This novel was my attempt at the 2007 National Novel Writing Month competition. Unlike most competitions, NaNoWriMo is against time. There is one month to reach 50,000 words.

Cyclopean Highway is a freakish literary experiment of mine. I’m taking the writing style of pulp fiction and penny dreadfuls and mixing it up with conventional horror, told from the perspective of a dirt-bag biker. It’s all set within the Cthulhu mythos, created by H.P. Lovecraft. After a month, I was only able to reach the first 6 consecutive chapters. There are additional chapters written, however they’re the climax. I’d rather leave them unpublished until I’ve written up to them, as they’re likely to fluctuate a bit.
Completed chapters are listed and linked here. Consider this a forward and table of contents all in one. There’s even some writer’s commentary and bonus features included in this document. I doubt anyone will care about any of them, but somehow, my webcomics pulls in 100 unique visitor a day, so clearly someone will read it if I put it out there.
Chapter 1: The invocation of the muse and Vinnie’s first sojourn into the red twilight
Chapter 2: In which Vinnie visits Fat Jake’s Truck Stop and eats something that disagrees with him
Chapter 3: In which Clark recounts the shoggoth from his childhood
Chapter 4: In which August refuses to discuss his past and instead suggests action
Chapter 5: In which action occurs
Chapter 6: In which things go south like a recently hired jezebel
Chapter 1 bonus stuff:

“May the dark times sound sinister and may the golden times be in a 3:2 ratio.” A math pun. The “golden ratio” is approximately 3:2. Not exactly, but close enough for a biker. How did this fairly unintelligent man learn about this relatively obscure concept? Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land.

“The tourist’s protests were cut off when “Mad” Abdul vaulted over the bar.” Allusion to Abdul Alhazred, the “author” of the famed Necronomicon.

“Vinnie cracked a smile for the first time in days as he listened to the howling commotion outside. “Black” Jack heartily slapped him on the back.” Vinnie and Jack are basically the only named characters that are not allusions to anything or anyone.

“So, you had a little run in with the Church, huh Vinnie?” The “modern” name of the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

“Clark’s haunted eyes and August’s long, lanky limbs criss-crossed with scars gave Vinnie all the proof he needed that they weren’t merely paying lip service.” Allusions to Clark Ashton Smith, close friend of H.P. Lovecraft and along with his buddy Howard P., part of the first wave of Cthulhu Mythos writers and August Derleth, also a friend of Lovecraft, and chief member of the second wave of the Cthulhu Mythos writers.

“If I had noticed that the mirror was pointing more at me and less at the road behind, I’d have fixed it before I took off. As it was, I was too damn stubborn to fix it on the road.” I do this in real life. Except if it’s really obscuring my sight, I’ll fix it while in motion. Unless it’s the right mirror. Then it’s staying like that. The right handlebar is where the throttle is, so it’s not possible to adjust the right mirror of a motorcycle without taking your hand off the throttle. No big deal if you’re riding an expensive touring bike with cruise control. Impossible for everyone else.

“on a Jap rice rocket” I really debated on whether or not to drop the J-bomb. Despite being part Japanese, I’m a big fan of dark humor and most slurs for Asians don’t offend me. Jap does. I have no idea why it’s like that for me.

“the green, sticky spawn of the stars vanished around the bend, with dreadlocks as green as the rest of his rubbery-looking body flapping behind his head, like a mass of feelers” There are three separate direct quotes from The Call of the Cthulhu in that sentence.

“shitty piles of rocks slapped together. I don’t know what the fuck this is called, but it’s a kissing cousin to gravel roads.” Piles of rocks slapped together without mortar is called “Cyclopean” architecture. I had to work the concept in after deciding on the title “Cyclopean Highway”.

“Kawazuki” Hurray for fictional brand names!

“thinking that the star spawn had fallen off the edge” This is two separate doses of foreshadowing.

“pussies like that fag in green.” I really hate the word fag. I didn’t want to use it. But Vinnie is a shit head. And he had already dropped the J-bomb, so there wasn’t much restraining my use of it.

Chapter 2 bonus stuff:

“harder than a college freshman overdosing on Viagra” What can I say? Bad puns are required for pulp fiction.

“One percent stands up and throws the shit right back in their face and bangs their mothers in dirty motel rooms.” I don’t know why, but I really like mother jokes. Don’t think I won’t figure out a way to work in a few “yo mama” jokes.

“Hell, my balls were still traumatized from having teeth that close to them.” I had the most fantastic grammar conversation with my friend Justin while having take a look at my rough draft of this chapter. He reminded me that testicles are plural and required a plural pronoun. Yeah. Talking about the grammatical implications of balls at 9pm. Can you think of something better to do with your evening? Probably not.

