Edward P. Berglund

- Ken Withrow

Ken Withrow: Tell me about your life: the family unit, your day job, what you were doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, etc. . .?

Edward P. Berglund: I was born October 28, 1942 in Vallejo, California.  I was raised in Oregon, Washington, California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

At the present time I am an independent paralegal, doing business as Tarheel Paralegal Services (established in 1992).  The majority of my work consists of doing criminal record checks for pre-employment screening.  I also do real estate title searches, lost wage states for personal injury cases (military only), and public records retrieval.

Ken Withrow: I had heard you were in the Marines.  What did you do while you were in?

Edward P. Berglund: I joined the United States Marine Corps in 1960, went to recruit training right after I graduated from North High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was transferred to the retired list on January 1, 1991, as a Mastery Gunnery Sergeant (E-9).  I elected to remain in Jacksonville, North Carolina, rather than return to the northern Midwest. 

While I was in the Marines I had been a disbursing clerk (1960-1964), a construction draftsman (1964-1966), an interrogator-translator (1966-1981), intelligence analyst (1981-1987) and intelligence chief (1987-1990).  As an interrogator-translator, I went to school to learn Laotian, Korean, Moroccan Arabic, and Egyptian Arabic, all of which I no longer am able to use.

Ken Withrow: How long were you in?  Were you writing during that time?  If you were, did you write anything that was worth while (even a keeper that wasn’t ready to hatch at the time).

Edward P. Berglund: I seemed to have been writing almost all of my life.  The first story I ever wrote, never finished, lost, was about a voyage to the moon.  This was written when I was in the first or second grade of school.  Almost all of the stories that I have completed were written while I was in the military.  And almost all of those have seen print in fanzines and have appeared on the Internet. 

Ken Withrow: Were you reading weird fiction back then . . . actually, when did you pick up your first “weird” story?

Edward P. Berglund: No, I wasn’t reading weird fiction “back then.”  I started out reading comic books, like almost every other kid in the United States and elsewhere, but gravitated toward those that were oriented toward science fiction.  (However, I do remember reading DC’s House of Mystery.)  I can still remember that the first science fiction magazine I bought as science fiction, was the August 1955 issue of If Worlds of Science Fiction, featuring “Bleedback” by Winston K. Marks.  I didn’t get into reading weird fiction until I discovered H.P. Lovecraft.  What other weird fiction I was reading was the other stories in anthologies in which a Lovecraft story was featured.  Up until I found the Lovecraft collection Cry Horror! (Avon Books, 1958), my reading was almost entirely in the science fiction genre.  During my tour in South Vietnam, I purchased the Lovecraft books from Arkham House.  After I had all of those, I started buying the other in-print Arkham House books.  I still read science fiction and horror, some fantasy, westerns, mysteries, thrillers, what-have-you—it all depends on what catches my interest at the time.  (One of my foibles—too many interests!)

Ken Withrow: What writers have influenced you the most (both within and out of the Mythos environment)?

Edward P. Berglund: Obviously, H.P. Lovecraft has influenced me the most, or this interview wouldn’t be taking place.  August Derleth, in a round-about way:  When Ramsey Campbell (then J.  Ramsey Campbell) first sent his Mythos tales to Derleth, Campbell said Derleth “persuaded me to agree that the Arkham country had been saturated as setting for stories in the Mythos, and that a new milieu for a series of tales might well be originated in Great Britain.”  Thus, the majority of my tales take place in or in the vicinity of O’Khymer, Oregon.  

Walter C. DeBill, Jr. submitted a story for consideration in Nyctalops (published by Harry O. Morris, Jr.).  This story was done in what Walt called a “mosaic” format.  I found the format to be fascinating in its possibilities and the result was “Wings in the Night.”  This was the hardest story for me to write and the one I am still the most pleased with.  (And, apparently, there are a lot of readers who felt the same way!)  

I cannot say who else may have influenced my writing, but there are several authors whose writing I admire:  

Style-wise, I admire the writing of Charles L. Grant (with/without the “L.”) (horror) and John D. MacDonald (mystery).

Description-wise (and plot-wise and character-wise), I admire the writing of Louis L’Amour (western).

