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.

Posted in amreading, Dear Edgar, Poe, pointless things of wonderfulness | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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
Posted in amreading, amwriting, books, fantasy, Hannibal Smyth | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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

Posted in music, Uncategorized, writing, writing music | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dear Edgar 61 ~ The Domain of Arnheim

Posted on July 1, 2026 by Mark Hayes

Way back in this project, specifically the 37th story, I wrote about ‘The Landscape Garden‘ a short ‘sketch’ story which was first published in the September 1842 issue of Snowden’s Ladies Companion. It was far from the most interesting piece Poe ever wrote, and it would not be unreasonable to suspect it was written purely for the pay check. It was a bland at best, but five years later 1847 in Columbian Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, a new expanded version of the story was published under a new title. The Domain of Arnheim.

The expanded version is around fifteen hundred words longer and I would love to say that these extra words fix all the issues with the original ‘story’. This would be something of an ask as one of the main problems with the original story was that it wasn’t a story to begin with. It was in essence just a descriptive piece about a landscape garden. As 19th century descriptive pieces about landscape gardens that are not part of a wider narrative go, it is right up there as one of the best I have ever read, but that isn’t saying a great deal as it is the only one I have ever read that isn’t part of a wider narrative, and I have not read many that are.

Purely descriptive pieces that have no narrative structure are not stories, Stories require a beginning, a middle and an end. Now the beginning does not have to be at the beginning so to speak. nor indeed does the end necessary need to be at the end. I have read, and indeed written stories where the end is quite firmly at the beginning. To be a story there does however need to be a narrative structure, and perhaps more importantly, a narrative.

The landscape garden is not therefore, in my opinion, a story. You can disagree by all means. You can defend our Dear Edgar by pointing out his stories come to us across going on two centuries, so who am I to say what is or is not a story. In my defence I am a man who writes stories… But importantly the question before us is not if the landscape Garden is a story, but if The Domain of Arnheim takes that original non-narrative piece and turn it into a story…?

No it doesn’t.

That is not entirely fair. The extra fifteen hundred words does add a thread of narrative to the story, involving a journey by canoe, but its a thin thread and easily snapped under the strain. There is nothing really here that’s worth the reading. Its the same non-narrative descriptive piece, with a hair beath of narrative connecting it to a second non-narrative descriptive piece. In the end it is just a bit dull and I see little to improve my original verdict beyond, well there is more of it. Which in this case is not really a good thing.

The Raven nevermore…

SHOULD YOU READ IT: No, perhaps if your are a keen gardener…. but no not even then.

BLUFFERS FACT: In the world of the Warhammer RPG and TTB games, Arnheim was a High Elf colony and port city built on the eastern Black Coast of the continent of Naggaroth. Located at the fringe of the Dark Elf domains. This led to it capture and recapture between the warring factions for centuries before it was finally destroyed by the witch king Malekith. It would be nice to say at this point that a garden has grown up among the ruins. It seems unlikely however.

Posted in amreading, Dear Edgar, Poe, reads | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Interesting Folk…

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Mark Hayes

As a rule I seldom directly reblog, because I would end up filling this blog with other blogs on a daily basis and at some point that becomes a spiral of insanity, besides you can go find them yourself. But as I dabble in folk horror on occasion and to an extent it slips over into my unspecialised subject. I thought I would repost this intrigue look at the genre by Rowen Lee.

You should read it, probably before my own notes on the subject below…

Some Thoughts on Genre

So what is folk horror, Rowen starts with the definition below.

Folk horror is when a stranger stumbles into a “quaint” village and discovers horrors at a harvest festival! Folk horror is fundamentally British and pagan!

Its a good solid definition, and certainly that’s the definition at the roots of the genre. But stranger wanders into a ‘quaint’ remote village and discovers something horrifying is a definition that can be applied to a great many stories. I would argue the vibe behind it is the important bit. The ordinary everyday village folk proving not to be quite so ordinary, be it because of strange beliefs or the tampering of things beyond our ken.

Take ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and others stories Lovecraft set in his beloved version of New England. Lovecraft Country as it is sometimes called has many isolated communities and strange things in the woods. ‘The Picture in the House’ I would say is very much folk horror though it holds none of the usual tropes of the genre. Indeed it doesn’t fit in with Rowen’s definition at all… But the tales of Lovecraft country are ‘Folk Horror’ in much the same way as southern gothic is in essence folk horror.
Isolated communities, strange beliefs, dark undercurrents.

Innsmouth, an isolated community populated by half bred ‘fishy’ all of whom are members of a strange cult, that meets to enact rituals summoning their non-human masters, is the quintessence of folk horror in many ways. Aside the the fundamentally British and pagan part.

