And after the leading lady, one of the bad guys.
My favorite bad guy, actually, of all those that crowd the pages of The Ministry of Thunder.

A few years back I was talking with my friend Ken Asamatsu, the famous Japanese horror author and Lovecraftian scholar, and we were discussing the game HPL and his friends played, mentioning each other in their stories, and usually killing each other off.
And I promised Asamatsu-sensei that I would give his name to a bad guy in my first novel, and then kill him off in a horrible way. Which would be fun, considering that Ken Asamatsu is one of the kindest, most friendly people I ever knew.

Thus was born Captain Asamatsu Kenzaburo, Imperial Japanese Navy. Continue reading →