Cthulhu's Reign, edited by Darrell Schweitzer and featuring my theologically themed Lovecraftian story "The New Pauline Corpus," is now available in stores everywhere (publication date: April 6). Both the book in general and my story specifically have been receiving positive responses.
In part two of a pre-release, multi-part series of interviews with the book's authors, Black Gate says my story "reads more like a fragmented religious text, a mad work of theology and philosophy, than a mere horror tale." The same article quotes my responses to some questions about what inspired me and how I went about writing the piece.
SFRevu pegs my story one of the two most interesting in the book, and describes it as "effective."
In his Amazon review, Matt Carpenter says, "Wow, what a magnificent story! A theologian tries to reconcile what has happened with what he spent his life studying."
A reviewer for Boston Book Bums says, "If I were to peg my favorite [story in the anthology], I would have to say 'The New Pauline Corpus' perfectly blends the end of the world with the deepest introspection that would come when weighing the dogma of light against the horrors oozing down from the night sky."
Similarly, a reviewer for The Maine Edge writes, "A personal favorite is Matt Cardin's 'The New Pauline Corpus,' a story written in triptych and built around a new gospel reconciling the rise of the Old Ones with the foundations of Christianity. We get a theologian's proof equating Cthulhu to the Old Testament God, a 'fictional' recounting of the time of the change and a diary-style account of a church official attempting to construct a new gospel from the pieces of the former two. It's an interestingly-written piece that has some seriously strong connections to Lovecraft's work. Probably the best one of the bunch."
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March 11, 2010:
I was recently interviewed by Lovecraft News Network: Interview with Matt Cardin: Dark Awakenings and Cosmic Horror (March 3, 2009).
I was also recently interviewed again by TheoFantastique about my reading of the biblical book of Isaiah as a cosmic horror story: Matt Cardin - 'Gods and Monsters, Worms and Fire: A Horrific Reading of Isaiah' (February 17, 2010).
Talent Development Resources, Douglas Eby's website about the psychology of creativity and personal growth, has published my article "Perspiration Meets Inspiration or, The Return of the Muse" (March 5, 2010)." It's one part apologia for the creative value of pairing deliberate effort with active waiting on inspiration, and one part report on the rehabilitation of the idea of the muse, daimon, or personal genius in contemporary Western culture.
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December 19, 2009:
My semi-surreal short story "Chimeras & Grotesqueries," in which the invasion of a nameless modern-day city by a dark extra-cosmic power is observed by a faceless narrator who lives in an alleyway and spends his days fashioning miniature monsters from garbage, has been accepted for publication in Dark Faith, an anthology edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon, to be published by Apex Books in May 2010.
The cover art and full table of contents for editor Darrel Schweitzer's Lovecraftian anthology Cthulhu's Reign (DAW, April 2010), which will feature my story "The New Pauline Corpus" (which reconciles Christian theology with Lovecraft's Old Ones), have been showing up around the Web, along with a brief description of the book: "Some of the darkest hints in all of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos relate to what will happen after the Old Ones return and take over the earth. What happens when Cthulhu is unleashed upon the world? What happens when the other Old Ones, long since banished from our universe, break through and descend from the stars? What would the reign of Cthulhu be like on a totally transformed planet where mankind is no longer the master? Find out in these exciting, brand-new stories."
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November 11, 2009:
New blurb from Nick Mamatas, author of the deliriously brilliant Lovecraftian Beat novel Move Under Ground: "Dark Awakenings offers the dream imagery of the best weird fiction but goes even further beyond the ordinary thanks to Matt Cardin's fierce intellect. Haunting stories and insightful essays. This is mandatory reading to prepare for the doom to come."
My two-part article "Lovecraft's Longing" has been published at Art Throb, the North Shore-oriented arts Website administered out of Salem, Massachusetts and helmed by my sister, New England journalist Dinah Cardin.
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October 25, 2009:
Welcome to the new MattCardin.com! I hope you enjoy looking through the site and seeing what it has to offer. This space will contain periodic news updates, while my Teeming Brain blog, at three-plus years and counting -- and with a brand new look, as you'll see when you visit it -- will continue as before (see the feed for it here on the Home page). Feel free to use the Contact link to let me know what you think of everything.
More news: On October 18 I sent the final round of galley revisions for Dark Awakenings to the publisher, and the project is on a definite track for a November/December release. Beyond that, I'll have a new story titled "The New Pauline Corpus" in editor Darrell Schweitzer's forthcoming anthology Cthulhu's Reign (DAW, April 2010) and three entries, including an extensive examination of vampires and religion, in editor S.T. Joshi's Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead in Myth, Legend, and Popular Culture (Greenwood Press, 2010).
