Over the last several years I have been involved in the Harvey Duckman Anthologies project. First as a writer, occasionally a mentor and then latterly as part of the editorial staff . I have spoken of it here more than once. It was a grand enterprise, an outlet for new writers and established ones alike. I say was, because it is no more and for one I morn its passing…

The reasons Harvey Duckman has gone by the wayside are many. The project proved to be flawed when inclusive innocence came up against entitled idiocy, as such things are apt to do. I am not going to go into the whys and wherefores, but a few malcontents ruined what was conceived in, and mostly achieved, wonderfulness. Lessons have been learned and the business model has basically lost money from the word, and was a labour of love for Gillie Hatton has ended. Because its hard to love something that keeps kicking you when you’re down. The thirteen volumes of Harvey Duckman Presents will go out of print for ever at the end of the month.

We raise a glass and salute its passing…

This is however not the end for Harvey, a new Harvey has being born form the ashes, a new Harvey with a new business model. A new Harvey that has the potential to be greater than ever before. You can find out about it here….

https://harvey-duckman-is-alive.ghost.io/

The new Harvey is a community site on Ghost, for writers and readers. It will have short stories , author interviews, writing tips and publishing advice as well as a monthly flash fiction ebook anyone can contribute to as well as read. Please check it out if you are a writer, or a reader, or a want to be writer, of genre fiction.

As part of all this there will also be a New style Harvey paperback coming out quarterly, each focused on its own sub-genre, the first of which will be a Steampunk collection that is being curated in part by me. So I can promise I know the quality of every story that has been accepted, with many new to Harvey authors and its going to be splendid…

This has however put me in a bit of a hole… I have not written a short steampunk story for quite a while and old Hannibal is still on hiatus while I write another novel, so I don’t want to don the old ‘Ins and Outs’ club tie and go back to the smoking room to listen to him tell me stories. I need to write something else suitable for a steampunk collection… If only I had a suitable inkwell from which to draw… Some collection of shadowy individuals that fit into the genre… Oh well, I am sure something will come to me if I stare into the void long enough…

The thing in the Thames with the tentacles was not the problem.

Admittedly, a mass of writhing uncanny, disturbing, pseudopods and slick slimy appendages apt to explode from the waters of the old father was far from ideal. All the less so when having done so it wrapped those tentacles around a Hanson and wrenched the cab, its poor occupants, driver and both horses from the recently completed Tower bridge, down into the waters never to be seen again. That it was fair to say was as near as damn the definition of ‘far from ideal’.

But it was not ‘The Problem’.    

“The Problem”, Mr Chapman considered, “is what to do about the witnesses.”

This was the third confirmed attack on Londoners by the enormous night squid which has taken up residence in the Thames. Chapman had noted previously they should ‘thank god every evensong’ that it was a giant Night Squid. The semi-nocturnal creature kept to the dark depths throughout the day and would only break surface under cover of darkness. A more obtrusive cephalopod, one given to making it presence known in daylight, would have proved far more problematic for the ministry to handle, as Chapman had assured his masters in Whitehall. “In the case of monstrous aquatic incursions, darkness is our friend.”

Luckily this was London. City of a hundred thousand chimneys. The furnaces that powered the cities heart with the ever burning coal bless it with the predictable nightly fogs so enamored by drunks, doxies, and the occasional blade wielding maniac that hunted them both. The pea soups of London hid many horrors from the public, which was one of the reasons The Ministry had scuttled clean air bills every time they came before parliament.   

One of the reasons…