Scott R Jones is a writer, editor, spoken word performer, mostly unintentional comedian, and naturalized sorcerer living in Victoria BC Canada with his wife and two frighteningly intelligent spawn. His fiction and poetry have been published in Innsmouth Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Great Jones Street, and others, as well as a few anthologies and podcasts. He was once kicked out of England for some very good reasons.

When The Stars Are Right by Scott R Jones

The Great Old Ones: hideous monster-gods that populate the pantheon of weird fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft's increasingly popular milieu, his so-called Cthulhu Mythos. Protean, nebulous, unimaginable, and impressively persistent in their psychological and spiritual presence.

In When The Stars Are Right, author Scott R Jones deftly breaks down the barriers between the bright logic of our daytime intellect and the fearful non-Euclidean symmetries of our darkest dreams, revealing the Black Gnosis: a radical mode of being that anticipates a new appreciation of humanity's place in an increasingly dire and indifferent cosmos. When The Stars Are Right asks the reader a simple question: "Are you keeping it R'lyeh?" The answers may surprise you.

CURATOR'S NOTE

People have been trying to integrate Lovecraft into metaphysics for decades, and have mostly just managed to create ridiculous "rituals" more suitable for a Halloween party than a faith. Scott Jones digs deep to create a metaphysics of interest to Lovecraft fans, transforming the literary into the philosophical. An amazing attempt at what Jones calls "an authentic Lovecraftian spirituality." – Nick Mamatas

 

REVIEWS

  • "When The Stars Are Right constitutes an important contribution to Weird literature. At points profound, perverse, and personal, Jones provides a reading of the Mythos that reclaims the horror and cosmic strangeness … as a journey along a dreamer's path, deep among infinitely inexpressible wonders. Highly recommended, but don't expect any gates to close easily afterwards."

    – Bryan Thao Worra, NEA Fellow in Literature, author of DEMONSTRA

  • "This is no Simon Necronomicon, no coy cash-in; instead, the book you hold in your hands is filled with potentially life-changing wisdom, provocative observation, and beautiful madness. When The Stars Are Right is the first real self-help book for the weird fiction crowd."

    – Ross E. Lockhart, editor, The Book of Cthulhu

  • "With this book Scott R Jones manages to transcend the mire of … the pop Cthulhu cottage industry … a stirring examination of the genuine Darkness that churns not only in the mythos of H. P. Lovecraft but in the universe at large."

    – Richard Gavin, author of At Fear’s Altar and The Darkly Splendid Realm

  • "… the particular violence that Mr. Jones has wrought upon Lovecraft is a thing to behold … When The Stars Are Right is not a book; it's a crime scene."

    – Leeman Kessler, AskLovecraft.com
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Nyarlathotep manifests in all communications: He is Messenger and Message, the ultimate Medium. He is manifesting now, as these words are laid across the dim glow of my laptop screen, and he will manifest again when they are read on page or tablet, and we small humans that serve as the base matter for this manifestation will nod our heads and marvel and think ourselves momentarily wise. "Ah!" we will say. "We understand!" But we understand nothing, for there is nothing to understand. Human faith and human logic and sciences balk at this. Surely, the more we know, the more meaning is created? With increasing levels of knowledge and denser connectivity between those areas of knowledge, surely our ignorance will be lessened? We forget, conveniently, that the brighter the bonfire, the more darkness it reveals to our eyes. Nyarlathotep is both that bonfire and the Outer Dark it reveals. Mankind, under the guiding hand of Nyarlathotep, will one day correlate all the contents of his knowledge: revelation and madness, that divine Madness which is the Black Gnosis, will result.