Cthulhu Mythos | CW Hawes

The Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations

Four years ago, back in 2017, I started writing the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series. The first book, Nightmare in Agate Bay, was published in January 2018.

I’d been watching the first season of The X-Files, and thought how cool it would be to mash-up the Cthulhu Mythos with The X-Files. And just like that, Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena was born.

The Pierce Mostyn series was an immediate hit, and it’s been my annual top seller since its introduction.

What is it about Pierce Mostyn and his cohorts that readers like?

I’m not big on surveys, questionnaires, and the like. To tell the truth, I’m just not big into data. But to answer the question, I took a look at what readers put in the reviews.

Here are some of the things that stuck out:

“entertaining and action packed”

“a charming, easy to read, creep-fest”

“contemporary and action-packed”

“keeps the reader on the edge”

“fun and exciting”

“non-stop action”

“tautly paced and elegantly plotted”

“The character development is detailed”

“fast-paced and the tension is great”

“all kinds of scary fun”

From those snippets, what stands out is the action, the suspense, and the fun factor. Those are what make Pierce Mostyn a top seller.

The fun factor kind of surprised me, but then I asked, Why?

The books are doggone fun to write. Apparently, my having all that fun writing comes right through the page and grabs the reader. Which is what we writers and readers want, isn’t it?

Well, the eighth Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation is live — and only 99¢ through the end of March. Now it’s your turn to get in on the fun, if you haven’t already.

In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness
Only 99¢ on Amazon!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Pierce Mostyn and Antarctica

I’ve been in love with Antarctica since I was a kid. It all started when I got a National Geographic map of the ice-covered continent.

Shackleton’s failed 1914 Antarctic expedition is one of the most thrilling tales of endurance and heroism ever.

Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica is one of my favorite symphonies.

I even collect pictures of the place!

Why I didn’t pursue getting a job at McMurdo Station when I was young is beyond me. Now I’m too old.

So is it any wonder that Pierce Mostyn finds himself on the icy continent in his latest investigation? Maybe some vicarious experience going on.

HP Lovecraft’s short novel, At the Mountains of Madness, takes place in Antarctica. At the time HPL wrote the story in 1931, not much was known about the continent. Much of it hadn’t even been explored. That was certainly the case with the interior.

So it is very surprising that Lovecraft was so accurate in his description of the place. Of course, a lot was made up. That is what writers do: make things up. But much of what HPL described is quite accurate.

The location he chose for the Mountains of Madness is almost identical to that of the sub-glacial Gamburtsev Mountains. Coincidence?

And the lake HPL describes? Well, Lake Vostok is also close by. Another coincidence?

I’ve read and written enough mysteries to know that coincidences don’t happen all that often. So how did Lovecraft know all this stuff? Did he have special access to information that others didn’t?

I have my own theory as to how he knew what things were like, and you can read all about it in the latest Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation: In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness. Which goes on sale Thursday, March 25th.

Until then, if you have any theories as to how HPL was so spot on, drop them in the comments. And until next time, happy reading!

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In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness

Pierce Mostyn is back in an all new adventure! A creature feature extraordinaire: In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness.

I’ve been sharing snippets with the folk on my mailing list. If you want to get in on sneak peeks and exclusive never-before-published content, sign up for my VIP Horror Readers Club. Plus, you’ll get the exclusive novella, “The Feeder” — which is not available in stores.

And if you haven’t yet discovered Pierce Mostyn, take a look at the books and pick your monster!

This time around, Mostyn and his team are sent to Antarctica to investigate why a Russian base has suddenly gone silent. Once they find out why, Dr Rafe Bardon, the director of the Office of Unidentified Phenomena, sends them off to the subglacial Gamburtsev Mountains, also known as The Ghost Mountains. Because Dr Bardon thinks they fit the coordinates of the infamous Mountains of Madness.

Those familiar with the stories of HP Lovecraft will immediately recognize where the inspiration came for my story.

