We have past into winter, and the sun has begun its return and the writer within me is excited for the new year to come. My literary year of 2025 is going to begin early with a new Harvey Duckman Anthology due out on the 10th of January. It is an anthology of dark and urban fantasy which we have entitled Rum and Rosemary. Gillie ultimately came up with the title and left some debate on the ‘Rum ‘ part, as rum has more than one meaning. In this case it almost certainly mean ‘strange and uncanny’, but Gillie it has to be said, is a pirate at heart…

In any case, with a brief of ‘urban or dark fantasy’ I naturally chose to invent a new genre instead, because that just not broad enough. Thus I wrote ‘Euryale’ which would more correctly be described as a Suburban fantasy. Any classical scholars among you may recognize the name, but for those that do not Euryale is one of Medusa two half sisters. Unlike, medusa who was a mortal woman ravaged by one god then cursed by another for being ravaged (the moral compass of Greek gods was ever deeply questionable), the two other gorgons Euryale and Stheno were wholly divine in nature and thus immortal. Of course the real problem with immortality is what do you do with all the time?

It is partly for this reason that my version of Euryale is working in a charity shop in Cheam. The one with the odd name, next door to the Acropolis Kabab shop run by Mr Popodolpois, who like many a Greek father, made many sacrifices to put his not overly gifted soon through medical school. Just don’t ask him to elaborate on those sacrifices…

Aside from my own story Rum and Rosemary will contain another thirteen thought-provoking, edgy, atmospheric, oft times darkly funny and always entertaining short stories from Anna Atkinson-Dunn, Kate Baucherel, John Holmes-Carrington, Liz Tuckwell, Christine King, CK Roebuck, Laura Buckley, Keith Errington, Davia Sacks, Nimue Brown, Angela Smith, Ben Sawyer and JA Wood.

And is available for preorder on kindle, there will of course be hardback and paperback editions from the 10th of January.

The next Harvey anthology will be Science Fiction Which is another broad church of course. We are always looking for submissions, if you are interested in writing something for us click on the image below.

In 2025 we will also be doing three more Harvey collections, in order after Scifi they will be the expanded ‘Alterative history/steampunk’ then once more ‘Post apocalypse/Dystopian’ before we come back to ‘Urban/dark fantasy’. There is also always just generally weird stuff which we will find home for. And if we get several stories that fit together in ways we have not yet thought of then we might open another.

In other exciting news I can absolutely, positively confirm I will have a new novel out in 2025. The long awaited Lucifer Mandrake novel is finally with my editor and The Esoteric Cricket Ball will defiantly be out this coming year. Which will be the first new novel I have released since February 2022. Which seems a very long time between novels for a novelist. I did release The Strange and the Wonderful anthology , and The Complete Hannibal Smyth in the mean time and my book about HP Lovecraft, but 3 years between novels seems like an ice age. But finally the Mandrake novel is almost ready to be unleashed.

Exactly when is another matter, I have a self imposed deadline for all final edits, typesets et all by the ide’s of March for reasons of symmetry, but that really depends on how much redrafting it needs once I get it back from my editor. But still, exciting times afoot…

I did not spend all those three years have been spent in the company of Queen Victoria’s Personal Arcanist. There are other novels I am also working on , one of which is the second of the Maybe trilogy which is now four years over due.. I am hoping to have that written by autumn. there is also the urban fantasy with the working title ‘The Elf Kings Thingy’ which keeps dragging me back in. And a couple of other projects.

However I have one more project, which I will tempt fate by mentioning (the contract is not yet signed), which is that I have been asked to author a non-fiction book. If that happens, which I am reasonably sure at this point it will, it will have a very definite deadline. Thus Mandrake must be complete because if it isn’t, the non-fiction takes priority from the ide’s onwards. I will illuminated more on this subject when I am in a position to do so…

In any regard, a new year is dawning and I will will be writing for at least four anthologies, have at least one new novel coming out and hopefully more non-fiction and another new novel before the end of the year.

And finally, a happy new year to all my regular readers. the blogs stats for the year just eclipsed 2020 (lockdown was a busy year for blog posts) making this the most visited year in the blogs history. So I guess I will have to keep this going too

Much love

Mark