It is my honor and pleasure to announce Stay Strange Publishing‘s first book, releasing on 8/19/19. Stay Strange has long been renowned for its contributions to outsider music and culture, helping to keep the sleepy border town of San Diego from slipping into absolute torpor. Now, Sam Lopez, Stay Strange‘s impresario, has joined with Patrick Loveland and me to add textual bizarreries to its assault on normalcy.
You’ve got a few ways to preorder this collection. The coolest way is through Stay Strange’s Bandcamp page, where you’ll get the physical book and a complimentary poster reproducing the vertiginous cover art, shipped free within the continental USA. You can also purchase print and ebook versions from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Here’s an important note: the printed version includes illustrations, and that is but one more reason to bring one into your happy home.
I also plan to have some copies at NecronomiCon, so you’ll have an opportunity to look one over if you’re attending.
I am proud to be playing a key role in this great new venture, and I am proud to edit this collection spotlighting Patrick’s time- dimension-, and genre-spanning work.
I was invited to join the hosts of the Miskatonic University Podcast again, this time to talk about many of the things I have been up to recently. We spend some time talking about my recently released Pulp Cthulhu campaign, A Cold Fire Within. Then we discuss the Kingsport issues of The Arkham Gazette and how my trip to Marblehead provided inspiration for a new NPC that Keepers can drop into their game. After that, we talk a little more about my part in An Inner Darkness from Golden Goblin Press, a scenario anthology that sheds light on society’s ills of the 1920s. That segues nicely into my first announcement of the episode: “A Dread Gift of Flame,” a fundraiser in conjunction with Stygian Fox Publishing in support of the trans community. And then I make another announcement: I’m working as an editor with a new imprint, Stay Strange Publishing.
For those who didn’t catch it on social media, I was the author interview on sexygrammar.com in November. This was a great opportunity to talk about what I do and how I work for a general audience, the majority of whom have never played a table-top role-playing game. Each month, the wonderful writer and teacher Kristy Lin Billuni features an interview on her website. I chatted with the Sexy Grammarian about my process, why I’ve chosen role-playing games as my primary form of expression, and what I’m looking at doing next. I’ve been laying the groundwork for that personal project and hope to be able to devote more attention to it soon.
I’ve had a busy couple of freelancing years and rarely seem to take the time to talk about what’s keeping me busy outside of some scattershot mentions on social media. Let’s rectify that a bit.
Kickstarter for Fear’s Sharp Little Needles
As I write, Stygian Fox Publishing’s Kickstarter for Fear’s Sharp Little Needles is underway, ending on March 1st. Recommended for mature audiences, the book is a collection of more than twenty modern-day micro-scenarios for Call of Cthulhu. They’re intended for Keepers to easily pick up and run in one session. The publisher’s previous CoC book, The Things We Leave Behind, has been very well received, and this Kickstarter is far past its initial goal, with more stretch goals waiting to be unlocked (including a PDF fiction anthology for backers). As an author involved in this, I’m in great and varied company. “Waiting To Be Born” is by far the shortest scenario I’ve written (by about a third), which was an interesting challenge.
Other Writing
On the opposite end of the length spectrum, I recently turned in a fifty-thousand-word first draft to a publisher. This, then, is by far the longest thing I’ve written (albeit a campaign of six linked scenarios rather than a single one). The word count provided its own interesting challenge, and I suppose, no matter the length allowed, it never seems quite enough. My outlined research notes alone came to about twenty thousand words. Of course, few of those words directly made it into the draft. Nonetheless, being able to refer to that (thankfully searchable) outline was a great benefit. Even if something I gleaned from a fictional or nonfictional source didn’t make it directly into the campaign, it all provided a foundation, even in its absence or allusion.
I fell in love again with outlining my research notes while working on an article for the upcoming Kingsport issue of The Arkham Gazette earlier this year, using nested bullet points to organize the information. While that article is only eleven thousand words currently, I dived deep into the source material, W. H. Pugmire’s tale “The Fungal Stain” and the many HPL and REH stories that inspired it. Following are a couple of examples pulled from that outline.