Lovecraft welcomed other writers to write in his Cthulhu Mythos universe. And many took him up on the invite, and many more continue to do so today.

I enjoy working in the Mythos. It’s a walk in a world where we are not at the top of the food chain. It’s a world where there are forces at work much bigger than we are. Beings to whom we are not unlike the ants on a sidewalk. Blithely stepped on without a second thought.

The universe of the Cthulhu Mythos puts humans in a place where we are not only not equal with nature, we are less than nature. It’s a universe that makes me stop and think about all of our petty squabbles. It makes me realize how, in the big picture, our troubles and problems are truly insignificant.

I’m looking at the 25th of March as the launch date of In the Shadow of the Mountains of Madness. Stay tuned!

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

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For the Weekend 9

This weekend is Halloween and I thought it appropriate to recommend something horribly spooky for your entertainment.

Crispian Thurlborn

Crispian is one of my favorite authors. If he writes it, I’ll read it. For this weekend, I recommend:

Exit. This is a slow burn chiller. Something like the twilight zone. Mysterious, with a shocking revelation at the end. Get the book at Amazon!

01134. We’ve never been so connected, yet we’ve never been so alone. We crave companionship and when we get it we’re on top of the world. When we lose it… A superb tale of psychological horror. On Amazon!

Cinder. Jill is a college student, and like all college students she needs money. Which means she takes the occasional babysitting job. And the job of watching the Comptons’s kid seems to be like any other. That is until those things desiring to ward of the chill of the coming winter make themselves known. Get it on Amazon!

Richard Schwindt

Richard is another author who writes outstanding fiction. If he writes it, I buy it. For this weekend, I want to draw your attention to:

Herkimer’s Nose. This was the first book I read by Richard and it’s still my favorite. A fabulous cast of characters, with lots of humor, terror, monsters, ghosts, and spies. A delightfully spooky tale, that’s at Amazon!

Tony Price: Confidential. Tony is a social worker and an amateur occult detective. If you like mysteries and monsters, this trilogy is for you. I loved it. Get it at Amazon!

Ottawa Confidential. This story is the Tony Price prequel. And very appropriate for Halloween. It’s about dogs. Well, not really. More like wolves. Well, not really that either. Just read it. You won’t regret it. At Amazon.

A Killing in Samana. Murder mystery meets occult detective. And we discover Richard’s other amateur sleuth, Chris Allard, knows Tony. Together, they solve an eerie murder case. Pick it up at Amazon.

R.H. Hale. Hale’s Church Mouse duo is an incredible work of fiction. The writing is literary, and some of the finest I’ve read. I don’t care for a lot of description, yet Hale’s descriptions mesmerize me. They set the mood and atmosphere, and establish the eerie Gothic quality that makes these books work so well.

Rona, the main character and narrator of the story, is exceedingly well-drawn. She is truly lifelike.

Sergei, the vampire and antagonist, is also very well-drawn. His character is richly complex. We hate him and we love him.

The Church Mouse duo easily makes my top ten list of recommended horror reads. They are novels you truly do want to read before you die.

Get Church Mouse: Memoir of a vampire’s servant at Amazon, along with Church Mouse – Book 2: The Change, also at Amazon.

Lastly, a bit of shameless self-promotion. Aside from my Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, I’ve published the following stories:

Do One Thing For Me. George is old and going senile. Beth isn’t what she appears to be, but George isn’t sure she’s even real. And then she makes him an offer he can’t refuse. Or can he? Get it at the Zon.

Ancient History. Two brothers with a history, and not a good history at that. But they’re getting older and maybe it’s time to mend things. Put things right. But the ghosts think otherwise. And as one reviewer wrote: “…the ending was a shocking twist I never saw coming!” On Amazon.

Metamorphosis. I love vampire stories. And this is my contribution, to date. Devon is sick and having a mid-life crisis. His solution? Become a vampire and leave the problems behind. But his minister, who is a vampire, convinces him otherwise. Or does he? At Amazon!

