Tuesday, March 24, 2020

New picture book

Now that The Scarecrow Harvest Festival is all done, I'm looking for an agent and/or publisher for it. 

In the meantime, though, I'm already working on a new picture book about two of my favorite things: Halloween and cryptids. See, Cryptid Halloween is just like Human Halloween, but with little differences. Instead of carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, cryptids carve cantaloupes and other melons. Instead of decorating with bats, rats, and cats, cryptids decorate with fur-bearing trout, jackalopes, and flying platypus.  And, of course, instead of dressing up as monsters to trick-or-treat, cryptids dress up like human kids, as you can see below.



Mothman (or, rather, Mothgirl in this case)

Champ from Lake Champlain

The Fresno Nightcrawlers

I'm still working on designs for other cryptid trick-or-treaters, and working on a book dummy. Stay tuned for more!

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Review: She Walks in Shadows edited by Gemma Files and Silvia Moreno-Garcia



H.P.Lovecraft’s fiction didn’t include many women. Not, I think, out of sexism, but more because almost all of his protagonists were reflections of himself- bookish scholars or sensitive creative men of Anglo-Saxon descent from New England.

The few women who do appear in his works offer intriguing story possibilities, though. There’s the lonely, bookish Lavinia Whateley from the Dunwich Horror, body-swapping Asenath Waite of The Thing on the Doorstep, the enigmatic gorgon-lamia Marceline from Medusa’s Coil, and more. She Walks in Shadows explores these characters and other aspects of the Lovecraft mythos from a female-presenting perspective.

With many anthologies, the stories can be hit or miss. Some good tales alongside average stories. Though, admittedly, which stories are “good”, “bad” or just “mediocre” is highly dependent on the reader’s own tastes.  With that in mind, I’m pleased to say that I found every story in this anthology enjoyable. Each is different in tone, subject, and style, yet each offers an intriguing facet to Lovecraftian horror.

In many of these stories there is another strain of fear paralleling cosmic horror. It is the Earthly fear of being controlled, undermined and ignored by people who have more power. A fear that all too many women- cis, trans or non-binary- can understand.

One thing that can make this anthology difficult is the fact that it’s often necessary to have read the original stories to fully understand what’s going on. This is especially true for stories based on more obscure works such as “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family”, and Lovecraft collaborations like “Medusa’s Coil”, and “The Mound”. This can make the anthology difficult for more casual readers of Lovecraft. It’s not a good starting place for newcomers looking to explore the mythos writing of other writers beyond the Old Man of Providence’s tales, but it a rewarding read for those who have already waded deep into that dark universe.

Some of the stories that particularly stood out for me include:

 “De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” by Jilly Dreadful. Certainly the most stylistically interesting piece. Written as a bibliographic study by a PhD candidate. The actual story unfolds through numbered notes within the paper. Its structure is reminiscent of the subtle “clerical” horror of an SCP Foundation entry.

“Hairwork” by Gremma Files is a sequel to Medusa’s Coil, a story that Lovecraft ghostwrote for Zelia Bishop. The original tale had interesting potential that was undone by its ridiculously racist ending. This new work, however, reframes the narrative to create a powerful, interesting twist.

“T’la-yub’s Head” by Nelly Geraldine Garcia-Rosas combines Mesoamerican myth and history with the lost world of K’n-yan, found beneath an earth mound in the ghost-written story, The Mound.

She Walks in Shadows is a fantastic collection of stories exploring the female side of the mythos. You can get a copy at Innsmouth Free Press

Saturday, March 14, 2020

Small Fossil Tracks of the Connecticut Valley

A new article I wrote for the Dinosaur State Park newsletter. Some of the tracks can be a bit hard to pick out in photos, especially when they're at the small scale of a newsletter page, so to make them as clear as possible, I created illustrations of the fossils to accompany their entries. Enjoy!

SMALL FOSSIL TRACKS OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY

Although dinosaur footprints are the most abundant and well-known fossil tracks in the Connecticut Valley, they are not the only traces of ancient life in southern New England. Insects, fish, and other small animals of the Mesozoic also left their own marks preserved in stone. There are dozens of different trace fossil species from tiny animals throughout the Valley, a few of which are detailed below.


Bifurculapes
These early Jurassic tracks consist of double rows of two scratch-like marks (“furcula” means “forked”, and Bifurculapes trackway looks as if they were made by the tips of two Y-shaped legs dragging through the mud). The tracks are often found in association with ripple marks, suggesting that they were made by aquatic insects crawling across the floor of a shallow playa lake. Several specimens zig-zag, implying that the animals were being pushed off-course by a current and repeatedly correcting their path. It’s not currently known what type of organisms made these traces, though the forked shaped of the tracks suggests at least some may have been made by crustaceans, which have biramous appendages.



Undichna
These sinuous grooves were made by the tails and lower fins of fish as they swam near the bottoms of shallow temporary pools. Specimens of Undichna are extremely rare in the Connecticut Valley, although fossils of the primitive fishes that made them- Semionotus or Redfieldius- are quite common. These shallow lakes would have been prime fishing spots for the large theropod dinosaurs and crocodilians that inhabited the Valley.



Batrachoides 
 In the 1850s geologist Edward Hitchcock discovered a curious fossil impression in Triassic sandstone near Hadley, Massachusetts. The rock slab was covered in what he described as “spheroidal cavities”. To a modern viewer, this unusual trace might look as if someone had pressed a large sheet of bubble wrap into the soft mud. Hitchcock interpreted this fossil as a collection of “tadpole nests”.

 (I admit my illustration above came out a little weird for this one. Below are photos of the original fossils in the Edward Hitchcock Ichnological Cabinet at the Beneski Museum of Natural History.)


But what are tadpole nests, exactly? If you come across a temporary vernal pool in late spring, you’ll often find it swarming with hundreds of little black tadpoles clustered along the shallow edge. As the water slowly dries up, they excavate dimples or “nests” in the sediment by wiggling their tails and slowly rotating in circles, either to feed on the bottom or to escape the desiccating air. As the shore of the pool shrinks, the tadpoles move with it, continuously digging new nests until the bottom of the pool is covered in a shallow circular or hexagonal depressions.

There is some controversy about what made the Batrachoides impression. Some scientists have pointed out that similar patterns can be created by intersecting ripples. But the possibility that this unusual pattern was created by frog young is intriguing. 


Cheliceratichnus
Currently known from a single specimen found at a private fossil site near Holyoke, Massachusetts. this unusual fossil is an almost complete body impression- including legs, abdomen, and head- made by a resting chelicerate, an animal from the group of Arthropods that includes spiders, scorpions, mites, ticks, and vinegaroons. Such creatures are distinguished by their mouthparts, called chelicerae, that move up and down rather than horizontally as insect mandibles do.

The outline of Cheliceratichnus, including the impressions of its two massive chelicerae, suggests that it was created by an organism closely related to the modern solifuges or sun spiders. 

Cheliceratichnus was discovered at the end of a fossil trackway known as Acanthichnus cursorius, which shows feet impressions as well as drag marks from the tips of the creature’s heavy mouthparts. The sun spider created these tracks by walking backwards, a behavior found in many modern chelicerates.

SOURCES

 Lower Jurassic Arthropod Resting Trace from the Hartford Basin of Massachusetts, USA.