Action-wise, I admire William W. Johnstone (action), Mickey Spillane (mystery), and Donald E. Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) (mystery).

Humor-wise, I admire Richard S. Prather (mystery).

Ken Withrow: Do you only write (and deal with) weird fiction or have you dabbled in other genres?

Edward P. Berglund: I started out writing science fiction, or should I more properly label it, space opera.    There was a mystery entitled The Butler Did It, but it has since been lost.  I started a western novel with Randall D.  Larson, but the vagaries of the U.S. Ghost Awful seemed to shut it down after the fourth chapter.  See my story The Drive to see a crossover between the weird and western fields (and Mythos!).  I’ve written an A.  Merritt-esque fantasy (in the early 70’s), which has recently been accepted for publication.  And I have a science fiction story which utilizes nano-technology concepts.

Ken Withrow: What, of your myriad projects, are you currently putting your strongest efforts on?

Edward P. Berglund: Yes, I have myriad projects, all of which are huge time-consumers.

Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos (3^rd edition).  See below.

The New Pulps: Fiction Series in Paperback Books is self-explanatory.  Basically it entailed gathering information from the back pages of paperback books and other lists.  I was also including whether the author byline was a pseudonym, date of publication, and reorder number/ISBN.  It’s been about three years since I’ve done anything on this one.

Checklist of the Fiction Magazines in the United States in the 20^th Century.  This one started out as a checklist of the pulp magazines, but expanded to included all magazines that included at least fifty percent fiction in their contents.  Titles and dates of issues were obtained through checklists, articles and advertisements.  Then I went to the source (albeit a secondary source) -- the copyright registrations.  Found quite a few magazines that were obviously all-fiction that I had never heard of before.  Even found a few comic books that nobody had ever mentioned, even in the Overstreet’s Comic Book Price Guide.  Been at least ten years since I’ve done anything on this one.

The Disciples of Cthulhu II.  Chaosium Books should publish this anthology of Mythos stories around October 2000.  And John Tynes of Tynes-Cowan Corporation has intimated that they would be interested in my doing an anthology for them.

Pieces of Darkness: Tales from the Lovecraft Circle.  I began this one by contacting the living Lovecraft correspondents and asking them to select one of their stories for inclusion.  At NecronomiCon IV I asked Robert M. Price if he would write the introductions to the stories and use his influence to market it.  First choice:  Fedogan & Bremer.

Shards of Darkness.  This is a collection of my Mythos stories that will be published this year by David Wynn’s Mythos Books.  If this sells well, there might be a second collection with stories I have collaborated on with other writers.

Ken Withrow: Tell me about the Reader’s Guide as if I knew nothing about it what so ever.

Edward P. Berglund: The Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos is a listing of all the material, in whatever format, that deals with the Cthulhu Mythos (name coined by August Derleth), which expands the body of the work of H. P.  Lovecraft.

A Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos was compiled and published in a mimeographed booklet by Robert Weinberg in July 1969.  Its nine pages covered ninety Cthulhu Mythos stories that had been published up through June of that year.  Weinberg stated that he had listed all known Cthulhu Mythos tales.  This should be clarified; Weinberg listed all known professionally published Cthulhu Mythos tales.  Fiction only.  And he only listed the first place of appearance.

At the time I obtained Weinberg’s biblio, my list already consisted of 170 items.  So I decided to do a second edition of this bibliography.  I would include fiction, nonfiction, parodies, poetry, and books.  And I would include all appearances.  But then I decided to do something even more different than normal bibliographies.  I had noticed that the science fiction bibliographies were out of date almost as soon as they were published.  This was not good.  So I contacted all of the contributors to the Mythos that were still living.  In doing this, I also added titles of items that had not been published yet, and items that were in progress or projected.  I used the fiction listings as the main section and included cross references to the writers’ listings in the other sections.  (A professional librarian complimented me on this.)

The Silver Scarab Press published the second edition of the Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos in June 1974.  The print edition ran 84 pages (112 pages in manuscript).  Of the approximately 700 items listed, about 550 of them were stories.  And of that number, 360 were considered as integral stories in the Cthulhu Mythos.

(The introductions to both editions of the RGttCM, plus interviews with Fred C. Adams and Allen Mackey, can be found at http://www.toddalan.com/~berglund/history.htm .)

