When Chaugnar Wakes

About the Author: Frank Belknap Long, Jr. by Perry M. GraysonFrank Belknap Long, Jr. (APRIL 27, 1901 - JANUARY 3, 1994) is the prolific World Fantasy Award winning author of such books as The Hounds of Tindalos, The Horror from the Hills and The Rim of the Unknown. Incidentally, those titles are three of the most sought-after collector's items published by Arkham House, the specialty press founded in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to immortalize the writings of H. P. Lovecraft.Lovecraft discovered Long and took him under his wing after reading FBL's story "The Eye Above the Mantel" in The United Amateur in 1921. The two became best friends during the early 1920s while Lovecraft lived in New York. They exchanged hundreds of letters over the course of 15 years. The Lovecraft association tends to keep "Belknapius" (as he was called by HPL) in HPL's shadow, but Long's body of work speaks for itself.Fiction-wise, FBL primarily wrote in the realms of science fiction, fantasy, horror, adventure and mystery. Over the course of his seven-decade career Long wrote over 300 stories, poems and articles, many of which have been widely reprinted in over 80 major publisher anthologies. Long's first professionally published story was "The Desert Lich," which appeared in the November 1924 issue of Weird Tales. His first book was A Man from Genoa and Other Poems (1926). The Long legacy is an important one in the annals of 20th century pop culture. He helped shape the fantasy, horror and science fiction fields while Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov were still in their teens. Long was one of the few early science fiction writers to make the transition from the 1930s Astounding Stories to exacting editor John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown during SF's Golden Age. In the pages of Astounding and Unknown, Long appeared alongside Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, A.E. van Vogt, Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Eric Frank Russell and many other highly respected SF luminaries. When the pulp magazines died in the mid-1950s, Long successfully made the transition to the paperback original. As a pioneering horror comic book script writer, Long paved the way for the immensely popular EC comics with his work in the ACG title Adventures into the Unknown (circa 1948). As an editor, Frank worked on magazines such as Fantastic Universe, Satellite Science Fiction, Short Stories and Mike Shayne Mystery during the 1950s and 1960s. Long's poetic bent carried over into his prose, and his verse kept the torch of romantic tradition alight during the age of modern free form poetry.FBL was honored with the Lifetime Achievement award from the World Fantasy Convention in 1978 and the Bram Stoker award for Lifetime Achievement from the Horror Writers of America in 1987. You might think that an author with such laurels would have enjoyed the success of modern horror acolytes like Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Anne Rice, but Frank Long's existence was that of the struggling artist. Not a surprise when you consider Edgar Allan Poe's demise. An empty bank account, but a wealth of imagination. Long outlived most of his fellow pulp-era writers, and he made a final public appearance at the Lovecraft Centennial Conference in Providence, RI, in 1990. A New Yorker at heart, Long spent most of his life in the Big Apple-aside from a brief stint in California during World War II. He married Lyda Arco in 1961. Frank and Lyda had no children. Lyda was very protective of her husband's literary reputation, always reminding folks that Frank was much more than just Lovecraft's protégé. Long passed away on January 2, 1994. His spirit lives on in every word he wrote.

Perry M. Grayson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 11, 1975. Perry's family relocated to Southern California during his early years. He lived in the San Fernando Valley, capital of the pornography business and the setting of the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High, until 2006. Perry now resides in Sydney, Australia, with his wife Tanya, an entertainment industry veteran, and two cats.Perry founded Tsathoggua Press in 1994 to publish pulp-era fantasy, horror and mystery fiction and non-fiction works relating to vintage authors. Since 1995, Perry has edited four volumes by his favorite author, Frank Belknap Long: Escape from Tomorrow (Necronomicon Press), The Eye Above the Mantel (Tsathoggua Press), The Darkling Tide (Tsathoggua Press) and the present collection. Many more FBL projects are in the works.Perry's pro writing career began in 1994 as a journalist for electronic news service SilentRadio. Between 1997 and 2007 Perry served as copywriter and production coordinator for Sampson Advertising West, a busy porn graphic design and advertising agency.Perry's other passion is music, and his pro music career took flight between 1997 and 2000 as guitarist and main songwriter in the heavy metal band Destiny's End. With Destiny's End, he recorded two albums on Metal Blade Records and embarked on a regional tour of Texas with labelmates Mercyful Fate in 1998. A full US tour with metal mavens Nevermore and Iced Earth followed in 1999. The US tour was followed by an appearance in front of tens of thousands of screaming metalheads at the illustrious Wacken Open Air Festival in Germany in August 1999-alongside a European tour with Sacred Steel, Wardog and Slough Feg.Next, Perry formed technical/progressive metal band Artisan, tackling both aggressive vocals and guitar from 2000-2003. While in Artisan, Perry supported internationally renowned metal artists such as Arch Enemy, Strapping Young Lad, Cathedral, Samael, Engine, Hate Eternal, Nile, Zero Hour, Onward and others.Since 2002, Perry has fronted the loud, raw vintage heavy rock power trio Falcon as guitarist/vocalist with friend and collaborator Greg Lindstrom, co-founder of cult U.S. metal legends Cirith Ungol. Towards the end of Perry's tenure in Artisan (and simultaneous to Falcon) he played guitar for multinational metal project Isen Torr on the EP Mighty and Superior (2003). Branching out further, he played bass for American heavy doom rockers Pale Divine on a European tour in 2005 with Place of Skulls (led by Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin).Aside from music, Perry's pop-culture expertise extends far beyond to vintage TV, film and literature. He was a staff writer for Metal Maniacs, one of the world's largest circulation heavy metal magazines, for over a decade.Since the mid-1990s, Perry has contributed fiction, non-fiction, interviews, reviews and poetry to such mags and sites as The Scream Factory, Crypt of Cthulhu, Necrofile, Other Dimensions, Snakepit, Fungi, Al Azif, Emptywords.org, Slow Ride, Hellridemusic.com, Snap Pop! and a host of others. He is often asked by hard rock and metal bands to pen liner notes and bios.A true-crime buff and lifelong devotee of American hardboiled literature, Perry often ventures out of the armchair, prowling deep into unsolved cold cases with abandon. His latest true-crime project, tentatively titled Dirty Deeds in L.A., focuses on weird crimes of the 1940s, including the Black Dahlia Murder case.