Nailing my colours to the mast

Posted on August 10, 2026 by Mark Hayes

This is a rant, I make no apologise for this. If you don’t wish to read a rant then you should just stop here, but it is, I feel, an important rant. I also stand by ever word. Originally this was posted on my Facebook page. I have extended it to a degree to clarify my position.

Over the week I found myself delighted to discover an old friend from way back when had written what they described as ‘Their first foray into Fantasy Literature’. As such with the intention of buying a copy I went on amazon and as I was able read a sample just to get an idea of his style etc. As I say I had every intention of ordering a copy because I believe in supporting my friends in their endeavours and writers in general.

I was surprised in the first place that the ‘writer’ had not published it under his name but under a slightly odd pseudonym. But having read the sample It occurred to me that perhaps this was because something inside told them not to put there name to it…

When I read the first paragraph and was disappointed on many levels by the prose. Not just because it wasn’t well written, though it wasn’t, the prose was terrible but that is by the by. I was disappointed because when I started reading the sample it became obvious in a few lines that this had be ‘written’ by generative AI. That’s all it took, one paragraph. Regardless read on, hoping I was wrong but I wasn’t.

I went back to the copyright pages and found the words ‘this was written with generative AI and then edited and proof by the ‘author’…’ So let me be as fair as I am able here and say at least they have not tried to pretend it isn’t Generative AI.

If you are wondering how I knew so quickly, let me just say there are certain hallmarks to generative AI. I have come across them all too often as part of the editorial team with Harvey Duckman. There is a certain kin of over done description that is encouraged in High school English classes which is a commonality to Generative AI.

Having read the first few paragraphs I was disappointed and angry in equal measure. As such I almost replied to his Facebook angrily. But I let my annoyance cool off a tad, and instead posted to my own page with the rant this post is based on, to get it out of my system.

And it was a rant.

Allow me to expand on why I hate generative AI. I started writing for pleasure when I was around 13, that is to say I started writing stuff that was nothing to do with school work, because I wanted to. When I was 45, I published my first novel, and in the intervening 30 years between these two events I learn to write. I learned how to craft sentences, paragraphs, chapters and weave stories. I learned how to develop a plot and characters. I learned to write in my own style, then in multiple styles. In short over 30 years I learned how to write.

It is often said it takes 10000 hours to perfect any skill. Perhaps I am a slow learner as I spent significantly more than that learning to be a writer. That first novel some 12 years ago is a bit of an oddity, unlike anything else I have written. It is also a novel that I think anyone who has read it will agree is if nothing else unique. That first novel was however merely another step along that road of becoming a writer.

None of this came easy. Aside anything else I am dyslexic, writing is hard. But I put my soul into the page. It ain’t worth anything if you don’t.

I like to think I have become quite good over the 40+ years I have been at this. Do anything long enough and you will become at least competent. I like to believe, however, I have crafted genuine art with my words. That may be pretentious of me, perhaps, but I believe writing is an art.

40+ years of crafting words… But now lets get back to the rant.

Generative AI is destroying the creative industries while being trained on stolen goods. The stolen words of those who have spent years learning there craft. And what it produces is trash, utter trash. Unreadable garbage for the most part, generic descriptions at best, all in all soulless tripe.

Yet in the last couple of years the literary marketplace has been flooded by people using generative AI to ‘write’ books. Two years ago there were perhaps 2 million books on amazon, today there are 20+ million due to the absolute flood of generative AI ‘writers’. This is strangling the market place that it was already hard to find readers in. In the process it is destroying livelihoods.

What is perhaps worse is Generative AI is also turning readers away from independent authors because readers have already read too much generative AI crap. Unable to find real books in the mire of Generative AI garbage, there has been a move back to mainstream books again. In essence Generative AI is a cancer to the creative industries

I did warn you this was a rant…

There is very little money in books. The people flooding the market with AI garbage are not going to make money, but they can produce books by the dozen in a few days or less, while real writers spend years to write a novel. Real writers are drowning in a sea of AI created garbage.

To be clear if any of my friends have the passion and drive to become writers. I welcome them, I will help and encourage them any way I can.

But if you use generative AI to ‘write’ a book please do not call yourself an author and more importantly stop as you are destroying the industry I have put my life and soul in to.

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Dear Edgar 65 ~ X-ing a Paragrab

Posted on August 7, 2026 by Mark Hayes

As it is well known that the ‘wise men’ came ‘from the East,’ and as Mr. Touch-and-go Bullet-head came from the East, it follows that Mr. Bullet-head was a wise man.

If that short exert doesn’t tell you all you need to know about this particular story. Well then, let me go on to explain it is the story of an editor who opens a new paper in the small town of Alexander-the-Great-o-nopolis. The new paper that Mr Bullet-head names ‘The Nopolis Tea-Pot’ is situated directly across the street from the established paper in the town the ‘Alexander-the-Great-o-nopolis Gazette’, and with its establishment there begins a war of words, well newsprint, between the two proprietors/ editors. Mr Bullet-head of the teapot and Mr Smith of the Gazette.