I continued keeping track of Cthulhu Mythos items as they came out . . .  for an eventual third edition.  Somewhere in the late 70’s my interest started to wan.  And then in 1980 Chaosium Inc. published the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.  Things just sort of snowballed from there.  By the time I started keeping track of everything again, I had lost contact with most of the people I had contacted for the second edition.  And this one edition was going to be even bigger!

Now, mind you, I was doing all of this while I was still in the Marine Corps.  And toward the end of my military career there was just too much material to categorize and put in the proper places.  The current manuscript is only complete up to 1996 and runs just a little over 1,000 pages.

And the listings have expanded onto the Internet as I have gotten in contact with Mythos creators:  http://www.toddalan.com/~berglund/listing.htm .

At the same time I began wondering just who in the hell would want to publish a hard copy of this monster.  Mike Ashley and William G.  Contento’s The Supernatural Index, published by Greenwood Press in 1995, sold for $105.00.  It is 993 pages of very tiny type in two columns.  Well worth the price, but it’s not for your average fan.  (In fact, Greenwood Press’ advertising was almost entirely slanted toward libraries.)  An alternate method would be to put the RGttCM on CD-ROM.  This latter method would bring the price down under fifty dollars.  To put this in perspective, the first edition of nine pages, published in 1969, sold for fifty cents.  And the second edition of 84 pages, published in 1974, sold for five dollars.  And here we are twenty-six years later.!

Ken Withrow: Do you think you might be able to pull off getting the Guide published within the near future or are we talking way down the line . . . if at all?

Edward P. Berglund: My main concern is whether I can obtain all of the information that is needed to bring it up to date.  This includes contacting all of the creators for additional information.  For instance, when a writer writes several stories that are in the same “fictional universe,” sometimes the editor or publisher touts the latest story in the “x” series.  This might not be the same as what the writer thinks of them as.  Another for instance.  August Derleth created the term “Cthulhu Mythos.”  (In fact he originally wanted to call it the “Hastur Mythos.”)  In one of Lovecraft’s letters, he referred to his Mythos stories as “my tales of Yog-Sothothery.”  Plus adding information on dates of writing and wordage.  Someone may say what’s the big thing about when the story was actually written.  If someone wants to do an essay on the history of the Mythos, they cannot go strictly by the dates of publication.  Crispin Burnham used a few of my fictional creations in his stories, which were published before the story he had seen them in saw publication.  Going by publication dates, it would appear that that are Crispin’s creations, instead of mine.

But this is getting away from the question at hand.  I don’t really think about getting the 3^rd edition of the RGttCM published and who would actually be interested in publishing it.  At this time it is a moot point.  The point of focus is getting it done.  Then we’ll see.  And as I said, worse-case scenario is that I put it out on CD-ROM myself.

As for when, that all depends on how much time it takes to bring it up to date (and how much time I have to devote to it), possibly with a 12/31/99 cutoff, and how fast I can actually get the information from the creators.

Ken Withrow: Do you ever sit back and look at the Reader’s Guide and say “My God! This thing’s huge!  What the hell was I thinking?!”?

Edward P. Berglund: Not actually.  But in the twenty-six years since the publication of the second edition, the usage of the Cthulhu Mythos has really snowballed, especially in professional publications.

I do dread the fact that I will have to double check all of the cross references, make sure that stories that are indicated as being in a sub-series are actually listed in the series listing, make sure that all stories from collections and anthologies have been noted in the authors listings, and make sure that all of the first appearances are in the chronological listing.

Ken Withrow: Have you ever thought of finding help with your basic maintenance of the Reader’s Guide (an assistant or two)?

Edward P. Berglund: When I did the second edition of the RGttCM, since I was giving Weinberg half of the byline, I figured that he should have some say in what material was listed.  As you probably already know, the chances of finding two people who are in complete agreement on all the story in the Cthulhu Mythos is very nearly zero!

