When the Elder Gods extend an invitation, be wary of the strings attached
While browsing in a rare book store in Arkham, Sean finds an occult book with an ad seeking an apprentice sorcerer, from a newspaper dated March 21, 1895. Even more intriguing, the ad specifically requests applicants reply by email. Sean’s always been interested in magic, particularly the Lovecraftian dark mythology. Against his best friend Edna’s (“call-me-Eddy-or-else”) advice, he decides to answer the ad, figuring it’s a clever hoax, but hoping that it won’t be. The advertiser, Reverend Redemption Orne, claims to be a master of the occult born more than 300 years ago. To prove his legitimacy, Orne gives Sean instructions to summon a harmless but useful familiar—but Sean’s ceremony takes a dark turn, and he instead accidentally beckons a bloodthirsty servant to the Cthulhu Mythos god Nyarlathotep. The ritual is preemptively broken, and now Sean must find and bind the servitor, before it grows too strong to contain. But strange things are already happening in the town of Arkham….
Top Ten List:
Top Ten Lessons Writing This Book Taught Me:
1. Go ahead and write long in the first draft. Now’s the time to throw everything on the table. Too much restraint at this point can be crippling.
2. All of which implies that you (yes, you!) have accepted that your first draft won’t be perfect.
3. Or your second draft, or your third.
4. Or your fourth.
5. Stop sobbing and start that fifth draft.
6. Your betas and editors will still find stuff that needs fixing and polishing. Way better them than your readers!
7. Writing query letters and synopses is HARD, but like all HARD things, it will get easier with practice.
8. While the novel is under submission, only writing another novel will preserve your sanity. Also, as with short stories, the arrival of a rejection means the query or MS goes out again the same day! If you’re not in the game, you can’t win.
9. If a character resists following your plans, she’s probably right. Let her do things her way and see what happens.
10. Chocolate is always good, both in rejection and triumph. Vodka has its uses. But chocolate and vodka together? Oh hell, why not, given a sufficient supply of antacids. 
I was born in Troy, New York, but I currently live just outside Providence, Rhode Island, at the head of beautiful Narragansett Bay. New England has long been my spiritual home, and the region informs much of my fiction. One day I hope to find Lovecraft’s portals to his mythical towns of witch-haunted Arkham and Kingsport, shadowed Innsmouth and accursed Dunwich. Until then, I’ll just have to write about them.. I am a member of SFWA and HWA and a rabid Austenite. Don’t those three always go together? Apart from writing, I like gardening, swimming, king cobras, jumping spiders, and cats. No cobras or cats at the moment, but the jumping spiders are always with us. In spite of maintaining a mental age of between twelve and sixteen, I have just married my partner of more than thirty years. Thanks to the RI Legislature for finally living up to Roger Williams’ philosophy of crabbing at people he disagreed with but never denying the primacy of the personal conscience.
Rose Shadow Ink 
Tell me what you think!