Matters escalate leading to Mr Smith accusing Mr Bullet-head of using ‘O’ too often in his prose. Mr Bullet-head writing a long venomous riposte which using an unconscionable amount of ‘O’s. Only to have all the ‘O’ stolen form his printers tray, leading to all the ‘O’s in the following paragraph

‘So ho, John! how now? Told you so, you know. Don’t crow, another time, before you’re out of the woods! Does your mother know you’re out? Oh, no, no!—so go home at once, now, John, to your odious old woods of Concord! Go home to your woods, old owl—go! You won’t! Oh, poh, poh, don’t do so! You’ve got to go, you know! So go at once, and don’t go slow, for nobody owns you here, you know! Oh! John, John, if you don’t go you’re no homo—no! You’re only a fowl, an owl, a cow, a sow,—a doll, a poll; a poor, old, good-for-nothing-to-nobody, log, dog, hog, or frog, come out of a Concord bog. Cool, now—cool! Do be cool, you fool! None of your crowing, old cock! Don’t frown so- don’t! Don’t hollo, nor howl nor growl, nor bow-wow-wow! Good Lord, John, how you do look! Told you so, you know—but stop rolling your goose of an old poll about so, and go and drown your sorrows in a bowl!’

To be replaced by ‘X’s by way of substitution. That being a whole lot of X’s as you can see…

‘Sx hx, Jxhn! hxw nxw? Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw. Dxn’t crxw, anxther time, befxre yxu’re xut xf the wxxds! Dxes yxur mxther knxw yxu’re xut? Xh, nx, nx!—sx gx hxme at xnce, nxw, Jxhn, tx yxur xdixus xld wxxds xf Cxncxrd! Gx hxme tx yxur wxxds, xld xwl,—gx! Yxu wxn’t? Xh, pxh, pxh, Jxhn, dxn’t dx sx! Yxu’ve gxt tx gx, yxu knxw, sx gx at xnce, and dxn’t gx slxw; fxr nxbxdy xwns yxu here, yxu knxw. Xh, Jxhn, Jxhn, Jxhn, if yxu dxn’t gx yxu’re nx hxmx—nx! Yxu’re xnly a fxwl, an xwl; a cxw, a sxw; a dxll, a pxll; a pxxr xld gxxd-fxr-nxthing-tx-nxbxdy, lxg, dxg, hxg, xr frxg, cxme xut xf a Cxncxrd bxg. Cxxl, nxw—cxxl! Dx be cxxl, yxu fxxl! Nxne xf yxur crxwing, xld cxck! Dxn’t frxwn sx—dxn’t! Dxn’t hxllx, nxr hxwl, nxr grxwl, nxr bxw-wxw-wxw! Gxxd Lxrd, Jxhn, hxw yxu dx lxxk! Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw,—but stxp rxlling yxur gxxse xf an xld pxll abxut sx, and gx and drxwn yxur sxrrxws in a bxwl!’

Now, the leads to Mr Bullet-head leaving town due to the up roar. Not least because populous are half convinced this is all some sort of demonic code and ‘X’press there horror loudly with talk of lynching…

All of which is in part a set up for a series of puns involving words with a X in them. Which in the end just becomes ‘X’asperating.

Now, that said, it is funny, to me at least, because it is an exercise in word play. Very clever word play that dances around itself. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else. It is a little like a sketch in a comedy show that knows it is ridiculous and leans into this fact. It isn’t want you might have wanted form one of Poe’s last stories but it is not that uncommon from much of his earlier humour, which is often a tad hit and miss. This one hits because it doesn’t try to be anything else, which was often the flaw with other Poe humour. It embraces the silliness of itself.

In the end its is ‘X’cellent in that regard.

FOUR ‘X’CITABLE RAVENS

Should you read it. It is short and fun as reads go. If you like word play it is a giggle. If puns annoy you, then you should probably pass

Blaggers fact. While it gains no mention in this tale it is worth noting that using X to denote a kiss at the end of a correspondence is not an invention of the text generation but is said to date back as early as 1763 when it was used in this way by a British naturalist named Gilbert White. White was also a curate and some belief these were not meant to be kisses but crosses tied to prayers. It was however a practise that because common by the 1800’s.

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Dear Edgar 64 ~ Von Kempelen and His Discovery

Posted on August 2, 2026 by Mark Hayes

By April 1849 our dear Edgar was a widower finding his comfort once more in the bottle. Privately he had started becoming increasingly unstable after Viginia’s death in January 1847. Yet publicly he had never been so successful. The initial fame The Raven brough him had driven the republication of many of his earlier poem and stories that had originally been published in regional magazines and newspapers with moderate circulations found new audiences in national syndication and internationally.

While international publishers were notoriously unbothered by such niceties as copyright, and even the US publishers were not too worried about lining the writers pockets by paying for old stories, it did mean that when The Flag of the Union launched as a ‘weekly story paper’. Edgar was near the top of their list of writers they courted.

The magazine was to become Poe’s final publisher, and aside reprints of earlier stories they published four originals beginning with the pervious story Hop Frog and in other editions they published his poetry.  

Professional Poe was at the peek of his success. The success that led to his stories and poems still be read and still relevant two centuries later. As I said in the introduction to this book, readers in every generation since his passing have ‘discovered’ Edgar Alen Poe, his poems, his stories and found something to connect to. Something to be inspired by. Something to love. And something that spoke to them in the dark hours of their soul.

It is a shame then that the last few stories Poe wrote were far from his best. The first of these ‘Von Kempelen and His Discovery’ is a satire, reminiscent of some of Poe’s early satires, which is to say it has not aged overly well.

