OPALESCENT THING

OPALESCENT THING
"It resembled nothing so much as a star-shaped blob of transparent jelly that shimmered and changed color like an opal. It appeared to be some lower form of animal, one-celled, not large, only about a foot in circumference when it stretched those feelers out to full length. It oozed along over the sand like a snail, groping its way with those star-points—and it hummed!"

"It was nauseating to watch, and yet beautiful, too, with all those iridescent colors gleaming against that setting of dead-black stone."

"Instead, I took off my flying-helmet and tossed the goggles directly in the path of the creature. It did not pause or turn aside, but merely reached out one of those sickening feelers and brushed the goggles very lightly. “And they turned to stone!"

"It took me about three days to trap the thing, although it gave me no more actual resistance, of course, than a larger snail."

"He had prodded this jelly-like Thing with his automatic, and it had turned (him—and everything in contact with him —into shiny dark stone."

"I saw horror—a jelly-like, opalescent thing like a five-pointed star. It pulsed and quivered for an instant, and the room fairly rocked to the unmuffled sound of that vibrant humming."
Mary Elizabeth Counselman, The Black Stone Statue

Read Scott's essay about The Black Stone Statue here

LIZARD MAN

LIZARD MAN

"And then the openings poured forth lizard men. There were at least a hundred of them, all about four feet in height, their skins gray-green in the eerie luminescence. Their loins were wrapped in some sort of bindings that left room for the massive tails that dragged the ground behind them. They had almost no necks, and their lipless mouths extended more than an inch beyond where their noses should have been. Thier bulbous eyes stared unblinkingly as they shambled forward on massive lower legs that bent nearly double. Had they straightened those legs they would have been the height of a man."

Lewis Shiner, Lizard Men Of Los Angeles

Read Scott's essay about Lizard Men Of Los Angeles here

DUNE ROLLER

DUNE ROLLER

"It was not a pebble or a piece of chipped glass as he had supposed; instead, he fished out a small, drop-like object shaped like a marble with a tail. It was a beautiful little thing of pellucid amber color with tiny gold flecks and streaks running through it. Sunlight glanced off its smooth sides which were surprisingly free of the surface scratches that are the inevitable patina of flotsam in the sand-scoured dunes."

"'It reminds me of something, with that little tail. I know — Prince Rupert drops.'"

"It looked the same as the three small drops he had previously seen, but he saw that what he had mistaken for golden flecks inside of it was really a fine network of metallic threads which formed a web apparently imbedded a few centimeters below the thing's surface."

"'There have been some funny old stories told along these shores. I heard one myself from my grandmother when I was about twelve. About the Dune Roller that was bigger than a schooner and lived in the caves at the bottom of the lake. It came out every hundred years and rolled through the dune forest, leaving a strop of bare sand behind it where it had eaten the vegetation. They said it looked for a man, and when i found one, it would stop rolling and sink back into the lake.'"

J.C. May, Dune Roller

Read Scott's essay about Dune Roller here

OOPS! NOW the store is updated!

Hey folks! Looks like I goofed and forgot to put the "purchase button" on the Commonplace Book Deluxe Edition. It's all fixed now!

 I have a store inventory update but most importantly I have Deluxe Editions of my fully illustrated edition of The Commonplace Book! 

Each of these will come with a hand inked page from the book! 

I adjusted the zine inventory post-Necronomicon & I got a restock of books from Lethe Press so these are available again:

MONSTROUS MYTHOLOGIES 

DELUXE EDITION

• Hand signed.
• Hand numbered.
• Includes an original drawing of a monster featured in the book.
• Includes an original monster hand drawn on the inside back cover.
  
  

HARBORING MONSTERS
DELUXE EDITION

• Hand signed.
• Hand numbered.
• Includes original drawing of a monster from the book.

COSMIC TITAN

COSMIC TITAN

Nothing was distinguishable beyond a few yards, but his mind's eye could see the rest—the immense slug-like shape that extended in ponderous repose across the river valley, its head and tail spilling over the hills on either side, five miles apart. The beast was quiescent until morning—sleeping, if such things slept.

Above him lay the great black steep that rose to the summit of the monster's humped back, a mountain to be climbed.

 Near the crest of the monster's back, he stumbled and fell hands and knees on the shagreen-roughness of the skin.

 Unmistakably even in the misty dawn-light, the hills and valleys of the rugose back were changing shape, as the vast protoplasmic mass below crawled, flowed beneath its integument. 

Fingers shaking, he unhitched the light ax from his belt and began to hack with feverish industry at the monster's crusted hide. 

The scaly, weathered epidermis seemed immeasurably thick. But at last he had chopped through it, reached the softer protoplasm beneath.The slabs of flesh he had cut off were gray and unappetizing, but he knew from the studies he had helped Sutton make that the monsters, extraterrestrial though they were, were in the basic chemistry of proteins, fats and carbohydrates one with man or the amoeba, and therefore might be—food. 

The scientists had found, in the burst bodies of the Titans that had been killed by atomic bombs, the answer to the riddle of these creatures' crossing of space: great vacuoles, pockets of gas that in the living animal could be under exceedingly high pressures, and that could be expelled to drive the monster in flight like a reaction engine. Rocket propulsion, of course, was nothing new to zoology; it was developed ages before man, by the squids and by those odd degenerate relatives of the vertebrates that are called tunicates because of their gaudy cellulose-plastic armor....
Robert Abernathy, Strange Exodus

Read Scott's essay about Strange Exodus & The Rotifers here.

ROTIFER

 ROTIFER

"'Oh—nothing,' Harry turned back to his work. As if on after-thought, he explained, 'I was wondering if the rotifers could see me when I'm looking at them.'"

"Mr. Chatham laughed, a little nervously, because the strange fancies which his son sometimes voiced upset his ordered mind. Remembering the dark glistening eyes of the rotifers he had seen, however, he could recognize whence this question had stemmed."

"There was a swarm of them under the lens, and they swam lazily to and fro, their cilia beating like miniature propellers. Their dark eyes stared, wet and glistening; they drifted in the motionless water, and clung with sucker-like pseudo-feet to the tangled plant stems."

"'I won't tell you how to talk to them, because nobody ought to talk to them ever again. Because they find out more than they tell.... They know about us, now, and they hate us. They never knew before—that there was anybody but them.... So they want to kill us all.'"

"He remembered the shapes that swam and crept in the green water gardens, with whirling cilia and great, cold, glistening eyes."

Robert Abernathy, The Rotifers

Read Scott's essay about Abernathy's The Rotifers & Strange Exodus here.

THINKING-TIME-DREAM-THING

 THINKING-TIME-DREAM-THING 

"Pretty soon, entirely without volition on his part, queer, half-formed dream things would float through his mind . Like dark , polliwogs. Propelling themselves along with their tails, hinting at secrets that nobody knew, not even grown-ups. Some day he would be able to catch one, quickly, before it wriggled off into the inner hidden chamber where They had a nest and, then , he would know."

"He had only had it for a split second but he remembered it had blind, weepy eyes and was smooth."

"'"And make a thinking-time-dream-thing hold still so's I can get it. So's I'll know. I guess that's all. Hahneeweemahneemo, O Idol of the Flies, you are free to GO!'" 

"Another—shooting itself along with its tail—its greasy sides ashine . Another—and another—and another—and then a seething whirlpool of them. There had never been so many . Spiny, pulpy, slick and eellike, some with feelers like catfish, some with white, gaping mouths and foreshortened embryo arms."

"Its nose holes went in and out, in and out, in and out, like something he had known long ago in some past, mysterious other life , and it whimpered as it came and whispered things to him."

Jane Rice, The Idol Of the Flies

Read Scott's essay about The Idol Of the Flies here!

STORIES FROM THE BORDERLANDS RETURNS! TOMORROW!

