The Passing Place

Dear Edgar #8 Berenice

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Mark Hayes

There are many ways to enjoy a story. In almost ever regard, and on almost every occasion, I will always say the best way is to read it yourself. Like all rules however, there is always an exception. But lets not get ahead of ourselves, there are other matters to attend to first.

All writers go through the occasional fallow period. this doesn’t mean they are not writing of course, and if you are going purely on publication dates (which in Dear Edgar’s case the only option I have) there can be a lot of deceiving factors involved. Lovecraft had his faults, many of them, but he did clearly date everything… Poe on the other hand was less fastidious with dating his work, this and his inclination to tinker with it even after publication makes knowing when something was written and where his fallow periods might be, harder to identify.

However, there is a gap of some fifteen month between the previous story ‘The Assignation’ and this next story Berenice, which was published in the Southern Literary Messenger in March 1835. This represents one of the longest fallow periods in terms of publication in Poe’s career. It was also a period that saw him shift from those earliest humourist works that occasionally paddled around the edges of Lake Horror, to diving into that lake with wilful abandon. Berenice is very defiantly Dear Edgar’s first out and out horror story, and much more the Poe you expect to encounter. It is not unreasonable to say therefore, it was in this fallow period that Poe found himself as a writer… He was to go on to publish six more story in the same magazine over the next few months in a period of frantic activity.

That said, there were other things going on in the life of our Dear Edgar at the time. He had started to drink heavily, something which became a problem quite quickly. He was both hired and fired (for turning up to work drunk) as subeditor of the Southern Literary Messenger in the space of a month in summer of 1835. This was the same year in which he obtained a marriage licence to marry his cousin Virginia Clemm, who aside being his cousin was also thirteen years his junior, though they were not actually married until May the following year when a witness false attested to Virginia being twenty one… She was actually at the time only fourteen, while this was not entirely unusual in the 1830’s, Edgar was twice her age.

By all accounts Virginia was the great love of Edgar’s life, and her early death at twenty four broken him for some time and inspired much of his later works.

Between his emerging alcoholism, unstable employment (he was rehired by the same magazine a month later having sworn to his sobriety) and his complicated romantic entanglements, Poe life was far from settled. He was however finding the inspiration to become the writer he was destined to be, though there was a road to traverse before this transformation was fully realised. But everything you might expect to find in a tale by Poe can be found within this story…

*Original Illustrations of ‘Bernice’ by Harry Clarke 1926.

Bernice is a tale of obsession, a monomania in a grandiose Gothic style. Egaeus, the narrator of the tale, is a studious young man given to hanging around in the ancestorial library and brooding a lot. The last male heir of a noble line, he grows up with the an affliction where by he easily becomes obsessed with objects, going into a trance like fixation for minutes , hours or even days.

The Bernice of the title is his cousin, with whom he spent his childhood, and whom is his polar opposite. Where he is serious, studious and like hanging around with dusty books, she like the open air, sunshine and generally larking about in the grass having a good time. In short they have next to nothing in common, until Berenice is struck down by a disease, and in a short time haunts the dusty halls of the mansion in those few hours she is not abed. It is at this point, his cousin dying before his eyes, be proposes to her… because that’s what you do when you flighty fun frolicsome cousin is slowly wasting away of some incurable affliction, you suggest marriage. After all, she can’t run away into the sunlight any more…

Strangely and perhaps as a mark of just how ill she is, she agrees, and the two become engaged, just in time for Egaeus to start regretting his decision. Then some time, her beauty and youth burned away by her illness, Berenice smiles at him one day and he becomes obsessed with her teeth. The only part of her untouched by corruption…

And when Egaeus becomes obsessed, he really becomes obsessed…

Some time late he is aroused from his mania by a servant who tells him Berenice has died. At which point his mania for her teeth really goes a tad over the edge… This involves a shovel, a visit to the grave yard and a hammer , chisel and pliers. As well as the unfortunate revelation that Berenice was not actually dead when they buried her, just in a deep stupor, deep enough to appear dead. Considering what Egaeus’s obsession drives him to do, that is somewhat unfortunate…

This is a very dark tale, in fact it is so dark that Poe himself editing it in later publications to tone down some of the brutality in the original version. Stripping out a lengthy section, it is an interesting act of comparison to read both. While the first is certainly more graphic, I would argue the later edits are an improvement in terms of horror for what they don’t say.

All that said the prose of this story is dense even by Poe’s standards, which make it an awkward read in some respects. Poe is generally a tad more restrained with his prose than he is in this tale, he leans so heavily into the atmosphere of ruinous gothic excess that it edges into the territory of prose poetry more than story telling, there are some wonderful lines. Like the ones below…

…she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! — I call upon her name — Berenice! — and from the grey ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! Sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim!

But here in lays a problem , the lines are wonderful, the use of language exquisite, the descriptions rich and layered until its like wading thorough the literary equivalent of a sickly sweet syrup which makes the actual story hard to follow. This is a dark Gothic beauty of a story but it is intoxicating over written. It is, for me at least, so love with its own Gothic grandeur that it fails to be an engaging story.