The story is told by a narrator telling us about a man he barely knows who achieves some renown for a scientific discovery. What is evident however is that Von Kempelen is a former forger, and con man who it seems has discovered the secret of alchemy. The secret of turning lead into gold. This is slightly unfortunate because a year before the California gold rush had begun after the region was ceded to the United States at eth end of the US Mexican war. California would not become a state until it was officially admitted to the union a year after this story in 1850.

It was the gold rush, that gave this story a contemporize satire it no longer retains. The gold rush was the driving factor in the drive to statehood. California was the place top go if you wanted to strike it rich with its rivers awash with gold and hills just aching to be mined. Or as popular belief at the time had it ‘There is gold in them there hills’.

The narrator claims that though no one is entirely sure how the former forger and con man Von Kempelen had managed to turn lead to gold, even if he refuses to explain how his process works the scientific community will figure it out before the end of the year. Of course this will make gold plentiful and easy to manufacture, thus dilute its worth. Meaning all those gold hunters rushing to the hills of the sunshine state are going to end up with is a base metal worth no more than lead…

Of course, there is some implication that Von Kempelen is a con man, though the narrator doesn’t believe this to be true.    

As a satire of the time this is cleverly crafted and funny. But it has not aged all that well. In part it was based on an oft spouted belief at the time that the gold rush was going to devalue gold by making it plentily. There was a fear that so much gold could be mined in California that it would make the metal worth less than silver. This belief was so firmly held that it drove the federal government to mint more silver dollars than their new gold dollars because they theorised silver was more likely to retain its intrinsic value.

The problem is that out of time the satire seems stale as satire often does. Satire needs an edge and it loses that edge quickly when it is outside of its times. Which leaves us with a story about a man who discovered the secret of alchemy, who may or may not be a con man. Which is well written, but not much more than that, sadly.  

A COUPLE OF RAVENS AS THE REST WENT WEST FOR GOLD…

Should you read it: It is a story for the completists, if you are not a completist let it pass. 

Blaggers fact: At the peak of the gold rush such were the number of prospectors with ‘gold fever’ that the people making the real money were those who supplied shovels, pick axes and gold pans. In particular Samuel Branna who became one of the wealthiest men in California in the space of a couple of years after opening up his first general store. Reputedly he bought up all the prospecting supplies in San Francisco and resold them in the gold fields at a huge markup.

Branna reputedly bought up all the supplies then employed men to run around town shouting ‘Gold, Dold’ and tell stories about where they had struck it rich, in order to drum up business… This helped him become California’s first millionaire, and found the fine ‘honest’ traditional of California entrepreneurship we enjoy today…     

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Dalek humour

Posted on July 30, 2026 by Mark Hayes

In a departure to my normal methods of procrastination I have bene messing about maying single frame Dalek cartoons because…

Well actually because three years ago I did an event in Scarborough and spent the whole weekend across from the Sons of Skaro and chatting with Dalek builders many of which had throat mike so while having perfectly normal conversations, such as what they were going to have for lunch, what they had had for lunch, the quality of the cheese and pickle sandwiches from the small cafe area, and where to get the best diodes for those flashing lights on there domes. they were coming through the dalek voice speakers.

This was hilarious, out of context.

So anyway after I made a Dalek joke on a face book group I normally just lurk about in,. which many people likes, I made one in cartoon form for the hell of it to post in the group in the hope of just amusing a few people, and annoying Ben who runs the Dalek Earth Force group and has 3 daleks and is entirely sane I may add…. I failed to annoy Ben, but the cartoon was appreciated and liked so I made another, and one thing led to another…

So anyway this is all Ben’s fault for not getting annoyed…

Yes, the irony of this above is not lost on me…

Anyway I may have got this out of my system… Or I may continue making them for a while until I run out of terrible Dalek puns. You know I could make a table joke book of dalek puns… I mean I am not going to, but I could….

Normal service will resume shortly

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Dear Edgar 63 ~ Hop Frog

Posted on July 28, 2026 by Mark Hayes

This is a tale of revenge, though to be more exact this is a tale of revenge written out of a desire for revenge. That is to say the tale itself is a vengeance, as well as being a tale of vengeance. So before we speak of the tale itself, the tale of the tale needs to be told. This tale involves another writer, Elizabeth F. Ellet, who is now remembered mostly for ‘The Women of the American Revolution‘ a large tomb of a book in three volumes’ still considered one of the foremost works on the subject. After it was published in 1845 she moved to New York and became embroiled in the literary scene. This was about the same time our own Dear Edgar became suddenly the leading light of the literary scene with the publication of ‘The Raven‘.

The sudden fame granted Poe by ‘The Raven’ was a mixed bless. He had the success he had always sought, but at the same time his the love of his life Virginia was slowly dying of consumption. Virginia for her part encouraged her husband to ‘find happiness elsewhere’ indeed she had a strangely active involvement in his expanding love life. Certainly his interest in Mrs Frances Osgood was very much encouraged by his dying wife. There were others too among the literary circles of New York, including Sarah Whitman and Nancy Richmond, who were close to the couple. Close enough that there were rumours of Poe entertaining a more than platonic relationship with both of them. Such was Poe’s reputation as a bold romantic this in turn led to an involvement with Elizabeth Ellet.