The inspectors tale (part 1 of The Call of Cthulhu) can also slip into that broader definition. A strange cult of otherness meeting in a swamp. Though I admit I am stretching here and it is more the New England tales that fit the genre.

Perhaps it is New England Horror in general that does this. Stephen King almost exclusively sets everything he writes in New England, specifically Maine (aside the dark tower novels, though they go there too) and certainly some of kings stories have elements of folk horror behind them.

I have also read a lot of folk horror style stories from America that have bene submitted to the Harvey Duckman Anthologies I work with. One of our most prolific writers form across the pond has written a series of short stories that all loosely hang together with are a wonderfuil example of folk horror in the short form.

The writer in question is Bruce Connelly, who aside been a writer and actor, is also a puppeteer who from 1993 to the present day has been Barkley, the dog on Sesame Street. Yes Barkley the dog writes New England folk horror…

In any regard Rowen’s thoughts of the subject are far more interesting than my own. Though as far as I am aware she doesn’t work with any writers who also happen to be muppets, so there is that.

Also folk horror in the more narrow view is indeed British and pagan, so nothing I have suggested really fits that definition, beyond the general vibe of the genre. But they all give me the same itch that good British folk horror does.

Finally, if you want what I think of as real deep at the roots British folk horror I recommend you go read the Thistlebone graphic novels some time, but be warned they are dark and snarly.

Posted in amreading, horror, pagan, reads, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lucifer Redux

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Mark Hayes

For the reasons I went it to last week Lucifer mandrake & The Esoteric Cricket Ball has a new cover. It has also had a few minor issues fix in a short edit and because I could the kindle edition has a bonus mandrake short story Auguries, from my Auguries of Euryale collection.

I am very please with the new cover, which has so much pop.

And the paperback has a full wrap to the back cover is pretty awesome too even if I am the one saying that.

It that has wetted your appetite, you can get a copy in paperback or on kindle (and soon in hardback) here mybook.to/A3ON

Posted in amreading, books, fantasy, reads, steampunk, urban fantasy | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Cover Stories

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Mark Hayes

‘Don’t judge a book by the cover’ as the old wisdom goes, unfortunately, however, in the real world everyone does. There is going to be some harsh unforgiving honesty with myself in this post, but sometimes that is required.

A week ago I took out my phone and showed a group of friends three cover designs for a book I am in the process of vaguely writing. This is to say it is not the book I should be writing but the book I am writing while I need a break from the book I should be writing. The reason for this was a couple of evenings before while while avoiding writing the book I was writing to avoid writing the book I should be writing, I faffed on with cover ideas and came up with three different ones*.

*You should note here that none of these are final designs, they are scribbles on the page… no more than that. They are far from finished.

Well actually two as I had a cover design already from a pervious procrastination. I was not entirely sold on the first one though it used a technique I had used before with Maybe, in that the character on the front was facing into the book with her back to the reader. There is phycology at work here, but also practicality

The practicality is once you use an image for a character you are stuck with them to an extent. You are going to need more than one picture in case you go back to that character. Show them looking into the book and you avoid that and allow the reader to project whatever image they want onto the character.

The phycology is it invited mystery, who is the shadowy figure she is looking at? Who is she? There is an implied sinisterness to this situation as well, something bad is going to happen.

The other covers I made are based on both main characters in the novel, which could be described as a Victorian version of the men in black ( The Men in Dark Tweed), but also shades of the avengers (the 60’s the British TV show not the American comic book superhero team) Mr Chapman is very much and allegory of John Steed and Miss Bradshaw is equally an allegory of Emma Peel. It is all set within a Victorian secret government department dealing with occult threats and other weirdness, while keeping the general populous unaware that strange things are going on. It is my distraction novel because its is just plain fun to write and does not take itself seriously.

Of the small select group of friends I asked, the opinions I got back was almost entirely universal. Everyone was intrigued and interested by the first cover. Liked the mystery and invitation to discover more it held. And none of them cared much for the other two, which felt forced and uninspired. So that was an evenings procrastination avoiding writing the book I was writing to avoid writing what I should have bene writing wasted…. But at least I got opinions. Opinions are good.

Also, it struck me afterwards that the single most successful novel I have written, the sequel to which is the book I should be writing, in case your wondering. Maybe, has a very similar cover in that the female main character is facing into the book. The cover of Maybe captures peoples imagination, possibly because of the title as well, but certainly the cover works in a way some others don’t.

