HAPPY
BARFDAY!

HAPPY
BARFDAY!

HAPPY
BARFDAY!




[shadow=blue,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

SHERIFF GEORGE PATTERSON

Bzzzzt. Wrong. The sheriff never told anyone why he looked one way yesterday, another way the day before that, and--woops!-- today he looks like he did the first day but not like he's going to look tomorrow.  

[shadow=red,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

Dear Mark,  I spotted a couple of odd statements in Dr. Karswell's big speech to Julia.  Ra, not Osiris, was the Egyptian sun god, and Moloch if memory served was worshipped by the Carthaginians, a people I would certainly hesitate to describe as "Hebraic."

Gothick -- Heh, this is why writers really do need editors. Regarding Osiris, this actually should read "Ra"; I was inserting several references in this passage, a number of which I ended up deleting; I realized I had two Egyptian figures and deleted the name Ra, but left his description -- and left the name of Osiris, but deleted his description! And I read over this passage about five times without catching it. Thanks -- and I'll make the appropriate alteration.

However, Moloch (a.ka. Molech or Melech), was a divinity worshipped by idolotrous Israelites. The name Moloch means "king," and in different places in the Old Testament, it is occasionally used to refer to a human ruler rather than the deity. Solomon is thought to have originally erected a statue to the god Moloch, whose trademark was the sacrifice of young children and the burning of their bodies.

That creature, the Xianges (boy, that's not like any Sumerian word I've ever come across) seems VERY Fungi from Yuggoth.  Brrrrrr!

Xianges is strictly a fabricated word; it isn't actually supposed to be a Sumerian word -- it's the thing's name in its own rightful dimension. The only existing reference to such a creature, in the context of the story (apart from Karswell's personal deduction regarding its appearance in Revelation), is supposed to be in Sumerian mythology (although this too is a complete fabrication). That's not clear in the story, I see, so I might recompose that section.

The initial appearance of the Xianges -- as well as its name -- is taken directly from a dream I had a couple of years ago, which was letter for letter the way it unfolds in the story. It was pretty creepy. The Yuggothian analogy is certainly apt.

Good catch; since this is all first-draft quality, I will be the first to admit, in the absence of a real editor, that a second eye is always valuable.

[shadow=blue,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

The Cthulhu Mythos has a very long, involved history, with more facets than the Pink Panther diamond. The original Cthulhu stories were written by H. P. Lovecraft in the early 1900s. The term "Cthulhu Mythos" was coined long after his death (1937), and is actually a misnomer in regard to the pantheon of elder beings he originated. The long and short of it is that an ancient race of beings once dominated the universe, suffered internal strife, and became dormant, widely dispersed, imprisoned, or otherwise rendered unknowable but for a few "enlightened" individuals. In DARK SHADOWS, the Leviathans were roughly parallel to some of the elder beings in the Mythos.

Over the years, many writers have contributed to the Cthulhu Mythos, including Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Lin Carter, Fred Chappell, Basil Copper, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Stephen King, Fritz Leiber, Frank Belknap Long, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, Clark Ashton Smith, Colin Wilson, and F. Paul Wilson.

Rather than derail a DARK SHADOWS board with what could amount to a monumental amount of information on Lovecraft, kith and kin, let me point you to a Cthulhu Mythos FAQ, which, if you are interested, can provide you with as much or as little information about it as you want.

http://members.tripod.com/~danharms/mythos.htm

Enjoy.  

[shadow=black,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

Poppies?

[Surrender Dorothy]

Get that sheep out of here. This is cattle country.

[shadow=black,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

All the little facts about the witches and different African ceremonial masks .... are those all true? Goodness gracious, if they are you must do a ton of research!

Heh heh; I pretty much don't write without researching. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. If I fabricate something out of thin air, I generally attempt to base it on something at least semi-factual so that it has the ring of authenticity. For example, for LABYRINTH, I looked into the kind of trees one would find in the woods of Maine (since I've never been there, I wasn't sure which local varieties would be native to the state). I checked a couple of details about Tudor houses to make sure I didn't blunder in its description. I even found a picture of a Rolls Royce Silver Seraph, just in case I needed to describe it accurately at some point.

Yes, the info about the African masks is true. No, the book by Keziah Mason is not; I made it up on the spur of the moment. However, Keziah Mason comes from the H. P. Lovecraft story Dreams in the Witch House. Arkham, MA, and Miskatonic University are also Lovecraft's creations. Since I have contributed a significant amount of short fiction to various anthologies dealing with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, I figured it would be fun to blend a little of it into DARK SHADOWS. As you probably know, the Leviathans were based (loosely and mostly unsatisfactorily) on the Cthulhu Mythos.

In the end, I just hope it ends up coming together so that ye author doesn't look like an airhead. Or if he does, a well-read airhead.

[shadow=black,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

Hmm, I appear to be Julia Hoffman. But it's all a big mistake, see; I was actually Julian Hoffman, and they made a typo and left off the "n" on my first name and now I've got this big gender confusion thing going on b-b-b-but nobody seems to understand and I got this red wig I'm supposed to wear that's terribly ugly because it clashes with my shoes and I really want to complain because I've only had these shoes for a week and the heels are falling off and really I need to be sedated.

[shadow=red,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]

Ahhh, so *that's* where you find the inspiration for all your wonderful stories .... hmmm ... interesting .... speaking of which ..... I'm having FF cravings! LOL    

~Daphne, *cracks whip* the slavedriver

Axe, and ye shall receive.



[shadow=red,left,300]--Mark[/shadow]