Our dear Edgar, it is noted, had no romantic interest in Elizabeth Ellet. Mrs Ellet, however, on the other hand was very much interested in him, and his affairs. She, like Mrs Osgood, send Poe letters, some of these letters were more than mealy flirtatious in nature, but unlike Mrs Osgood’s letters, Mrs Ellet did not inspire the response she perhaps desired. Poe had become at last a famous poet and writer enjoying the kind of celebrity once enjoyed by Lord Byron and Shelley some thirty years before. Women were known to swoon at his romantic poems. Poe write several specifically for Mrs Osgood including ‘A Valentine’. This rankled with Mrs Ellet, perhaps for no other reason that Mrs Osgood was receiving the attention from Poe that Mrs Ellet wanted, she started indiscrete gossip and harassing Poe’s wife with letters about his indiscretions. Virginia who died less than a year after this began, is said to have claimed on her death bed that ‘Mrs E has been my murderer’. Added to this Edgar borrowed a pistol form a friend because he received death threats from Mrs Ellet’s brother Colonel William Lummis for allegedly refusing to return her letters, though he claimed he had already returned what letters she had sent.

In short, it was all a bit Bridgerton, scandalous and not a little ridiculous, at least if not for the tragedy of Virginia’s death. Our dear Edgar was, perhaps understandably not inclined to be forgiving of Mrs Ellet. Hop Frog then was written as something of a literary revenge on the woman he claimed…

‘revolted’ him, and of whom he said ‘to this day she has never ceased her anonymous persecutions.’

Published in march of 1847 a few short months before he followed his beloved Virginia to the grave. Hop Frog is perhaps his last great story. A bitter jibe in some parts it has a elegance to it that is almost profound.

Hop Frog is a jester to a vile kings court. He is also a cripple and a dwarf, much abused by his master. The jester was enslaved and bound to his master for no other reason that the King find Hop Frog amusing, giving him that name because the jesters deformed spine means he can not walk easily and has to hop about. Forces him to entertain the court often by forcing the little man to drink. Knowing he reacts badly to spirits.

Hop Frog has one true friend in the work, the diminutive but beautiful dancer Trippetta. When the king abuses them both, Hop Frog comes up with a plan to get his revenge on the king and the vilest members of his court. he convinces the King and seven of his most loyal, and horrendous councillors to attend a masquerade dressed as ape’s chained together. And in doing so make the costumes as real as possible in order to scare the kings other guests. The king loves the idea, and so of course do his councillors…

Hop frog helps them into costume, and uses tar over tight fitting cloths and flax to create ‘fur’ before leading them into the great hall. Now the thing about tar is, it burns , and the thing about flax is, it burns, so when he hooks the chain to a pully and pulls king and councillors all into the the air. it doesn’t take much to set them ablaze… Before turning to the crowd and exclaiming..

“I now see distinctly… what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors—a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl, and his seven councillors who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester—and this is my last jest.”

It is this line, more than ever that is damning of Mrs Ellet and her New York literary crowd. Poe is clearly Hop Frog, the jester who struggles with drink, as for the diminutive dancer Trippetta, she is most likely Virginia, though there were other women Poe was close to that got caught up in the scandalmongering of Mrs Ellet. In either regard the subtext was plain enough to embarrass Mrs Ellet and her writing sett. But if the motivation to write this story was revenge, that it was a motive that brought the best out of Dear Edgar. The is a striking sharpness to the prose that had been lacking in his later works before this.

A FLOCK OF VENGFUL RAVENS

Should you read it: Yes, for it is a delight and a morality tale of a sort worthy of your time. That said it is best read in the knowledge of its intent, but luckily you now have that.

Blaggers fact: On Lou Reed 2003 album of songs inspired by Poe which Reed called The Raven there is a song called Hop-Frog sung by David Bowie… Which is just, well, its Bowie singing for Lou Reed for oner minute and forty three seconds of epic wonder. In that way that only Lou Reed and Bowie could make such a short ridiculous song epic…

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Dear Edgar 62 ~ Mellonta Tauta

Posted on July 21, 2026 by Mark Hayes

Time makes fools of the works of man. When we consider what our ancestors believed we are oft hard pressed to give credence to their strange ideas. Take Aristotle for example. He once counted the legs on a fly and declared they had eight. Such was the high regard in which Aristotle was held, no one questioned this for almost two thousand years. Then when some one bothered to check they discovered flies only have six legs .

Did Aristotle really miscount the number of legs on a fly?

Or was, as seems more likely, his work on the subject mistranslated?

Did it really take two thousand years for someone to check his sums?

Probably not, this is probably apocryphal, but in essence the story is true. The essence of it being the past is imperfectly remembered and more often than not, wilfully so. This have nothing to do with the quote below from Poes story Mellonta Tauta, save the quote demonstrates something about the tone of the piece. It is also somewhat delightful in of itself…

democracy is a very admirable form of government—for dogs.