Take this sentence…

My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative, and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself.

Its splendid isn’t it… But no sentence should need eight comma’s… And what does it actually mean… Well ‘My books feed into my obsessional nature.’ is perhaps the best interpenetration. Yes this is Poe and yes Poe prose always lent towards being a tad overwritten. This is not even the worse example, (see the bottom of this page) But even for Poe some of this story is excessive. Which is perhaps partly on purpose, with a obsessive narrator, but still makes it a tough read to follow, and that is without some fairly oblique classical references and the smattering of Latin and french that crop up along the way. As with earlier stories Poe loves to through a little french about…

However, there other ways to take in this tale other than reading it yourself. There is a wonderful reading of this story by one of the crown princes of Gothic horror. Vincent Price. And frankly I would listen to Vincent Price read the back of a cornflakes packet, so finding this unabridged version was a real treat.

If however you are more taken by the power of visuals over just the sound of Mr Price’s unforgettable voice there is an much abridged version of the same reading used as the narration of a short film of the same name by Vlad Latosh that leans heavily into the Gothic nature of story and is a delight.

But Vincent Price and Eastern European film-makers aside in terms of the story itself while it has plenty of fabulously descriptive prose, and is wonderfully Gothic in splendider, as a story its just difficult to get to grips with… So it gets less ravens than I really wanted to give it…

THREE RAVENS OUT OF AN UNKINDNESS, THE FORTH GOT MIRED DOWN AMIDST A SENTENCE THAT NEVER ENDED.

Should your read it: Sure, but listen to Vincent Price tell it first, you will enjoy it more as when you read it you will hear his voice narrating the story to you in your head ever more…

Should you avoid it: There is no reason to avoid it, save perhaps a desire to avoid getting lost in sentences like this one…

Thus awaking, as it were, from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity at once into the very regions of fairy land — into a palace of imagination — into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition — it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye — that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie — but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers — it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life — wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my common thoughts.

Yes that’s one sentence…

Bluffers facts: As mentioned earlier Poe rewrote the tale in later editions this was after publisher of the Southern Literary Messenger, Thomas W White, received several complaints about the ‘shocking violence’ in the tale.

Poe disagreed with the complaints at the time but later said “I allow that it approaches the very verge of bad taste – but I will not sin quite so egregiously again.” before going on to write a story about a gorilla murdering Parisians by ripping them to pieces…

Posted in amreading, Goth, horror, Poe, reads | Tagged amreading, Dear Edgar, Edgar Alan Poe, gothic, horror, Poe, reads, sciencefiction, writerslife, writing | 6 Comments

The battle of the bottle bridge

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Mark Hayes

For reasons best known to them, the ‘good’ folks of Hopeless Maine ‘invited’ me to write a story for their blog. They did this by repeatedly blaming me for things, all of which I was completely blameless for…
Sure I looked at a map of the island and saw a spoon-walker depicted in one small corner of it and joked it was clearly to scale and was therefore Spoon-Kong.
And sure this passing aside of mine may have inspired Nimue to write a story featuring Spoon-zilla… But how is that my fault?
And sure I may have suggested to the folks of Hopeless that Spoon-zilla and Spoon-Kong clearly therefore should have an epic battle somewhere on the island, in jest…
“Yes, you should write that.” they said…
“Oh what the hell, sure…” I replied thinking that I could days out a few hundred words of silly monster combat and that would be that…
It was a this point things go out of hand… Because I love Hopeless Maine and if I am invited to write for them then I could not possibly just hack something together. I had to try and make something worthy of being placed on the island… Which is why this is just part one and doesn’t really involve spoon-walkers for the most part.

The Hopeless Vendetta

By Mark Hayes

In the aftermath of broken bottles and stamped on night potatoes no one was entirely sure what had happened. No one even admitted to having been there. The most anyone would admit was knowing someone who knew someone who had been there. There were no witnesses because no one was willing to admit to having been there and witnessing the event and by mutual unspoken agreement those who had seen others in attendance and been seen themselves never spoke of it directly.

Everyone one was however more than happy to apportion blame, as ever.

In this case though that blame was easy enough apportioned. It was the fault of the newcomer. The man in the red-tailed jacket who had washed up on the shores of the island less than a month before in most unlikely circumstances. Barham P Bingley. Just how he had washed up in a…

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Notebooks and Scribblings

Posted on June 14, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Most writers, I suspect, keep a few note books… Some more than others. Some may scribble down the odd idea once in a while, if they remember. Others may carry a note book pretty much all the time. Or have merry little notebooks scattered about their home or work places. Of course in the modern age many will make verbal notes on there phones, or type them out into a notepad file of some description on one hand held device or another.

The there are the mad ones, the ones that are a tad obsessive and keep note books by the bed, the sofa, there desk, on the kitchen table, in the car, in the smallest room…. And keep voices notes shouted at ‘Alex’ at 3am, and in notes files on every conceivable device backed up to the cloud on something like one note , and folders full of word documents and transcriptions of the diseased uttering of an incoherent mind… And have been doing so for so many years now that they frankly have no idea where all the notes are or what inspired most of them or whey they were noted at all…

Occasionally these mad individuals find themselves stumbling through the notes, trying to make sense of often incoherent gibbering.

Hello. My name is Mark, I am a note-a-holic… Here’s some very random short scriblings (bare in mind these are not even first drafts, they are at best the equivalent of an artists sketch, trying to get an idea out for a first draft to follow, they are rough and ill-formed. Welcome to some of the odder bits of my mind…

In the space between universes, the emptiness of nothing, there is something all the same. If only the possibility of something. Islands of potensality for want of another word. Think of them as the soft places. The places in between. No more real that a dream, except they are real none the less, and there are those who dwell within them.

But there are other things too.Things that come from elsewhere, from places that could be described as here, or there. Bleedings out of reality, if you will. Bleeding out into the soft places. To a place where nothing can be, from the place where everything is. 

One such soft place is the garden of the lantern maker. Don’t ask me his name, if he ever had one it was forgotten before your universe was born. That may seem impossible to you,  not that it matters, but you are thinking in the terms set by what you call reality. You need to step beyond them, the soft places exist between. Beyond if that is the better word. Time does not exist there in any sense you understand. Time and its passing is a product of reality after all. 

He is known by his actions only, he is the lantern maker, that is enough. It is not what he does that matters so much of how he does it. His lanterns you see are weaved from human souls. Well not just human souls, the souls of those things which inhabit what you call the universe. I only said human souls to grab your attention, but all that which exists has souls, humans, elephants, lions , the smallest of ants, a blade of grass. Though the lanterns of ants are dull lights at best. Even the souls of your dead, human, make for only the tiniest lanterns in his garden. 

The souls of of the living though, they shine brighter than stars. Thus the lantern maker coverts those more than any other.

I have no idea, so don’t ask, a note with the file says PP2 which would imply this was part of my early plotting for the sequel to Passing Place I may eventually write one day. If so it bears no relation to the actual plot notes for the sequel to Passing Place I may write one day… Its also not entirely coherent even within itself…

Its odd ,the little details you remember. Like the book I was reading when Lorne came into the cafe. Perhaps it was because it wasn’t my usual fair. A crappy sub-errotic detective thriller called Blindsided By Beauty, it was trying its best to be 30’s noir updated to a more modern setting with sexscene just the right side of the censors knife. It was trying to be classy, while wrapped in a brown paper bag.

It was failing on all counts. I vaguely remember enjoying it, though beyond that carefully alliterated title I can’t remember a thing about it.

Lorne looked strung out again. But there was little new there, she had been working for Frankie at the eleves until her habit got too firm a grip on her. Now she plied her trade in less surlobrious establishments . Frankie had warned me she was a shitshow but she was also another old friend from back in the day. Back when we were kids shopping up west with a fine fingers discount. I knew her mum who had known my mum both of whom would not be happy with the turn her life had taken. But what are you gonna do , and when she was sober she was fine company

Not in the way you are no doubt assuming

Well not after a couple of drunken tumbles . but let’s not go there. She was good to talk to.

Anyway, she had been tying to straighten out and I had thrown a little work her way of the none horizontal kind. I had clients that didn’t like to meet men in uniform and she was a good go between .

But right now Lorne was strung out about something

Fairly sure this was a sketch for a Hannibal short story, though not sure how Hannibal works with 30’s noir. Technically there was still a 30’s in Hannibal’s universe so its kind of works, I have a vague recollection (and some more plotted notes) of where this one was going which was very much followed the noir type plot of the ‘woman gonna do me wrong’…. But still.

Sometimes I wander into the hidden valleys of the mind

And there , between mountains of improbably size and beneath improbably blue sky I walk

At the heart of these hidden valleys there is always a temple

Small but imacilate in concept

And on the steps of the temple sits an old monk , who always has something to tell me , but speaks only in words whom meanings are beyond comprehension

And that one is literally in a folder called Plotting, and I have no idea what I was jibbering on about. That folder contains many small bits including this last little aside which which also contains the last of these notes, a short one but one that made me smile… I have no idea why I wrote it down.

Clearly, they were both swinging at the same piñata

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Bridget Jones is a Werewolf

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Okay, now I have your attention with a blog title that even by my standards is a little left field I should almost certainly put out a disclaimer. Let me state for the record that I have never read any of the Bridget Jones books, and have only a vague recollection of the first movie. I had a girlfriend who wanted to see it and I wanted to see her knickers no matter if they were big comfy pants or a lacey thong.

I will say this though a Bridget Jones Werewolf movie would be a far better date movie, particularly if Hugh Grant got ripped apart by a rabid Bridget in he middle of the third act. Renée Zellweger would make for a cute werewolf I am sure, and she could pull it off, that woman has range…

Oddly enough, Hellen Feilding’s the original novel was based, loosely, on Pride and Prejudiced, which I think proved my point as while movie versions of Pride and Prejudiced also make for popular date movies, Pride and Prejudiced with Zombies is easily the best of these IMO. All the romance of the Jane Austin original, with sword fights and zombie beheading. So just saying Bridget Jones Goes Rabid is a movie idea with legs…

Unfortunately, I suspect that movie will never get made, but on the off chance that it does, Warner Brothers can contact me here with the bankers draft for my ideating. When they do I will of course be morally obligated to admit my idea was inspired by another authors novel, once the money is in the bank… So until then I’ll not tell anyone, you included dear reader which novel inspired me to think Bridget Jones Goes Rabid was a great idea for a movie… So lets just move on and put this whole Renée Zellweger goes furry on the back burner for now… Instead I’ll review some random book that is in no way connected to the opening section of this blog post…

I should also point out I don’t read a lot of chick-lit. I suspect one of the reasons I don’t read much Chick-lit is generally it lacks shapeshifters. Having said that I am sure someone will want to point out a long list of werewolf erotic romances that are available… The kind of books aimed at a female readership that have a man on the cover with his shirt off.

‘He was the alpha of his pack but could she tame his wild heart..?’

There is nothing wrong with that kind of book, they tend to be set in mid-west America and the werewolves all drive pickups. Except for the Lone-wolf who will have a Harley… They are a popular subgenre of urban fantasy, but like the majority of Urban Fantasy its all set in the US and its appeal to me which is somewhat limited to start with, falls away entirely when we start talking about ‘good old wolf boys’ down on the farm. Also, and this has to be said, the were’s in American books of this type are all werewolves, or on the odd occasion werebears.

The best book I read last year involved a shape shifter, that was Hunting the Egret by Nimue Brown and the shapeshifter in question was a were-otter. You would not get a were-otter in the average shape shifter chick-lit I mentioned above.

That would be as likely a book having a were-guineapig in it or a were-hedgehog for that matter. Or a social worker, blundering around the urban decay of a British council estates, while having Bridget Jones style relationship issues which are amplified by being a werefox in a society were the others are ‘shifters’, force to live on the fringe of society. Now I find a book like that far more interesting than Chick lit ‘good old boy’ werewolves… But where can you find a book like that?

A review of Less Than Human by Steven C Davis

Thirty-something Natalayiana has a problem, actually she had a lot of problems. Her best friend doesn’t like her fiancée, though in fairness Nat isn’t massively fond of him either. He is however the safe steady option who understands Nat’s body re-morphic issues .

Her best friend who happens to be heavily pregnant, is also in lust with Nat, but like Nat’s book group, work colleagues and most everyone else Nat interacts with, she doesn’t trust ‘shifters’. This is a tad problematic for Nat because she could probably do with someone other than ‘safe steady’ Gerald to whom she could talk about her issues. Specifically that she is on of the ‘shifters’ he best friend doesn’t trust…

Being a Werefox and having a dull fiancée is not Nat’s only issue either. There is her bosses obsession with obtaining funding for the charity she works for, who’s happy to exploit his workers to get such funding. The rich father of her ex uni boyfriend who has an odd obsession with her. Her ex boyfriend himself who was a creep back then and seems just as creepy now. Her clients who need her help but mostly seem to resent her. Mal, the American who wanted to bring Homes’s4 Were’s to the UK, and organisation that seeks to ‘manage’ the were problem, in the ways not dissimilar to how some evangelical churches try to ‘manage’ homosexuality.

Then there is the mysterious Robert who makes her lament having a fiancée.

Nat just wants to be safe, she just wants to be left alone to get on with living a quite helpful life trying to do good , except of course being safe and being left alone is the last thing she actually wants…

So there you go, Bridget Jones the werewolf years…

Except, it not. Underneath that fluffy fun idea, which I suspect is not how the author would chose to describe his novel, there is something poignant about living on the edge of society and having to hide your true nature because society neither understand it nor is libel to accept it. Its analogous to the experience of gay people in the 80’s and trying hard hide it from everyone. The general fear and distrust of ‘shifters’ is equally analogous to society’s reaction to the AID’s virus.

Natalayiana is a social worker, doing her bit to right societies ills, she volunteers on her weekends with the national trust, she’s in a book group, she’s agreed to be her single friends Birthing partner. She is a good person doing her best to make society better for everyone… A society that would reject her in a moment if it knew she got really really bad PMT around the full-moon… Because all the good works in the world will not change her from being the ‘other’ that ‘normal’ people are constantly encouraged to distrust by the status quo.

Nat’s experience as a ‘shifter’ is also Analogous to the experience of the trans community, certainly from some quarters of the media and the public at large. So this is very much not Bridget Jones the werewolf years, this is not just a book about thirty-something handwringing and emotional frustrations. Also, it has to be said that while I have never read Bridget Jones, I suspect Bridget Jones novels are much less visceral in nature.

This is a very visceral novel, with a lot of visceral sexuality within it, and indeed a lot of equally visceral sex. But there is, and should be, something very primal about shapeshifters. That primal visceral sexuality of her nature is what Natalayiana seeks most to deny in order to fit in. Much of this novel is about the futility of the struggle to deny, even to yourself, who you truly are. You can suppress your nature, bottle it up, hide it beneath layers of banality and fitting in, but unless you can be yourself, can embrace you true nature, how can you ever be happy?

So, there are layer to this novel, layers that make it something very defiantly not Bridget Jones Goes Rabid (the werewolf years). But then if that had been all it was I would not have enjoyed it and would not be writing this review. It is fun, interesting and thought provoking. It is visceral both sexually and in terms of its reflection of society.

It was also a joyously diverting novel to read on every level, just plain fun, but equally thought provoking at the same time.

Posted in amreading, big questions, book reviews, humour, indie novels, indie writers, novels, reads, rights | Tagged amreading, bookblog, bookreview, books, reads, sciencefiction | 3 Comments

Lucy and the bear…

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Occasionally, I am required to do a little publicity work for various books, I tend to have most fun doing this when it is not one of my own books. Which is to say when its a Harvey Duckman, as I don’t worry quite so much about getting the tone right. I also can go a tad wilder thank normal…

Which brought me to Lucy (who is not based on my niece Lucy, on the off chance any family read this…)

I don’t know what Lucy is, not any more, I do find her slightly creepy I must admit, but that was more or less the point. The Latest Harvey Duckman , volume 13 of all things , which has seemed cursed while we were putting it together as it has taken about nine month longer than planned, has a lot of stories with teddy bears in them…

None of these stories involve a character called Lucy, or a thing that used to be called Lucy… Or if this is an older version of Lucy…

I’m not sure why Lucy exists, or they thing that used to be Lucy exists, or what it has to do with a book that doesn’t have a character called Lucy in it. But the idea formed in my mind and I ended up makes several little memes based upon it…

Anyway the 134th Harvey Duckman collection is out now, a lot of the stories are dark , many of them creepy and most have Teddy Bears in them. One has a pot plant, which is to say a plant in a pot. Not that the pot is a pot but that’s beside the point… And no Lucy…

Anyway I have to go now, there is someone at the door, a small figure in a white dress holding a bear. I am not worried by this, not at all…

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Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 13 Released Today

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Among the many wonderful stories in this volume there is a new Hannibal Smyth story from me that unlike almost every other story in this book doesn’t involve a teddy bear at all… It does involve a potted plant in an odd pot, and an in-depth commentary of the class system in a pseudo Victorian age that hasn’t end and how it pertains to ripped trousers down in the tube station at midnight…

Ben Sawyer

Beneath the trees, where nobody sees, we hide and seek as long as we please…

Cover art for Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 13 featuring a sinister Teddy bear

The latest volume in the Harvey Duckman Presents series of anthologies is available today. Brace yourself for the unexpected as you enter the dark and twisted world of… The Teddy Bear Special, an extraordinary volumethat ventures into the realms of darkness and horror lurking beneath the innocent facade of our cuddly companions.

Dive into a realm where the line between childhood comfort and spine-tingling terror blurs in the most sinister of ways. Within these pages, seemingly innocent Teddy Bears reveal their true nature, unleashing tales of horror that will plunge you into a world of the grotesque and the familiar.

There is also respite from the bear-infested nightmares with some nuggets of the unusual, tales that diverge from our furry friends, providing a momentary reprieve and a refreshing change of palate between these…

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Music to write to, Blood on the page

Posted on June 2, 2023 by Mark Hayes

The music changes, depending on mood, and what I am writing. But in this case this is a post about music with a theme… I’ve taken to over using the analogy that good writing requires a little of the writers blood be left on the page. This is not a new analogy for me, neither is saying that my books have slithers of my soul in them. I use these analogies all the time when I talk about my favourite writers, or the difference between the writing of an AI chat bot and words crafted and cared for by living breathing humans. I stick by it.

Because, as I have also been known to state of late, in the words of Ian Astbury. ‘you have to bleed a little while you sing, least the words don’t mean nothing.‘ And you can’t argue with that, or with any Billy Duffy guitar riff…

As we are on about blood and writing, here’s New Jerseys finest, asking the what happens if you shed too much blood on the page… Lyrics to live by… or not.

Now, does anyone have a cow bell? Because She Wants Revenge need it to play Written in Blood which is surprisingly not a mid 80’s goth track… But certainly channels the 80’s goth of my youth. I stumbled across them a coupe of years ago on a play list wedged between Bauhaus and The Sisters as if they had always been there…

And finally speaking of the 80’s goth music, and because any excuse for a relatively obscure Sisters track, from First and Last and Always Bloody Money (yes okay I was running out of blood and writing songs, its not a huge field)…

Anyway, I’m off to shed a little blood on the pages of a novel I’m not writing, rather than on the one I am and possibly think of a new metaphor while I am at it.

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Passing Place – a review

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Mark Hayes

It is terrifying when you know someone, who’s good opinion matters to you, is reading that book. The book in which you left so much blood between the pages…
I’m aware I am overly fond of that analogy, but as Ian Astbury once sang, ‘You have to bleed a little while you sing, lest the words don’t mean nothing!”

Then, of course, they’ll have read the book and if they are nice enough to do so they will write some form of review…. Now it’s always nice to get a review. Nicer still when it is a review of what you know to be the best thing you are ever likely to write. Even nicer when the reviewer is a writer who’s work you greatly admire.

Of course, then you have to read the review, which is a whole new form of terrifying…

So anyway Nimue Brown, amazingly talented writer, bard, and High-Priestess of Blogging steampunk druids has read Passing Place… I am perfectly calm about this…

Druid Life

(Nimue)

Passing Place, by Mark Hayes is a beautiful, bonkers sort of a book. This is speculative fiction, with a story that isn’t easily explained at all without spoilers. What I can say with some confidence is that if you like the kind of bonkers and speculative fiction I write then the odds are you’re going to also enjoy what Mark does. I feel that we may have been cut from the same cloth. (I think it was a pair of intergalactic trousers, with a print design it might be safest not to examine too closely.)

I’m not claiming objectivity here. Mark is a friend, I know him through steampunk events. To all intents and purposes, Mark is on of the Gloucestershire steampunks, despite the small technical detail of his currently living a rather long way from Gloucestershire. He’s a fine chap, has piled in to help me with book…

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Dear Edgar #7 The Assignation

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Mark Hayes

“Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.”

The pages of popular woman’s periodical of the 1830’s, Godey’s Lady’s Book, would on the face of it seem a strange place for our the first of own Dear Edgar horror stories to find a home. It’s a bit like Stephen King writing a story for Cosmopolitan.

Godey’s has quite a history in American publishing, running for nearly fifty years between 1830 and 1878, which took it right through the civil war. For much of that history it editor was Sarah Josepha Hale who is even more fascinating than the magazine she edited for forty years. She did not retire until 1877 she was 89. Also in that year that Thomas Edison made the first ever human speech recorded on a phonographic* device reciting the opening lines of the poem ‘Mary had a little lamb’ into the crude recording device. A poem you may well of heard of that was written by Sarah Josepha Hale 47 years earlier…

*Aside being a type of early sound recording device The Phonographic is also the legendary Goth club in Leeds where The Mission were founded out of the shattered remains of the original Sisters of Mercy, and I once briefly got chatted up by Marc Almond…

Sarah Hale was not just an editor and poet, She was also a novelist who wrote about the evils of slavery some 30 years before the civil war, a woman’s activist in particular as an advocate for women’s access to higher education, indeed she helped found Vasser Collage in furtherance of that aim. She was also almost signally responsible for Thanksgiving becoming a national Holiday in the USA and as editor of Godey she was also responsible for publishing the famous picture of Queen Victoria’s Christmas tree and help to popularising what became a tradition.

So the deaths of millions of Turkeys and the cutting down of countless premature fir trees can all rest firmly at Sarah Josepha Hale’s feet. Despite this she wasn’t the commissioning editor who decided to published this particular Edgar Alan Poe tale which found its home between the magazines pages in 1834 three years before her tenure as editor began. So this is all a bit of a weird little digression all in all. She was, however, responsible for bring him back to the magazine when he had made more of a name for himself several times over the years, and she is also one of the most fascinating and influential women in American history and celebrated as such with plaques, historical trails and literary prizes named in her honour.

In any regard, famous editor aside Godey’s was a forerunner of the glossy fashion magazine of today, crossed with good house keeping and lifestyle magazines with a little bit of fiction, and in January 1834 it published a horror story that was then entitled ‘The Visionary’ by an anonymous author who later turned out to be our Dear Edgar, who republished the story in later words under the new title The Assignation’. This was his only story publish that year in what was one of the leanest periods of he career. It’s also a trifle odd, even by Poe’s standards…

*Original Illustrations of ‘The Assignation’ by Harry Clarke 1926, who illustrated much of Poe’s work in his own very individual, very gothic and frankly beautiful style.

This is a story in two very distinct acts. It is a story of a doomed love, a fools passion, and one mans choice to chase after a lost love that eventually leads to a tragedy. It is very much a gothic tale of forlorn intention. A tale we are told by an unnamed narrator who becomes an innocent bystander and witness to it all.

Rowing his gondola through the grand canal of Venice as evening falls the narrators peace of mind is interrupted by a woman’s scream, he also manages to drop his oar, which is mildly inconvenient as that leaves him somewhat adrift in the middle of the canal moving slowly towards The Bridge of Sighs (which is not on the Grand Canal but we’ll let Poe off on that score).

The scream it turns out was the scream of the Marchesa Aphrodite, reputedly the most beautiful woman in all of Venice. Certainly the narrator is of this opinion, and given his reaction to seeing her is finding himself rooted to the spot and adrift in his gondola, its fair to say this may well be the case. Not that this is the most helpful of things he could be doing as the reason for her scream is that her infant child has fallen into the canal. The child is eventually rescued, but not by the Marchesa’s husband (who just goes back to playing his guitar, without a second thought for the child), or any members of his court more interested in their lords strumming, but by a stranger, or at least someone who the narrator believes is a stranger. The Marchesa however clearly knows him, and appeared to be looking for him in the crowd even while her child was drowning. After the rescue the narrator hears her say to the stranger…

‘Thou has conquered – on hour after sunrise – we shall meet – so let it be!’