What the Next Day Brings. A tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, set in 1920s Vienna. Everyone of us makes choices. Sometimes out of desperation. And starving to death, that’s what Franz does. However, as we all know, such choices often hand us more than we bargained for. Also at Amazon.

Plenty of good reading for your Halloween weekend. Enjoy!

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To Build a World

Worldbuilding, while often thought of as something only fantasy and science fiction writers need to do, is actually something all authors engage in.

The New York of Nero Wolfe isn’t exactly the New York that actually exists. It is a carefully constructed version that suits the storytelling of Rex Stout.

My Justinia Wright series is set in Minneapolis. But it is not quite the same Minneapolis that currently exists. The Minneapolis of Justinia Wright is a fictionalized version that suits the needs of the story.

The Pierce Mostyn series, although set in the present day, is a fictionalized version of today. The world building is much more subtle, than say Neverland, or Oz, or Barsoom, or Pellucidar, or any of the Star Trek worlds, but it is still worldbuilding.

This is because fiction is, well, to be honest, a lie. Stories are not reality. They’re entertainment. And to be successful entertainment they need to be lifelike, but not real life.

Take “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. The setting is small-town America of the 1940s (the story was published in 1948). But it is no small town that actually existed then. What small town annually stoned to death one of its citizens? Jackson created a world that was mostly normal, save for that little part that wasn’t. Superbly horrific worldbuilding.

For Pierce Mostyn, while there is much that is “normal”, there is much that is not. There is much that is made up or borrowed from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Kathy Edens, in World-Building 101: How to construct an unforgettable universe for your fantasy or sci-fi story (published by ProWritingAid), gives us three rules of worldbuilding:

1. 1. Creating a new world goes way beyond mere setting
  2. Use other author’s worlds to inspire your own
  3. Don’t make new world your story’s focus

In Pierce Mostyn, the setting is the contemporary world. However, it doesn’t stop there. Monsters exist. Weapons and devices exist in Mostyn’s world that don’t exist in ours. Geography is manipulated to suit the needs of the story. Pierce Mostyn’s world is one where monsters and terrifying aliens are alive and bent on our destruction, unbeknownst to the population at large.

To build Pierce Mostyn’s world, I borrowed from The X-Files and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos — and then added stuff from my imagination. The world may look a lot like our own, but it is as fantastical as Oz.

And while Mostyn and his team hunt monsters to save us from annihilation or enslavement, the stories ultimately deal with people and the larger issues of life. Cthulhu is as important as our reaction to him.

There are now 7 books in the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series, with an 8th in the works, and a 9th on the drawing board.

I hope you enjoy reading about Mostyn and his world as much as I enjoy writing about them.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Flawed Heroes: Bah! Humbug!

Pierce Mostyn rides again in 7 days! I’m looking forward to the release of Book 7 in the Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations series. There’s nothing better than fighting monsters and bad guys and coming out on top.

The series is a combination of Cthulhu Mythos, creature feature, and action/adventure. And I have great fun writing the books. The series has also been my top seller since its introduction in 2018.

Lee Child wrote that he created Jack Reacher to be the opposite of the angst ridden and troubled main characters of detective and thriller fiction. He was tired of flawed characters. So Reacher doesn’t have any flaws. And because he’s the guy who beats up the playground bullies, he’s something of a superhero as well.

Quite accidentally, Mostyn is cut from the same cloth. Probably because the characters I enjoy most aren’t overly flawed. They might be quirky, but they don’t have flaws. Characters such as Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Holmes and Watson, Solomon Kane, Jules de Grandin, Hercule Poirot, and Philip Marlowe.

Perhaps because I see my own flaws all too clearly, I want my fictional heroes to be flawless. Quirks are okay. Delightful in fact. But flaws? I can do without them. Give me a hero who is just a bit larger than life.

