I’ve said in other venues that Jerry Holkins was my favorite contemporary writer, and I’d like to just repeat it here. He’s a very lucid and descriptive writer and I love that. Also, The man shares my admiration for Lovecraft and it really shows in his style, whether it be in the news posts or comics. I still find it hard to fathom, but I do realize that not everyone reads Penny Arcade religiously, so I just wanted to share an excerpt that Holkin’s wrote for the most recent comic:

When it begins, you will hear the sound of children screaming – as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my radiance before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.

I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth.

To you, that passage may not be anything extraordinary, but to me it’s perfection; like he’s channeling Lovecraft while simultaneously infusing his own personality. I read it and I’m stunned at how elegant it is in its deft blending of fantasy and horror. It inspires me to write my own prose, instead of scripts.

Plus, it doesn’t hurt that I’m writing a short story right now that I am too into for my own good. I think it borders on some kind of disorder when you re-read your own writing dozens of times because you love it so much. Tweaking one word every 5 read throughs… it’s a process I very, very rarely get into, but when I do, brings me a satisifaction that really can’t be reproduced by any other meaningless task I complete…

I really need to write more. I go long breaks without writing anything original and I forget how good it makes me feel about myself. My ego feeds on stories of my own creation.