And thus her fate, and the fate of the stranger are sealed… Though the narrator doesn’t know this at the time. And that is more or less the end of the first act.

The second act is more than a little odd in comparison. The narrator who ferries the stranger home is invited to visit with him before sunrise, so does just that. He discovers when doing so that the stranger is rich, more than a little eccentric, and without exactly saying so it clear the narrator thinks the stranger has more money than taste, a lot more money than taste. He is, however, certainly highly educated, and if anything he is even more ostentatious in displaying that education than he is with golden rugs and (poorly made) sphinx statues.

Poe then treats us to an array of oddity, poetry and the strangers observations on many subjects much of which Poe clearly made up as he was going along. Such as the claim Sir Thomas Moore died laughing (rather than being beheaded for refusing to recant his Catholicism) Or that Sparta was a city of a thousand temples to a thousand gods, (rather than having Apollo as a patron god, I mean there were other temples, but a dozen or so is hardly thousands). Possibly this was Poe trying to indicate that the stranger was just as full of himself intellectually as he lacked for taste. But I rather doubt it.

Towards the end of this rather long section the narrator begins to suspect the stranger is actually an Englishman, there are clues in his education, his mannerisms, and of course the translations of Italian love poetry he has annotated with English… The narrator then remembers that the Marchesa Aphrodite, before she was the Marchesa lived for some time in London and the court gossips spoke of an affair between her and a rich young noble…

Indulging in a bit of very early in the day, drinking, the stranger takes a moment to quote a long dead bishop with the following passage.

“Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.”

Then the stranger collapses on to a chair while the narrator answers a knocking at the door to discover a page arrived from the Ducal palace to bring new that an hour after sunrise the marchesa took her own life with poison. The narrator turns to see the stranger has joined her in this final tryst. In other words it all goes a bit Romeo and Juliette…

Much of the second half of this tale comes off as intellectual posing by Edgar. While that might sound a harsh criticism, I doubt the readership of Godey Lady’s book in the 1830’s would have spotted all the oddities within the strangers preachy monologues, and I am sure Poe knew that. He packed the tale with a certain kind of exotic… Venice the far off city, the beautiful woman uncared for be a husband, the brave stranger.. This is a tale of tragic love, of a kind written to appeal to a female audience. A female audience of bored middle class wife’s who could afford the annual subscriptions for Godey’s Lady’s Book. A magazine you would imagine most of there husbands would never consider leafing through themselves… This was the 1830’s Cosmopolitan after all..

In short, this is not so much horror, as it is often coined to be despite note having any traditional elements of horror within it, but a romance for bored housewives. There is an odd, and somewhat convoluted line but there is a line all the same, between this story and 50 shades of grey.

Now that is horror…

TWO RAVENS OUT OF AN UNKINDNESS

Should your read it: While the score I give this isn’t high it is actual worth a read. I’ve marked it down mostly because I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. it fails as horror, and it doesn’t really succeed as a romance either. But it does have a oddly fascinating quality to it.

Should you avoid it: Well if your offended by poor research you might want to avoid it, but Poe did not have google, Wikipedia, and a pedants mind.

Bluffers fact: Among her many other honours Godey Lady’s Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale was forth in a series of historical bobblehead dolls created by the New Hampshire Historical Society… You know you have really broken the glass ceiling when one hundred and fifty years after your death they make a bobblehead in your honour.

Bluffers fact2: I don’t normally do a second bluffers fact, but the artwork of Henry Clark that litters folio editions of the complete works, is actually in the public domain as all works published before 1928 are in the public domain as of 2023, and in any regard, due to the death +70 years rule all his art is public domain and Harry died in 1930. This isn’t much of a fact, but does mean I can reproduce these gorgeous works of art in these blogs without being sued which delights me…

Oddly enough Henry Clark is actually most famous for stain glass windows of which he did more than 130, the book illustration was just a bit of a side gig between windows .

Posted in amreading, book reviews, Dear Edgar, goodreads, horror, Poe, reads | Tagged amreading, books, Dear Edgar, Edgar Alan Poe, horror, Poe, reads, writerslife, writing | 5 Comments

And then the ride is over…

Posted on May 28, 2023 by Mark Hayes

‘I didn’t come from the gutters of London, where I came from we looked up with envious eyes and aspired to the gutters…’
Hannibal Smyth ~ A Spider in the Eye

Trilogies are becoming something of a lost art. Which is not to say people don’t write trilogies any more, they just don’t tend to write a complete beginning to end trilogies. For this I blame Robert Jordan and The Wheel Of Time… This is unreasonable of me, Robert Jordan can’t be blamed for everything…

Back in 1990 before the second Wheel of Time novel was published, Jordan was about half way through the writing the third when he had a conversation with his publisher about how well the first novel The Eye of the World was selling and they discussed whether the trilogy Jordan had originally planned could be stretch to six books. With a deal to do this on the table by the time The great hunt came out in November 1990, Jordan had changed the direction of the original final novel by dint of making its climax the defeat of one of the big bad’s minions rather than the big bad himself. If you read that third novel closely you can spot the exact point where that decision was made… Publishing history has been rewritten to claim that the original plan was for six novels all along, but I read a rather too honest interview with Jordan back in the early 90’s in which he didn’t follow the party line and he admitted he only originally planned a trilogy.

