In the Memory of Ruins

One of the things I've always enjoyed in fiction is the creation by authors of meta-texts, texts that don't exist but which take on a life of their own and become thought of as real by readers. H. P. Lovecraft's The Necronomicon is perhaps the best know of these creations, but there is also The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, and The Book of Counted Sorrows by Dean Koontz, and many others.

In Cold in the Light, I tried to create such a meta text. I called it "In the Memory of Ruins." Each chapter of the book starts with a short, five line epigraph, ostensibly from "In the Memory of Ruins." Together these chapter headings tell a story within a story. Put together they reveal a secondary tale that has no direct relationship to the primary one of the novel.

Here's a couple of sample's of "In the Memory of Ruins."


Marble statues lay flat under a sky of bruise-
blue, toppled by one long winter after another.
Even the massive towers bent down their stones,
like shoulders curved by the weight of labors.
There were many places to hide.
--In the Memory of Ruins


On every side of him swirled colorless
petals from dead flowers, their beauty
leached by evil. And he raced among
them unaware, as behind him they grew
black limbs and began to scuttle.
--In the Memory of Ruins

Have you ever done anything like this in your own writing? Do you like this sort of thing? Can you think of other such meta-texts that I haven't mentioned here?
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