced create another tale about the Arkham Detective.

   Just released, due to coercion, is “The Innsmouth Look.”  The Great Depression is in full swing and his tightwad chief of police makes him take the rattletrap motor coach to Innsmouth in hopes of tracking down a murderer and kidnapper of a small child.  Upon arriving, he tries to blend in so he can locate the “perp” and soon discovers that the “fish face” population of the town are conspiring to release the Old Ones to wreak havoc on our world.

   The Arkham Detective, who I have also nicknamed, “the detective with no name,” is a hard ass and demands that he exist in nothing less than a four-part series.  So I am currently writing, under duress, the third installment in the life and times of the Arkham Detective.
​
   It is getting late and he keeps forcing me to write.  Haven’t had food or drink in days.  I am so tired.  He keeps pointing that gun at me.  Help!!! 

Back when I was involved in the preproduction of the film THE CRY OF CTHULHU I wrote a screenplay titled SHOGGOTH. The story was to take place on a fictional top secret Army base in the Mojave Desert next to a living ghost town that I called Sibley.  I wasn’t happy with the name of the town and one afternoon I was struck by an epiphany and decided that since the script dealt partially with the origins of life on our planet, why not call it “Darwin.”

Several months later while studying maps of the Mojave, that I had obtained from the Bureau of Land Management, I discovered that there was an experimental research center out there that was run by the U.S. Navy occupying over a million acres.  It was the Naval Weapons Center, the NWC.  Scrutinizing the charts further, low and behold, I learned that smack dab at the north end of the NWC property line was the town of “Darwin.”

The Elder Ones most assuredly had pointed me in the right direction.  Consequently, over the years, I was able to visit the NWC twice, getting permission to examine the many petroglyphs that lie within its borders thus obtaining valuable research for what eventually became my latest novel.

To learn more about my novel SHOGGOTH please visit Amazon.com

It is now the 37th anniversary of “The Cry of Cthulhu” film project that Tom Sullivan once said, “Was the greatest movie never made.”  Through the years I have received several emails, letters as well as messages on my Face Book site from fans that were disappointed that the motion picture was never completed.

Last year I released the novelization of “The Cry of Cthulhu” screenplay titled, “The Alchemist's Notebook.”  Now, the novel has been released and re-titled "The CRY of CTHULHU."  It is written in a style as if Lovecraft were alive in the 21st century.

The novel consists of three individual narratives that seamlessly link together a single story where when one account leaves off, the other continues leading the reader through a terrifying web of mystery, horror and apocalyptic doom.

Available at Amazon

The Necronomicon is a fictional textbook of magic that appeared in the stories of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and his followers. The ancient book was first mentioned in Lovecraft’s 1924 short story “The Hound,” written in 1922.  In H. P. Lovecraft’s fictional world it was penned by the “Mad Arab” Abdul Alhazred.  Amongst a collection of alchemic spells, the Necronomicon also contained an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them forth.

Authors such as August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith also cited the Necronomicon in their works and Lovecraft approved, believing such allusions created a background of realism to his mythology.  Today there are many readers who believe it to be a real volume of magic, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it.   Pranksters have listed it in rare book catalogs and, at one time, a student secretly placed a counterfeit card for it into Yale University’s Library card catalog.

Even though some real-life publishers have printed several books titled, “Necronomicon,” the work is fiction.  Albeit there are those that still believe in its existence.  In my novel  "The CRY of CTHULHU" (initially published under the title “The Alchemist’s Notebook”) the ancient tome plays an important role.  Alhazred’s textbook passes down through many hands, in my story, along with Doctor Dee’s English version of the work until they come into the possession of my main protagonist wherein the translation and comparison of the two volumes reveal a dark secret.

Because of my many references to the old book in my novel I have become paranoid.  Not that I dread that some tentacled thing might reach out from the eldritch pages to choke the life out of me, rather, I fear someone will knock on my door at 2 o’clock in the morning asking to borrow my copy of the Necronomicon.  May the Old Ones protect me!

Byron Craft