That bad? But stay!
Bring me Miranda and young Ferdinand.
We must be fenced within a circle sure>
@BeardieWeirdie
>of strong protection ‘gainst the monster’s rise.
My spells will ring us in a field of force
like to the mystic singularity.
Dost thou see?
@AeryFaery
Indeed.
When the wind is nor’ nor’ easterly
I can tell a Hawking from a handsaw.
@BeardieWeirdie
Go then! Bring me Miranda and her hapless youth.
@StageDirections
Exit @AeryFaery, reentering with @GeekGirl and @Beachboy.
@Beachboy
Of your kindness, tell
who is this beauteous being whose sweet voice
drives from me all the horror of the storm?
@BeardieWeirdie
My daughter Miranda.
@AeryFaery
My name is Ariel.
@Geekgirl
I have a DM from sweet Sycorax!
Tomorrow morn she hopes to sail this way. The ship we’ll know
by its black sails emblazoned with a skull.
@Beachboy
You seem a geeksome maid. I wish you well
with your fair Goth.
@Geekgirl
I thank you sir. And Ariel, a sprite I long have known
is surely well deserving of your love.
@BeardieWeirdie
By all the gods, I swear I’m much inclined
to cast them forth into Cthulhu’s clutch
for wimpish ways and limping soppy words!>
@BeardieWeirdie
>But as it haps, their wayward affections
effect no change of plan. Come close, all three!
I must a small event horizon weave>
@BeardieWeirdie
>to shield us from the new apocalypse.
My daughter, thou shouldst hide thine eyes from sights
too fearful for a maid to look upon.
@Geekgirl
Nay father, thou dost
underestimate me quite. I would not miss this day
for all the teabags made in far Cathay.
@BeardieWeirdie
So be it. Ariel, prepare!
And I will summon Cthulhu from his lair!
@StageDirections
‘Tis now my turn to take the centre stage
with bold directions conjure Cthulhu’s rage.
Divers alarms are heard, and mystic chants>
@StageDirections
>And soundless now Prospero rants.
The waves upswell to rearing height
the sunless sky is black as night
and then at last the scabrous hide>
@StageDirections
>shows thru the backdraft of the sucking tide
and monstrous tentacles come writhing out
entangled with a swaying waterspout.
@StageDirections
We glimpse the giant beak, the ragged teeth
and livid goo bubbles from underneath.
Prospero’s foes are plucked from rock and shore>
@StageDirections
>and meet their end with SFX galore.
Against the background of their dying screams
wide-eyed Miranda tweets and beams>
@StageDirections
Ferdinand in fainting mode is seen
while Ariel looks a little green.
@BeardieWeirdie
Silence! I’ve had enough of rhyme
‘Tis back to blank verse just in time.
(Bugger.) Ariel, use your music fey
@StageDirections
The storm fades, and a haunting tune
stills the dark waters spread beneath the moon;
Cthulhu, sunk once more beneath the wave>
@StageDirections
>in vanished R’lyeh finds his dreaming grave
while on the shore the few survivors stand:
wizard, sprite, girl, and hapless Ferdinand.
@BeardieWeirdie
After this act, I must my pow’rs forswear
’tis customary to sink into despair
expiring haunted by the horrors past>
@BeardieWeirdie
>but frankly, guys, I really had a blast.
Minions of Cthulhu all, I wish you well!
And know we’ll party one day soon in Hell!
Dramatis Personae
“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII.
About the Authors
Mistress Nimue Brown
Nimue Brown is the author of graphic novel series Hopeless Maine, in which there are a lot of tentacles and strange creatures. She started reading Shakespeare when she was about 12, and a great deal can, verily, be blamed on this. In order to calm the madness rampaging in her head, she writes both fiction and non-fiction books, and blogs at www.druidlife.wordpress.com
Mr Michael Carroll
Michael Carroll is the author of twenty-five(ish) novels, including the acclaimed New Heroes/Super Human series of superhero novels for the Young Adult market. He currently writes Judge Dredd and DeMarco, P.I. for 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine. Other works include Jennifer Blood for Dynamite Entertainment, contributions to the Titan Books edition of John Higgins’ Razorjack graphic novel and the e-novellas Judge Dredd Year One: The Cold Light of Day and Rico Dredd: The Third Law for Abaddon Books. A former Herald of Galactus, Mike lives in Dublin, Ireland with his wife Leonia and their twin imaginary children Tesseract and Pineapple. He is over half-a-hundred years old and some days it really shows.
Visit his website at www.michaelowencarroll.com
Mr Adrian Chamberlin
Adrian Chamberlin lives in the small south Oxfordshire town of Wallingford that serves as a backdrop to the UK television series Midsomer Murders, not far from where Agatha Christie lies buried, dreaming in darkness. He is the author of the critically acclaimed supernatural thriller The Caretakers as well as numerous short stories in a variety of anthologies, mostly historical or futuristic based supernatural horror. He co-edited Read the End First, an apocalyptic anthology with Suzanne Robb (author of the acclaimed thriller Z-Boat) and edited the supernatural warfare novella collection Darker Battlefields, coming from the Exaggerated Press in summer 2016.
He is aware of the concept of “spare time” but swears it’s just a myth.
Further information can be found on his website,
www.archivesofpain.com
Mr Ian Edginton
Ian Edginton is a New York Times bestselling author and Eisner Award nominee.
He is currently writing Batman ’66 meets The Avengers (Steed and Mrs Peel, not the other ones!) for DC Comics as well as Judge Dredd, Stickleback, Helium, Kingmaker and Brass Sun for 2000AD.
Other titles include such iconic characters as Wolverine, Batman and the X-Men. He has also worked on a number of film and television properties including Star Wars, Star Trek, Aliens, Predator, Terminator, and Planet of the Apes. He has written for the videogames Hellgate: London, Dead Space, Kane and Lynch, The Evil Within and Assassin’s Creed. In addition, he has written the audio adventures Doctor Who: Shield of the Jotunn and Torchwood: Army of One.
He has adapted into graphic novels works by bestselling Young Adult novelists Robert Muchamore, Malorie Blackman and Anthony Horowitz as well as literary classics, Pride and Prejudice, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Princess of Mars and the complete canon of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels. He has also written several volumes of Holmes apocrypha, The Victorian Undead, has adapted H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds and written several sequels, Scarlet Traces, Scarlet Traces: The Great Game and Scarlet Traces: Cold War.
He lives and works in Birmingham, England.
Mr Ed Fortune
Ed F
ortune has been telling stories since he was very small and he is now too old to stop. He writes about books, table-top games and comics for Starburst Magazine and hosts a very popular podcast about genre. He also happens to be an award-winning games designer, which is nice. He has written for magazines as diverse as Time Out and The Fortean Times. He lives in Greater Manchester in a cave surrounded by bears and is powered by tea and chocolate hobnobs.
Mr Guy Haley
Previously a science fiction journalist and editor, Guy finds making up his own strange worlds even more fun than writing about those created by other people.
You can find hundreds of reviews, interviews, opinion pieces, free pieces of fiction and more on Guy’s blog at
www.guyhaley.wordpress.com
Mr Pat Kelleher
Pat Kelleher is a freelance writer. He served his time writing a wide variety of TV licensed characters, across a bewildering array of media, has several non-fiction books to his credit and a collection of children’s stories published by Bloomsbury. His No Man’s World series of pulp sci-fi novels is published by Abaddon Books, along with his Gods and Monsters e-novella, Drag Hunt. He also worked on Sniper Elite 3, the latest in the video game series from Rebellion and has short stories published by Tickety Boo Press and the award-winning Fox Spirit Books.
Mr Andrew Lane
Andrew Lane is the author of eight books in the Young Sherlock Holmes series as well as several Doctor Who related dramas for Big Finish Audio, and is currently working on a new set of adventure books with the overall title Crusoe. He has recently written Cthulhoid fiction based in the South-West of England for the anthologies Secret Invasion and Dead Letters. He studied Julius Caesar for his “O” Level English, which renders him suitably qualified to be included in this anthology.
Mr James Lovegrove
James Lovegrove is the author of more than 50 books, including The Hope, Days, Untied Kingdom, Provender Gleed, the New York Times bestselling Pantheon series, the Redlaw novels and the Dev Harmer Missions. He has produced three Sherlock Holmes novels and is working on a Holmes/Cthulhu mashup trilogy, Cthulhu Casebooks, with the first volume, The Shadwell Shadows, out in late 2016 with the follow-ups, The Miskatonic Monstrosities and The Sussex Sea-devils, due at yearly intervals after that. He has also sold well over 40 short stories and published two collections, Imagined Slights and Diversifications. He has produced a dozen short books for readers with reading difficulties, and a four-volume fantasy saga for teenagers, The Clouded World, under the pseudonym Jay Amory.
James has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Society Award and the Manchester Book Award. His short story Carry The Moon In My Pocket won the 2011 Seiun Award in Japan for Best Translated Short Story. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages, and his journalism has appeared in periodicals as diverse as Literary Review, Interzone and BBC MindGames. He reviews fiction regularly for the Financial Times. He lives with his wife, two sons, cat and tiny dog in Eastbourne, not far from the site of the “small farm upon the South Downs” to which Sherlock Holmes retired.
Mr Graham McNeill
Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill worked for over six years as a Games Developer in Games Workshop’s Design Studio before taking the plunge to become a full-time writer. Graham’s written thirty SF and Fantasy novels and comics, as well as a number of side projects that keep him busy and (mostly) out of trouble. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and his Time of Legends novel, Empire, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Graham lives and works in Los Angeles for Riot Games, and you can keep up to date with where he’ll be and what he’s working on by visiting his website, www.grahammcneill.com
Mr Jonathan Oliver
Jonathan Oliver is the author of two sword and sorcery novels, a plethora of short fiction and the twice British Fantasy Award-winning editor of The End of the Line, Magic, House of Fear, End of the Road, Dangerous Games and the forthcoming, Five Stories High. He has also twice been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and was a nominee for the Shirley Jackson Award. Star-Crossed is his first foray into explicitly Lovecraftian fiction, though a thread of the weird runs through all his fiction. He lives in Abingdon, Oxfordshire with his wife, two daughters and a cat called Fudge.
