Cthulhu's Reign

About the authors

Mike Allen works as the arts and culture columnist for The Roanoke Times in Roanoke, Va., where he lives with his wife Anita, a comical dog and three psychotic cats. He also writes poetry and fiction. The Philadelphia Inquirer called his verse “poetry for goths of all ages” — his poems have been reprinted in the Nebula Awards Showcase series and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year — while his horror story “The Button Bin” was a finalist for the 2008 Nebula Awards. He is the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology series Clockwork Phoenix (Norilana Books) and also editor and publisher of the poetry journal Mythic Delirium. Like every other writer in the world, he’s working on a novel.

Ken Asamatsu was born in 1956 in Sapporo, Hokkaidō. He graduated from Tōyō University to work at Kokusho Kankōkai, famous in Japan as the publisher of Lovecraft and many other works of horror and fantasy. His debut work as an author was Makyō no Gen’ei (Echoes of Ancient Cults), in 1986. He continues to be active in a wide range of activities, including writing extensively in the weird historical and horror genres. While remaining extremely interested in the Cthulhu Mythos, lately he has been concentrating on weird historicals set in the Muromachi period (1333–1573). In 2005 he was a candidate for the annual award of the Mystery Writers of Japan, Inc., in the short story genre, for his “Higashiyamadono Oniwa” (Higashiyamadono Villa Garden). He has also made considerable contribution to Japanese fiction as an anthologist, proposing a number of collections successfully published in Japan. The Lairs of the Hidden Gods series, which won high praise in the original Japanese, is now available from Kurodahan Press. http://homepage3.nifty.com/uncle-dagon/

Laird Barron raced the Iditarod three times during the early 1990s. He migrated to the Pacific Northwest in 1994 where he became a strength trainer and studied martial arts. In 2000 he began to write poetry and fiction. Barron’s work has appeared in places such as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, SciFiction, Inferno, Lovecraft Unbound! Black Wings, and The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. It has also been reprinted in numerous year’s best anthologies and nominated for multiple honors including the World Fantasy, International Horror Guild, Sturgeon, Crawford, Locus, and Shirley Jackson awards. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, was recently rereleased as a trade paperback. A second collection, Occultation, and a novel, The Croning, will also appear in 2010 and 2011. He lives in Olympia, Washington, with his wife.

Matt Cardin has a master’s degree in religious studies and writes frequently about the intersections between religion and horror. He is the author of Dark Awakenings (2009) and Divinations of the Deep (2002), the latter of which launched the New Century Macabre line of contemporary literary horror fiction for Ash- Tree Press. He is a regular reviewer for Dead Reckonings, and his work has appeared in Lovecraft Studies, The Thomas Ligotti Reader, Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Icons of Horror and the Supernatural, The Encyclopedia of the Vampire, The HWA Presents: Dark Arts, and elsewhere.

Fred Chappell is a prominent writer of Southern regional fiction, a retired university professor, a leading poet (who was poet laureate of North Carolina between 1997 and 2002), and winner of the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He is best known to Lovecraft fans for his novel Dagon (1968) which recasts the Cthulhu Mythos in a Southern Gothic mode, and for his collection More Shapes Than One (1991), which contains several stories directly related to Lovecraft and the Mythos including one of the very few prior to this anthology to take place (or at least end) after the Old Ones have returned. His work has appeared in Weird Tales and in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He won the World Fantasy Award in 1992 for “The Somewhere Doors.”

Gregory Frost is author of the duology Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet, voted one of the best fantasy novels of the year by the American Library Association. It was also a finalist for the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 2009, and received starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. His previous novel, the historical thriller Fitcher’s Bride, was a finalist for both World Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for Best Novel. Author of fantasy, science fiction, and thrillers, he has been a finalist for every major fantasy award. Publishers Weekly proclaimed his collection Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories, “one of the best fantasy collections.” Other recent stories appear in Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow, and in The Beastly Bride, edited by Ms. Datlow and Terri Windling. He has taught writing at the Clarion, Alpha, and Odyssey workshops, and currently directs the fiction writing workshop at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA.

