Chad Fifer’s “One Small, Valuable Thing”

With the Stone Skin Press Kickstarter in its climactic days, we’ll be highlighting the contributors and stories behind Shotguns v. Cthulhu, our anthology of action-packed Lovecraftiana.

Desperate alcoholics in love and living the greasy life in Davenport, Iowa target a strange old man for a robbery in Chad Fifer’s “One Small, Valuable Thing.” If only they understood that they were operating under a Lovecraftian ethos, they’d have a sense of the slam-banging catastrophe they’re about to unleash.

Chad Fifer wraps his take on the Mythos under a seamless layer of contemporary hardboiled crime story. His action sequences arrive with the force our anthology concept demands. The story plays with our awareness of its inspiration without having to underline it with a usual litany of direct references. And it finds a straight-faced modern analog to the Lovecraftian fainting spell.

Chad Fifer is one of the minds behind The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast (hppodcraft.com). Each week on the show, he and co-host Chris Lackey take a critical and irreverent look at one of Lovecraft’s stories, using atmospheric music and talented guest readers to breathe unnatural life into the work. Chad is also the author of the coming-of-age novel Children in Heat and was the resident humor columnist at criticism magazine The Simon for eight years. He co-wrote animated feature film The Chosen One with Lackey and is currently writing TV scripts for Australian animated comedy God Squad. He lives in L.A.

Larry DiTillio’s “Welcome to Cthulhuville”

With the Stone Skin Press Kickstarter in its climactic days, we’ll be highlighting the contributors and stories behind Shotguns v. Cthulhu, our anthology of action-packed Lovecraftiana.

An idyllic beach scene turns to horror as faceless, winged creatures swoop down to take Santiago’s wife and daughter. But it’s only when he awakes that the real nightmare resumes. The stars have already aligned. Santiago has been left a desperate survivor of the mythos apocalypse.  Existence on a blasted, rearranged earth has been reduced to violent struggle.

Larry DiTillio lets out all the aesthetic stops in “Welcome to Cthulhuville”. It partakes of the unhinged wildness of a Robert E. Howard mythos tale, cranking it so far past eleven that it breaks through into a gobsmacking realm of surreal, tentacled experimentalism. Necronomiconomaniacs who have been waiting for Larry to return to the eldritch fields he sowed so memorably in his Call Of Cthulhu days will thrill to this new tale even as their SAN points dribble out their ear holes.

Larry DiTillio has been a professional media writer since 1973. His script work has appeared on “Babylon 5”,“ Hypernauts”, “Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future“” “The Hitchhiker” and “Murder She Wrote.” He also writes animation and has scripted over 130 teleplays in that genre including “He-Man”,  “She-Ra, Princess of Power” “Conan the Adventurer” and “Beast Wars: Transformers”. He’s also (gasp!) a gamer and wrote the classic Call of Cthulhu Scenario “Masks of Nyarlathotep.” Philosophy of Life – To Live is to undo your belt and look for trouble.

Dennis Detwiller’s “Lithic”

With the Stone Skin Press Kickstarter in its climactic days, we’ll be highlighting the contributors and stories behind Shotguns v. Cthulhu, our anthology of action-packed Lovecraftiana.

In Dennis Detwiller’s “Lithic”, a young man retreats to his Vermont home still aching from a bad break-up. What he finds there is not recovery, or solace, but an ancient presence up on Indian Hill.

Dennis Detwiller’s stream of shattered consciousness draws us into the narrator’s  disconnected fugue state for an intimate date with madness. “Lithic” proves the enduring power of the subtle scare, with a slow build, authentically drawn contemporary voice, and very selective set of Lovecraftian allusions. And then, because this is Shotguns v. Cthulhu, the mayhem.

This was the first story I received for the collection. As I read it and realized I had a home run on my hands, I knew the project was headed in the right direction.

Dennis Detwiller is a writer, artist, tabletop game designer and video game producer. His tabletop games have won major industry awards; his video games have sold millions of copies worldwide. Along with John Scott Tynes and Adam Scott Glancy he co-created DELTA GREEN, the widely acclaimed setting of modern-day Cthulhu Mythos horror and conspiracy.

Natania Barron’s “The One in the Swamp”

With the Stone Skin Press Kickstarter in its climactic days, we’ll be highlighting the contributors and stories behind Shotguns v. Cthulhu, our anthology of action-packed Lovecraftiana.

Something creeping and predatory troubles the farmers of a small town near Savannah, Lydia. Their cows are dying. A corruption infects their pastures. Luckily for them, sisters Lydia and Cassandra Sunderland have arrived from the Arizona Territory. Knowing a little too much about this sort of thing, they press their help on the reluctant locals. With Cassandra’s blazing six-shooters and Lydia’s strange, gear-tech adventures, they plunge into a trackless marsh, where an appalling discovery awaits.

For this anthology I was looking for a balance between action romps and traditionally unnerving Mythos stories with an extra dollop of movement and violence. With its gleeful sense of play and hybridized western-steampunk pedigree, Natania Barron’s “The One in the Swamp”, leans to the former. Yet when the horrors appear, they’re no mere monsters in a shooting gallery. They maintain their sense of menace and visceral nastiness.

Natania has more adventures in store for Lydia and Cassandra. This story could have easily appeared in one of Stone Skin’s The New Hero anthologies: the sisters meet every criterion of the iconic hero structure.

“I’ve always loved Westerns, from the youngest ages,” says Natania Barron. “But I always felt there was a need for more women with heavy artillery. The Sunderland sisters definitely spring from wanting to be included in those sorts of stories. Combining that with steampunk and Lovecraftian horror just was too fun to pass up.”

Natania Barron is a word tinkerer with a lifelong love of the fantastic. She has a penchant for the unusual, and has written tales of invisible soul-eating birds, giant cephalopod goddesses, gunslinger girls, and killer kudzu. Her work has appeared in Weird Tales, EscapePod, Steampunk Tales, Crossed Genres, Bull Spec, and various anthologies. Natania’s first novel, Pilgrim of the Sky, is due in December of 2011. When not venturing in imagined worlds, she can be found in North Carolina, where she lives with her family. Her website is http://www.nataniabarron.com.