Beyond the Mountains of Madness

"The umbrella has collapsed. The portal is open."

This one was sure a beast getting onto the street, but — finally, at long last — here it comes. Some years back, editor Robert M. Price approached me wondering whether I might be interested in writing a story for an anthology based on H. P. Lovecraft's short novel, At the Mountains of Madness, which is one of his better known — and one of my personal favorite — works of fiction. Of course I was, so I wrote a story, titled "The Danforth Project," which takes place in contemporary times. In it, a phenomenon in Antarctica reveals a mountain range that has never been seen — except by a number of individuals, specifically, those from Lovecraft's tale plus a handful of others over a long span of years. An air reconnaissance mission is hurriedly launched to investigate, and most of my story is an account of the pilot's experiences on his long excursions over the mysterious Antarctic continent. Solidly based on Lovecraft's epic work, I've also woven in a bit of lore from some of his other tales, "Dreams in the Witch House" being the most prominent of them.

Dark Quest Books was initially slated to produce the book, but over time, problems with the publisher began to mount. Some authors were paid, some were not. A few copies of the book were printed, but it was never put into official release, and for all intents and purposes, as a product, it died a cold, ignominious death — at least until Celaeno Press, which had recently come onto the scene with In the Court of the Yellow King (which includes my story, "Masque of the Queen"). Publisher Edward Lipsett and editor Price worked to get the book repackaged, using the same cover art and most of the same content, with two additional tales. At long last, the deal was done, and now the book is available for purchase. I can safely say this one is a winner, and my hat is off to all parties who worked hard to make this happen. There couldn't have been a more deserving volume to be rescued from the pit into which it had been shamefully discarded.

Besides myself, contributors to Beyond the Mountains of Madness include Ken Asamatsu, Glynn Owen Barrass, Pierre Comtois, Laurence J. Cornford, Cody Goodfellow, C.J. Henderson, Willie Meikle, Edward Morris, William Patrick Murray, Joe Pulver, Peter Rawlik, and Brian M. Sammons, with a special guest appearance by Weird Tales legend John Martin Leahy and an introduction by Robert M. Price.

Here's a link to the Amazon page: Beyond the Mountains of Madness