MJ Newman is a writer and senior game developer with Fantasy Flight Games. She is the co-designer of Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and is an enthusiast of horror, fantasy, and romance. Her credentials include insomnia, existential dread, and jumping in fear whenever she sees a spider. I got the chance to chat with her about her story, 'Crossing Stars' in the new Arkham Horror anthology collection Secrets In Scarlet.
You’re one of the co-creators for the Arkham Horror Card Game, when did you first discover the work of Lovecraft, and what about it drew you to that universe?
I have been an enthusiast of horror stories ever since I was a kid. My brother and I used to hang out in our basement, turn all the lights off, and play video games like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark, and Clock Tower. That was my introduction to the horror genre. The games were the real draw for me—being in control of the main character really puts you in their shoes and makes the experience so much more terrifying. Later, in high school, I started reading horror stories which included the works of H. P. Lovecraft, specifically At the Mountains of Madness and The Call of Cthulhu, two of his most ubiquitous works. I think the thing that most drew me to those stories was the scale of “cosmic horror” —the scary part isn’t the fact that there is a killer or a monster, but rather, the idea that all of this is just the tip of the iceberg; that there is a vast, uncaring cosmos out there filled with all manner of horrors we can scarcely comprehend. I absolutely love that.
This is your first time writing an Arkham Horror story with Aconyte, what was it like moving from writing for the games into writing for the books, did you find that your time creating the game helped you with this project?
It was very different, but also very gratifying! For one thing the writing style is very different—the card game’s narrative is typically written in second-person present tense, as the events that unfold are happening directly to you, which is quite difficult to write in. Additionally, in game writing, we’re working with a very limited space and have to tell the story as concisely as possible (sometimes fitting entire sequences of events on a single card), while still maintaining a high quality of prose. Getting the chance to write a short story in the Arkham setting was very different, but was still Arkham, so in that way it remained familiar to me.
Your story is split across two different time periods, with the mystery slowly unfolding in one whilst the other began to introduce more and more horror elements. What drew you to telling your story in this particular way?
This story ties in directly with one of the scenarios in the upcoming campaign expansion, The Scarlet Keys. I wanted to explain the ancient backstory that causes this scenario in The Scarlet Keys to unfold, but I also wanted the story to leave off immediately where that scenario picks up. So, it made sense to split the story into this sort of framed narrative. The twist is, of course, that these two stories are much more tightly linked than the reader might initially assume.
The stories in the Arkham Horror series tend to be set in one particular time, and often centre around the city of Arkham itself, was it exciting to get to shift the location and time so drastically for your story, and what made you pick the ones you did?
Yeah, it’s true that the city of Arkham is often considered to be almost a character in and of itself, and it is central to the identity of Arkham Horror, along with the time period of the 1920s. But The Scarlet Keys is somewhat of a unique campaign in that it is a globetrotting adventure set all throughout various cities across the world. To that end, we had a bit more freedom in Secrets in Scarlet to write stories set outside of Arkham. Additionally, with the Red Coterie being this ancient organization that has manipulated events all throughout human history, it made sense to explore this ancient backstory for one of the Coterie’s most important members. It was exciting, but it was also quite a hurdle, as I am not extremely well-versed in this era or region of ancient history, so I had to do a lot of research!
There’s a lot of pre-exisitng lore in the Arkham Horror series, and your story definitely adds to that in new and interesting ways. Is it ever daunting to create new stories and new characters in settings like this?
It definitely can be daunting! In this case, as the primary writer for The Scarlet Keys, I had a lot of freedom in defining aspects of the Red Coterie, the Foundation, and the events that ensue. Since these stories are not based on any particular work of H. P. Lovecraft, and most of them are set outside of Arkham, it wasn’t as difficult to write as some previous campaigns might have been. That said, this setting has so many characters, places, and pre-existing events, as you say, it can sometimes be very difficult to reconcile it all.
Were there any stories in particular that inspired your own, or was it the setting and location that drew you to write your story?
The entirety of The Scarlet Keys campaign draws upon a lot of sources of inspiration, including the X-Files, Men in Black, the SCP Foundation, the video game Control, and the roleplaying game Delta Green. The setting of my story in particular, Crossing Stars, was at least partially inspired by the plot beat in Aliens in which the colonial marines descend into the alien hive and stumble across the colony’s cocooned civilians. That sequence is burned into my brain. I love the way the walls feel alive throughout that scene, and I really wanted to give that same growing sense of alien otherworldliness throughout Haresah’s expedition.
I really loved your story because the setting was so different, and seemed to give readers something very different to most Arkham Horror stories, are these historical horror stories something you’d like to write more of in the future? And can you tell us about any upcoming projects of yours we should keep an eye out for?
Thank you! I would love to write more stories like this in the future. I think most Arkham stories will continue to be contemporary rather than historical, as previously mentioned, but it was extremely fun to write and a real breath of fresh air. I hope players also find the story entertaining and unique in this way! As for upcoming projects, I can’t speak about any unannounced projects with Fantasy Flight, but I do have my own fantasy/horror book series that I am working on, called Darkdrifters. The first book in the series, The Key and the Crescent, is available on my website (www.bewaretheblackcat.com) and on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Check it out!
Make sure to check back all this week as I chat with more of the authors from Secrets in Scarlet.
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