To offer another example I have a couple of small anthologies the most recent of which is Auguries of Euryale. The most successful however is The Strange and the Wonderful which preceded it and was the reason I did Auguries in the first place as The Strange and the Wonderful sells well for an anthology and also does well at events. The cover just works and draws people to it. It is often the book people pick up first.

Yet it has a simple cover, a cloud scape with a pagan, witchy, skull thing I just liked when I stumbled across it and bought the art. Auguries by contrast has a cover design I really like, but it has not sold as well as I could have reasonably expected, which as its an anthology was not a great deal to start with as anthologies are really books people buy if they have bought your novels and want more, which has happened. What hasn’t happened it Auguries hasn’t found a audience beyond that in the way The Strange and the Wonderful does, nor does Auguries draw attention at events the way the other book does. As much as I love the cover, it isn’t doing what I as an author need the cover to do.

It doesn’t matter how good the stories are, or even the blurb, if no one gives the book a second look due to the cover. Covers are a dark art in that respect.

This brings me to the cover another novel, and one both written and published, one for which I also adore the cover design…. Lucifer mandrake: The Esoteric cricket Ball.

The Lucifer, Luci cover tells you a lot about the book without telling you about the book. Its a very pretty cover, I am very fond of it. But here in lays the rub… The novel, which those who have read it are fairly universal in praising, just has not sold. It just hasn’t managed to grab peoples attention and that unfortunately may have a lot to do with the cover.

I had a conversation about the cover, and covers in general, a few months back while working an event with fellow authors, and asked for candid opinions. Candid opinions are exactly what I got. The summery of which is the cover at first glance suggests the book look like something other than it is a fantasy/supernatural romance. That was not my intention, its not what I write in general and certainly isn’t the case with this novel. So readers who are attracted by the cover are not ones that would be inclined to read the novel once they read the blurb. The pitch is wrong. The cover is therefore by extension wrong.

When I say the book has not sold, that is exactly what I mean. While it has done reasonably well at events, where I can tell people about it, online it has sold less than a quarter of what I could have reasonably expected based on how other books did in the first 16 months of their release. A book I have been told be several readers is the best I have ever written*, is utterly failing to find readers, even among people who have read other books of mine. It just isn’t finding its market.

*They are wrong, the best novel I have ever written is Passing Place, but Lucifer is up there with my best in my opinion.

Cover designs are a discussion that comes up a lot with the Harvey Duckman Anthologies, as recently as yesterday I was in a discussion between several of us, and the chief, about the cover of the forthcoming Dark Urban Fantasy anthology Feral and Fae which is due towards the end of the month. The discussion was long and complicated and I shall not bore you with the opinions. The main font for Fae is being changed and some other minor things, But these were the choices of cover presented to us by Harvey resident cover designer, the lovely Nick Jenkinson (Klaus) who Gillie keeps locked up in her cellar and feeds on scraps of bacon, allegedly…

My own favourite of the three, the middle one, is not the one being used, indeed it the one no one else seemed to like. But as you may have realised by now, what I like does not always make for a good cover…

A good cover being the cover that finds readers.

Which brings me back to Lucifer, the novel that no one reads, with the cover that does not work. Having decided this is the case I have started putting together a few possible replacements, the first of which is a minimalist design, meant to stand out, and attract attention in the way the Strange and the Wonderful cover does. I will be making more before I fix on anything final. It is designed for impact, it is designed for people to say, what is that? A couple of versions of this first idea are below.

I am not yet convinced I have this cover right, and I will make some more designed before I make any changes. But I do like the simplicity of this one. It has impact and intrigue to it, which is sometimes the secret, to finding the answer to the question ‘what cover will work best’.

Lucifer Mandrake: The Esoteric Cricket Ball is good novel. It deserves to be read. Covers matter and the current one just isn’t working. Which is a shame, but the point of a cover is not to please the writer but to find a book readers.

Sometimes you have to kill your darlings, and sometimes reinvent them.

Posted in amwriting, books, fantasy, Harvey Duckman, men in dark tweed, reads, self-publishing, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear Edgar 60 ~ The Cask of Amontillado

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Mark Hayes

When I was fairly young, certainly no older than ten or twelve, my maternal grandmother used to slip me a very small glass of sherry now and again. Edna Herrington had lived through a war, rationing and my grandfather dying young on her and leaving her left to raise two teenage girls on a Burtons clothing factory wage, in a back to back council house in east Leeds, with communal outside toilets. By the time she was slipping me tiny glasses of sherry she was living in a council tower block that had replaced the back to backs, with internal plumbing.

