{"id":334,"date":"2012-07-11T15:11:26","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T15:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stoneskin.wpengine.com\/?p=334"},"modified":"2012-12-11T10:42:16","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T10:42:16","slug":"behind-the-scenes-on-shotguns-v-cthulhu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/behind-the-scenes-on-shotguns-v-cthulhu\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes on Shotguns v. Cthulhu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/NdVLvc\">Yesterday we revealed<\/a> the <em>Shotguns v. Cthulhu <\/em>Table of Contents. Today we thought we\u2019d draw back the squamous curtain and share the project brief we sent to our impressive roster of New Cthulhuvians. Here\u2019s the meat of it, shorn of the boring business stuff.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The premise: a story of H. P. Lovecraft\u2019s Cthulhu mythos which includes at least one action sequence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAction sequence\u201d could, among other things, evoke the spirit of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Robert E. Howard\u2019s two-fisted mythos tales<\/li>\n<li>the rooftop chase from <em>Shadow Over Innsmouth<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Ludlumesque technothriller meets cosmic horror<\/li>\n<li>that loopy, tommy-gun heavy <em>Call of Cthulhu<\/em> game you ran when you were thirteen<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To fulfill the promise of the title, I need at least some adventure romps in which sinewy muscle and\/or high-powered weaponry prevail against the minions of the Great Old Ones. That said, I\u2019d also like to see stories combining movement and violence with the existential despair at the heart of Lovecraft\u2019s work. There might be some room for the oddball or deconstructive takes on HPL; I\u2019m not looking for outright spoof or parody.<\/p>\n<p>Stories can be set in any period. If anything, I\u2019m resistant to pieces that revel in the 1920s and 1930s as a wellspring of the quaint and old-timey. Prehistorical, historical, contemporary, futuristic are all possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll also be skeptical of stories that include Lovecraft himself or his works as part of the fictional reality. Unless you have some stunning new take on it, the idea that HPL\u2019s work masked an awareness of actual occult forces that more or less resemble the mythos has already been thoroughly explored.<\/p>\n<p>I am in no way, shape or form looking for pastiches of Lovecraft\u2019s style. We all know how painful that can be. Write the story in a voice of your own that\u2019s appropriate to the piece.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>You will note that this is a simpler concept than<em> The New Hero<\/em>, and thus, a much briefer brief. As you&#8217;ll see when you pick up the book (which at present you can do <a href=\"http:\/\/kck.st\/Pkpvs7\">through the Kickstarter for the Stone Skin Press launch<\/a>), the writers came through with guns blazing, with exercises in clammy unease easily outnumbering the romps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday we revealed the Shotguns v. Cthulhu Table of Contents. Today we thought we\u2019d draw back the squamous curtain and share the project brief we sent to our impressive roster of New Cthulhuvians. Here\u2019s the meat of it, shorn of<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/behind-the-scenes-on-shotguns-v-cthulhu\/\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,11],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-project-briefs","tag-shotguns-v-cthulhu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stoneskinpress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}