The fungal avatar
First appears to narrator when he reads The People of the Monolith in bookshop
Possibly his first time doing so in Kingsport, since he is visiting
Later can’t recall if he read it aloud
He sometimes does read poetry aloud
Likes to feel the words on his lips
Her presence
Face “seems all wrong, more bestial than human”
The way she lifts her curious mouth to “drink in the evening air” seems unnatural
Tall? Must bend to kiss accordionist and narrator
Unsettling
Beguiling
Narrator fancies he can sense her bestial appetite
The narrator is able to run when she kisses the accordionist a second time
Touches narrator’s hand when taking The People of the Monolith
Hums an odd song
Issues as mist from her unmoving mouth
The thickening fog meets and mingles with her exhalation
Beguiling
Draws listener to her with “almost unconscious motion”
Listener creeps toward her slowly
May not be sexual (narrator considers women an “alien race”)
Black Stone
The Black Stone is composed of a dully gleaming black stone, whose unmarred surface creates an illusion of semi-transparency
Characters inscribed on Black Stone
Completely blotted out up to ten feet from the base
Narrator climbs up and discovers the rest are more or less defaced
Natural stone seat near Black Stone
Narrator leans back in it
Narrator believes Geoffrey must have sat in when he composed poem
Visions
Gazing at the Black Stone for any length of time causes insanity (The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia)
Those who sleep nearby are haunted in their dreams the rest of their lives
Visions usually at night, particularly witch holidays like Midsummer’s Night
What is it?
A tower of an obscured castle?
“New made I rise, a pillar of dark stone, a nascent thing on Yuggoth’s hoary sod”?
The witch in the vision
Appearance
Naked young woman
Long black hair
Riveting, eh? There were a couple of other writing projects I was involved with over the course of 2016, as well as some others pending, including some more possibilities with publishers I’ve never written for.
My Appearance on the Miskatonic University Podcast
After writing my three-part series on Lovecraft’s racism, I was invited to participate in a long-awaited special episode of theMiskatonic University Podcast., which aired on January 12, 2017. The discussion between me and Keepers Chad and Jon centered around Robert M. Price’s controversial opening remarks at NecronomiCon 2015, wherein he presented his perspective on jihadism and political correctness by drawing on Lovecraft. We attempted to provide context and analysis of the meaning of Price’s words, as well as some of their repercussions at the convention. I appreciated being asked to join in on what I hope was a valuable and interesting discussion.
Copyediting?
This has been my focus for the last few years, and I’ve written an occasional scenario or article during that time. Last year, I copyedited the first three releases for TimeWatch, Pelgrane Press’s GUMSHOE game of time-traveling agents protecting the universe from chronal disruption. I also provided assistance with part of Cthulhu Confidential, the first GUMSHOE One-2-One game. Unfortunately, I was unable to fit the entirety of that book into my schedule. As you might surmise, my focus flipped over to writing at the beginning of 2016. There are many reasons for this change, but a crucial one is simply time. As with many freelancers, that work is not my only source of income. I currently work full time for the county library, which provides both stability and a career I love. I realized that maintaining steady copyediting work under those circumstances wasn’t working–not if I wanted time for anything other than work, no matter how enjoyable. So, I made the difficult decision to take an extended hiatus and focus on writing. Anyway, on to the future–it keeps coming, no matter what we do.
I did. It was my first time and everything. Yes, I’m a little tardy in summing up my experience. I was out of town for two weeks for not only Gen Con but NecronomiCon as well, and had work waiting or on its way to me when I returned. But, finally, I’m passing on a few thoughts.
So, how was it? It was quite nice, really. As a first-time attendee of such an enormous and long-running convention dedicated to gaming, I was prepared to be overwhelmed, which was indeed the right mindset. Having experienced Comic-Con International‘s staggering expansion over the last twenty years, I have developed convention survival skills that serve me well. While Gen Con isn’t as big (you don’t need to squeeze through people or perpetually stand in line), it’s still difficult to see and do everything you’d like to.