The Wheel of Time is much beloved by its fans, and became a victim of it own success as the publisher kept going back to Jordan with suggestion such as six books could become nine… maybe nine could become twelve. Personally I gave up about the middle book eight as the books got thicker, with more and more POV character while never getting any closer to any kind of climax… I am not alone in this, many readers fell away, but many didn’t… Robert Jordan was not really to blame for this. He was a writer with a publishing deal and a publisher who kept throwing money at him to extend his series. He had a living to make, and many people love those books. If he hadn’t died he would still be writing them now I suspect.

The fall out of The wheel of Time is however felt else where. Its the reason the same reason GRR Martin’s as yet incomplete Game of Throne novels extend over so many books following the same pattern. The early (pre TV) success of the first novel led to his publishers saying “About this trilogy you have planned George, could it be a bit longer?” But again, you can’t blame publishers, they are trying to make money out of books, by giving readers what they want and these days what readers want is to go on a near endless journey with a character. When a group of readers find a character they love they want to keep reading about them, they want a book every six months for half a decade or more. We know this because publishers have told us this is what readers want…

And so writing a beginning to end trilogy has become something of a lost art, because only an idiot plans and writes a three novel arc telling the complete story of a much beloved, popular, fan favourite main character. What kind of fool writes a trilogy, with a distinct beginning , middle and very definite end. Killing off a series, never to return as the lynch pin of the series has reached the end of their journey…

A glorious, wonderful, talented fool like Craig Hallam that’s who, and thank the elder god of your choice such fools still exist…

A review of Grave Purpose, The Adventures of Alan Shaw: Volume Three By Craig Hallam

If you have not read the previous Alan Shaw novels, do not read this book… Not because this book does stand alone as a novel about an aging hero, long past his prime, still trying to be the man he was, despite infirmity and a hundred old scars catching up with him. It would stand alone perfectly fine on it own two feet, with the help of a cane, I assure you… You should not read this if you haven’t read the previous two novels for one reason and one reason only. They are brilliant.

And so is this one…

In the first novel Alan Shaw was a guttersnipe orphan, who through luck more than judgement got out of the gutters of London and vowed as he got older to get as far away from them as he could. The second novel was Alan Shaw in his prime, adventurer, privateer, swashbuckling hero who doesn’t always know what’s going on but is sure if he punches back hard enough he will win through. Until the death of his step father drags him back to old haunts. This final novel takes place a decade or so after the events in Old Haunts, with Alans past adventures and the fame it brought him haunting a man well past his prime, with a lame leg, haunted by the spectre of Mister Slay.

As in the pervious two novels this novel comprises of a number of episodes, each given titles that would fit nicely between the pages of weird tales. Alan Shaw and the Spectres of Sutton Hall, Alan Shaw and the Shattered Soul, Alan Shaw and the… You get the idea. This is very much in the Doc Savage style pulp tradition. Which is very much the way in which Alan’s stories read. This is proper abashedly pulp fiction, everything moves along with pace and purpose. Alan punches, shoots, and leans heavily on his cane to catch his breath for a moment before limping off again, he may not be broken down but his is breaking, but he isn’t giving up, no yet, not until… Well everything ends.

And that’s what this is, a swan song, a final throw of the dice, the last bullet is in the chamber and who knowns is the hammer will spark, or the pistol misfire. And through it all Mister Slay laughs a sardonic little laugh.

There are old friends, and new enemies, but as the novel goes on there is a sense of ominousness about it. We all know where this is going, we all know how this ends. It ends in a graveyard, because that’s where old heroes always end up, one way or another. The only real question is who’s in the grave and who’s staring down at it, and that I’ll not spoil. I will only say this. The ending is bittersweet and glorious in equal measure. The ending this trilogy deserved.

Bravo, Mr Hallam. Bravo.

There is no reason Craig could not write more Alan Shaw novels, and set them before the final story in this novel, but I sort of hope he doesn’t. This is a complete trilogy, as I said it is something of a lost art in an age of ten book series. Sure he could write the odd short story here and there set in Alans world, there is plenty of scope to do that. But this is in of itself a complete thing. As beautiful and fragile as it is grim and gripping. Craig will also go off and write other things equally inspired I am sure. In fact having read most everything he has published I know he will.

He asked me to tell him what I thought of the ending, in that nervous not entirely sure of himself manner of his. The answer to that is simple, I loved it. It is what I expected it would be at the time, masterful. The ending his hero deserved.