E.A.Poe ~Mellonta Tauta

In Mellonta Tauta, our Dear Edgar imagines the world a thousand years in his future and writes a letter from it. All be it a letter not address to us, but sealed in a bottle and thrown into the ocean by its writer just before the balloon, on which they will be traveling, collapses into the sea. This in a future that mocks all the achievements of Poes own age. Putting into stark perspective one salient fact, that in a thousand years, all the works of our current civilization will be for naught… We will be mostly forgotten, our culture misunderstood and things we now consider so important, our art, our beliefs, even our morality, will be no more than dust…

Sobering thought isn’t it…

Importantly, however, Poe writes this letter form our future selves with a joyous ridiculousness that carries the reader though. This is not a dark future in which society is ripped apart by human indifference. It isn’t a dystopian vision, though it is not exactly a utopian one either. The people of the future have different moral beliefs and stand points but that in itself is not dystopian.

It is important to note that this is a projection of a thousand years from Poe’s own time. As such aspects of that projection naturally seem silly to us. Take balloons. For reasons that should be self evident, the idea of traveling by balloon travel was very much the in vogue in the late 1840’s. This was written 30 year before Verne wrote ‘around the world in 80 days’, and the idea did not seem so unlikely then. This was still before the idea of powered ‘lighter than air’ flight, that is to say airships had their brief moment in the sun. More than half a century before the Wright brothers decided the future did not lay in bicycles after all. As such a future containing air travel by balloon must have seemed entirely plausible to our Dear Edgar. Balloons that filled the sky, taking advantage of the different currents at different altitudes in order to navigate their slow passage around the globe.

Giant balloons that carried many passengers in great gonderlas all at once.

The writer of this letter from the future is traveling by one such balloon, and due to the slow but steady nature of this passage finds the time to write of the world and their thoughts upon it. There are many oddities about Poe’s predicted future, the value of a single human life is no longer a matter of great concern. If some one falls overboard the ship sails on. There is no great reason to inconvenience the other passengers due to the misfortune of one. Society as a whole has value, but not the individual.

What makes the story fun however is that in Poe’s imagined future much has forgotten much of the past. Even the names of past cultures and their peoples are either forgotten or misremembered. Just as we don’t really know as much as we profess of dark age society. The cultures of the present-day have long fallen by the way side. Remembered now in abstract, the letters talk about the Kanawdian and Amriccan cultures. The Amriccan culture was, according to the letter, dominated by the churches of Wealth and fashion, and the Knickerbocker tribe that infested the contains when it was first discovered by Recorder Riker, a knight of the Golden Fleece. New York it seems was destroyed in an earthquake in the 2050’s and is remembered by the people of the balloons in abstract like much everything else.

Now the important thing about all this is it is a fun read, the half remembered past and the ‘;strange ways of the ancestor folk’ is well imagined and will bring you a smile. Unfortunately there is a middle section that wonders off from this formular to some abstract cosmology that seems out of place. Not least because its is good cosmology for Poe’s time. It doesn’t spoil the story, but it does detract a little from the ridiculous joy of it all.

Now obviously there are aspects of the story which fail through no fault of their own with the modern audience, written as it was all but two hundred years ago his future runs past our present and, well, a lot has happened in the last couple of centuries. But in essence it is still a fun read, even the slightly broken cosmology, that suffers form the limitations of Poe’s time. That cosmology however reflects the nature of time on a human scale compared to that of the cosmological.

A thousand years making light of our works, is nothing compared to the eons it takes the sun to orbit the century of the galaxy. This long before we knew this was but one of many such galaxies in a universe of cold indifference to the works of man.

Which is another cheery thought…

FOUR RAVENS CONTEMPLATING INFINITY IN REVERSE

Should you read it: Yes, but bare in mind its limitations

Blaggers facts: Mellonta Tauta is actually Greek for ‘these future things’ Alsoi The ‘Knickerbockers’ were the original Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam which later became New York, it is where the New York Knicks get there name from and why the wear orange and blue.

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Oh what convoluted webs we do weave

Posted on July 21, 2026 by Mark Hayes

I am something of an enthusiastic plotholer, which is not unlike a potholer but with plots instead of deep warren-like holes in the limestone hills of the west riding. This is to say I weave convoluted webs when I write. Things are seldom as straight forward as a reader might perceive, because what finally sees the light of day is seldom where it all began.

Main characters are bad enough, but the incidental characters that hang around the edges get more often than not have their own lives that morph and change as they go from a one chapter, one scene, body with a plot point nailed to it, to someone with a complete back story and who has had their own weird adventures of stage…

If I had the time and the column inches I could explain in detail how Viviane ‘Bad Penny’ Verne, daughter of Jules, came to be such a central pillar of the Hannibal. But briefly, before she was Viviane Verne, before Hannibal started calling her ‘Bad Penny’, to the inevitable reply of “That’s not my name…” she was initially just known as ‘the maid.’ and was not supposed to survive the first novel, Indeed, I only wrote her in because I needed someone to accost Hannibal when he found himself on board ‘The Indian Princess’ and after that she could have easily slipped out of the book. Her only role initially apart from hitting Hannibal on the head was to introduce Saffron Wells into the story.

Bad Penny was just known as The Maid for quite a long time, while she quietly grew in my imagination, and became the hellcat she is. She grew into herself as she keep coming back whenever I needed someone to do a thing. By the second novel she was interictal to the whole story, by the third she was as much centre stage as old Harry himself.

Why am I telling you all this. Well in the latest Harvey anthology Feral and Fae, Fellow Harvey main stay Ben Sawyer has written a story about one of the Hollyiverse supporting cast, and written a detailed explanation of how it all came to be. Something other writers and perspective writers as well as readers may find fascinating, I know I did.

