I found out today that I was one of the winners of the Tales Out of  Miskatonic University contest!

The contest was to write a short piece about a character reminiscing of their days at Miskatonic University, a fictional university that is mentioned in the works of horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft.

Winners of the contest will have their stories included in the Tales Out of Miskatonic University anthology (edited by William Jones, who also set up the contest). The anthology is a collection of stories that take place at MU and are written by present day writers.

I’m not getting paid for this, but I get a writing credit–and that’s fine by me, it was a flash fiction piece (a very, very short story–mine was around 330 words), so it isn’t like I wrote an epic novel. Because, now when I send out other manuscripts I can list that in my cover letter (as well as put it on the ol’ resume).

While I can’t put up the actual story online, I can say what it is about–I went with a bit of a different direction, making it more humorous and satirical. The narrator (this is a first person point of view) talks about being awarded a track scholarship to MU and is a background character for lots of wacky stuff going on around campus.

Lots of Lovecraft stories deal with characters finding some kind of ‘forbidden knowledge’ or science gone wrong or beings from other dimensions. My narrator isn’t directly involved in any of that, but his (ever changing) roommates are.

Think Death Star construction workers. Something like that.

I don’t know yet when Tales Out of Miskatonic University will be released, but I’ll do a post once I find out. And better still, I think it might be available at bookstores.

I’m excited!

Mirrored from Daniel J. Hogan. If something doesn't look right or show up, view the original blog post. Feel free to comment here or on the original post

I came home from work, laid back in my recliner and started reading a selection from High Seas Cthulhu (The Idol in His Hand by Darrell Schweitzer) I was out cold minutes later. I guess I was tired (not the fault of the story I was reading, which I was enjoying a lot - it had pirates!). I have talked to my doctor about this: my coming home from work and being able to just pass out for over an hour almost at will. He said get more sleep at night - and NOT to take naps, no matter how much I wanted to because doing so throws off my sleep cycle even more.

The other problem is, other than losing an hour of sacred free time (which I did tonight), I have a hard time fully waking up after these naps. I'm still a bit groggy. And I tend to have weirder dreams too, dunno why. I've started doing my best to keep a dream journal as of late (both nap and real sleep) and after reading over some of these again it is rather...yikes.

At least I got disc two of Battlestar Galactica Season 2.5 from Netflix today. I'll get disc 3 soon - but Season 3 doesn't come out on DVD until the middle of March! What's a boy to do?

I also came up with a clever idea to solve my "wishing I had just paid the $12 to re-name my old LJ account" problem. I'll go into eyriblog, copy the posts I want and post them here with the same date. Yeah it'll take some work, but it'll solve many problems. And I save $12!

Writer/editor William Jones is running a contest over on his blog. He's working on another H.P. Lovecraft inspired anthology, this one dealing with Lovecraft's made up Miskatonic University, and is asking readers to submit comments as if they had been a student at good ol' MU. William is going to pick up to five that he feels fit the bill the best and print them in the book - and you get a free copy of the book as well.

Always one for a contest, I gave it a shot. I decided to just do something quick and funny - taking the persona of someone who went to MU on a track scholarship and never really knew  exactly what was going on (a clueless jock I guess).

I'm new to the Lovecraft Mythos, but I've enjoyed everything I've read so far and I'm happy for a chance to be included in a collection of Mythos stories. As William says "...here is an easy way to get into print." William and I were on the Influences of H.P. Lovecraft panel at ConClave this past October. He'll forget more about H.P. than I'll ever know, but I had fun - and I actually did a decent job for it being my first panel. I had more say in the people who had actually been influenced, and myself being influenced by them (trickle down influence, if you will) - such as Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and the Evil Dead movies.

So wish me luck - and let me know what you think of my entry. I may do another one now that I realize William is keeping this open for awhile. He said we can submit as many as we want, but he'll only take one.

I like my premise for the story: someone  who is at the university, but isn't involved in the typical weird going ons - someone in the background who is exposed to the weird stuff, but not directly a part of it. Kind of like the construction workers on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi.