Tim Mendees: « Dumas and Lovecraft are
still incredibly influential today »
The British writer Tim Mendees has curated the
anthology The
Three Musketeers Vs. Cthulhu in the Court of King
Louis, writing himself one of the fifteen
short stories. Author of many stories derived from the
universe of HP Lovecraft, he speaks in an interview for
pastichesdumas about his passion for the mashup genre,
where completely different literary worlds are put
together. The writers involved in the project, he says,
enjoyed so much pitting Dumas’ musketeers against
Lovecraft’s monsters that many of them intend to do it
again! More informations about Tim Mendees and his works
on his website.
(interview done on November 22, 2022)
This is the original version in English of the interview
in French.
Where does this crazy idea of joining the
worlds of the Musketeers and Cthulhu come from?
 My
thing is Lovecraftian fiction. That’s what I’ve been
doing. But I really enjoy the mashup sub-genres you can
do with it. Because that kind of story, that element of
cosmic horror, you can inject in pretty much anything
else. And it’s enormous fun to take two things which you
normally wouldn’t see together and push them together.
Black Ink Fiction, the publisher, was looking around.
They had done other « Vs » anthologies and
they approached me, they said : « do you have any
idea? » I had rewatched recently one of the old Three
Musketeers movies, the one from 1973 with Oliver
Reed, by Richard Lester, which is superb! It gave me the
idea to write a story combining the Queen’s diamond
studs and the Lovecraftian « shining
trapezohedron », this stone created on a distant
planet that serves as a means to summon Nyarlathotep,
one of the Great Old Ones. I thought « that’s a
story which writes itself! » So I had it at the
back of my mind for a while. When Black Ink Fiction
asked me if I had an idea for a mashup anthology, I
thought about it at once. And I said « I wonder if
anybody else would have any idea for something
similar », putting together the musketeers and
Cthulhu. So I asked a few authors friends whether they
would have any idea or whether it was a stupid idea. And
everybody seemed very excited by it! So I went with it.
I wrote a brief and I got many more submissions than I
had imagined.
The surprising thing is that the two writers are so
different: Lovecraft is dark, full of monsters and
terrors, while Dumas is joyful, full of love of life… So
you might think they have nothing in common.
That’s very true. And that’s why I like to do this kind of
things. It’s like you have the opposing forces of light
and darkness, really. You’ve got this joy of life in the
world of Dumas and this existential dread in the world of
Lovecraft. So it creates a natural clash. And then you can
combine the intrigues, the adventures from Dumas and the
cult-type people from Lovecraft, there are endless
possibilities!
It seems three of Dumas’ characters are candidates to
fall on the dark side: Milady, Richelieu, Aramis. Is
Milady the obvious choice?
Yes. I think this is because, specially in the film and TV
adaptations, she always comes across as very manipulative,
working in the shadows… She is intelligent, sneaky, and
there is a bit of glamour to that character as well, it
appeals to the authors. You can romanticize her as a
villain. Personally, in my story, I wanted to ask: what if
the fleur de lys was not the reason Athos tried to kill
her, what if he had found out she was something
« other »… In Lovecraft, you have many races and
creatures which can pass for humans but have very
different allegiances… So I thought that would be an
interesting theme to explore.
Aramis can also be one of the followers of the dark
forces, but none of the others. Nobody can think of
d’Artagnan joining the cult of Cthulhu…
No, that’s interesting, nobody did that. In the case of
Aramis, I think it’s because of the religious background.
What if he was following a slightly older and more
insidious religion? He’s more of an easy target than
Porthos or d’Artagnan.
Actually, Porthos is the unlikely hero of several short
stories. Do you have an explanation for that?
Yes I do! We did a launch event for the book, with several
of the authors. Chris Soucy (author of Porthos in
peril) said that Porthos is always shifted on the
side, was seen as less important to the plot than Athos or
d’Artagnan. So he wanted to put him front and center. It
was a conscious decision to use a character that had not
been focused on as much as the others. In fact, I guess
many authors thought everybody would focus on d’Artagnan,
so they chose somebody else. And at the end of the day,
nobody focused on d’Artagnan!
Do you know if Lovecraft was a reader of Dumas’ novels?
He mentioned Dumas briefly in a letter to August Derleth,
so we know he had read him. He grew reading things like The
Arabian Nights, he was very much into this classical
literature. We don’t know much more than that. So we know
he read Dumas but we don’t know his thoughts on him.
Would you have any other project linked to Dumas?
Yes. I am seriously considering doing a longer piece on my
own, adjacent to that. A novella or maybe even a novel.
What is really interesting is that many authors involved
in this project enjoyed it to the point that they want to
do other things similar. I have never seen that happen in
the other anthologies I have been involved with. People
seem to be really taken by the idea. This idea of putting
together these two iconic pieces of literature, it gives
endless possibilities.
These new stories would use the musketeers again, what
about doing something with Monte-Cristo?
That is something I discussed with one of the writers!
It’s a good idea, it’s something I’ll think about…
More generally, is Dumas a source of inspiration for
you on a regular basis?
He’s definitely in there. My grand-parents had The
three musketeers and I read the book as a kid. And
then I saw the movies. We were playing it in the yard!
Dumas inspired a lot of the swashbuckling stories. So,
even you haven’t read him, you’ve got the elements by
osmosis. I like the team set-up as well. I like the
interactions the four musketeers have with each other.
It’s a very good dynamic for story-telling. If you’ve got
one person, they have nobody to bounce ideas across. Two
people: yes, they can have a conversation… But with four
of them, you get cross-purposes, conflicts, friendly
conflicts, quarreling, and that makes for good
story-telling because there is drama in it. I like to have
this kind of dynamic in my stories, and people coming
together for a noble cause, like stopping Cthulhu rising
from the sea!
When you talk about Dumas’ stories, it seems you would
rather mention the movies than the books, right?
Yes, there are so many of them! Admittedly, most of them
are dreadful. I read the books as well. But the movies, I
saw them at an age where they inspired me to read the
books.
In your circle of writers and fans, do you think Dumas
is still read?
Yes, definitely. I am a member of a lot of reader groups
on social medias. There was a discussion some time ago
about swashbuckling adventures. Somebody posted:
« could you recommend an adventure book? » And a
lot of the answers were: « go back and read
Dumas! ». So he is still there, influencing people to
this day, I think. In many fantasy novels for instance,
you can see a lot of them have the same kind of setup,
court intrigues, you can see there is a direct line from
Dumas to all of this stuff. He is incredibly influential.
And it’s the same with Lovecraft: in pretty much all
aspects of horror stories, there is a direct line back to
HP Lovecraft, and through him to people like Edgar Allan
Poe.
Do you have any project mingling Lovecraft with
another big writer?
Yes. I wrote a novella mashing up Lovecraft with The
wind in the willows. It’s called The madness in
the willows… It’s ridiculous but I had such fun
writing it! I also did « almost » Sherlock
Holmes mashups. And I am actually plotting another
anthology like The Musketeers Vs. Cthlhu. It will
be different literary mashups, so the authors can choose.
If they want to do a Dickens story, do a Dickens story. If
you want Shakespeare, go for Shakespeare! I think that
will be fun.
Interviewed by Patrick de Jacquelot
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