You should go read it…

An Inspector Calls: Creating Caroline
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A Tale of Two covers

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Mark Hayes

This post may offend some people. To be fair I could write that at the beginning of almost everything I write so I’m not overly worried. However, this post will touch upon a subject which offends a lot of people, including me. The subject of AI art.

Now to be clear from the very beginning, I don’t like, encourage or proliferate AI art in any form. To give you a for instance I listen to a lot of music on instagram/facebook reels. I find a lot of new music and new artists there. Occasionally I will however come across some beautiful singing/music where the artist has used AI to create visuals to go with their music. I understand why as they might do this. Making a video can be expensive and if you have a particular visual vison using AI can be an attractive solution. But personally I would sooner have a still picture of the artist and the music than an AI generated video. It is the music I care about, and I am unlikely to listen long to anything with obvious AI visuals.

Now, that said, enhancing videos with software, and using software tools to do so I have no issue with. AI software tools used as tools, fine. Photoshop is a tool, some elements of photoshop use AI type algorithms, how do you think it determines what is and isn’t background when you ask it to remove the BG, or fill it back in. In these terms artists have been using AI tools for decades. The issue is not AI tools, it is Generative AI. There is a line in the sand, tools that assist the creative human is one side of the line, tools that steal from creative humans work to ‘create’ is on the other.

I have written seven novels, a novella, several of my own anthologies, and god only knows how many short stories over the years. But for those who are not aware, I am dyslexic, I could not write novels without a word processor, or at least I could be no one would be able to read them. Spell checkers, Grammar checkers, find and replace, and lately text to voice, are all software tools I make use of to write. All of them are tools that assist me creatively. All of them have some elements of algorithms baked in and are in effect AI tools that have been around for decades, but while they assist me to write, they do not do the writing.

They will never do the writing.

Quite rightly the creative communities of writers, artists, musicians etc are almost all AI-phobic, we don’t like it, we don’t want it, and we are repelled by it. Which is why I get annoyed when musicians use AI for ‘visualisations’. Or when writers use AI generated covers for books.

There is however an issue with AI-phobia. That been that just because something looks like generative AI doesn’t mean that it is. Generative AI steals the creative talents of artistes and regurgitates them. Occasionally this leads to the original art been incorrectly identified as AI… And AI-phobic’s occasionally assume something is AI just because it looks like it might be. And just to be very clear here. I am AI-phobic*. Proudly so…

*Yes I know it is weird to call yourself proudly ‘phobic’ anything. Particularly is you are adamantly not ‘phobic’ anything else, but to be phobic is to be afraid, and if you are not afraid of Ai you probably should be.

What inspired this post was a last minute panic with the latest Harvey Duckman Anthology where we changed the cover. The Harvey covers are done by a fabulously talented graphic designer called Nick Jenkinson who builds them with layers of ethically sourced graphic’s and has a very clear brief from Gillie (not that he needs it), ‘No generative AI’. Nick goes to great lengths to avoid any Generative AI elements in the covers, he checks everything studiously to avoid ‘contaminating’ the covers.

A note on cover design…. As you may know I do all my own covers. I always have, and I enjoy doing them. It is part of my process. I build them with layers of ethically sourced art, and in any average cover of mine there might be ten to fifteen elements/layers of graphics, even something as comparatively simple seeming as the new Lucifer cover I mentioned a few post ago have lots of layers to it, and a whole lot of editing of art to make it all fit together. Ten to fifteen layers….

Nick, for perspective, probably has forty to fifty layers in an average Harvey cover. Nick is an artist, I’m merely a vaguely competent amateur. Nick also checks every element to make sure it is not Generative AI. That is a whole lot of work because despite what the ‘finger counters’ may think, it is not in any way as obvious as they may think. Nick however is not an algorithm. People from Tadcaster seldom are. So in the latest Harvey cover he mistakenly included 1 piece of AI ‘art’ in the cover, because it wasn’t labelled correctly where he sourced it. Only when he went back to double check after we had already agreed on the cover did he find the error (an entirely forgivable error just to be completely clear on this. It was not his fault it was wrongly labelled.)

Having discovered the error, Nick remade the cover from scratch, for nothing, as he is aware of the Harvey budget constraints, despite already been paid for his original work. A days worth of work, because of an utterly forgivable error on his part. Nick is not just a great artist, but his is a gentleman of honour as well. I would add to this that he is also as much a part of the Harvey team as any of us. His covers are as important to the project as the words of our writers ever are. They help give us an identity that run through the series of that have now reached the landmark of ten books.

So Feral and Fae, our latest dark urban fantasy anthology (very dark in places, I am look at you Nimue…) had to have a new cover made just days before it was released.

The one of the left is the original ‘AI contaminated’ cover the one of the right is the new ‘clean’ one

Now I will admit I prefer the new one as it happens, though of the several covers I saw for this book one of the others options that was rejected was my personal favourite. Here however is the thing, while neither of these covers are generative AI, the contaminated one just having one element that was out of 50 , so 2% AI if you prefer, some perfectly nice people, who are AI-phobic might leap on the assumption they both are AI because they look similar to covers that are made with generative AI.

