Shoggoths Free To Good Homes

[ecosophia]

I need to ask a little help from my readers.

Founders House Publishing, the publishers of The Weird of Hali (and quite a few of my other books), has helpfully provided me with a certain number of complimentary review copies of the e-book editions of the first two books in the series. I'd like to get those to podcasters and online reviewers who are likely to be interested in a quirky Lovevcraftian epic fantasy where Great Cthulhu and his cultists turn out to be the good guys after all.

The one challenge is that I don't happen to know which podcasters and online reviewers those might be. I've spent years doing the podcast-and-website thing with my occult books, on the one hand, and my peak oil books on the other; I've got a fairly good idea who's likely to be interested in that end of my work -- but tentacular fantasy novels? Not so much. 

The one thing that comes to mind is that my readers are an eccentric bunch and have astonishingly diverse interests. If you, dear readers, happen to know of suitable venues that might be interested in reviewing these books of mine, please let me know!

In saying this, I feel rather like the kid with the box full of kittens sitting out in front of the supermarket, hoping to find homes for them. Wouldn't you like to take home a cute little shoggoth broodling? It really will eat anything... ;-)

Comments

Re: Been there, seen that, done that

[(Anonymous)]

Anything involving parthenogenic females is OK with me! ;-)

Ashtar

Re: Been there, seen that, done that

[ecosophia]

Then you'll probably like The Shoggoth Concerto.

Do you mind if I rabbit on a little about shoggoths? I've long thought that they're the most unfairly neglected of the Lovecraftian "monster" species. The basic concept is chock-full of raw story material: a species created to be the slaves of the Elder Things who rebelled against their makers, were defeated and forced back into slavery, and then finally triumphed -- think of what that kind of heritage would mean to a young shoggoth growing up in a shoggoth colony, even millions of years after the Elder Things went extinct.

So I spent a lot of time working on shoggoth biology, history, culture, psychology, linguistics -- their language doesn't distinguish between nouns and verbs, for example, since to a shoggoth every object looks like a process of flow; for them, as for us, the body is the source of all basic cognitive metaphors. They also don't have permanent names -- they take new names each day, and it's a normal shoggoth courtesy to introduce yourself with some whistled, multioctave equivalent of "my name today is Across the Cavern" (or whatever it happens to be).

The two people other than me who've read The Shoggoth Concerto liked my portrayal of shoggoths; still, we'll see what other readers think once it sees print. One way or another, though, it was fun to write.

Re: Been there, seen that, done that

[(Anonymous)]

"They also don't have permanent names -- they take new names each day, and it's a normal shoggoth courtesy to introduce yourself with some whistled, multioctave equivalent of "my name today is Across the Cavern" (or whatever it happens to be)."

What does one do to talk about someone last seen past week to someone else who hasn't talked to the 2nd for even longer?

Can you yak some more with a history or psychology sample, please?

- S. T. Silva.

Re: Been there, seen that, done that

[ecosophia]

Among shoggoths, that's easy -- they have a very highly refined terminology for relationships and personal qualities, so that something like "my broodmother's broodmother's broodling from the earlier of her broods, the one who doesn't get along with Across the Cavern and always starts speaking before others finish" is a quick and easily whistled phrase. Humans and voormis find this endlessly confusing -- Deep Ones don't, but then they have fantastically intricate relationship-terms and tend to use those instead of names -- and so humans and voormis who hang with shoggoths generally give nicknames to the shoggoths they know. Thus Brecken Kendall, the main human character in The Shoggoth Concerto, takes to calling the main shoggoth character in that book by the nickname Sho. (It's short for "shoggoth," and less awkward than "Shog.")

As for more yakking, well, shoggoths don't get numbers. A few of them, after close association with humans or other numerate species, have understood the concept of numbers, but it takes them the kind of effort it would take you or me to understand Einstein's theory of General Relativity. It makes absolutely no sense to your average shoggoth that this small pile of leaves has something in common with this stack of plates, and when a human says, "well, there are six of each," the shoggoth just looks baffled. They perceive patterns and shapes, not numbers.

I drew up an information sheet on shoggoths for roleplaying game purposes. I could post that on this journal if you like.

Re: Been there, seen that, done that

[isabelcooper]

I am not S. T., but I'd love to see that!