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The Carnacki Casebook features William Hope Hodgson's Edwardian era occult detective, Thomas Carnacki, and was written from October 2018 to September 2020. I published three volumes of stories as eBooks, then collected all nine stories in a paperback: The Complete Carnacki Casebook, published in October of 2020.
My goal in writing The Carnacki Casebook was the creation of a set of atmospheric weird fiction stories using the established character of Carnacki, his techniques, and the settings typically utilized in the original stories. Gradually, I moved away from the typical story structure—where Carnacki relates the case to his friends and Dodgson acts as chronicler, and utilized Carnacki's ensemble (his friends Arkright, Dodgson, Jessop, and Taylor) in the stories themselves. I also introduced a new character, Lady Anne Bennett, a medium of significant ability. The addition of these characters opened up new opportunities for story elements and dialog.
In addition to the self-contained stories, each of the eBook volumes contains parts I - III of The Black Obelisk novella, all of which is included in The Complete Carnacki Casebook.
I wanted something unique for the covers, reflecting my own design philosophy—bold colors and symbolic elements. Each cover references a specific story in the collection. Volume 1 references The Barton Wood Mystery, Volume 2 The Curse of the Black Obelisk, Volume 3 The Voyage of the Black Obelisk. The complete collection combines all three.
See The Carnacki Casebook for more information on the stories.
A document consisting, to quote H. P. Lovecraft, "of ideas, images, and quotations hastily jotted down for possible future use in weird fiction." I've used several in my own stories. They are merely starting points to set the imagination working. A few have been pulled from Lovecraft's own Commonplace Book.
Commonplace Book (wjrankin-cpb.pdf, 28K)