Why is this? Because generative AI makes good book covers. We would never use them. We are committed to never using them. We find the entire idea of them abhorrent. But we can not deny they are good book covers. There is a reason for that, its simply that AI learned from humans what human want in book covers…

The reason we changed the cover was because one writer, new to the anthology, had asked in his writing group what they thought f the cover and several of them had responded “That’s AI.” Now I’m glad they did, because that is the reason Gillie asked Nick to double check. But they were not saying one small element was AI, they assumed, erroneously, the whole thing was AI generated. And again on this occasion I am glad they did, but assuming things are AI on no other bias that ‘it looks like it is AI’ is not good in general terms. And I speak as someone self professed an AI-phobic, as we all are at Harvey Duckman because we would no more use AI cover art than we would allow AI stories in our anthologies.

We have an absolute line in the sand, no generative AI, as if you don’t think we check every story you would be wrong. We have rejected AI submissions more than once and have a black list of writers who submitted AI stories. That line in the sand extends to everything we do.

This is why I am so pleased with the latest Harvey anthology cover, because I know its 100% human creativity. Just like all the rest.

Speaking of Feral and Foe.. am half way through reading the hardback. I had read many of the stories as a submission editor but not all as John and Gillie read them too and regular writers don’t need to be filtered through me so much. I had feared my own offering in this one ‘Of Copper and Bone’ (doors, murders, more doors) might be a tad too dark in comparison to the rest… Well, I was wrong there. All the stories are fabulous, but yea gods of oak and stone, some of them are dark. Not all, there is plenty of lighter pieces in there too, but the dark is very dark… New Harvey writer, Joachim Heijndermans ‘Feast of meat’ and my old favourite Nimue Brown’s ‘Thorny Hedgehogs Be Not Seen’ are deliciously dark tales for two very different reasons. Andrew Hodges ‘Malrubius’ is a vicious shade of black, Meanwhile Bruce Connelly is back in Fairy land with a different kind of dark humour…

I should not need to sell you a Harvey by now if you read this blog often, but this one is wonderfully feral… Even for us.

Posted in amreading, book reviews, Harvey Duckman, horror, indie novels, rant, reads | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cosy dragons and haunted beds

Posted on July 9, 2026 by Mark Hayes

It is my, not especially profound, opinion that as a writer it is important to read a lot. It is also important to read different subgenres and wander off the well beaten track of Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, Joe Abercrombie, David Gemmell and the rest. Because yes I read books written by predominantly old middle class white men, some of whom are dead. Though to be fair I also spend an inaudiant amount of time reading books by long dead white middle class men such as Poe, Lovecraft, Wells, Verne. The point being its good to get out of your literary rut once in a while and read something different.

Now, to be fair, while I may read a lot of old dead white men, they are far from the only things I read. Some genre’s however I read less than others, not really for any major reason, I just don’t really seek them out. However on occasion a different subgenre crosses my path and for one reason or another I feel compelled to read them.

As is often the case these books are not written by old middle class white men and the authors are all alive as well, which makes a nice change.

Pay the Troll by Summer Oakes

I don’t generally read what you might term as ‘cozy’ fantasy. This is not a deliberate choice on my part, in so much as I avoid it. It is just not my genre. This is certainly in the ‘cosy’ fantasy bracket, which is to say its gentle, nice, no one gets hurt in a permanent kind of way, and no one spends any significant amount of time hungry…

Will Ryge is asked to recover a stollen gem that reputedly has some odd magical qualities. Will is a former agent and now private investigator, and has enough contacts to have an idea where to start. So takes the job and ends up trailing his suspect to a south Atlantic island that’s not on any map. A perfect island for thieves and smugglers to sell of stolen goods. But also an island with some odd inhabitants.

Along side the human population who live in a small port town at one end of the island there is a whole community of ‘magical’ residents of the island, Henri a friendly dragon, Vivaine the witch, Celeste a warrah, which is a highly intelligent fox like creature that can talk to humans. There are of course also dangers, trolls who own bridges and expect a toll, Queff’s which are poisonous goblin like creatures who hunt in packs and all manner of other dangers.

There are also cafe’s with extra large side entrances for dragons who do dragon size portions of rabbit stew.

This is all a gentle kind of delightful. It reminds me of a certain kind of fantasy novel I read a lot of as a child. Its a happy little ride in which nothing ostensibly terrible happens that can’t be fixed with a little rest and plenty of tea. It’s an adventure, with mild peril, that tells you it will all be fine in the end from the off. Thus not my usual fayre, but that is no bad thing.

Occasionally we all need a cosy little adventure with mild peril, tea and cake.

Summer Oakes lives on, what I assume is a small holding, in western Canada. She claims to be a witch, and I am old enough and wise enough never to question anyone who makes such a claim. She also occasionally likes things I put on BlueSky, which is how I know any of this. She is quite lovely and her occasional updates about life around the farm are charming.

Pay the troll is the first book in a trilogy, so I have more to read at some point

The Bed by Laura Perry

Romance fantasy, or Romantasy, isn’t really my stick, obscenely popular as it may be, I don’t generally read it. This novel is not strictly Romantasy, but has elements of romance to it. Strictly speaking I would call it a supernatural romance and if you like your fantasy to have elements of romance* it could well be a book for you.

*romance not spice, not that there is anything wrong with spice, just to be clear.

