I have noted that, almost immediately after writing the stories that would comprise The Inhabitant of the Lake and well before that volume was actually published in 1964, Campbell began to veer off in different directions, consciously repudiating the Lovecraft influence. ‘The Stone on the Island’, the last of his early Lovecraft pastiches, already shows signs of independence, while ‘The Childish Fear’ [1963], ‘An Offering to the Dead’ [1963], and ‘The Reshaping of Rossiter’ [1964] also suggest a search for new orientations. Several of these tales are, to be sure, not great successes, being by turns too obscure and too obvious, and failing to display the mastery of diction and tone that we find in the bulk of Campbell's work. Nevertheless, Campbell was clearly aiming for something new—and in the process he would help to usher in a new type of weird fiction, one that would still continue to draw upon older motifs but would otherwise be vigorously modern in its ability to address contemporary concerns about the interplay between the mind, the emotions, and the imagination, and the complex interaction of individuals with one another and with society. The first product of this new mode was Campbell's second collection, Demons by Daylight (1973), a volume whose importance—both in Campbell's own oeuvre and in the realm of weird fiction generally—cannot be overstressed.

Campbell himself was fully aware of the boldness of the new direction he was forging, and he has frequently admitted that he was not at all certain whether he was on the right track. But some timely encouragement by Robert A.W. Lowndes—a veteran of the field who had corresponded with Lovecraft and was the editor of a series of digest magazines in which one of Campbell's tales appeared in the late 1960s—gave Campbell the impetus to continue. Lowndes wrote a favourable review of August Derleth's anthology, Travellers by Night (1967), in which he singled out Campbell's ‘The Cellars’ as a notable piece of work.

And yet, why did nine years pass between the issuance of Campbell's first and second collections? He had finished nearly all the tales for Demons by Daylight by 1968, and the collection had been accepted by Derleth's Arkham House by no later than 1970.