Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities now Available on Amazon, While 'The Screamer' Strikes a Chord with Writers and Reviewers

"The Screamer" story art by Tom Kristensen

Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, the widely renowned anthology of gritty Lovecraftian fiction edited by Henrik Sandbeck Harsken and published on his H. Harksen Productions press, is now available not only on Lulu, but also on Amazon.

I'm quite fond of this book and proud to be among the stellar names assembled within its Paul Carrick cover piece.  The raves for the antho have been fantastic so far (including those in HorrorWorld, She Never Slept, and Unfilmmable.com), and the specific reviews and blurbs for my story have quite frankly floored me.  I have to admit that although "The Screamer" is probably my favorite story that I've written so far (as it hews closest to my own rattling bones in terms of setting and the pseudo factual basis for the story), I was still a bit shocked and delighted that it resonated with peers and reviewers - especially the ending, which was supplied to me by Ives when I was casting about in the dark trying to figure out where this story needed to go.  She showed me The Screamer, the path opened up, and everything fell into place.  I couldn't have done it without her.

Below are a few of the extremely generous and humbling thoughts on "The Screamer" provided by an array of highly regarded - and personally respected - dark fiction writers, readers, editors, reviewers (and often a combo of all of the above):

Jeffrey Thomas said:

"'The Screamer' is one of the best modern horror stories I've read. Ever. I keep wanting to discuss it at greater length and detail, to acknowledge its remarkable construction, its superb prose voice, its volcanic build-up of power (from subtle anxiety to all-stops-pulled-out-madness), and its brilliant sense of metaphor, but I have been too distracted. Oh wait...I kinda just did, a little.
That one story is better than entire short story collections I've read by respected and (so far) better known writers. If you took all the stories in those collections and condensed them into one small mass like a collapsed star, you'd have 'The Screamer'. For real. 

I liked how characters I thought were merely placed in there for background detail (and that would have been fine) reappeared later under other... circumstances. I liked the prose voice. I liked the masterfully tuned shift in volume from 0 to 11... The beautifully balanced ending. It is one of my favorite modern horror stories. 

I wish I'd written this." 

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Matt Cardin said:

"I read 'The Screamer' today and it was a massive enjoyment. T.E. Grau's use of language, his unfolding of the cosmically apocalyptic-horrific premise, the delectable evocation of honest-to-gods dread -- all were wonderful. Hats off! The words 'the real deal' are prominent in my thoughts as I come away from Grau's depiction of a truly harrowing urban-cosmic undoing of everything." 

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Michael Marshall Smith said:

"Very, very powerful indeed. One of the best breakdown stories I've read in a long time - I love the richness of the collapse, the blurring of reality/unreality, the sense of terrible cataclysm both within and without the main character - and the language and description is suggestive of a lot more going on beneath the surface. I'm not surprised 'The Screamer' is being put up for nomination." 

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Scott Nicolay said:

"I don't manage to read much anymore, but I read a story a few days back that has stuck with me: 'The Screamer' by T.E. Grau. I'd heard it was good, and it is. Damn good. In particular, I keep going back to what Ted did with the ending. It is horrific on a cosmic scale yet elegantly understated at the same time. I expect this one to appear again in reprints, maybe The Year's Best. The Next wave of horror is in good appendages, my friends. Oh, yes it is." 

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Marc Nocerino said:

"'The Screamer' by T.E. Grau is the best story I have read all year. In fact, it tops any short story I read the year before, too! Grau masterfully weaves a tale of terror and madness with a sneaky surprise ending that I definitely did not see coming."  (Full review published by She Never Slept) 

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Brian Sammons said:

"I want to group up three authors right at the start, as there are a lot of similarities between them for me. I became aware of each of them around the same time (about a year to year and a half ago), I’ve read a quite a few things by them since then, often in the same books, and they have never disappointed me with their story telling skills. In fact, they consistently blow me away. They are Glynn Owen Barrass, Pete Rawlik, and T.E. Grau and their stories here, 'Carcosapunk', 'The Statement of Frank Elwood' and 'The Screamer' respectively. These three are the best of the bunch here. When I suggested that there were young Turks in this book, these guys are the ones I was thinking of. They have each rapidly become three of my favorite writers. All fans of Lovecraftian fiction should consider them bright shining stars that need to be carefully followed."  (Full review published by HorrorWorld)