 Hey folks! I'm very excited to announce that Stories From the Borderland will be returning tomorrow. If you're unaware (it has been a while) this is a project where author Scott Nicolay chooses a forgotten but influential Weird story and writes and essay about it. I draw the monster. Author Anya Martin coordinates & edits. 

In the past we've covered A.E. Van Vogt's contribution to pop culture (Star Trek, D&D and Alien) and Joseph Payne Brennan's influence on The Blob. It's also just an amazing, fulfilling project. It's how I discovered both James Tiptree & Margaret St. Clair. Scott did a brand new translation of J.-H. Rosny's The Xipéhuz which Dim Shores published with the essay and my illustrations AND our coverage of Margaret St. Clair was featured on Weird Fiction Review. 

We had done around 20 entries and even had another set of stories lined up, then life got in the way. I was working on both Monstrous Mythologies and The Commonplace Book and Scott was working on degrees and translating Jean Ray's work. It didn't help that I stopped using Facebook, the preferred method of communication of weird fiction authors. But I had drawn the monsters from that last set of stories and posted them, not knowing if we'd ever return. BUT we have! So I'll be reposting them and you'll get to read the essays that go along with them. 

Scott's going full speed and already has the next set planned. I'm so excited to dive back into this project and so excited for you all to come along for the ride. 

COMMONPLACE BOOK & NECRONOMICON!

 

Hey everyone! Just an update to say my fully illustrated edition of H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book is out now! AND I'll be at NecronomiCon in a week signing them! I'll have these and a bunch of zines at my Seventh Church Ministries table. I'll be on 2 panels during the con both on Sunday: 

Sunday 11:00AM Weird By Any Other Name: Margaret St. Clair – Providence Ballroom, Omni Hotel, 2nd floor

Sunday 3:30PM Tales From a Dying Earth: Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique Cycle – Providence Ballroom, Omni Hotel, 2nd floor

 Due to the ongoing Covid surge and the Con's decision to not require masks, I'll only be at my table for 1hour a day. I'll post time's closer to the Con. 

CREEPER

CREEPER

"Neither men nor fence slats but rows of bowed staves or spears or...spines, all shifting and bristling in suspect motion."

"Oarfish was the only choice she lingered on—the only thing long enough—but Colleen knew this was no way an oarfish. Oarfish didn't have spikes near that high and didn't have legs at all."

"A second only or less, but in that flash she saw the lumpy globe at its north end, the two curling tusks that hung beneath it. And she saw the same silver-blue sheen she'd seen off the crust on her downstairs door."

"Not tusks then. Appendages of some kind. If the round part was the head they might be fangs."

Scott Nicolay, after

NEW BOOK PREORDERS!

I know it's been a while since I posted but it's been a wild time. For the last year or so I've been quietly working on a book. Well I can now reveal what it is and even the cover! I've been working on an illustrated edition of H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book! There are 30 full page illustrations and 11 spot illustrations and I even designed the whole thing! 

AND YOU CAN PREORDER NOW THROUGH LETHE PRESS!

For those of you that are unfamiliar, the Commonplace Book was basically Lovecraft's idea journal. There are over 200 entries, some of which are a few paragraphs but most are sentences or even phrases. It's great as fan of his work because you can see which fragments grew into full stories. You can also see which other authors inspired him. I like to view them as improv  or RPG prompts. 


This also worked out because there was a lot of Lovecraft influence in the early days of D&D. My cover was inspired by supplemental material from that time period, specifically work by Erol Otus.

Now, I've actually illustrated a bunch of creatures mentioned in the Commonplace Book on this blog. But for this project I tried to approach everything with fresh eyes. So in most cases I've completely redesigned things that I'd drawn previously and in some cases I kept the original design but redrew them. 

This has been the last year of my artistic life and it's something I'm incredibly proud of. I hope you all grab a copy and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Speaking of things I'm proud of, you can still get copies of Monstrous Mythologies at Lethe Press!