The shortlist for the THRESHOLDS International Feature Writing Competition has just been announced, anf amongst the list of tehn is an essay penned by yours truly on the fantasy and horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.

THRESHOLDS describes its mission as, “to promote and celebrate the reading, writing, study – and pleasure – of the Short Story.” In January the website – which is run by the University of Chichester – launched its first-ever writing competition, for essays that explored either a single short story or a story collection, or a profile of a short story writer. Given that I was around ten or eleven years old when Lovecraft’s weird vision changed my life for ever, HPL seemed the natural choice.

Out of the hundreds of entries, ten have been selected for the shortlist, with a further fifteen noted as ‘Highly Commended’. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 25th April. All the shortlist, including ‘Geoff Holder: We Recommend H.P. Lovecraft’ will be published on the THRESHOLDS site over the next few months.

And if you are unfamiliar with the works of Lovecraft, may I suggest you follow in the footsteps of Alan Moore, Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and Stephen King and other devotees of the Sage of Providence, and dive deep into his world. Within weeks, you’ll be wanting to own a plushy of Great Cthulhu. Not that I got one for Christmas, oh no. (Sob.)