"Do you have a Lovecraftian story of humor you want to publish in an anthology?" said my friend Scott Elliott. Scott's friend and publisher of anthologies, Alex Shvartsman of UFO Publishing was short on stories for his anthology. He posted a call on Facebook: "My invited authors delivered shorter stories than I anticipated and I still have room for a couple more, but the turnaround time is really short. I'm looking for Lovecraftian humor stories for THE CACKLE OF CTHULHU anthology." And I said, "Oh, I wish! Thank you for thinking of me. No time to quickly write up something." Then I thought about it and said, "Unless...do you think I should buckle up and write up something? I could. I read all of Lovecraft..." and then I thought, "Fuck it. I'll do it. Just for fun." 

I wrote it in three days, in the evenings, after writing the chapter outline for ZHANNA. The deadline was December 31st. Scott graciously offered his time and edited it for me, and voila, I've sent it off, the very first story I've ever submitted anywhere, and of course I got my very first rejection, which was so funny and so true, I fell off my ball reading it (Alex said it was totally cool to share it with you guys, as I said you'd get a good laugh out of it):