I planned to release two stories this month. The first I succeeded: Island of the Baboon God got unleashed on the world June 12. Go me. The other story, the one I'm currently yelling about here, is PSI 2, sequel to my short story Lock the Last Door.

It's not going well.

Why is the short story giving me more trouble than the novella, you ask? Well, for one, the novella was already written, I just needed to make it better. I didn't need to do research, I just needed to sit down and write.

Research… that's the reason I'm walking into walls with this one. I didn't do enough research from the start and my brain, somehow, can tell.

Let's back up a bit.

If you don't know, Lock the Last Door is the first of my Cthulhu Mythos short stories, set in my PSI (Pharaoh Syndicate Investigations) series. It follows Lazarus Core, a private detective in Arkham, as he enters an abandoned house looking for a runaway. Instead of the runaway he finds his sworn rival, crime lord Harlan Thompson, and a whole lot of scary stuff.

In PSI 2, Lazarus heads to one of Harlan's hotels. There he finds more cosmic horror, uh, horrors. But before he goes, his partner and arguably friend, Carmine Mason, does a tarot reading for him. She loves the circus, see, of course she knows how to read the cards. So my logic went.

My outline continues: Lazarus gets to the hotel, sneaks in. He wants to avoid Harlan because he's not supposed to be there, see. But Harlan catches him anyway. Shenanigans happen, and Harlan decides to do his own tarot reading. It's a mirror of the first, I thought. Of course Harlan knows the tarot, I thought, he's a cultist who worships eldritch horrors, most especially Nyarlathotep (who, if you aren't familiar with him, is the most active in human affairs and is the closest thing to a Big Bad the Mythos has). Of course he knows this.

I had to outline this reading more in depth. Couldn't just give the cards for this situation, oh no, because Harlan wants to call on fucking Yog-Sothoth and make a show of this to impress (terrify) his guests. So I do the setup, I figure out the chants, get all the drama going.

But the story is dragging. Every word is hard to put on the page. I can't tell what the issue is. It's annoying me. This should be going so smoothly. It's not.

A card pops out of the deck. Harlan looks at it. In my head, it's the Devil. And maybe that's the card that made me think, maybe it was him drawing the first card, I don't really remember now. But I realized, wait a minute. The past/present/future layout I was gonna use doesn't work. The Outer (Other) Gods like Yog-Sothoth don't experience linear time like we do. And Harlan more than any of them knows that.

So I think of a few alternatives.

And then I think, what kind of layouts would they have used back then? PSI is set in about 1931.

So off I went to Project Gutenberg.

I'll spare you the whole story of how I did my research, and only leave you with what I learned:

• Tarot cards didn't become popular until the late 1950s

• Playing cards were more often used for fortune telling by the average person. Project Gutenberg has a couple books about it.

• There were also custom fortune telling decks, which were based on what we know as the lenormand or playing cards or both or neither.

• The only tarot manual that existed until the late 1950s was the one written by the creators of the RWS (Rider-Waite-Smith). The one on Project Gutenberg is The Illustrated Key to the Tarot

• The Illustrated Key is. Challenging. A lot of it is esoteric gobbledegook that gives me a headache trying to read, and that comes from the guy who mimics this antique style in my own works. The meanings and spreads are shoved to the back.

• Meanings have changed since the Illustrated Key was written.

• Spreads have too. The Illustrated Key includes what we'd call the Celtic Cross, but nothing exactly quick and simple as I wanted.

Conclusions?

Harlan keeps the tarot cards but he's not gonna use them in this scene. For this scene he'll use a common deck of playing cards, maybe even some dice. He probably also had a lenormand deck because that's the kind of guy he is.

Carmine will use a fortune telling deck, possibly a hoodoo labeled one, and playing cards.

Both will get custom decks, the kind we'd call Oracle decks. Harlan probably starts the story with his. Depending on my needs, he may use it in this story. Carmine will make her own. She scrapbooks, after all. Maybe I'll have her find a way to print and sell them. She's got to have good business sense, especially if she wants to make her own circus.

And oh boy, that's another rabbit hole waiting for me. Black circuses are something I know nothing about, even less than normal circuses, but I've got some tabs saved to go over when I'm done with this story. Here's hoping I can get my hands on some books for research and reviewing.

I have so much research to do. 🫠

I haven't touched this newsletter in forever, y'know. I have been meaning to change that but I wasn't really sure how to. I honestly wouldn't be writing this here if I didn't think it'd get entirely ignored on my Tumblr. Eh, I'm glad it get it off my chest anyway.

So, what do you think of my mini journey into madness? Got any resources, personal stories, or advice? I would love to hear them.

Here's my sources for the road:

• https://tarot-heritage.com/history-4/tarot-for-the-masses-mid-20th-century/
• https://waitesmith.org/index.php/the-pictorial-key-to-the-tarot/
• https://marykgreer.com/2015/11/15/old-gypsy-fortune-telling-cards-an-american-jewish-immigranthoodoo-deck/
• https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/7144
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Anne_Lenormand

PS: Do me a favor. If you get this far, and can afford to do so, donate to Wikipedia, Palestine Red Crescent Society, or someone's mutual aid fund. If you can't, take a few minutes to share a mutual aid or charity link somewhere, your own included.