It was successful enough to merit several other books, and McNaughton transitioned back over into doing mainstream horror in Weirdbook and other publications, and won the World Fantasy Award for Throne of Bones (1997).Įrotic horror wasn’t exactly new, as Grady Hendrix notes in Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction, sex has long been a selling point and those two decades saw a boom in erotic horror and horror erotica.

His “break” came in the late 70s when he began producing erotic horror novels, starting with Satan’s Love Child (1977)-the publisher’s title, not his-which included elements of or references to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Active as a fan during his teenage years in the 1950s, McNaughton was briefly a journalist before turning his hand to erotic novels, starting with In Flagrant Delight (1971). The very first erotic novel to deal with the legacy of Innsmouth came from the typewriter of Brian McNaughton. All the relevant government records have been destroyed.” The thing in Massachusetts was remarkably well hushed-up. But they never got around to bothering the Squampottis bunch, either because they’re so isolated, or because cooler heads prevailed in Washington. As I understand it, the main body of the church was stamped out by some pretty high-handed federal action back in the nineteen-twenties. It’s a branch, or a schism of a church that was founded in Massachusetts about a hundred and fifty years ago.

“Their religion? You mean, they have one of their own?”

Satan's Love Child by Brian McNaughton