My stories tend to fall into several categories, but the major division is between original works and pastiches. A pastiche is a story about characters or concepts invented by other authors. New stories, novels, and movies about Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, the Cthulhu Mythos, and Frankenstein's monster appear every decade, and fan-scribed tales of Star Trek, Star Wars, comic book heroes, and the like are legion. I've added stories to the above milieus, but somehow I end up writing sequels and pastiches with amazingly obscure references.
Fictional Speculations is an offshoot of the pastiche. By this I mean the examination of fictional characters and events as if they were real. The Baker Street Irregulars, with their many scholarly articles about Sherlock Holmes and his world, pioneered this curious area of research decades ago. SF writer Philip Jose Farmer expanded the field exponentially with his "Wold Newton Family" series, which proposes that Holmes, Tarzan, James Bond, Doc Savage, the Shadow, and dozens of other fictional heroes and villains are closely related. Farmer's fans have continued expanding his expansion (see the Wold Newton Family). My speculations are rarely so ambitious, but they are fun to write, and sometimes they inspire new stories.
Original Works is self-explanatory. I have several categories for my original tales, but the largest is Icelos, a world parallel to this earth, where dwell gryphons and other fabulous beasts, some familiar, some unique. There are articles and glossaries that help define Icelos; these are liable to show up anywhere, but The New, Improved Eyrie will handle most of the gryphon-related material.
"Moon-Eyes" -- Another tale of Wellman's Silver John.
"Bullwinkle's Mythology" -- an oldie but goodie pastiche of an oldie but goodie animated show.
"Away Down the Road a Piece" -- just in time for Halloween, a story of Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John.
"The Plastic Blob" -- a tale of horror (or something like it).
When I finally got around to reading Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, I was struck to its resemblance -- in the first few chapters, at least -- to another famous horror novel that appeared at about the same time. Thus, a pastiche of two characters meeting halfway to their destinies on the road. (Arrogant me: I consider this story to be "Chapter Zero" of Hill House.) There was no real reason to write this tale; it just seemed apt. (The characters in "On the Road," of course, are copyrighted by their respective creators.)
Notes on the Gill-Man of the Upper Amazon at the Wold-Newton Chronicles
Curupiri -- a lost section of The Lost World which complements the above article
Megafauna of the 1950s at Win Scott Eckert's Wold-Newton site
Since many authors contribute (without even knowing it) to the Wold-Newton Universe, different events in history have been given multiple interpretations. For instance: the fate of the colonists of the Roanoke Colony. Kidnapped by aliens? Killed by vampires? Amelia Earhart: Killed by a secret weapon? Still living in secret?
There have been many versions of and solutions to the Jack the Ripper murders, as well. Can they co-exist in one universe? We take a stab at it in the Wold-Newton Field Guide to Ripper Murders!
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