Category Archives: sci-fi

As days grow lighter… coming things

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Mark Hayes

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 … Continue reading →

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A semblance of Truth

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Mark Hayes

I am a bit of a fan boy when it comes to the work of Nimue and the esoteric creation Hopeless Maine (and Nimue’s writing in general). So when I was given the chance to read a early copy of Semblance of Truth I jumped at the chance. Continue reading →

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Music and words

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Passing Place remains the book of which I am most proud. I love all my novels but this one is the one with the most blood in the ink, the most slivers of my soul between its pages. Its a tale of loss and love, of hope and grief , and of choices, the choice we all have….

Also, there really is a forest in the cellar. As well as a Dryad waiting tables when she is not in the back garden with her tree. A gunslinger with a tale of the mythology in the old west. An Inuit whose spear is dropping blood on the bar and speak of tears like diamonds. The wisest doorman in all the universe who will teach you many things, including how to drink brandy the right way. A girl in the corridor with eyes in her hands. A literal devil called Lyal. A grey man form a grey world marveling at the colour in the swirl of his mop water. A chef who understand how to may causality sandwiches. Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar #21 The Man That Was Used Up

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Mark Hayes

All of which is no way as humorous in these latter days than it was intended to be when Poe wrote it and as much as Poe needs to be read with him being ‘of his time’ in mind, sometimes that excusing of the writer doesn’t make the reading of their tales any easier. Continue reading →

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The Return of a Semblance of Hope

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Time has past… Strange epochs are upon us, the stars are finally right and the thing that was prophesied will now come to pass… Also there make be coco! Continue reading →

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Authors of Folly and Madness

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Mark Hayes

In a dimly lit basement. Beneath the grim streets of a post industrial city whence dark satanic mills long since ceased to pushing dense black smoke in to the air. On a wooden operating table, complete with ancient leather straps … Continue reading →

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Men in Dark Tweed #10

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Mark Hayes

The Men in Dark Tweed were created on a whim while I was working on my current WIP novel, a Victorian Urban Fantasy entitled ’Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanoverian Proxy’ The new, somewhat nefarious Home Secretary sets up a plain clothes … Continue reading →

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Verne: A guess post by Will Nett

Posted on November 16, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Sir William Nettleton VII, was once arrested for ‘lewd behaviour involving an elephant’ in his short stay in what was at the time refereed to as Eastern India, later became Burma and is now Myanmar one of only three nations … Continue reading →

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It…

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Mark Hayes

It watches…
It would be wrong to say it is waiting.
Waiting would imply it was waiting for something. That it desired something. Desire is an emotion, want is an emotion. Emotions are not something it experiences. To have emotions requires a frame of reference for emotion is a reaction.
It does not react.
It does not desire.
It does not want… Continue reading →

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Strange wonders

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Tales of Sanctimonious cults, another of a strange tower that do not want to be seen. A story of madness and elder gods returning in the Tees valley, a tale of a magician appointed to the court of Victoria Sax-Coberg. The strange statement of a life repeating in waves of twenty-seven, a tale of a wyrd in the western deserts cira 1850, a story with Sigmond Freud in a rowing boat and finally Hannibal Smyth, who is his as reliably honest as ever, while carrying and aspidistra. Continue reading →

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