“Avoiding the puddle of puke, “ Here is my attention to detail. His puke doesn’t magically vanish. It’s still there, waiting for something bad to happen.

“Oh right. The mirror. I screwed with the mirror for a little while until I got it adjusted to point mostly at the road behind me.” Seriously. Adjusting mirrors on bikes is a pain in the ass. Not only do you have to make sure that it points at a good angle so as to have a good angle on the road behind you, but you have to adjust it so that it’s out far enough that it doesn’t have your arms and body taking up most of the reflection.

“I don’t know who Fat Jake is, but he’s my hero right now. Seriously. I’d buy that man a beer and an ugly girl with low self esteem.” This is my favorite line so far.

“My ten-year old Apache was the newest thing with wheels here.” Another fictional motorcycle brand. A clear allusion to the Indian motorcycle company, though.

“bat Old West saloon-type doors out of my way to get in, which is always fun. There’s no way to look like a pussy going through those things.” There isn’t. Try it for yourself.

“No, I mean they didn’t cook it. The hair would have came off. You ate it raw.” I have no idea if this is true or not and to be honest, I’m not going to cook a dog to find out. Well, maybe one of those yappy little purse-sized dogs.

Chapter 3 bonus material:

“They’re mailmen. They’re cops. They’re doctors and nurses. Any time you go to a hospital, any time you get pulled over, any time you get a burger, it could be them. And you could be doing exactly what they want you to.” Cthulhu conspiracy theories. Yes, please.

“Old Man Derleth was fucked up.” That’s right, I have two separate allusions to August Derleth. Why? Because apart from Lovecraft, he’s the most influential writer within the Cthulhu Mythos.
“goat fucking crazy!” I don’t know whether I’m especially proud or ashamed about making this idiom.

“f-bombs and s-hammers, “ s-hammer? Man, when I set out to create unusual diction, some times I think I go too far.

“growling g’s and th’s,” eg Yog-Sothoth, Yith, Cthulhu, Shoggoth, Shub-Niggurath, etc.

“Lin had picked the lock on the front door” Allusion to Lin Carter, pulp writer and huge fan of the man, Howard P.

“One of the other kids, Colin,” Colin Wilson, another member of the third wave of Mythos writers.
“Then there was just the three of us; Lin, me and Sandy.” Note the grammatical undesirable ordering. Because no one actually says, X, Y and I. Also, Sandy is an allusion to Sandy Petersen, the creator of the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu game.

“There were windows up here. I knew there had to be, ’cause we could see them from the outside, but the street light wasn’t shining in up in the second story.” External features and dimensions not corresponding to the internal ones is both how I interpret non-Euclidean geometry and a nicely creepy feature of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

“I could sense Lin and Sandy standing near me, but it seemed as though they were sliding away from me, until I couldn’t feel their presence anymore.” Completely inspired by House of Leaves.

“Soon, it became obvious to me that I was all alone in the night.” Thank you, J. Michael Straczynski! Write some more TV shows, please. And don’t skimp on the Spider-Man comics, either.
“The stairs were gone. Just fucking gone.” House of Leaves inspired again.

“the formless pillar of evil that went from floor to ceiling. Its body rippled with a billion eyes opening and closing, growing and popping. Insect eyes. Human eyes. Animal eyes. Eyes from things that I’ve never seen before. It reached for me with an oily black tentacle.” This is a shoggoth, of course, although I don’t believe that I’ll ever reference the name directly in the novel.

“I rolled over, expecting to be crushed by more of the inky eye things and instead the cave exploded into burning bright light. “ Something that’s not obvious by my writing, because it’s not obvious to Clark, is that he was saved by an Elder One. Not because the Elder One gives a shit about humans, but because it wanted to blast the shoggoth.

“There was a metal scream, like someone was raping the Eiffel Tower” This is my new favorite line in the book. It’s going to be hard to top.

“Clark pulled back his shirt to expose a branch made of gold tied to a leather cord around his neck. ” This is the Elder Sign as originally drawn by H.P. Lovecraft. Problem is that it’s really obscure, and the version that Auguth Derleth used because he didn’t have access to the drawing has become more popular.

“According to some geologist dude that went bat shit crazy in Antarctica, back in the Great Depression,” William Dyer, narrator of At the Mountains of Madness.

“It’s supposed to be a charm to ward off evil, like the swastika was before the Nazis turned it into something fucked up.” The connection between the Elder Sign and swastikas was originally made in The Shadow over Innsmouth.

“I’d say it was an angel, except from the flash that I remember, it didn’t have no wings and looked like a starfish mixed with a walking piece of celery.” Elder Ones look really weird.