John R. Fultz lives in San Jose, California. His fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Black Gate, and Space and Time, as well as the comic book anthologies Zombie Tales and Cthulhu Tales. His graphic novel of epic fantasy Primordia is published by Archaia Comics (www.myspace.com/ primordiacomic). John’s literary heroes include Tanith Lee, Thomas Ligotti, Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, and William Gibson, not to mention Howard, Poe, and Shakespeare. When not writing stories, novels, or comics, he teaches English literature in the Bay Area. In a previous life he made his living as a wandering story-teller on the lost continent of Atlantis.

Jay Lake was born under an eldritch sign on a remote Pacific island. He now lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2009 novels are Green, Madness of Flowers, and Death of a Starship. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

John Langan is the author of Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (2008) and House of Windows (2009). He lives in upstate New York with his wife, son, and a pair of neurotic cats.

Richard A. Lupoff is the author of more than fifty books as well as uncounted short stories, screenplays, essays and reviews. His work spans a wide variety of fields including fantasy, horror, mystery, mainstream, and science fiction. His most recent novel is The Emerald Cat Killer. Recent collections include the trilogy Terrors, Visions, and Dreams, as well as Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix and Killer’s Dozen. He first encountered a story by H. P. Lovecraft in a paperback anthology that he smuggled into church and hid in a hymnal. He has been fascinated by Lovecraft and his works ever since, and is the author of Marblehead: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft, as well as many shorter contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Will Murray is the author of over fifty pseudonymous novels and a lifelong Lovecraftian. He has been writing about HPL since the 1980s, chiefly in legendary journals such as Crypt of Cthulhu, Lovecraft Studies and Nyctalops. He was one of the three founders of Friends of H. P. Lovecraft, which was organized to place the memorial plaque on the grounds of the John Hay Library on the centennial of Lovecraft’s birth in 1990. As a contributor to numerous anthologies, Murray’s Mythos stories have appeared in The Cthulhu Cycle, Disciples of Cthulhu II, The Yig Cycle, The Shub-Niggurath Cycle, Miskatonic University, Weird Trails, and the forthcoming Cthulhu 2012. He periodically threatens to write more.

Brian Stableford has two further Cthulthu Mythos stories due for publication in 2010: the short novel The Womb of Time and the novella The Legacy of Erich Zann, which will make up a book published by Perilous Press. His other recent novels include Prelude to Eternity and Alien Abduction: The Wiltshire. He is continuing to issue a series of translations of classic French scientific romances from Black Coat Press, including five volumes of the work of Maurice Renard and five volumes of J. H, Rosny the Elder, due in 2010.

Ian Watson’s most recent collection of bizarre tales, co-written with Italian surrealist Roberto Quaglia, The Beloved of My Beloved (NewCon Press, UK, 2009), may be the only full- length genre fiction work by two authors with different mother tongues, the product of much travel and wine- fueled discussion in Hungary, Romania, Spain, England, and Italy, including Genoa where “The Walker in the Cemetery” is set. The UK’s Immanion Press recently rereleased Ian’s earlier novels Whores of Babylon and The Gardens of Delight in revised editions, and his Balkan chess fantasy Queenmagic, Kingmagic, which was perfect first time round, says he. Ian lives in a tiny Middle English village, where black tulips waft over his black cat’s grave, at least in the spring, and his website is www.ianwatson.info.

Don Webb has written books on the Greek Magical Papyri, computer security, and even a poetry collection. A four-time loser (nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, International Horror Critics Award, Rhysling Award, and Hugo Fan Writing), he teaches English in a rural Texas reform school by day and online creative writing classes for UCLA by night. He is said to be working on a book of magic derived from the Mythos and is releasing a Kindle collection of his vampire fiction. He is generally disagreeable and funny-looking.