Every now and then, someone comes along with a theme for an anthology that’s nothing shy of brilliant. That’s what’s happened with the new anthology from SamsDot Publishing called The Book of Tentacles.
I’m fortunate enough to have the opening story in this anthology. Well, technically, Camille Alexa has the first thing in the anthology, but it’s a poem, so I don’t think that really counts.
My story is "Call of the Bailiff," which is one of those sardonic Cthulhu stories that you seem to see everywhere.
Have you ever seen the movie, "I am Sam"? For your sake I honestly hope you haven’t. It’s one of those films where an established actor plays a retard in the hopes of getting an Oscar. Unfortunately, Sean Penn went full-retard in "I am Sam" and only got a pity-nomination for his role. Sean Penn’s character is a retard who fights the courts in order to retain custody of his non-retard daughter. The point of the film being, that it doesn’t matter how retarded you are, your love makes up for all that retardation.
This is a deeply retarded film.
I was so angry at the schmaltzy sentimentality of "I am Sam" that I thought, why not take out the retard, and put in a character that’s even less competent to raise a child? Initially the story was going to be about Satan fighting the legal system to retain custody of his daughter, but nobody believes in Satan anymore, so I made it Cthulhu.
I also highly recommend that you check out the website for the Book of Tentacles anthology, TentaclePower. It’s not just a website, it’s a full-on multi-media tentacle extravaganza. I even supplied them with some of my tentacle art for the art page.
Yes, we all like the tentacles.