I was recently asked if I would agree to do an interview for the Harvey Duckman website. Which is to say Gillie said to me ‘I am sending some questions to answer, is that okay?’ and looked at me with mild panic in her eyes. For some reason she always assumes I’ll say no, or be offended, or in some other way be less than happy with being asked to give an interview.

I don’t know why this is the case. Gillie has known me for several years. She should know me better than that. Getting me to talk is never difficult, getting me to shut up on the other hand…

The Harvey Duckman project, as regular readers will know, is something I have been involved in since its inception. Aside the quarterly anthologies and the monthly fast fictions, there is also a web site on which some content is open to all and some requires you to subscribe (free subscription being an option). But such a thing needs content and amongst the free content are monthly interviews with the many splendid and varied, Harvey authors. Some of these are fascinating insights into to the minds of writers…

It was apparently my turn to be fascinating…

I will leave opinions on such matters to the readers, but I think I managed interesting at least.

In any regard, Gillie sent me the questions , one of which was about a short story I wrote for the original Harvey Duckman anthologies called The Tower. I am rather fond of The Tower, it features now in my own ‘The Strange and the Wonderful’ anthology.

Behind the subscription wall of the Harvey Website (again its free to subscribe) you can also find stories, mostly picked from the original Harvey series. So this month there is one of mine there, which in this case is The Tower as Gillie is particularly fond of it and asked specifically for it when were originally planning the Harvey Website earlier in the year. So despite it being available in my own Anthology, because it was originally written for Harvey, I said yes. There were other reasons as well…

The Tower is one of those stories… A story that people tend to remember and ask about. It has a perfect ending in my opinion. Which is to say the ending is open to the readers imagination. This tends to generate the same question from almost every reader “What is the tower?”

This was entirely deliberate on my part. Answering all the questions is never a good idea as a writer. Some certainly, but never all. Which is why my answer to “What is the tower?” is “What do you think it is?”

Don’t get me wrong, I know the actual answer. I just see no reason to tell anyone. I will however confirm to anyone that they are right if they have figured it out themselves. All the clues are there in the story. Some of which hide behind big neon signs saying “this is a clue” that people often miss because they are big neon signs…

In any regard as i said one of the questions in my interview was about The Tower. (no not that question , a different one) I suspect Gillie already knew what my answer was going to be.

You can find the interview here. Its quite a good one …

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

You can also find the Tower here, is you subscribe ( again there is a free option, so why would you not?)

https://harvey-duckman-is-alive.ghost.io/short-story-the-tower-by-mark-hayes/

And if you do read it and want to know what the tower is, well you were prewarmed to look for clues were you not?

What do you think it is ?