I’ve posted many stories, poems, pictures, and music to Visions of the Dark. There is one set of stories that form an overall story arc. These stories were inspired mostly by Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow. While Poe and Lovecraft tend to dominate the upper tier of the pantheon of Weird Fiction, to me, it is The King in Yellow (at least the first four stories of the volume) that creates a truly weird mood that is so unsettling. After all, Poe and Lovecraft published their stories mostly as stand-alone stories, never grouping any tales into an arc that was presented all together.
It was largely because of The King in Yellow that I decided to create the stories that I call The Other Side of Despair; all unified by insanity because it is on the other side of despair where madness lies. There are other influences, too. The story Alone was directly inspired by The Terror by Guy de Maupassant. The story The Things the Shadows Say was directly influenced by The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. There are nods to others throughout as well.
Since these stories were posted out of order with various other items posted between, I thought I would document the true order for anyone who would like to read them the way they were intended.
THE OTHER SIDE OF DESPAIR
Book 1 – The Language of the Mad includes stories: Shockley House, Alone, The Land of Nod, The Murklor, and The Children of the Wasteland
Book 2 – Suite Insanity includes stories: Prolegomenon to a Tragedy, Lunatic Overture, The Things the Shadows Say, Kissed by Madness, and The Prophet of Monkey Park
