Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch was the youngest member of the Lovecraft Circle, as he was only 20 years old when his literary mentor, H.P. Lovecraft, died in 1937. Robert Bloch would go on to many accomplishments of his own, winning a Hugo Award and Bram Stoker Award for his fiction. Bloch was also the president for the Mystery Writers of America. Robert Bloch is best known as the man who wrote the novel Psycho, which Alfred Hitchcock would adapt into the famous namesake movie.
Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft
Robert Bloch was still a teen when he began reading H.P. Lovecraft's stories in Weird Tales. Bloch wrote a fan letter to Lovecraft in 1933 and received advice on writing from the author. Lovecraft introduced Bloch into the Lovecraft Circle of writers like Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth. Robert Bloch exchanged letters with all these men, which certainly helped to improve his fiction writing. H.P. Lovecraft exerted the biggest influence, though, as Robert Bloch's early fiction fits right into the cosmic horror universe of Lovecraft.
Lovecraft and Bloch were close enough that they included
characterizations of each other in their short stories. Robert Bloch even
received written permission from H.P. Lovecraft to kill off the Lovecraft
character in his Cthulhu Mythos short story, "The Shambler from the Stars".
Lovecraft sent a certificate with his written permission to do the deed--a
certificate also signed by a few of Lovecraft's horror characters. A year
later, Lovecraft turned the tables and killed of a thinly-disguised
character stand-in for Robert Bloch in "The Haunter of the Dark". It's an
indication the 1930s was a different time that Lovecraft even included
Robert Bloch's real-life home address in the short story. Robert Bloch
eventually wrote a third and final story in the series called "The Shadow
From the Steeple".
Cultes des Ghoules
When he was still in his teens, Robert Bloch introduced a couple of books to the Cthulhu lore that are used as plot devices in role-playing games and cards in boardgames and living card games by Fantasy Flight Games. These books are the Cultes des Ghoules and De Vermiis Mysteries. Many Cthulhu Mythos tomes tend to have fictional-sounding, gibberish titles, so these two fictional books are often grasped at by game designers and storytellers because they sound more realistic. In the Lovecraft universe, Cultes des Ghoules (easily translatable as "Cult of Ghouls") was supposedly written by Francois-Honore Balfour in 1702 or 1703 and was immediately denounced by the Catholic Church. This condemnation was so swift because the book included details on a French cult engaging in "necromancy, necrophagy, and necrophilia". According to Mythos lore, there are thought to be 14 extant copies and the latest surfaced in 1906.
De Vermiis Mysteriis
The other famous book Robert Bloch invented for the Cthulhu Mythos is De Vermiis Mysteriis (translated from Latin as "History of the Worm") was reputed to have been penned by Ludwig Prinn in Cologne, Germany in 1542 and quickly was suppressed by the Church. This book describes the history and magic of the Arab world. Fifteen copies are thought to have survived the purge. Again, these book might not have had the impact on the pop culture or the allure of The Necronomicon, but from my own experience gamemastering for Call of Cthulhu rpgs, they operate as nice second and third options for catching the attention of investigators. De Vermiis Mysteriis first appeared in Robert Bloch's 1935 "The Shambler from the Stars". De Vermiis Mysteriis also appeared in Stephen King's short story, "Jerusalem's Lot", which was a prequel to Salem's Lot.
Robert Bloch's Horror Fiction
Robert Bloch eventually branched out from Lovecraftian terror to explore other aspects of the supernatural and the horrible. Various of his stories included demonic possession, black magic, and even voodoo. As time passed, Robert Bloch's writing began to deal with the workings of the human mind. He branched out into crime stories, though Robert Bloch was capable of writing humorous tales, such as the Lefty Feep stories that were published in Fantastic Adventures. Besides writing for publication, Robert Bloch spent a short time working in local vaudeville. He also wrote for a radio horror show early in his career.
Perhaps the first sign of that Robert Bloch would evolve beyond mere imitation of H.P. Lovecraft into Blochian fiction was his 1943 short story for Weird Tales called "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper". He would go on to write off-center takes on the other historical figures, such as the Marquis de Sade, Lizzie Borden, and The Man in the Iron Mask.
That Hell-Bound Train by Robert Bloch
Of Robert Bloch's fiction not set inside the world of Lovecraft, one of the most notable examples is the short story "That Hell-Bound Train". This story won the 1959 Hugo Award. The story's protagonist is an orphan named Martin whose father was killed by a train and whose mother ran away with a salesman. Martin has a strange fascination with trains and, after escaping the orphanage, he rides the rails and makes a living as a petty thief. Dissatisfied with the life, he contemplates giving it up to join the Salvation Army.
At this moment, Martin is confronted by a train conductor (perhaps The Devil) who offers to grant him any one wish, if Martin agrees to ride the Hell-Bound Train upon dying. Martin agrees, thinking he has a way to cheat death. He asks for a stopwatch that will allow him to stop time in any one moment--the moment he is happiest. The short story thus becomes a psychological study of happiness and the human inability to appreciate the moment, always hoping for something more. The story has an excellent ending, so it's no wonder it won the Hugo Award.
Robert Bloch and Psycho
Psycho was published in 1959, the same year Robert Bloch won the Hugo Award for Science Fiction. Robert Bloch had touched on the subject of split personalities before in 1957's "The Real Bad Friends", but his exploration of the human psyche in his fiction was beginning to deepen. The story was well-received and he sold the movie rights for $9,500. After the agent and his publisher got their cuts, Robert Bloch saw about $6,500 (in total throughout his life) for all the success of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho on the big screen.