S.A. Sidor is the author of four dark crime thrillers and more recently two splendid supernatural-pulp adventures, Fury From the Tomb and The Beast of Nightfall Lodge. He has written a number of Arkham Horror titles for Aconyte books, including Cult of the Spider Queen, and The Last Ritual. I got the chance to ask him a few questions about his latest book, Lair of the Crystal Fang.
This isn’t your first Arkham Horror title, and you’ve written some fantastic stories for the series. Were you a fan of the work of Lovecraft before coming on to write for the series, and did you have much experience with the games?
I was a reader of Lovecraft, but more often I prefer tales and writers inspired by the Cthulhu mythos rather than the original tales themselves, although I do have a soft spot for At the Mountains of Madness. Lovecraft has an odd appeal compared to most writers of the pulp era. His characters and plots are not what resonate the most with readers, I think. It’s the eerie weird vibe, the creeping dread of cosmic terror, and the ornate prose which is often hypnotic. Our family played Arkham Horror games (Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, Mansions of Madness, and Elder Sign) before I ever dreamed of writing stories in the game universe. But I found an old note I wrote to myself years ago about looking into the prospect of writing novels based on the AH games. A premonition? It freaked me out when I found it.
The Lair of the Crystal Fang is a sequel of sorts to Cult of the Spider Queen, did you always know that you were going to be telling another story with those characters, or was it a decision that came about later on?
When I originally pitched the idea for Cult of the Spider Queen to Aconyte, they asked me to consider writing a duology. I liked the idea. I knew some characters would return for Lair of the Crystal Fang, but the setting would be different. After an adventure in the Amazon jungle, a horror visiting the characters back in New England made sense to me. I wanted to show the team of investigators dealing with the traumatic aftermath of their first encounter with the Ancient Ones while they were confronted with a new cosmic terror. How would they react?
Your story brings back three of the characters from your last Arkham Horror novel, and it shows that they’ve not really been having too good a time of things. Was it tough to figure out what happened to them after the book ended and where they’d be when this one started?
I wanted to place the action soon after their return to Arkham while their physical, psychic, and career wounds were still healing. I wanted to present them with another challenge before they’d had a chance to rebound fully. That’s how life is. You get hit with things all at once, and you must fix yourself as best you can while you try and move forward. Life doesn’t play fair. We’re all headed into the next battle nursing old wounds. I took each of the returning characters and challenged them where they were most vulnerable. Andy loses his job, Jake is physically challenged in a way he never imagined, and Maude is lost in her nightmarish dreams.
The story also brings in some characters that have appeared in the games, as well as in some other Arkham Horror stories from Aconyte, who were your favourite of the new characters to write, and were there any that you considered including in addition to them?
I envisioned a citywide threat that had the possibility of spiralling out of control, imperilling the whole planet. At first, my imagination wanted to include as many investigators as possible. But I soon realized cameo appearances by the games’ characters wasn’t the way to go. If an investigator from the game showed up, they needed to play an essential role. Rex Murphy was a lot of fun to write. Dr Carolyn Fern added great psychological depth and insights, especially into the subject of The Dreamlands. Surprisingly, Mayor Charlie Kane was my favourite to write. I hadn’t expected that. But looking at Arkham’s problems from his perspective opened previously hidden imaginative doors for me. Likewise, Wendy Adams observes the city, and its monsters, from a completely different viewpoint. Diversity is what makes these games great.
Your previous story took the action far away from Arkham, and put readers in an extremely different environment. In this story you return to the city, what was it like returning to Arkham, and was it a different kind of writing experience because of that?
It was good to return to Arkham. I wanted to tap into Arkham history a bit, and I liked the idea of a growing threat underneath the city itself. Setting part of the action of the story in subterranean Arkham was a way to bring the story home but also to enter a hidden world. The setting proved just as complex as the Amazon. In the beginning, it was a challenge to keep all the characters and locations sorted out so the reader might follow things without trouble. The plot tightened up in the editing phase. The result is twisty but always propulsive.
Cult of the Spider Queen had a pulpy adventure kind of vibe to it, and reminded me of stories like Creature From The Black Lagoon. Lair of the Crystal Fang has a much more claustrophobic kind of feel to it, and the horror of being trapped in the dark tunnels was quite intense at times. Did you choose to make the books thematically different that way to change things up, or are these kinds of stories and themes that appeal to you?
It's funny that you mention Creature From The Black Lagoon. I’ve always loved that film. Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Mummy are the two old Universal horror films that scared me the most as a child. It’s no mystery that they influenced my imagination. Being trapped in a confined space is a recurring motif in horror because it’s a basic fear that works on an animal level, but it also has many symbolic levels of interpretation. I’m not particularly claustrophobic; in fact, I happen to enjoy snug little spaces. I spent a great deal of time as a child playing in boxes and making little forts where I acted out my imaginary fantasies, travelling in time machines, hiding from monsters, rationing my supplies and scanning for voices on a staticky old walkie-talkie. I live in my head and that’s a dark, tight spot most days.
This story delves into some of the history of Arkham, and introduces another mysterious group into the novels with the inclusion of the witch coven and their ties to the city’s past. Is it ever daunting to start digging into to the past when it comes to a franchise like Arkham Horror, or is that something that you enjoy?
One of the great things about working with Aconyte and Arkham Horror is the amount of collaboration that goes into planning and vetting the stories as they move from the idea stage to the final product. The smart folks at Fantasy Flight Games have oversight and input while the book is in development. They steer people like me away from dangerous or complicated elements that might conflict with the games and their long history spanning many storytelling formats. The editors at Aconyte know what territory other Aconyte writers have covered, or will be covering, so everything is well-coordinated. Short answer: it is daunting to dig into Arkham’s past, but I know I’m not going into the dark alone. My teammates look out for me.
Some of the other writers on the Arkham Horror series have spoke about the huge wealth of characters and stories that the game has created that you’re able to draw upon when writing the books; what’s it like working in a pre-established universe like that?
It’s both a challenge and a source of inspiration. I want to make sure my work measures up to the legacy of stories that have come before me. I hope readers have an experience that is familiar but surprising. I want readers who play the games to feel as if they are diving into another form of the same immersive universe. The books ideally work two ways: readers will want to play more games, and gamers will want to read more books. As the Arkham universe deepens, it becomes a fountain of new possibilities. I never felt limited in what I might write.
You definitely seem to be a big fan of horror, and you write it very well. What horror stories have been some of your favourites and might have had some influence upon your own work?
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve read Lovecraft and many writers influenced by the Cthulhu mythos. It’s a rich legacy to explore because it’s shrouded in ambiguity and strangeness. It’s hard for me to pick favourites, because my answer would change every day. I’m a big fan of the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, T.E.D. Klein, Robert Bloch, Michael Shea, Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin Kiernan, Stephen King, and Thomas Ligotti. Other writers whose work I find myself returning to include: Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Elizabeth Hand, Sarah Waters, Margaret Atwood, Anne Rice, and Octavia Butler. I could go on and on.
If people enjoyed this book is there anything you can tell us about to expect in the future, or any upcoming projects that you might be able to tease us with?
I think I’ll always work with an element of horror. I like blending genres. In the past, I’ve mixed historical and westerns with horror. In the future, I’d like to try science fiction horror.
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