The Blog In Yellow

 Let me address the Chaugnar Faugn in the room: Lovecraft's racism. I've delved deep into the world of Lovecraft and his...issues with Blacks and Jews is appareant. In "The Rats in the Walls," the protagonist has a black cat called N. man. I'm not going to write that word out, you know what it is. During my research I found various views on Lovecraft's views. One blog was by a Jewish man who wrote of Lovecraft: "My favorite antisemite." I laughed out loud when I read it. It seems many are able to overlook or ignore his racism. So what do I think? To give you an answer, yes, Lovecraft is acting in a way we would today call racist, but what about the times he was in? Ford was rolling out the Model T for the public to consume. At the same time he was writing in his newspaper about the follies of the Jews and their plans to corrupt America. That seems to be a theme across Jewish racism at the time. There's this fear that Jews will change our society....

The biggest issue I came across while researching was the cross polleniation of the various writers. Lovecraft was a pen pal of Robert E. Howard, the author of the Conan series which incorporated similar gods such as Yag-Kosha with an eerily similar name to Yog-Sothoth. The pantheon is further befuddled by Clark Ashton Smith who added his Hyperborea (don't confuse with Robert Howard's Hyborian Age) stories. This spreading of ideas and authors causes the collection of gods and monsters to become confusing as to who belongs where and what.  Another issue is the source authors are drawing from. Every author I've read draws from Lovecraft which is to be expected as he is the orginator. But no one seems to draw from Clark Ashton Smith or Ramsay Campbell. I understand the idea is to pull from the original source but Smith, Campbell, Dereleth, Carter, Kuttner, and Bloch all bring their own twist to the formula. I've read most of their works and they seem to go out of their way...

 Two in one week?  I must be crazy. To start with any project is to find a good point to build your base upon. Mine was built on the Lovecraftian gods, which, at first, I thought would be easy. When I started this project a year ago I thought there were ten, maybe twenty gods total. That would have been the case if I had stuck with Lovecraft's original plan. Mr. Lovecraft allowed other writers to contribute to his universe which ballooned into a pantheon of nearly a hundred gods and goddesses. Even the gods can be categorized into four parts: Elder gods, Outer gods, Dream gods (the Great Ones), and the Great Old Ones.  You can probably see how this would be confusing. Why would somone name gods as Great Ones and Great Old Ones? Whatever Lovecraft's categorization may have been is somewhat redundante now as the world has taken a life of it's own. One of the things I've noticed is that very few people contribute to the Elder gods or the Dream gods. Instead, most of the ne...

 I apologize to no one since no one is watching but I had food poisoning and couldn't complete my duties. That said I look at the mountain I have to climb and realize I have no tools to help me. How will I get this blog to drum up some popularity when I'm a nobody myself. If I was Stephen King, this blog would already have a thousand hits and I'd be making money. Instead I'm John, John the beginner writer with no followers. It's scary to look at the blank page and realize you have almost nothing. It's like looking at a mountain and wondering how you will climb to the top. But you have to take that first step or you'll never start. Fear can paralyze you and you can't let that happen. It's so strange, I was brimming with confidence last night and all that seems to have disapated with my sleep. Still, I want to chronicle my journey, the one I'm still taking, through the Lovecraft Universe so I'll keep trying.

 I've been working for over a year on a new writing project. This blog will serve as two purposes.  First, it will let me loosen up on my writing skills. During the research I did for this project, I did little writing to the point that my skills have probably rusted. Best way to loosen up is to write and write I shall. The Second reason is to drum up an audience for the book. I noticed that George R. R. Martin has a blog and he discusses things about his life, interests and the stories he's writing. So, I figure I hit two birds with one stone. I'm going to try to do this at least once a week and work on doing it more as time goes on. Wish me luck. To break down what my story is about, it's about the Lovecraft universe, specifically, about a school that houses the descendants of figures from the various characters, gods and monstrosities that make up that world. I'm trying to tell what's going on without giving away too many details to spoil the work (especially...