Mr John Reppion
John Reppion was born in Liverpool, England in 1978. His writing career began in 2003 when he collaborated with his wife Leah Moore on a proposal for a six issue mini-series entitled Wild Girl. The proposal was accepted and the series was published by Wildstorm in 2004/05.
Since then the duo have written many classic characters including Doctor Who (in The Whispering Gallery with artist Ben Templesmith), Sherlock Holmes (in two original mysteries for Dynamite Entertainment), and Dracula (their adaptation of which is now on several university reading lists).
John’s interests in Fortean phenomena, esoterica, folklore, philosophy, theology and horror have led to his writing articles and reviews for numerous magazines and periodicals including The Fortean Times, Strange Attractor, The Daily Grail and SteamPunk Magazine. 2008 saw the release of his first full length book 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool, published by The History Press. His Lovecraftian Liverpool tale On The Banks of the River Jordan was published in 2014 in Ghostwoods Books’ Cthulhu Lives! anthology.
Mr Josh Reynolds
Josh Reynolds is a freelance professional writer and the author of over twenty novels. Despite what you may have heard, he is not an 18th Century painter, a footballer or a comedian. He is fairly non-Euclidian, however. His works include stories in anthologies such as Atomic Age Cthulhu, World War Cthulhu, Steampunk Cthulhu and Historical Lovecraft, as well as publications such as The Lovecraft eZine.
For a full list of his published work, visit www.joshuamreynolds.wordpress.com
Mistress Jan Siegel
Jan Siegel was twenty-four when pulled out of the slush pile at Faber for the prestigious Introduction series. Faber wanted her to be a “literary” writer but she was keen to write popular fiction and has published in several genres, under several different names, with several major publishers (including Hamish Hamilton, Viking Penguin, Little Brown, Century Arrow, and Harper Collins). She prefers SF and fantasy realism and has won/been nominated for awards and received wide critical acclaim in all genres. Her fantasy is often bracketed with Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling and her SF has been compared to Stanislaw Lem. As Jemma Harvey, her excursions into romcom (more com than rom) led her to be picked by Heat magazine for their Top Ten Summer Reads. She also writes poetry, usually incorporated into her novels, and is currently involved in a major project to promote great poets.
Mr Adrian Tchaikovsky
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series as well as standalone works Guns of the Dawn and Children of Time, and numerous short stories.
Mistress Danie Ware
Danie Ware runs the social media profile of cult retailer Forbidden Planet, and has organised their signings and events calendar for more than a decade. When not at work, she remains geek and gamer, warrior Mum, outward-bound cyclist and fitness freak.
She went to an all-boys’ school (yes really), studied English Literature at UEA in Norwich, then joined a Viking re-enactment group and spent her t
wenties fighting, writing, and rolling certain multi-sided dice. At thirty, she made an attempt to grow up and didn’t like it much; at forty, she spends her time with her son, in the gym, or making up for missing the battlefield by writing epic stories about it.
Author of the Ecko series, published by Titan Books, follow Danie on Twitter @Danacea or at www.danieware.com
Mr C L Werner
Exiled to the blazing wastes of Arizona for communing with ghastly Lovecraftian abominations, C L Werner strives to infect others with the grotesque images that infest his mind. He is the author of almost thirty novels and novellas in settings ranging from Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 to the Iron Kingdoms and Wild West Exodus.
His short fiction has appeared in several anthologies, among them Rage of the Behemoth, SHARKPUNK, Kaiju Rising, A Grimoire of Eldritch Investigations, Edge of Sundown and Marching Time.
About the Artists
Mr Malcolm Barter
Spawned in 1957, Malcolm Barter studied Illustration & Design at Ipswich School of Art. He has freelanced in Publishing, Editorial & Advertising, notably illustrated Ian Livingstone’s classic Fighting Fantasy gamebook The Forest of Doom. He is also a fully qualified Horticulturalist. Now back illustrating, his recent work has included more Fighting Fantasy, having been tracked down and dragged back by French publishers in 2013. He currently resides in Suffolk with his daughter Poppy and a modest bonsai collection.
Mr Kev Crossley
After 15 years designing video games, Kev Crossley turned his hand to illustration, contributing to numerous D20 gaming books alongside work for comics including 2000AD, Mam Tor and Kiss4k. His art and writing have appeared in over twenty art books published by Quarto and Ilex among others, and he is the author and illustrator of three books of his own; Fantasy Clip Art (2006), 101 Top Tops From Professional Fantasy Painters (2011) and Character Design From The Ground Up (2014).
Kev writes and illustrates regularly for Imagine FX magazine and affiliated publications, and in 2012 he illustrated Ian Livingstone’s 30th Anniversary Fighting Fantasy title, Blood Of The Zombies. In 2015 he produced illustrations for Total Warhammer and Jonathan Green’s Alice’s Nightmare In Wonderland gamebook.