Shakespeare Sunday: Shakespeare Week

Next week is Shakespeare Week (running from Monday 20th March to Sunday 26th March) so what better time is there to pick up a copy of Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu and dip into the myriad short stories through the next seven days?

Shakespeare Sunday: World Storytelling Day

Today is World Storytelling Day. The idea is that it is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the March equinox, on (or near) March 20th. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. 

Now, this being a written blog, I'm not continuing with the oral storytelling theme but I can alert you to some awesome storytelling that is happening within the pages of Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu. One of the master storytellers who has turned his hand to the task of seamlessly blending the Cthulhu mythos with the Bard of Stratford's celebrated plays is one C L Werner (or Clint to his friends).

Clint and I go way back, to the early days of the Black Library and Inferno! magazine, so probably almost 20 years! When I started editing short story anthologies Clint was naturally on the list of authors I was keen to work with. 

Last year he wrote a story for me for my debut editing gig SHARKPUNK, and he's back in Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu with a story entitled, Once More Unto the Breach.

The following extract comes from part way into the story, as a certain King of England is patrolling incognito among his troops when runs into a very strange stranger indeed...

The rustle of something moving through the brush snapped Henry from his thoughts. His hand sped from the glove tucked into his belt to the dagger hanging from it. His eyes struggled to pierce the darkness. Faintly he could make out a figure moving among the trees. 'Who is there?' he called out in French.

The reply was rendered in accent so barbarous that Henry had a hard time making sense of the words. 'One that would offer service to a king,' the figure answered. Beyond its brutish inflection, the voice had a repulsive quality about it, like the scraping of a snake's belly across a gravel path. Without realising it, the King found he'd drawn the dagger, clenching it tight in his fist.

'Are you Frenchman or Englishman?' Henry demanded. He knew the question was foolish, for such a loathsome voice never issued from either French or English tongue. 'Come forward and show yourself.'

The figure stepped out from the darkness. Henry was surprised to find himself looking upon a man wearing a leather hauberk and a helm of cuir boulli, his leggings tattered and stained, his boots worn and scratched. The features were rough and weathered, the face of a professional soldier. In aspect, the man was alike to the soldiers Henry had so recently spoken with. It was something less tangible that set the King uneasy, something that offended him at a level far more base and primal than reason and sense.

The soldier bowed before Henry. 'I'm only a humble man, sire, but I offer service to you.' Again, the words had that primitive intonation that made the King's ears feel unclean to hear them.

'Your bow will be called upon on the morrow,' Henry told the man. 'Or if you have no bow, then there will be work enough for your sword.' He moved to turn away from this strangely repugnant soldier when the man caught at the hem of Erpingham's cloak.

'The service I offer is worth a thousand bows, a thousand swords,' the man waved his hand towards the distant fires of the French camp. 'No arms can win against that.' A crooked smile worked across his face as he looked up into Henry's eyes. 'You need a miracle, sire.'

Henry would have laughed at that, but his humour faded when he considered that only a moment before his own thoughts had taken a similar turn. 'Are you selling miracles?' he wondered.

The strange soldier straightened. 'If you will forsake scruple and honour, there is a way to ensure your victory. How much do you want to triumph over the foe?'

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, and if you run into any squamous tentacled horrors, clobber 'em!"

Short Story Saturday: Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu

Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu features squamous takes on a host of famous Shakespeare plays, but possibly the most unusual is #Tempest by fantasy legend Jan Siegel...

@StageDirections

Massive storm, ship wrecked in rocky cove. Clouds withdraw to reveal Greek-style desert island. Enter @BeardieWeirdie and @Geekgirl.

@BeardieWeirdie

I did elucidate
how that my evil brother drove us forth
and is in his own vessel now bewrecked
by my enchanted skills. Markst thou not?

@GeekGirl

Father, I mark't. I merely wisht to scan
my twitterfeed to see if aught could holp
and if my gentle tweets could soothe their screams

@BeardieWeirdie

Doubtest thou me? Thinkst thou I would kill
these minor characters thus randomly?
Have I not pow'rs beyond that crude device?
Am I not>

@BeardieWeirdie

>a veritable Gandalf in my strength
and yet a hobbit in my kindly heart?
All shall survive. E'en my accursèd kin
my brother and his son>

@BeardieWeirdie

>a likely lad
who may yet heal this deadly fam'ly rift
when his keen gaze doth pierce thy untouched heart.

I have to say that this story in particular would transfer very well to a stage performance. Maybe something to consider for the book's launch later this year...

Gamebook Friday: Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu

When I first teased Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu on social media, coming as it did on the heels of Alice's Nightmare in Wonderland, some people immediately assumed it was another gamebook.

I soon put them right, but the idea of using the concept as the theme for a new gamebook hasn't left me. In fact, it's wormed its way inside my brain, like some wormy thing. And so, just maybe, one day, Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu will become a gamebook as well as an anthology of short stories...

Of course it wouldn't be the first time that Shakespeare has influenced my gamebook writing. If you've read my Fighting Fantasy output, maybe you will have spotted the following connections already.

Macbeth ~ Spellbreaker and Knights of Doom

The Tempest ~ Bloodbones

Hamlet ~ Night of the Necromancer

Shakespeare Week - Exit, Pursued By…?

I have been keen to have James Lovegrove contribute to an anthology of mine for some time, so I was delighted when he agreed to be a part of Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu.

His story takes its inspiration from Shakespeare's most famous stage direction, and here's an extract for you to enjoy...

I will tell you this, scribe: it is not as I have always said it was.

For nigh on twenty years now, whenever anyone asks me how I came by my injury, I have lied to them. I have rigorously maintained that the stiffness in my shoulder, the jagged scars which extend from it halfway up my neck, the chunks of missing meat, are all the gruesome handiwork of a bear. The culprit was no more uncommon a creature than that. A roaming black bear pursued me, caught me up in its claws, and tore a pound of flesh from my body with its ravening teeth.

No one queries this reply. Bears are a familiar enough sight in these parts. Bohemia’s forests are riddled with them. Few who dwell in the country’s rural areas can say they have not encountered one at some point in their lives. Most, fortunately, have lived to tell the tale, although some have not been so lucky.

At any rate, with this explanation I have been able to deflect such slings and arrows of curiosity as are loosed at me. Upon hearing it people will offer sympathy, perhaps, or wince as they contemplate the agonies I suffered. I will in turn dismiss their coos and blandishments. “Let us not make a fuss about it,” I will say, sounding brave. “It is much ado about nothing.”

Now, at last, as I lie upon what must surely be my deathbed, I wish to confess the truth. For the first and final time in my life since the terrible events of that night on the storm-tossed southern shore of this land, I, Lord Antigonus, formerly a noble of Sicilia and once close associate of and trusted advisor to her monarch King Leontes, hereby state for the record that I was not attacked by any bear.

No, it was no bear.

It was something stranger and much worse.

Shakespeare Week - Something Rotten...

I was delighted when Adrian Tchaikovsky agreed to contribute to Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu. I was even more delighted when I read his story Something Rotten, and you will be too, when the book is published later this year. Here's a brief extract:

This is not what I told Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, when he arrived with his little band of followers; the desperate adventurer who had heard the Danish royal family was failing and had come to stake his claim.

Well, he has it all now: Norway, Denmark, all of it. And perhaps he sleeps easy, believing what I told him. But he never entered Elsinore., He never saw what I saw, what nobody should have to see. It’s better that way. Let him sleep easy right up until the restless history of that castle returns from that undiscovered country.

You’ve heard the story, of course, the one I told to Fortinbras. I made it lurid and bloody enough that nobody would think to go behind it and find the far more lurid and bloody truth.

Tie-in Tuesday: Shakespeare Week - Beware the Ides of March!

Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu ties together two of the biggest franchises I have ever worked on, and I am fortunate to have some rather big names working on it with me.

The completed tales that will be appearing inside the anthology include...

• Something Rotten, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Exit, Pursued By...?, by James Lovegrove
• #Tempest, by Jan Siegel
• A Tiger's Heart, A Player's Hide, by Josh Reynolds
• Star Crossed Lovers, by Jonathan Oliver
• A Madness Most Discreet, by Michael Carroll
• Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Graham McNeill
• Once More Unto the Breach, by C L Werner
• A Reckoning, by Guy Haley

On another note, did you know that the Ides of March also mark the anniversary of the death of H P Lovecraft? I tell you, you couldn't make it up...

Thought for the Day - Shakespeare Week

In case you didn't already know, this week is Shakespeare Week. In honour of this my blog will have a decidedly Shakespearean theme this week, starting with today's Thought for the Day...

“To die, to sleep –

To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there's the rub,

For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...”

(William Shakespeare – Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1)

“In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

(H P Lovecraft – The Call of Cthulhu)