If you haven’t read Pierce Mostyn, give the series a try! The books are at Amazon, and free with Kindle Unlimited.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Riffing on The X-Files

Since his debut in Nightmare In Agate Bay (January 2018), Pierce Mostyn and his paranormal investigations has been my bestselling series.

The genesis for the series was The X-Files. And while the overarching story arc of the TV series was about space aliens (a storyline very similar to the earlier TV series The Invaders), it was the “monster of the week” episodes that I found most interesting. I liked the concept of a government agent investigating those things that go bump in the night.

The biggest things that go bump in the night, IMO, are Cthulhu and his ilk. So it was only natural for me to mash up The X-Files concept with The Cthulhu Mythos, with the “monster of the week” idea finding its way into the sub-series with diabolical mastermind Valdis Damien van Dyne.

Van Dyne lets me play with the whole cryptid menagerie, much as the producers and writers did with The X-Files. Let’s face it — we like monsters. We like weird, paranormal critters and beings. And while the cosmic horror of Cthulhu and his fellow Old Ones is terrifying, there is nothing immediately scarier than a good old-fashioned monster. Hence, the perennial popularity of the “creature feature”.

On Monday, the 20th of July, you will be treated to a rare and unusual cryptid: the zuvembie. The creation of Robert E Howard, drawn from the spooky stories his grandmother told him.

The zuvembie is a top-drawer creation, yet to my knowledge it only appeared once in the Howard oeuvre in the story “Pigeons from Hell”. I’m pleased that arch-villain Valdis Damien van Dyne learned the secret of the Black Brew and planned his zuvembie apocalypse. It will make COVID look like the common cold.

Make sure your hearing protection works, because you’re going to need it in two weeks.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy monster hunting!

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Where Ideas Come From

The world is an amazing place. It is filled with unlimited stimuli for our senses and our minds.

Something so simple as the wind moving the pine tree in an impromptu dance can bring forth images from other times, other places. Or that pine in the wind can be a soothing balm for our eyes and mind.

To my way of thinking, the thing that separates a writer from a non-writer is the ability to take the thoughts, patterns, and images we experience around us and see a story in them. The non-writer simply experiences the world. The writer not only experiences, but sees the stories that are there.

For 30 years I worked in county government and hated it. Yet, that job provided me with the seed idea for my first mystery, Festival of Death, gave me experiences and information and insights that I’ve used in many poems, short stories, and novels.

One morning a sentence popped into my head: Today I killed a man and a woman. A provocative sentence that! Must’ve had a bad day at work! That sentence, though, grew into my post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophe The Rocheport Saga.

The job isn’t the only source of ideas, however. Story ideas are everywhere.

The Pierce Mostyn series has a genesis that goes back decades. In the early 70s I became a member of a Minneapolis-based horror and pulp fiction fan group. I met Donald Wandrei, Carl Jacobi, Weird Tales artist Jon Arfstrom, and Jack Koblas, who went on to became a noted regional historian and biographer.

That fan group also introduced me to The X-Files, although many years passed before I actually watched the show.

Then sometime in 2017, after watching a few episodes of The X-Files, I got the idea for a mash-up between The X-Files and the Cthulhu Mythos. I liked the idea of an FBI agent hunting monsters and aliens. And what’s not to like about Cthulhu and his ilk?

After that idea took hold, it was a simple matter of a few broad brushstrokes to create the Mostyn world, and I was in business. But what stories would I tell about Pierce Mostyn and the Office of Unidentified Phenomena?

The first three Mostyn tales were heavily inspired by HP Lovecraft’s stories “The Shadow over Innsmouth”, “The Mound”, and “The Lurking Fear”.

The next Mostyn stories, however, drew inspiration from a variety of sources: Van Dyne’s Vampires from cryptozoology (the chupacabra and the Jersey Devil in particular); the seed idea for The Medusa Ritual came from the Heald/Lovecraft story “The Man of Stone” and the Medusa myth; Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” and the movie The Mummy gave me the launch pad for Demons in the Dunes; and the forth coming Van Dyne’s Zuvembies makes use of Robert E Howard’s creation which appeared in his story “Pigeons from Hell”.

