I am to blame, at least in a small way, for something delightful. This has been known to happen before… Occasionally I think people just need someone to blame and I am convenient as I have an occasionally loud personality, which hides the fragile collection of idiosyncratic night terrors that pretends to be brave while hiding behind masks of ambivalence, hiding behind a broken smile and the fear that some one soon is going to tell me to stop trying to write things. Or worse that they like something I written.

Sorry, got side tracked…

Anyway, back to blame… Several years ago now Kate Bachereal wrote a story about a small avian of currently unknown gender, trying to buy a cocktail in a bar on an alien planet and not having the local currency. In actuality this was a couple of paragraphs to illustrate a point in a non-fiction book about crypto currency, the same book had for reasons that made sense at the time a quote from me in it about it being impossible to play ‘shove half-penny’ with a bitcoin. I got blamed for that too. In any regard a few months later when we were looking for stories for one of the early Harvey Duckman collections, Kate decided to dig out her little Avian space traveler and turn the those couple of paragraphs into an actual story.

This lead to a conversation on the Thursday night in ‘Connections’ our regular writers bar in Norton about how the avian ( who may be a bird person but is a flightless bird person) could get off the roof of the bar in the story. Obviously since the cocktail waiter in the bar was an octopus (the bar in the story, not Connections, Glen is as far as I am aware not an octopus) and the octopus was helping the little avian escape dastardly feathers thieves, the solution was simple.

“Octopus catapult” ~ Mark, two beers in, suggested loudly

The story was written, my small suggestion included. I was very pleased to help and delighted by Kate’s story, which was just good old escapist fun. So I encouraged her to write more. By encouraged I mean badgered her to do so. A couple more ‘Finch’ found their way into the original run of Harvey’s. One also made it into the first of the relaunched Harvey’s ‘Folly and Madness’ But still I badgered Kate for more.

What I actually said, at least once a month or so for a couple of years was,

“These Finch stories, you realize that it you put them together and build around them, you have the structure for a great galactic travelog novel following Finch’s gap year travels around the galaxy. You should do that.”

For reasons, probably just so she could blame me, Kate went away and did just that. And ‘The Travels of Finch’ became the first novel to be released that started out as a short story in a Harvey Duckman Anthology. Of course everyone at Harvey Duckman Towers is very pleased for Kate, delighted that a short story within the anthologies pages has lead to a novel, and proud of Kate for doing so.

Which is just bloody typical…

(note for refrence . ‘The Travels of Finch’ was released two weeks before Lucifer Mandrake: The Esoteric Cricket ball. The other novel that started out in life as a short story in a Harvey Duckman. I am not remotely salty about this I just like to pretend I am, Masks….)

The Travels of Finch

Take one galactic tourist bird-person, one gap year, one diary from their granny from when she went on her own gap year tour of the galaxy, one cocktail serving octopus, pirate parrots, steam fruit, Armageddon cults, plumage thieves, plumbing for water slides, white water rafting between skyscraper canyons, Wild safaris on strange worlds, more cocktails, and let you imagination run wild….

Finch is an avian who’s yet to molt and get their adult feathers, so is not yet of a gender. Off on a gap year tour of the galaxy and doing what you should on a gap year, getting into trouble. Out of trouble, into more trouble, making friends, getting friends into to trouble. And drinking cocktails.

There is, and always should be, a place on every bookshelf for absurdity, silly, ridiculously, seat of you pants, fun, and that is what this novel is. It is not trying to make clever points about anything much, its not trying to be especially insightful, it doesn’t even mention cricket once…

There is absolutely no careful veiled points being made here about the absurdities like gender identity politics, environmental issues, celebrity culture, tourism, ecology, or anything else.

It is just fun, and funny, and joyous. So just read it for that.

Honestly, just do its wonderful. And a wonderful thing to be apportioned some minor amount of blame for the existence of. Even if all that amounted to was me nagging Kate to write it