Myths of Places: The Medusa Deep
I’ve always thought that at the root of horror literature are three basic relationships: our relationships
with nature, with the past, and with our own bodies. Lately, however, I’m thinking about adding to that
list. What about our relationships to place, to where we are or where we come from?
In my 2015 Lovecraftian YA novel The Midnight Games, I worked hard on place: on keeping the
action within the city core of Hamilton, Ontario where the characters live and where all the action takes
place. In that year’s Hamilton Literary Awards, “Midnight Games” got the regional award for the book
that “best conveys the spirit of Hamilton”: since the novel begins with an immigrant slave worker being
sacrificed to the dripping mandibles of a giant centipede in front of a cheering crowd at the Tiger-Cats’
football stadium, one might conclude that there’s at best a very loose correspondence between realism
– something being believable – and plausibility – something being made to seem believable.
It took me a long time to produce a sequel to The Midnight Games. I had to write a PhD
dissertation, and then learn on-the-job how to teach university courses, and then the pandemic came.
But when The Medusa Deep came out this summer, I started getting unaccustomed requests from
friends who read the book. They wanted me to take them on walking tours of the east end
neighbourhoods where the books are set. There was something in the plot, the characters, the monsters
and mysteries that somehow gave life to this part of Hamilton as a place. At some point, the place had
come to be a character in the books.