The eleven novels and several shorter texts comprising Jordan L. Hawk's Whyborne and Griffin series (2012-2019) blend two seemingly incompatible genres: Lovecraftian weird fiction and male/male paranormal romance. In an ominously familiar 1890s New England setting, antiquarian scholar Percival Endicott Whyborne and ex-Pinkerton private detective Griffin Flaherty confront the obstacles to their prohibited relationship even as they contend with dark family secrets, deranged sorcerers, and re-emergent Old Ones. Queering Lovecraft’s fictional world, however, is a more complex process than merely confronting a same-sex couple with Lovecraftian dangers. To achieve this generic hybrid, Hawk must rework Lovecraft’s poetics of atmosphere, plot, and character to craft emotion-driven narratives leading to romance fiction’s required “happily ever after” endings. Hawk deploys the port city of Widdershins, so reminiscent of Lovecraft’s Arkham, Kingsport, Dunwich, and Innsmouth, as a Gothic “uncanny city” in which a spectrum of queer and taboo-breaking desires can be acknowledged and pursued – and in which Whyborne and Griffin can heal one another’s emotional scars. Most important, Hawk rejects and redefines the conceptualizations and treatments of otherness that are both explicitly and implicitly fundamental to Lovecraft’s weird tales and so revealing of his prejudices and obsessions. Sexual, magical, and racial differences must face ignorance, bigotry, and danger in Hawk’s narratives, but the Whyborne and Griffin romances ultimately accept, include, and celebrate those differences in the relationships and in the community at the core of the stories.
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