I got to reconnect with and meet a lot of people that I’ve worked with. I picked up contributor’s copies of Eternal Liesand The Esoterrorists, 2nd Edition from Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press, who released ten new books at the convention. As with all things Pelgrane, they’re beautiful books, and I’m honored to have had a hand in them as a copyeditor. Eternal Lies is Trail of Cthulhu‘s foray into the kind of globe-trotting campaign that Lovecraftian roleplaying is renowned for, and The Esoterrorists, 2nd Edition is a refinement with additional material for the game of occult conspiracies that introduced GUMSHOE’s investigative genre emulation to roleplaying. I met Mike Mason at the Chaosium booth, congratulated him on Call of Cthulhu‘s 7th edition, and told him how much my group enjoyed playtesting it. His new role as line editor hadn’t been announced yet, so I didn’t have an opportunity to congratulate him on that as well. He gave me a print copy of the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Quick-Start Rules (the updated version is now available for download). I met lots of other great people and chatted with them about their games, and I attended some instructive panels on freelancing in the industry.
Gen Con’s a game convention, but I didn’t sign up for any beforehand for a couple of reasons. Again, not having attended before, I wasn’t sure how much time I could devote to that activity. Also, I wasn’t able to log on when game registration went live, and, considering what I’d heard about how quickly games fill up, I wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t much available for me. I started hearing about Games on Demand in the days before the convention, so I knew to check that out.
I don’t have a lot of experience with playing games in convention settings, so the hard-working folks behind this have set the high standard that I will now judge all such activities by. It was an excellent opportunity to try out different games. The flexibility Games on Demand provides worked out just great, and I got to play in five fun games over the course of the convention (and if I’d wanted more, I’m sure I could have gotten into some). It could sometimes be hard to hear over all the commotion, but I’m sure players at the adjoining tables were occasionally frustrated by my own volume.
I played School Daze written and run by Tracy Barnett and Carolina Death Crawl presented by Adam Drew. I played in a Dungeon World game run by Will Hindmarch, the head writer of Eternal Lies; I also played Always/Never/Now, his cyberpunk game based on Lady Blackbird, run by Mark Causey. And I got to try out Monsterhearts, run by Anne, a game I’d been intrigued by for a while. I read it a couple of months ago, and it was definitely interesting but not necessarily something I foresaw getting a group together for, especially for a campaign. With the wrong group of players, Monsterhearts could be a disaster. That’s true of any game, but the sexually charged subject matter in this game makes the chance of blundering into the wrong group and having an uncomfortable experience seem a little higher than usual. I’m quite happy that I had a great time with it, developing more of an emotional attachment to the characters than I almost ever do, especially in such a short time. I’d love to be able to explore that particular story further.
Sex has never been a big part of my roleplaying experience. Even in games where players take more time with creating backgrounds and developing characters during play, romantic connections are rare or an afterthought. And, when I’m the GM, it’s not something I press. But thinking back on it lately, I realized there were more positive experiences with it in my history than I initially remembered, some quite recent. It was far easier for me to recall the awkward or annoying experiences, the ones that help make me trepidatious about including such material. It’s a quandry that we are generally more comfortable with roleplaying violence than we are with romance and sex. I know I’m not alone in this; it’s been a fairly frequent subject of discussion lately. Here are two recent Google Hangouts on the part sex can have in roleplaying: Indie+ Sex and Dice, with game designers discussing how it factors into design and gameplay, and Sex & RPGs, where two of the Games on Demand folks discuss how they approach sex in their games.
I also got to experience the X-Card at Games on Demand, a device for creating a safe playing space by allowing any player at any time to non-verbally indicate that the game has veered into uncomfortable material. Of the five games I played, only one didn’t utilize it (and, in that one, we had a discussion beforehand about what themes we didn’t want to include). After its introduction each time, the card sat in the center of the table, accessible but, ultimately, unused. Regardless of its inactivation, I think its presence was a positive one. Just because no one at any point saw fit to use it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t doing its job. I found it reassuring, even though there’s very little, at least in the abstract, that I am likely to object to in a game (it depends on presentation, and I’m more likely to be annoyed than outright offended). Possibly I was more reassured to know that everyone else had recourse to it, in case I or anyone else verged into uncomfortable territory. Certainly, when you’re playing a game like Monsterhearts with complete strangers, a device like the X-Card can be very welcome indeed.
So I did indeed have a great time, both productive and fun. I’m going to do my level best to get there next year. And I expect I’ll make some time for games.