James Ambuehl, a fellow Mythos enthusiast with a somewhat similar philosophy toward same—there no such thing as a bad Mythos story, just a badly written Mythos story, is a little bit more liberal in what he considers to be Mythos items.  Over a period of about eight years he furnished my copies of almost everything I didn’t already have (due mostly to my stagnant period of the bibliography).  (I still haven’t finished going through the stuff that he has sent me!)  But I have had to read each and every item and make my own determination of whether it should be included in the bibliography.

Since I quit editing fanzines, I have very seldom read one completely through.  And I only pick up those which supposedly have Mythos material in them.  When someone says a particular story should be listed and I read it and cannot figure out how they came to their conclusion, I’ve lost time.  Not that I haven’t read some good stories in the fanzines (let’s say, the small press).  They just weren’t Mythos stories.  I’m more lenient toward parodies and poetry, and, of course, will list anything that was written for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.

Along with the material that I haven’t gotten to from Ambuehl, there are the new stories in the Chaosium anthology and elsewhere to check out.  And there are probably more Mythos items that Ambuehl knows about, but he’s currently stuck writing Dr. Who stories.

But, back to the original question.  In order for someone to assist me in bringing the RGttCM up-to-date, they would have to know what I already have and what I’ve considered, but discarded.  The former is the easiest to convey.  For instance, the fiction listed by title runs 65 pages.  The latter I could drum up a list of, but they would only be those items sent to me by Ambuehl.  I haven’t kept track of those items I investigated myself and discarded.

Ken Withrow: I also saw that you were writing a novel.  Do you want to talk about that?  If so, please do.

Edward P. Berglund: Actually, there are several novels started, none finished at this time.

There was “The End of the Hunt,” being a western written with Randall D.  Larson.  There was “The Dead and the Sorcerous,” which was to be a sword-and-sorcery novel consisting of individual stories which could stand alone.  There was “The Wildcatters,” an action novel.  And then there was an untitled private eye novel which I started.

The closest anything ever came to being finished was “Shadow Love.”

Shadow Love originated in and cannibalized my story Wings in the Night.  In the writing of this story, which concerned the main character, Eric Moltone trying to get an interview with the writer Charles B. Griths, I had to create some titles for his stories:

Evening With My True Love, Anubis Comes Stalking, The Lurking Shadows, Shadow Love, Shadow Wine in the Sun, and Ghoulishly, She Basked.  Basically, these were throwaway titles . . . until someone wrote asking if he could use the titles for his own stories.  I told him that I had plans for them myself.

Shadow Love was eventually written in first draft over a thirty-day period—one-and-a-half hours per day, Monday through Friday.  Unfortunately, I only came up with 56,000 words—kind of short for a novel (but in the story I said it was a novella).  Over the ten years since I retired from the Marine Corps, I have worked on it several times, but it is still basically in draft form, even though it is well over 60,000 words now.  As for the cannibalization, the majority of Wings in the Night was subsumed into the novel.

In the original story, the culmination of the story was because of a deal Griths had made with Mynoghra, the She-Daemon of the Shadows.  Her entry into our world in the story became the prologue for the novel.  But in the novel her influence on her location on earth is greatly expanded, indicating that there are other gateways in which she can come through to earth.  The most difficult thing about writing this novel was that my protagonist was female.  I lent it to a female classmate (I was going to the local community college at the time), and she really ripped it apart.  (Seems I haven’t learned as much about the fairer sex as I thought I had!)

Of that list of titles (besides the novel), I have also used Anubis Comes Stalking—twice!  There is a non-Mythos version which appeared in a community college literary magazine under my own byline—E.P.  Berglund.  And then, there is the Mythos-related version under the Griths byline.  The latter version was published in the April 1999 issue of the ezine Wired Art for Wired Hearts at http://www.wiredhearts.net/april/fiction5.html .

Ken Withrow: Have you ever tried to submit Shadow Love for publication?  Even just to see what might happen?

Edward P. Berglund: No, I’ve never tried to submit this novel for publication.  Like I said it is basically in a first-draft form at the present time.  I did happen to ask Phillip Rahman (of Fedogan & Bremer), at NecronomiCon IV, if they would look at a proposal for a novel.  He said sure, but that if they took it, it would probably be five years before they could publish it.  And then I say to myself that if I sent them a synopsis of the novel and they accepted it, I would have at least four years to get it in a publishable form.