Liz runs a small business selling art pieces she upcycles, and as business is good she buys herself an antique bedroom set, which unbeknown to her used to belong to a now deceased classics professor and occultist, who is ‘haunting’ the bed. This last is something of a simplification, he is actually been tormented on another plane of existence by the fallen angel Lucifer, because Lucifer is bored and wants something to play with. The arch angel Michael doesn’t entirely approve but as Lucifer is sticking to the letter of ‘the rules’ there is only so much he can do about this.

A haunted bed and supernatural entities are the least of Liz’s problems however as her mother is a bitchy lush who feels compelled to point out her mistakes constantly, her best friends brother has proposed to her, her best friend thinks she should accept, and she it trying to run a small business won too little sleep. She is also naturally attune to the occult, though she doesn’t realise this and quite by mistake manages to connect herself on a esoteric level with the beds previous owner Dr William Fletcher.

Things go downhill for Liz from there. What with the insistent not quite boyfriend wanting her answer to ‘the question’ he popped. Her best friend constantly pushing her to say yes. Her falling in love with the ghost who haunts her bed. Lucifer plotting against her and her family. And the IRS wanting to do an audit.

Yes, Lucifer the fallen arch angel uses the IRS to torture people… This should surprise no one.

The story moves between the real world, the the place between worlds where angels dwell and back again. The between the worlds sections are compelling in there strangeness. Lucifer is petty, Michael hide bound, Ariel easily led. All bound by rules that compel them no matter how much the lightbringer tries to subvert them. Meanwhile Liz has all the drama of human life to contend quite apart from the esoteric mess she had found herself embroiled in.

Importantly, this is all well written with an eye to details. It manages despite its central premise to be believable, at least within the context of a novel about a haunted bed. Liz is a believable protagonist, becoming embroiled in an esoteric world she is unprepared for. That she has some inherent talent in that area is doesn’t feel like a forced plot point, she is not a ‘chosen one’. She has just enough latent talent to irritate Lucifer, and to have the opportunity to thwart him in the end.

For all the supernatural esoteric elements this at heart remains a romance, for all one side of that romance is a deceased professor who’s soul is being torments by a fallen angel. It follows the patterns and beats of romance fiction. The same patterns and beats laid down by Jane Austin and reimagined by Hellen Feilding. The problematic family, the suitable yes unsuitable match, the interfering best friend, the handsome helpful sub plot guy and the love interest who is almost certainly wrong for her but so right at the same time… And waring angels on an ethereal plane.

You may have missed the last of those in Bridget Jones, and almost certainly in Austin but they were there I assure you, in the underlay subtext. What did you think all that polite conversation was about?

Somehow this all hangs together seamlessly, you are right there with Liz through all her struggles and hope she will come out the other end with her sanity intact even if her best friend needs a to keep her nose out… Its a joy to read and even for someone who does read romance as a rule it hits all the right notes you want in a supernatural romance.

Laura Perry is the temple mom of Ariadne’s Tribe, a worldwide inclusive modern interpretation of Minoan spiritual tradition. She lives somewhere in America and as yet has not been burnt at the stake for witchcraft by people who confuse the words paganism and satanism . On the whole I approve of not burning pagans. When not writing fiction she is just being wonderful at a whole host of things.

For a long time until I heard her speak I thought she was from the Cotswolds.

Posted in book reviews, books, fantasy, fiction, indie novels, indie writers, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Music to Write by ~ Female Rage Edition

Posted on July 2, 2026 by Mark Hayes

There has been a certain amount of words throw at the screen on an evening in the last few weeks. This is not overly unusual in the summer. Short nights and long evenings play merry hell with my body clock and writing is the result. As ever when I write on an evening much of it is to music, and my ever ecliptic taste tends to throw up strange play lists that often have some influence on what I write. Or what I am writing influence what I listen to.

I do have a lot of play lists, and a lot of old favourite that I cycle through. I do however always love to to find new music and new artists, for which of all places Facebook/Instagram reels are a surprisingly good resource, for both new artists on the fringes of the mainstream, and artists so obscure (yet wonderful) when you go to look them up on Amazon music or youtube because you want to listen to the whole song you find only a tiny number of people have ever heard of the artist or listened to the song (and I do mean tiny)

So in the spirit of sharing new music to write by, or just listen to (of which there may be a theme… ) From the almost mainstream down to an artist so obscure their you tube channel is only marginally better subscribed than my own

Firstly Paris Paloma and her song labour, you have probably heard this one, or at least the rage fuelled splendour of the chorus

Speaking of rage we come to Feed Us Your Girls by Lydia the Bard, which is equally wonderful but slightly less on the cusp of the main stream

Then we have Earth to Eve, and No Kings which is a truly splendid bit of rage

It isn’t all rage of course, there are some songs that are just delightfully bitter sweet Like this from The Lily Robinsons, which I doubt you have ever heard, but should give a listen

Now we come to this utterly wonderful song from new England indie artist Nocturnne who you have definitely not heard of. The Lily Robinsons are fairly obscure, but by comparison Nocturnne is hidden behind the vail. I have been listening to every track she has available on amazon ( all 9 of them, ) on a loop for the last couple of nights while I write.

She remind me of when I first discovered All About Eve , more years ago than I chose to remember

Do yourself a favour and give her a listen

Anyway back to writing , happy listening

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