An odd thing happened as I was writing a twitter post… I need to know which Hannibal Smyth short stories had been published in the Harvey Duckman anthology series and for the life of me I couldn’t remember if it was two stories or three. Its an odd thing to realise, and even odder to admit, but if someone asked me which or my stories are in which Harvey Duckman Editions I couldn’t give you a definitive list of the top of my head.

I couldn’t even tell you the titles of all the Harvey stories I’ve had published without looking it up. Particularly if they were standalone stories. But not remembering if the three previous Hannibal Prequal stories had been published in the Harvey Duckman Anthologies or just two of them… Well that’s just a little odd.

Partly this is a case of becoming a victim of the success of the series. We are about to publish our 13th anthology and I have stories in each of the previous twelve. Indeed I have two in the 11th edition due to reasons… Partly this may also be because my memory is dreadful, which worried me for other reasons. However in order to solve this problem I actually had to get the books off the shelf and look up the each of my stories in the contents page of each book.

Vol1 The Cheesecake Dichotomy (Hannibal Smyth early years)
Vol2 The Strontium Thing
Vol3 Narrative Particles
Vol4 ‘The Elves’ and the bootmaker (Hannibal Smyth early years)
Vol5 The Salmon Swim Both Ways
Vol6 The Tower
Vol7 The Strange and the Wonderful: A tale of the Passing Place
Vol8 Mandrake
Vol9 Twenty-seven
Vol10 The Ballard of Johnny Two Bones
Vol11 Pirotherapy
Vol11b Black Hearted Jack (as Mark Seyah)
Vol12 Little Plastic Santa’s

Its quite a list, as I said I didn’t remember them all. Thankfully I am not so far gone I could not remember them once I looked them up. Its also a list I am quite proud of. There are a lot of different types of stories among them, different voices, different worlds. Some serious, some not so much, in fairness it is hard to write an intensely serious ‘feelings’ story full of strong emotions and a deep internal monologue when your writing a story about a radioactive penis. Some what easier to do so in a long Lovecraft-esque prose poem of a story about a man becoming a hybrid deep one and returning to the sea. (please note this is not actual poetry… I would never write such a thing)

Other stories have lives beyond the text. Mandrake for instance started as this one short story and is now becoming a novel (possibly more than one) of Victorian Urban fantasy. The Strange and the Wonderful is probably part of another novel (the sequel to Passing Place) though not so much in it current form. Other stories begin and end in the pages of Harvey Duckman, though one day i will have to write the second of The Tower stories, because it infuriates people that so much was left hanging for their imagination to sort out at the end. It’s almost as if i did that on purpose…

The reason I was looking at Hannibal stories in particular was two fold, firstly because I don’t have enough projects on to keep me busy, I’m only writing five books , I clearly need to think about writing something else as well… Yes, alright fine , no need to point out the flawed logic there…

As it happens I enjoy writing the Hannibal Early years short stories, and they are well liked by a small but chirpy collective of readers, they also collectively form a complex but coherent narrative, that I am writing somewhat out of order, possibly backwards. I even know where the last of those stories would take us. There are more than the three stories currently in print and a forth is about to join them in Harvey 13. Hence i wondered if all three of the others in print (in Cheesecake, Avarice and Boots) had originally been printed in Harvey or just two of them. As it happens is just the two. At some-point the ones in the Harvey and else where may find there way into a definitive novel covering Hannibal Smyth’s early life up to the point he is sitting in the New Bailey waiting for a noose round his neck and a short drop into oblivion…

I have personally been far more involved with Harvey 13 than any Harvey previously. the bulk of the work is still being done by the ever wonderful Gillie Hatton of 6E publishing, but I am one of a triumvirate of submissions editors curating the collection to an extent… So I have a degree of pride wrapped up in this one and more skin in the game. It is however a great collection of stories.

My own, as I said is a new Early year Hannibal story, The Aspidistra Of Social Inequality. Which is a Hannibal title if ever there was one… It is joined by some fabulous tales and story’s by some new writers and some old hands …

Jake Matthew Carpenter – The Midnight Coach
Tamara Clelford – The Adventures Of Little Bear
R. Bruce Connelly – COPS: FTD
Eloign deBrohn – No Picnic For Bears
John Holmes-Carrington – Vaihtava Karhu
Christine King – Jolly Jack Tar
Peter James Martin – The Teddy Bear In The Loft
Jon Pentire – Avery
David Medina – Hell Is Other People
Will Nett – The Teddy Bears’ Quick Nick
J.B. Rockwell – A Cricket in Hell’s Acre
Davia Sacks – Mama’s Bear
Ben Sawyer – Everything’s Fine in the Mushroom House
Liz Tuckwell – The Collector
Ross Young – Igor and the Abandoned

Harvey 13 will be out soon, I’ll probably mention it when it is… Hannibal Smyth The Early Years, well that may be a while in coming… Just five other novels to finish first.