Monstrous Aftermath: Stories in the Lovecraftian Tradition

Cover art and interior illustrations by Matthew Jaffe.

For decades, W. H. Pugmire has been one of the foremost exponents of Lovecraftian fiction. In an array of works ranging from exquisitely crafted sonnets to delicately perfumed prose-poems to richly textured novellas, Pugmire has channeled the work of H. P. Lovecraft with a sensitivity and penetration that few have equaled. This new collection displays Pugmire’s many strengths as a writer. Here we have stories inspired not only by Lovecraft but by Oscar Wilde and Robert W. Chambers. Many of them are set in the Sesqua Valley, that magical realm in the Pacific Northwest that Pugmire has devised as a parallel to the constellation of New England towns — Arkham, Innsmouth, Dunwich, and others — that Lovecraft fashioned in his tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.

The capstone to the collection is a substantially revised version of Pugmire’s classic prose rendering of Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle. This work, Some Unknown Gulf of Night, exhibits the full range of Pugmire’s imagination — an imagination triggered by literature and infused with the quintessence of his own aesthetic sensibility. As a bonus, Lovecraft’s poem is included so that readers can appreciate Pugmire’s wondrous transmutation of verse into prose that is scarcely less poetic than the original.

Contents:

• Within Your Unholy Pit of Shoggoths
• Your Weighing of My Heart
• The Tomb of Oscar Wilde
• These Harpies of Carcosa
• An Ecstasy of Fear
• Darkness Dancing in Your Eyes
• Beyond the Wakeful Senses
• Ye Unkempt Thing
• Half Lost in Shadow
• Circular Bone
• Jester of Yellow Day
• This Splendor of the Goat
• Monstrous Aftermath
• An Element of Nightmare
• Some Unknown Gulf of Night
• Fungi from Yuggoth, by H. P. Lovecraft
• Acknowledgments