The Official Site Of Author Brian Hodge

And so concludes editor Stephen Jones’ epic trilogy of anthologies spawned from H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” This project has spanned nearly 20 years, and I couldn’t be happier to be a part of its culmination, and to join the company of the authors who’ve been a part of it.

If you know Lovecraft at all, then you may know that his Innsmouth saga is one of his finest. It’s also bursting with possibilities for expanding the core tale and the mythology in general.

For my part, “The Same Deep Waters As You,” I sought to answer a mystery that neither Lovecraft nor, to my knowledge, anyone else has accounted for:

Whatever happened to the prisoners of the long-ago raids on Innsmouth? Where are they now … and why is there a sudden urgent need to communicate with them today?

This early rave review calls it “one of the best Lovecraft-inspired anthologies ever.”

And check the wonderfully pulpy cover, which looks like it hopped in a time machine from the heyday of Weird Tales magazine.

I normally default to Amazon links, but in this case — and until a mass-market edition appears — you’ll earn so much more good karma buying direct from the publisher, Fedogan & Bremer.

Just in time as an antidote to the holidays, a family even weirder than yours: Whom The Gods Would Destroy is a month from release from DarkFuse, but the e-book edition up for pre-order now at 33% off, with fulfillment coming from Amazon.

Call it 32,000 words of Carl Sagan gene-spliced with HP Lovecraft. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. The soundtrack I’m composing for it is the best music and sound design I’ve ever done, and will be available for free download by release day. It’s all coming together on this one.

This early review from the Examiner.com calls it “a strange journey into the human psyche and a reimagining of human history on a cosmic scale … This is a powerful novella … that will grow more powerful in the reader’s mind at its conclusion and almost beg for another reading.”

“We all go a little mad sometimes.” — Norman Bates

And Norman’s father of sorts, Robert Bloch, plays the posthumous host to this whopping volume acrawl with his descendants. This thing is big. The title won’t cue you in, but it’s actually another in the venerable line of “Mammoth Book of…” books. It’s big, I tell you.

My chunk of it is “Let My Smile Be Your Umbrella,” inspired by the peculiarly American cult of 24/7 positivity, in which feeling glum is regarded as a personal and moral failing. I find something creepy about people who are so relentlessly upbeat that they wear this like a suit of armor. You just know something’s going to blow eventually.

So I carried this pathology to its logical extremes.

Apparently, while the UK edition is out, the US print edition won’t hit the shelves until next March. Kindle, though, is good to go anywhere.

Here’s a thought: why not count down to everybody’s favorite October holiday with a seasonal story per day? Just to get into the Halloween spirit early and all…

Say, with this freshly minted anthology edited by Paula Guran, and brimming with lots of people I’m honored to share pages with: John Shirley, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Nancy Kilpatrick, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem, and many more.

For my part, I always wanted to write about (a) Halloween, and (b) scarecrow lore, and have finally combined both with ruthless efficiency into a single piece called “We, the Fortunate Bereaved.”

This book could use a little extra love, too, if you have it to spare. Amazon messed up the initial listing, effectively hobbling it at the gate for a time.

And the cluster of new releases begins.

Fearie Tales is the next book from the editor / publisher tag team of Stephen Jones and Jo Fletcher, who were behind 2011′s A Book Of Horrors, if you recall my novelette “Roots and All.” This time the directive … well, given the title and the subtitle, you kind of know what’s up.

For my part, I reworked the 19th century menagerie of alleged naughty children from Shock-headed Peter, which may have been history’s first Scared Straight program, German style. For more on that, here’s a quickie interview I did for fellow contributor Angela Slatter.

For now Fearie Tales is a U.K. release, including Kindle, but I believe that, as with A Book Of Horrors, a U.S. release will come later.

So you work and work and work, and then, when you get the publishing dates, it looks like everything’s clustering all at once. Here’s a release schedule that lines it all up as I understand matters right now.

And if the calendar ends without every event coming to pass, it’s no apocalypse … just more to look forward to in 2014.

• “Eternal, Ever Since Wednesday” [soon]

In Better Weird, edited by Paul F. Olson. Remember when you were a kid and wanted a snow day to never end? Yeah, that, for this tribute anthology to the late, lamented editor, publisher, and writer David B. Silva. “Soon” … yes, that’s really the official estimate. (CD Publications)

• “We, the Fortunate Bereaved” [September]

In Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre, edited by Paula Guran. I always wanted to do a story about (a) Halloween, and (b) scarecrow mythos. And finally have, combining them with ruthless efficiency into a single story. (Prime Books)

• “Let My Smile Be Your Umbrella” [October]

In The Mammoth Book of Psycho-Mania, edited by Stephen Jones. Tales of rampant craziness … which, for me, prompted an exploration into the dark side of relentless positivity. (Robinson – UK, Running Press – US)

• “The Same Deep Waters As You” [October]

In Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones. Final volume of Jones’ long-running trilogy based on H. P. Lovecraft’s Innsmouth saga. My novella emerged from considering the fate of the longest-held enemy combatants in U.S. history. (Fedogan & Bremer)

• “Anything to Me Is Sweeter, Than to Cross Shock-headed Peter” [October]

In Fearie Tales: Stories of the Grimm And Gruesome, edited by Stephen Jones. From the same editorial team behind 2011′s anthology-to-beat, A Book of Horrors. This time we’re all drawing inspiration from fairy tales in their more archaic form, which were much more vicious than their sanitized latter-day versions. (Quercus / Jo Fletcher Books)

• Whom The Gods Would Destroy [December]

Heavyweight standalone novella. I’ve done a lot of work featuring screwed-up families. This plunge into astronomy, off-world intelligence, and sociopathy features what is probably the most screwed-up family of them all. I’m even working up an original soundtrack for this one, which will be available for free download. (DarkFuse)

• The Weight Of The Dead [late 2013]

Standalone novella of crime, punishment, and sanctioned predation in a close-knit society decades after a solar outburst has fried the world’s electronics. (CD Publications)

• Dark Advent [late 2013]

Big, beautiful hardcover of my early post-apocalyptic novel, freshly tweaked and polished. (CD Publications)