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Julia Morgan said:

"The second wonderful story is 'The Screamer' by T. E. Grau... I spent a lot of time trying to second-guess the storyline, and failed to do so. Epically. The denouement was so much better than anything I imagined."  (Full review published by Unfilmmable)

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If you haven't already made the move, your excuses are now at an end.  Pick up your copy of Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, in which "The Screamer" rubs jaw bones and neon with a chorus of stellar writers that make up the following ToC:

“Dancer of the Dying” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
“The Neighbors Upstairs” by John Goodrich
“Carcosapunk” by Glynn Owen Barrass
“Architect Eyes” by Thomas Strømsholt
“Slou” by Robert Tangiers
“Ozeelah’s Lake” by Morten Carlsen
“The Statement of Frank Elwood” by Peter Rawlik
“In the Shadow of Bh’Yhlun” by Ian Davey
“The Screamer” by T. E. Grau
“the guilt of each … at the end…” by Joseph S. Pulver

Come ye to the city, a hive of madness and black matter.  Come ye to the city, to die utterly alone.

Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities ARC Now Available for Official Review

As of the break of this misty, warm morning, I currently have in my possession an ARC of Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, which I will send to legitimate book reviewers, review sites, genre-centric blogs, and publications, albeit after a lengthy and most likely painful vetting process that is sure to involve goatskin documents signed in blood.

To receive your PDF copy, which will systematically self-destruct upon reading the last word on the final page, please contact me at thecosmicomicon@yahoo.com.

The book itself, which contains my tale "The Screamer", is a gritty, beautiful beast, with fantastic interior art adorning stories by high level practitioners of the Eldritch Arts (listed here), housed inside a cover by Mythos Master Paul Carrick.  Put simply, your efforts will not go unrewarded.

For those who are link-blind, Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities can and should definitely be ordered here.

Thanks in advance for doing your part.

Publishing News: Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities Released Today by H. Harksen Productions, Featuring 'The Screamer' and a Cover by Paul Carrick

Cover art (c) by Paul Carrick

As of Tuesday, April 10th, you are now literally days away (depending on shipping time to whatever far flung location you call home) from consuming Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, edited by Henrik Sanbeck Harksen and published through his stellar imprint H. Harksen Productions, in the cozy comfort and relative safety of the six walls that surround you.

I've been anxiously awaiting this release for months, as I'm quite excited to share my story "The Screamer" with a wider audience.  It's the longest piece I've ever written, and was the most grueling to construct and refine.  Special thanks to my beloved Ives for the incredibly thorough editing she did on the tale, and for unlocking the ending that had been plaguing me for so long.  I wouldn't have found "The Screamer" without her.

Check back through these past two blogs (here and here) to get further information and other pretty pictures, or better yet, click your happy ass over to Lulu.com (link to Amazon coming soon) to order Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities while the first printing is still available to the gibbering masses.  The Aklonomicon recently sold out of its first run, and I can foresee the same happening for this anticipated monster.

Just as a refresher, I'll provide the table of contents below:

CONTENTS: 

“Dancer of the Dying” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
“The Neighbors Upstairs” by John Goodrich
“Carcosapunk” by Glynn Owen Barrass
“Architect Eyes” by Thomas Strømsholt
“Slou” by Robert Tangiers
“Ozeelah’s Lake” by Morten Carlsen
“The Statement of Frank Elwood” by Pete Rawlik
“In the Shadow of Bh’Yhlun” by Ian Davey
“The Screamer” by T. E. Grau
“Night Life” by Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
“the guilt of each … at the end…” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

And here is the back cover blurb, for those who aren't keen to squint at the wraparound cover art above (the next size up for the cover image nearly ate the top of my top):

What lurks in the damp recesses of urban existence? 

These new tales of weird fiction are a blend of urban horror, pulp noir and dark fantasy. Lovecraftian horrors and Cthulhu Mythos monsters have never been this gritty. 
From haunted Kingsport across the globe to shadowy Berlin and the otherworldly music of Bangalore. From kind, sexy neighbors to cyberpunk paranoia an The King in Yellow. A journalist's search with unexpected results. What really happened to Walter Gilman, and what is the origin of the witch Keziah Mason? And witness humanity fail against the forces from beyond  

From weird sounds to screams of madness. 
Entropy. Chaos. Disorder. Death.  

Beneath cities, on the outskirts of ruined, aeon-old cities and INSIDE cities. The stench, the decay, the hopelesness... it is everywhere.  

Welcome to URBAN CTHULHU: NIGHTMARE CITIES.

As mentioned in the header, the cover is by one of my personal fave Mythos artists Paul Carrick, who shows us how nightmares are made in stop motion below:



If you are a fan of Lovecraftian fiction, cosmic horror, dark urban fantasy, or just twisted shit that happens on the land paved over by human (and sometimes inhuman) hands, order Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities right friggin' now.

It's better to bring it home, than to have it find you.

Publishing News: Full Table of Contents and Cover Image Finally Revealed for 'Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities', Edited by Henrik Sandbeck Harksen for H. Harksen Productions

Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities cover by Paul Carrick

March should be a damn good month for devoted readers - and writers - of the Weird, the Cosmic, and the Lovecraftian.

Not only will it see the release of the Aklonomicon, compiled and edited by madcap talented Aklo Press founder Ivan McCann and the legendary Joseph S. Pulver, but it will also go down in barnacled annals of history as the month that saw the release of another monumental tome, titled Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, edited by Danish Lovecraftian/horror fiction writer, editor, publisher, and Cyclopean pillar Henrik Sandbeck Harksen, released via his extremely active H. Harken Productions, which has several fantastic books coming out this year, including The Eltdown Shards by Franklyn Searight and the Lovecraftian anthology Whisperers in Darkness, among others, listed here.

My personal tie between the Aklonomicon and Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities also extends to the artistic realm, as Paul Carrick - the conjurer who unleashed the cover above - also provided original artwork for and based on my two stories in the Aklonomicon.  As mentioned previously in The Cosmicomicon, I almost can't believe that my writing is now adorned, in even a small way, by Paul's art, which has been a favorite of mine since I first stumbled across the name "Cthulhu" in some tattered tome so many gibbous moons ago.  Paul is a true Lovecraftian legend, and a proud ambassador and trailblazer in the visual interpretation of things often left partially/vaguely described.  He's the terrifying Cliff's Notes of Cosmic Horror and Dark Fantasy, allowing the reader a mind-bending cheat sheet in the endeavor to visualize the unnameable, helping our feeble human minds to correlate a dangerous amount of its contents.  What would we do without magicians like him?

Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities has been flying under the radar for quite some time, as Henrik isn't one to flash his impressive literary plumage.  So, being the often overly enthusiastic fanboy of all of my esteemed colleagues, I'll do the shouting for him, by releasing the Table of Contents below, from Henrik's recent blog on the subject:

CONTENTS: 

“Dancer of the Dying” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
“The Neighbors Upstairs” by John Goodrich
“Carcosapunk” by Glynn Owen Barrass
“Architect Eyes” by Thomas Strømsholt
“Slou” by Robert Tangiers
“Ozeelah’s Lake” by Morten Carlsen
“The Statement of Frank Elwood” by Pete Rawlik
“In the Shadow of Bh’Yhlun” by Ian Davey
“The Screamer” by T. E. Grau
“Night Life” by Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
“the guilt of each … at the end…” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

As you can see, the ToC of this anthology is noticeably sparse, reflecting a devotion to showcasing larger works in the anthology format (penned by an exciting line-up of well known names, and some that are new to my eye).  This focus includes my story, "The Screamer," which is my longest piece to date, and perhaps the most personal, as it deals with the strangeness (and worse) that can fester amid the white collar, office drone high rises of west Los Angeles.  "Urban" doesn't necessarily just apply to gritty streets, blighted neighborhoods, and gangland gun battles, as a deeper horror can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places.

I'll go into a bit more detail about the story once the tome is finally released, and I once again send out a barrage of electronic smoke signals to possibly annoy and hopefully delight.  But for now, I wanted to get this glimpse of what's coming for you out into the ether, and plant a spore in your brain as we creep toward the anticipated birth of Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities.

Watch this space for the release announcement, and in the meantime, hazard an occasional look out those cold, office building windows.  You never know what could be taking place on the other side of the glass while we all face our computerized headmasters, counting down the minutes...

Publishing News: 'The Screamer' Accepted For Publication in Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities

I've had the ridiculously good fortune to be either published and/or accepted for publication in a number of stellar anthologies in 2011, and the latest is certainly no exception. 

My story "The Screamer" - a sizable tale that attempted to hobble me a number of insidious ways during the birthing process - was recently accepted for inclusion in Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, edited by devoted Danish Lovecraftian Henrik Sandbeck Harksen and published by his critically acclaimed small press H. Harksen Productions, with a tentative release date of January 2012.

While this auspicious occasion will mark the typesetting of my longest narrative to date (8,700 words), it will also count as the first time I'll be published in a language other than English (if a Danish version is released in addition to the English language version, which I'm assuming/hoping), and a Scandinavian language at that.  As a proud Teuton whose ancestors finally skittered to a stop in the Schleswig Holstein area of northern Germany (just a catapult throw from the Danish border) before bailing for the New World, I've always felt a special affinity for Denmark, where - regardless of what that mother-loving emo Hamlet said - something is rarely rotten.  Hell, for a number of mystifying and silly reasons, my dad claims to be Danish instead of German, so I could possibly be (great)grandfathered in as a full-on Dane.

 

Anyway, I'm very excited and proud to be a part of what looks to be a fantastic line-up of Cthulhoid asskickers, including several friends and antho comrades with whom I've shared a ToC or two in the past, and some new names that I'm very keen to read.  

Here's Henrik's most recent announcement regarding the dread folio:

Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities (hplmythos.com Vol. 2) Update

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post today, Vol. 2 of the much anticipated hplmythos.com Series, Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities, is scheduled for publication January 2012. I could probably publish it earlier but I want the result to be worthwhile — so I am going for the safer bet. The stories deserve the best possible design etc., and not something rushed through.
Here’s an updated Table of Contents:
CONTENTS:

• “Dancer of the Dying” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
• “The Neighbors Upstairs” by John Goodrich
• “Carcosapunk” by Glynn Owen Barrass
• “Architect Eyes” by Thomas Strømsholt
• “Slou” by Robert Tangiers
• “Ozeelah’s Lake” by Morten Carlsen
• “The Statement of Frank Elwood” by Pete Rawlik
• “In the Shadow of Bh’Yhlun” by Ian Davey
• “The Screamer” by Ted E. Grau
• “Night Life” by Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
• “the guilt of each … at the end…” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

Believe me, it’s worth the wait!

For comparison's sake, here's an announcement Henrik made back in May , when "The Screamer" was still just a barely meeping fetus, looking for a way out of the womb inside my skull:

Announcement: URBAN CTHULHU stories found

I know you have been waiting, holding your breath — close to dying — wanting to find out what stories and authors you can find in Volume 2 of my hplmythos.com Series, Urban Cthulhu: Nightmare Cities. Well, rest at ease at long last, my shadow friends on the web. The final decisions have been made, and here are the tales you will find:

CONTENTS:

• “the guilt of each… at the end…” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
• “Dancer of the Dying” by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
• “The Neighbors Upstairs” by John Goodrich
• “Carcosapunk” by Glynn Owen Barrass
• “Architect Eyes” by Thomas Strømsholt
• “Slou” by Robert Tangiers
• “Ozeelah’s Lake” by Morten Carlsen
• “The Statement of Frank Elwood” by Pete Rawlik
• “Night Life” by Henrik Sandbeck Harksen
• (I expect a couple of more confirmations, but will reserve the mentioning of those stories till I’ve heard from the authors;-))

I am really, really impressed by this collection. In all modesty (or not) I think this will truly be a fine addition to the Cthulhu Mythos & Lovecraftian publications that sprawl the world. And any interested reader will find tales that reveal a new, hitherto unexamined corner of this genre — the urban Cthulhu area. (And yes, the .com site will be updated with this information, but it will take a few days longer.)

A deeply felt thank you to all contributors.

Needless to say, I'm tickled a pleasing shade of pink about this one, and must say working with Henrik has been a breeze.  His patience and trust, allowing me the time and space to explore every labyrinthine turn, and stare down every unnatural shadow in the room, was a wonderful experience.  He's a fine one, he is.

As I creak toward a new decade of life in January, it looks like I'll have something other than bad joints and panicked feelings of mortality leering back at me.  I'll have "The Screamer," waiting in a Nightmare City, holding its breath while I blow out the candles and cloak the room in darkness once again.

Artwork (c) by Jon Foster -  http://www.jonfoster.com/#home