Edna lived through a lot, smoked 20 Embassy Number One’s a day and sipped her way through a bottle of sherry a month. Slightly more if she had one of the grandkids staying over night… Some time after this, once all the grand kids were adults and had left their respective homes, Edna’s mind started slipping, and she moved in with my mum and dad for a few moths but the night my mum woke tup to find her mother stood over her husband holding a knife and saying she had to kill him before he killed them, my parents decided with heavy hearts that there may be some wisdom in finding her a care home.

Grandma Edna loved my father, he was her favourite son in law. Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease with no logic to it at times.

But as I say, long before the disease took my grandma from me and replaced her with a slightly mad old woman living in the past, she used to slip me tiny glasses of sherry when ever I stayed the night in her flat. To the child I was, this was a rich strange tasting forbidden fruit… Almost certainly given so I would actually go to sleep…

I have never drunk sherry since, as such I would not know a fine Amontillado from any other sherry. Something in which I am not alone…

In this grim tale of revenge by our Dear Edgar, the promise of sampling a cask of Amontillado is used by the protagonist Montresor to lure his intended victim Fortunato to his grotesque doom. Fortunato considers himself to be a connoisseur of fine wine, though just how true this may be is debateable. At several points in the story he betrays a degree of ignorance, not least when admonishes another noble man as unable to tell the difference between Amontillado and Sherry. Unless Poe himself was unaware they were one in the same, which seems unlikely, it portrays Fortunato as been a social upstart and a drunkard. This is however, the least of his sins in the eyes of Montresor.

At some point in the past Fortunato had wronged Montresor, at least in the eyes of Montresor. What exactly has had done to deserve his fate is never entirely explained. Fortunato, blissfully unaware of this long held vendetta, considers Montresor to be a old friend and trusted ally. Trusted enough that Fortunato openly admits to Montresor he is a Freemason, and seems surprised that Montresor isn’t, at least he has no knowledge of freemasonry, masonry on the other hand…

This is far from the first time Poe has told a story from a murders perspective. Most notably he does so in The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat, but also to an extent the early stories like Berenice do much the same. But in those cases the madness of the perpetrator is fully on display. They are to an extent windows into insane minds. In this case however if Montresor is insane it is the cold calculated insanity of a psychopath, rather than the fractured minds encountered in other Poe stories. Montresor at no point comes across as insane at least in regards to the way Poe normally writes insanity. Instead he seems merely coldly and callously driven to enact his revenge.

As revenges go, this is unquestionably brutal. Lured, while drunk, by the opportunity to sample a fine cask of Amontillado and plied with other wines along the way, Fortunato, who is far from fortunate, is led through the bowls of the Montresor family home, through wine cellars and catacombs. Into a dark alcove deep in the furthest cellar, where he is chained to the wall in a drunken stupor and starts to come round as his host proceeds to wall him in alive. All the while listening to Fortunato’s pleading to be released as he finally realises this is not all some wildly elaborate practical joke.

This is a cold end to a chilling tale. Unlike Poe’s other tales of murders, Montresor faces neither justice nor indeed his own guilt. There is only the tinniest of suggestions of him experiencing any guilt at all right at the end, which he then dismisses as a reaction to the dampness of the catacombs. Oddly, or perhaps not, because Montresor faces no crisis of guilt, and remains uncaught, this feels a more chilling tale than Poe’s other stories. Montresor is a murderer who you could pass in the street with no inclination of his psychotic nature. It is grotesque in ways Dear Edgars other tales are not. Rather than obvious signs of insanity he is a companionable murderer, with a refined taste and sensibilities plying his victim with drink and massaging his ego, before committing his cold callous crime. Montresor is in a way a precursor of Hannibal Lector, only without the cannibalism.

A refined killer who acts without pity, who seems sane even which committing insanities.

A TRUE MURDER OF RAVENS

Should you read it: Yes, it is dark and chilling and tangibly horrific, and Poe at his best

Blaggers fact: Reputedly Poe’s inspiration for this story came from a barrack-house legend he heard while stationed at Fort Independence in his army days. After a dual over a card game that left a much admired officer dead, the men of the fort took revenge on his killer by getting the other officer drunk, then chaining him in the depths of the fort and walling him in. However, while Edgar may well have heard the tale in the barracks, it was entirely a fabrication. While the dual did take place, the surviving office was acquitted of murder and was still alive some thirty years later, when Poe put pen to paper to write this tale.

He did die that year however…

Now I think I am going to buy a bottle of Sherry, and have a small tipple to the memory of Edna, as fine a Grandma as a boy could ever wish for. In the meantime, support Alzheimer’s research, or just find out more at https://www.alzheimers.org.uk

Posted in book reviews, horror, Poe, reads | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment