THIS FANTASIA ON AN eldritch theme is the first of two volumes. The second, The Nyogtha Variations, will continue the story of Brecken and Sho, and tie up the loose ends I have deliberately left hanging at the end of this first volume.
Readers of the series The Weird of Hali, my other venture into weird fantasy, may find it helpful (or at least interesting) to know that The Shoggoth Concerto takes place in the same fictive universe as that series, but touches only peripherally on the tale of the Weird of Hali and its fulfillment. It takes place some five years after the events of The Weird of Hali I: Innsmouth and The Weird of Hali II: Kingsport, and the last chapter takes place at the same time as those parts of The Weird of Hali IV: Dreamlands that occur in the waking world.
Like my other weird tales, this story depends even more than most fiction on the labors of previous writers. H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, and Frank Belknap Long all contributed raw material to the tale. So, on a different level, did Johann Joseph Fux, whose Steps to Parnassus (the textbook Mozart’s father used to teach him counterpoint) helped me understand Baroque music, and the music department of the Providence Public Library in Providence, Rhode Island, which provided me with the background for Brecken Kendall’s compositions. I also owe a debt to Sara Greer and Isabel Kunkle, both of whom read and critiqued the manuscript. I hope it is unnecessary to remind the reader that none of the above are responsible in any way for the use I have made of their work.