'Firstborn'

E. W. Farnsworth's last published collection of horror tales was 'The Black Marble Griffon' and Other Disturbing Tales (2016), which is still available from Amazon. He continued to publish horror since then in individual stories and poems in a wide variety of congenial vehicles. Farnsworth's repertoire expanded to include cosmic horror, chiefly known through the works of H. P. Lovecraft and his friends. In this line came four years of serialized cosmic horror for Schlock! Webzine in The Picklock Lane Stories, a popular, continuing series being published by AudioArcadia.com. Farnsworth's 'exoteric' cosmic horror tales are appearing sporadically in Gavin Chappell's inspired monthly journal Lovecraftiana. The narration and setting for these tales is based roughly on the author's personal experiences in Allentown, Pennsylvania, during the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties. Meanwhile the author's poems come of their own accord. He writes, "My sincere wish is that my readers enjoy the games I play as much as I do writing them." E. W. Farnsworth's new collection of horror stories and poems will delight discerning readers who want to explore dimensions of the horror genre not available through normal channels. The keystone story for this volume, 'Firstborn, ' tells the story of Jure Grando Alilovic, the original vampire, who is still able to conquer his enemies, including a female vampire hunter, and the Viking Sigurd Nillson, who has turned into one of the creatures she is pledged to hunt. Other stories include 'Blue Steaks on St. Valentine's Day' tells of an unusual marriage proposal at a stockyard restaurant--joining a young man, Simon, and a young woman, Ruth, who share the special protection of tentacled creatures. 'The Hamadryad' figures human experimentation with nano-biotics gone wonderfully wrong as three men, janitor Myron Banks, Nano Robotics Chief Science Officer Dr. Charles Lamont and sixteen-year-old woodsman Nick Bounder, have wildly different relationships with the resultant female swamp-dwelling creature. 'The Carrier' is the story of Sherill McCabe, a young Arizona woman surviving a universal pandemic--until her time runs out on a comandeered ocean cruise ship at the northernmost reach of the Gulf of California. 'The Great Rift's Revenge' is about the results of the mission of two professors, Dr. Ophelia Hollins and Dr. Lloyd Stickler, to determine why their predecessors were killed by mysterious gases in the middle of a jungle paradise. Hansel Hedwig and Vilia Hedwig, the brother and sister who meet outside their family crypt for one last adventure, discover the joys of being trapped in a labyrinth. 'Halloween on the Escher Highway' is a puzzle from which only one of the figures will emerge and transform. 'Treasure Hunter' tells the story of the final fourth adventure of Bret Halliwell, the fabled fortune finder, who is betrayed by his lascivious girlfriend Rapunzel Smith and her other randy and unscrupulous boyfriends. Wealthy beyond imagining, the hero struggles to escape a destiny that is closing all around him. 'The ET Eel Infestation' pits ace New York police detective Val Cassidy and Mabel Deuce, his female side-kick, against the latest extra-terrestrial threat, a tangle of cooperating eels that thrive on human contact. 'The Music Master of North Eleventh Street' is an exoteric tale within the continuing cosmic horror of Farnsworth's neighborhood. Dr. Fiedler encounters his own apotheosis among his many students and admirers. The twelve included poems are eight Shakespearean sonnets, two elegies, one ballad and one ode. The elegies were first published in Eber & Wein's Best Poets of America series in 2019 and 2023, respectively.