We are pleased to announce that “Some Ghouls Wander by Mistake”, a Strange-Fiction Horror Action Lovecraftian Gothic Steampunk Art Noir Dark Comedy, is now in print.

It is available available for presale (shipping on or around November 15th) at sgwbm.com, where you will also find a 21-page free preview available on the site.

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Tonight: Seattle WA

Abney Park

September 26th, 9:00pm at HEAVEN
172 S. Washington Street, Seattle, 98104
phone 206-622-1863 | 21 and over | Tickets $13

The Sepiachord Crew WILL BE THERE! At a TABLE! With FREE STUFF!!!

This Weekend:

Eric Adams, Timothy Lantz, and Joanna Estep will all be at the Baltimore Comicon – a wonderful collection of art noir and steampunk artists in one place. If you live in or around Baltimore you should not miss this event.

Timothy Lantz, aka “Archeon” will be there to sell and sign copies of his amazing artwork, as well as his Archeon Tarot.

Eric Adams will be signing and selling his newest issue in the Lackluster World Saga, as well as his collaborative project with Joanna Estep “Reflection”.

Joanna Estep will have copies of “Roadsong” on hand as well as oodles of her amazing artwork. She will likely also be doing custom drawings and signatures.

above: Reflection by Eric Adams and Joanna Estep

Out this Week:

Bethalynne Bajema’s “Sepia” a collection of beautiful poetry, reflection, and prose set atop a collection of wonderous artwork, is now available for presale. Copies to be shipped in mid-October.

Above: Thumbnails from “some Ghouls Wander by Mistake”

“Some Ghouls Wander by Mistake” by Myke Amend is now available for presale, shipping in mid-November. Included are pages of horrid gags, pranks and jokes, set atop a backdrop of horror and lovecraftian strange fiction story, bound together with strange art-noir comic stylings. If you have ever been offended by anything, you probably should not read a single page of it; Otherwise, please take some time to read the 20 page free preview available at SomeGhoulsWanderbyMistake.com

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Myke Amend grew up in a sleepy little town called Cincinnati, Ohio, a place not far from Earth, nestled at the outer edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

Since long before his anticipated arrival, he has spent many aeons painting, drawing, engraving, and dreaming the death of mankind and the end of all life was we know it —and dreaming the days gone by (He also designs handbills and aethernet ‘sites’ for the evil corporate faces of the mysterious Elder gods).

In a time heavily influenced by hotel heiresses, boy bands, game shows, reality TV, and people who wrestle each other for spheroids, he has been influenced greatly by Earth ages present and past — longing for a return to those days where human society turned its ugly head towards more meaningful things such as science and invention, exploration, literature, and the arts.

Out of this comes a love for anachronistic art mediums, styles, and concepts—mixing them with modern materials, themes, or subject matter, and twisting them into horrid, the surreal, or the bizarre for reasons most humans are incapable of fathoming, even in their most horrid nightmares.

His style reflects a love for strange fiction and tales of the weird, ancient futuristic relics from a Victorian era aside our own.

Myke is believed to reside in the future and the past, somewhere on the Northern American content, lurking within the mists or swimming in the surrounding shadows, as the driving force behind approaching storms, or in the darkest corners of our mortal minds.

We are unsure of how or why these artifacts, painted, carved, or forged by Myke Amend, have fallen into our hands, but we are proud the share them here.

below: “The Wait” (painting) and “Hope: the Light at the End” (painting)

All of these artworks are available through the Miskatonic Archive Electric Store.
Many are also available at www.mykeamend.com

above: “Heptameron” (digital painting) and “Awake” (engraving)

All images within this post are copyright © 2008 Myke Amend, and used with permission by this site.

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(1921) H. P. Lovecraft

I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place, and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But despite all I have done, it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.

That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d’Auseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was within a half-hour’s walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by any one who had been there. I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil.

The Rue d’Auseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighboring factories shut out the sun perpetually. The river was also odorous with evil stenches which I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may some day help me to find it, since I should recognize them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow cobbled streets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the Rue d’Auseil was reached. (more…)

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(1894) H. G. Wells

“It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm once more.

I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by the help of a crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the withered hand gave the newcomer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire.

“I said—it’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered hand, when the coughing had ceased for a while.

“It’s my own choosing,” I answered.

The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment, and sidewise, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again. (more…)

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(1895) Arthur Conan Doyle

Chapter One

March 24. The spring is fairly with us now. Outside my laboratory window the great chestnut-tree is all covered with the big, glutinous, gummy buds, some of which have already begun to break into little green shuttlecocks. As you walk down the lanes you are conscious of the rich, silent forces of nature working all around you. The wet earth smells fruitful and luscious. Green shoots are peeping out everywhere. The twigs are stiff with their sap; and the moist, heavy English air is laden with a faintly resinous perfume. Buds in the hedges, lambs beneath them– everywhere the work of reproduction going forward!

I can see it without, and I can feel it within. We also have our spring when the little arterioles dilate, the lymph flows in a brisker stream, the glands work harder, winnowing and straining. Every year nature readjusts the whole machine. I can feel the ferment in my blood at this very moment, and as the cool sunshine pours through my window I could dance about in it like a gnat. So I should, only that Charles Sadler would rush upstairs to know what was the matter. Besides, I must remember that I am Professor Gilroy. An old professor may afford to be natural, but when fortune has given one of the first chairs in the university to a man of four-and-thirty he must try and act the part consistently. (more…)

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(1907) Algernon Blackwood

Chapter One

After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sumpfe, meaning marshes.

In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.

Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence. (more…)

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(1928) H. P. Lovecraft as published April 1929 in “Weird Tales”

The Dunwich Horror

Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras – dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies – may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition – but they were there before. They are transcripts, types – the archtypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body – or without the body, they would have been the same… That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual – that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy – are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence.

- Charles Lamb: Witches and Other Night-Fears (more…)

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