There is nothing new under the sun, the writer of Ecclesiastes declared. And he’s right. Everything plays off of everything else. Someone may come up with a unique and memorable way to express the thought, but most likely the thought itself is not unique. Someone said or wrote something like it before.

All one has to have are the eyes to see the stories, the many stories, that are all around us. If you have those eyes, you’re a writer. If you don’t, perhaps you can learn.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy creating!

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The Empty Quarter

One of the most lonely places on the planet is the Rub’ al Khali, or the Empty Quarter — that vast expanse of towering sand dunes that has an area greater in size than the country of France.

A few Bedouin tribes live on the edge of this immensely beautiful wasteland. Virtually nothing lives in the desert interior.

The Empty Quarter is part of the greater Arabian desert, which is the eastward continuation of the Sahara. And it is the setting for the newest Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation adventure.

For quite some time now I’ve been fascinated with the Empty Quarter. I’ve never been there, and at my age may never get there. But I have been to a place that will give you a little taste of the Rub’ al Khali. And that place is Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.

The dunes look like a great big pile of sand that some giant left behind. The sand covers about 30 square miles and are the tallest dunes in North America, towering upwards of 750 feet. They give one a hint as to what’s in store for them should they visit the Empty Quarter.

In writing Demons in the Dunes, I tried to give the reader a picture and feel for what it is like in the Empty Quarter. My main source book was Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed the area twice in the late 1940s.

Of course, Demons in the Dunes is fiction. A Lovecraftian-flavored adventure yarn that is perhaps closer to something Robert E Howard might have written than HPL. Regardless of influence, the story draws upon the legend and mystery of the lost city of Iram, adds a dollop of the Cthulhu Mythos, a bit of seasoning from The Mummy, and a whole lot of sauce from my overactive imagination.

You can get Demons in the Dunes here — and I truly hope you enjoy it. I’ve been told it’s the best Mostyn yet, and that makes me very happy.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Demons in the Dunes

Next week Pierce Mostyn and the OUP gang ride again, in another terrifyingly action-packed tale of cosmic horror.

The Rub’ al Khali, or the Empty Quarter, is a fascinating place. I find it almost as intriguing as Antarctica.

What makes the Rub’ al Khali so interesting? It is the largest sand desert in the world. It covers some 250,000 square miles of the southern Arabian Peninsula. The desert is larger than France and somewhat smaller than Texas.

This vast expanse of sand is home to the lost city of Iram, which is mentioned in the Qur’an, and may have been an important city in the ancient frankincense trade.

The Empty Quarter is the setting for Lovecraft’s story “The Nameless City”, and is also the setting for Demons in the Dunes, Pierce Mostyn’s newest adventure.

Did Lovecraft’s story play any part in the origin of Demons in the Dunes? It did. HPL’s story gave me the idea to set an adventure in the Empty Quarter, with Iram as the focal point.

However, the Nameless City of Lovecraft’s story is clearly not Iram. Consequently, the story line of Demons has no direct influence from Lovecraft. Although it is Lovecraftian to a degree.

Little is known about the actual city of Iram. It may have been located on the frankincense caravan route. Legend has it that it was built by giants to challenge God by creating a paradise on earth greater then God’s paradise. God, of course, destroyed the giants and the city.

Iram is called Iram of the Pillars, but we don’t know why. One Internet source, attributed mystical connections to the city. According to this view, Iram actually occupies several planes of existence, and, in accordance with the mystical position, an alternate reading of the city’s title is Iram of the Old Ones. No self-respecting Cthulhu Mythos aficionado can walk away from that tidbit of info and not have the cogs whirring in his brain!

Out of those seeds, Demons in the Dunes grew. I had great fun writing it. I hope you have great fun reading it.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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