More Like Lovecraft Than I Want

I re-read part of The Call of Cthulhu last night in order to remind myself of Lovecraft’s style, the events and exactly how the star spawn is described. Well, first off it isn’t really described (of course) because that’s just the way ol’ H.P. writes. Secondly I was upset to realize how close my setting is to the events of Chapter II: The Tale of Inspector Legrasse. There the encounter between the police and the cultists takes place in the swamps south of New Orleans in 1907. The victims apprehended for sacrifice by the cultists are described as squatters and as “mostly primitive but good-natured descendants of Lafitte's men.” In my story it’s 1924 and the cultist themselves are the descendants of some of Lafitte’s men. That’s really similar! I wish knew if I had thought to link this all to Lafitte independently or if I thought that because I read it in Lovecraft.

Basically, I have to decide if I want my story to be compatible with the Lovecraft Mythos or not. What I’ve written so far doesn’t contradict with what is arguably the most essential story in the Mythos. One can’t have a Mythos story that contradicts the original Mythos story! The star spawn isn’t killed in his story so my cultists could be involved with it years later. Plus, “the swamp and lagoon country to the south” is pretty vague. There’s a lot of bayou south of New Orleans with lots of room for different groups of cultists and different lines of Lafitte’s men. All I have to do to mesh this up with The Call of Cthulhu is mention a previous encounter in 1907 or something and I’m set. Poof! It’s a Mythos story.

However, I don’t really want this to be a Mythos story. I have plans to use this as part my own vaguely fantasy, vaguely gothic, vaguely noir story world. Just because Lovecraft is an influence on this tale doesn’t mean that it has to be compatible with his Mythos. I could just ignore the fact that there’s a lot of similarity and tell my story any way I want. Or I could make some other changes to make the stories more separate.

Basically it comes down to barrowing the idea of the star spawn and its cultists. That idea is so closely linked to the setting of the story and to Cthulhu that it’s hard to take just one half of the equation. If I take the cultist element in its entirety as I had planned to do, why not just go that one extra step and set the whole thing in the Mythos story world? If I want to avoid a direct connection to Lovecraft I should leave it all behind and think of some other background for the story. There are reasons for gruesome murder that don’t involve monsters from the stars. The problem is that, either way, it’s going to take some re-writing and that’s just not what NaNoWriMo is about. It’s taken me an hour just to puzzle through the problem in this post! I don’t have time for this! Need to write more words!

By now I should have 8,335 words.
My current count is 8,522 words.