Thank you so much for contacting me regarding the revision and editing work you need done. I occasionally get emails from people I’ve never interacted with before, inquiring about my services. It’s always a nice surprise to meet a prospective new client this way, and this, in itself, isn’t particularly odd or suspicious. When I saw your subject line, WRITER/EDITOR NEEDED, I thought, “Hey, that’s me!” And you certainly need help with your informative pamphlet for teens about the dangers of STDs. It looks like you’re trying to do some good work here.
I can’t wait to dive into it. I’m not sure why your sponsor has already sent a check. I haven’t really done anything yet, except exchange a few emails with you to discuss the details of this very important and completely genuine project. I’m also quite sorry to hear that, in his haste, he wrote it for some unspecified amount more than what he should have. Since I never specified an amount, either, can we really be sure he wrote it out for the wrong amount? I mean, all I’ve provided is an hourly rate and an estimate of how long the project will take. Did I mention that I haven’t actually performed any work yet? I appreciate your eagerness, but I’ll invoice you, don’t worry.
In any case, that “extra fund is needed to provide shelter and drug for less privilege kids and organize seminar about the STD/AIDS program.” I’m not sure about that. I hope you mean “medicine” rather than “drug.” I mean, I have my doubts about the whole “drug war” thing, but I don’t want to be involved in anything nefarious. Anyway, the simplest solution would be to cancel the check, all of which is overpayment at this point, after all. I’ll happily mail it back to you or shred it. But if you’d rather I deposit the check and then let you know I’ve done so, I suppose that’s reasonable enough. Then you’ll let me know where to send the excess amount (don’t forget to also let me know what that excess amount is). Again, that all seems needlessly complicated, and I’d hate for anything to go horribly, horribly wrong somewhere in the transaction. I hate to think of those kids not getting the shelter, unspecified pharmaceuticals, and informative seminars they need (be sure to distribute that pamphlet to them as soon as I’ve finished it for you).
Sincerely,
Christopher Smith Adair
So, it’ll come as no surprise to anyone who waded through the above that this is all a scam, a phishing attempt targeting writers and editors. I wasn’t aware such a particular variation existed until earlier this morning. Nanci Hamilton writes about her own experiences with this type of fraud here: http://www.hamiltonpdx.com/blogs/index.php/email-scam-detailed. The emails she received are quite similar to the ones I did. Mine were less elaborate and didn’t provide any Youtube links. Either the person or persons involved are trying a variety of approaches or they’ve developed them over time. In any case, I’m glad I figured it out early enough. I’ve filed a complaint with the FTC, and, once the bogus check arrives, I’ll alert USPS. In the meantime, I have some actual work to do.
Two books I worked on were published recently. Finally! (Working in publishing is an exercise in patience.) Paul Carrick was one of the many great artists contributing to both books.
Paul Carrick’s cover for TALES OF THE SLEEPLESS CITY
I was a copyeditor on Tales of the Sleepless City, a collection of Call of Cthulhu scenarios from Miskatonic River Press. It’s another beautiful book from them (their production quality keeps getting better and better). Each scenario spotlights an area of New York City in the 1920s, full of great atmosphere and details to bring the cosmopolis to life. Some friends and I got to play in a couple of the scenarios (“To Awaken What Never Sleeps” and “The Fishers of Men”) at MythosCon in 2011, courtesy of MRP president Tom Lynch.
Paul Carrick’s nightmarish painting from “This Village Was Made for Us”
I wrote a scenario, “This Village Was Made for Us,” and some scenario seeds for Atomic-Age Cthulhu from Chaosium. This Call of Cthulhu collection takes place during the 1950s, a previously neglected era for the game. It also provides resources to create characters and run games during the period. My scenario takes place in one of the communities established to support the nuclear industry, a surreal and oppressive environment for an investigation. I recently received my copy, and I look forward to reading the rest of the scenarios. Brian Sammons put it together, and it was great working with him again. I made my first RPG submission pitch to Brian back in 2002, for Strange Aeons II.
It is my honor and pleasure to announce Stay Strange Publishing‘s first book, releasing on 8/19/19. Stay Strange has long been renowned for its contributions to outsider music and culture, helping to keep the sleepy border town of San Diego from slipping into absolute torpor. Now, Sam Lopez, Stay Strange‘s impresario, has joined with Patrick Loveland and me to add textual bizarreries to its assault on normalcy.
Christopher Smith Adair 