Ken Withrow: Even though you said that Shadow Love cannibalized Wings In The Night would you say that they were two separate entities all together or does Wings In The Night give the reader a good glimpse of Shadow Love?

Edward P. Berglund: I would have to say that the two stories are individual entities.  One can be read without the other.  The portions of Wings that I have used in Shadow Love consist primarily as foreshadowings, seeing as how the publications of the two stories will be separated by more than twenty-five years of actual time.

In Wings in the Night, I only had a short portion of the story from the viewpoint of Mynoghra—that segment which shows her entering our dimension.  There were no actual descriptions of the She-Daemon, except for some hints in esoteric tomes.  In Shadow Love, there are quite a few sections told from the viewpoint of Mynoghra.  The main viewpoint is from the female protagonist.  There are a couple of sections told from the viewpoint of her brother and her boy friend.

All-in-all, I would say that Wings in the Night does not give a reader a good glimpse of Shadow Love.  If it did do so, what would be the point of reading the novel?  (Check out the postings in the alt.horror.cthulhu newsgroup concerning August Derleth’s Mythos stories.  With a few exceptions, almost all of his Mythos stories had the same plot.)

The major difference between the short story and the novel is that in the short story the protagonist’s sanity has been severely compromised; whereas in the novel, the protagonist survives, but not without some loss to herself.

Ken Withrow: I have a few questions about some of your other short story work. To start, who’s idea was it to do 'Huitloxopetl' as a “Round Robin” story and was it the same person who originated the story idea?

Edward P. Berglund: In The Unnamable # 1, May 6, 1973 (distributed through the 1^st mailing of the Esoteric Order of Dagon amateur press association), Meade Frierson, prefaced his first two chapters with this comment:  “Inasmuch as this piece seems destined to never be revised, it will be run here in hopes that the writer - whoever or whatever he is - make [sic] take en/discouragement from the reactions [?] and either finish the thing or ashcan it.”  Joe Moudry published Chapter 3 in The Arkham Anchorite # 1, April 24, 1974 (distributed through the 6^th mailing of the EOD).

Now, from what Frierson said, he expected somebody other than himself to finish the story.  And it took almost a year for it to appear.  But it was painfully obvious than Moudry hadn’t finished the story.  That’s when I decided to write a chapter.  But at no time until I wrote my chapter had anyone even mentioned “Huitloxopetl” as being a round robin story.

Crispin Burnham’s chapters were the last to appear in the EODapa.  I furnished copies of the published chapters to James Ambuehl, which inspired him to write his chapter.  Now the story still wasn’t complete!  When I started my website, I decided to put these chapters online and see if there were any Lovecraftians on the Internet that would be willing to contribute to this round robin.  And we now have sixteen chapters.  There is supposed to be a final, concluding chapter, written by Daniel Harms.  Once this has been received and put online, then I’ll see about getting the entire round robin published in the small press. 

Ken Withrow: When reading The Drive it seemed as though you had another story sitting in the background about the relationship between Brad Johnston and Adobe Jack.  Have you considered expanding The Drive to tell more about the two friends or had you planned to only give up the nibble you did?

Edward P. Berglund: No, I haven’t considered expanding this story.  (And it will be appearing in Shards of Darkness from Mythos Books later this year.) What I was trying to do with this story—besides trying to win the contest! -- was write a Mythos story that was character-driven, instead of phenomena-driven like most Mythos stories (mine included).  (I guess this is an offshoot of writing Shadow Love.)  I wanted to show that Brad Johnston and Adobe Jack were more than mere acquaintances, thus the alluding to their previous history.  Telling any more than I did would have only slowed the story down.

Ken Withrow: So, out of everything you have been grinding away at, which project would you like to see hit the public eye first?

Edward P. Berglund: The 3^rd edition of the Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos.  Then I can get on to other things, Mythos and otherwise. But we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we.

I, for one, am very eager to see what Mr. Berglund has in store for us next. I also highly recommend that you, the reader, pull up the web sites he had listed above. Find out for yourself what I had discovered; that he has become a vital asset to the “weird” genre; as an archivist, an editor and  . . . as a writer.

- KW

Interview copyright © 1999 Edward P. Berglund & Ken Withrow