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 , , , , , , , , | 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.

Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, fiction, indie, indie novels, indie writers, indiewriter, novels, reads, steampunk | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The place I write from…

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Mark Hayes

I stumbled over the below in an old note book, and later an old blog post, its probably fifteen years or more since I originally scribbled down these words. Words written to myself, six novels ago, and at a very different time in my life. Its an old habit, writing notes to myself in any attempt to explain whats on my own mind. To explain myself to my self. I still do so from time to time.

I’m not sure where I picked up the habit. Certainly no one ever suggested I did so. I’d say its a form of self-inspired therapy but I suspect I read of it in a book somewhere and clung to the idea. I have always collected ideas and habits from books. This is one of the more constructive ones I think because taking the time to write yourself a note explaining yourself to yourself forces you to consider your demons, your actions, and on occasion consider how best to deal with them.

The place I write from is not a happy place.
This was a lesson learn the hard way, but a lesson learned hard, is a lesson learned well.
But all the same it is a bitter kind of lesson.
Writing is not one of the things that take me away from the unhappy place. That too was a hard lesson to learn.
But the hardest lesson to learn was perhaps that in order to write I need that well of anger, that core of rage, that distrust of the world, that unrepentant cynicism with which I find I view the world, when I reside in my unhappy place.
If that all sound a tad dark, that is only because you need the dark to make sense of the light, and writing is how I make sense of the darkness.
It is a strange dichotomy, writing is my light. My beacon. Yet for it to exist I must first be in the dark, for it is there I find whatever it is that drives me to write, the hunger and need to express my thoughts and ideas all stem from there.
There is, I hope, humour, hope, and humanity in my writing, and when its good I know it is good. When it works it flows like water, ideas become babbling brooks and serpentine streams rivers ever flowing into oceans the wash on other shores.
But it all starts in the dark unhappy places of my soul, the dark well spring, and my struggles to make sense of everything that life is…

I maintain no preconceptions that these words are in anyway profound, least not to anyone but me. They do however remain true, writing holds the dark at bay, for which I am ever grateful, and so while the world is not the world in which I wrote them, nor my life the life I was living when I did, the words ring as true to me now as when I first scribbled them down.

Often these days I scribble things down in other ways than tatty old note books, though I have many tatty old notebooks and if anyone tries to take them from me there will be tears… Sometimes I do so and I don’t even realise I am in effect still writing notes to myself. Notes to explain who I am. I scribbled the below as a comment on a friends blog, it wasn’t till stumbling across the notes in an old blog post a few days later above that I realised what I had done…

I like my anger, without it I am not sure who I am
I bottle it up in tight little jars. Seal it within myself.
Turn it, mould it, hammer it and temper it.
Then, when it can not be held down any more. When it has been refined to a glowing edge. I use it, and poor it into words.
My anger becomes creation, focused it becomes a positive force

Still writing notes to myself to explain my inner demons. As self-therapy’s go its less destructive than throwing Molotov cocktails.

Posted in amwriting, big questions, depression, mental-health, opinion, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Duckman’s Odyssey

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Mark Hayes

An odd thing happened as I was writing a twitter post… I need to know which Hannibal Smyth short stories had been published in the Harvey Duckman anthology series and for the life of me I couldn’t remember if it was two stories or three. Its an odd thing to realise, and even odder to admit, but if someone asked me which or my stories are in which Harvey Duckman Editions I couldn’t give you a definitive list of the top of my head.

I couldn’t even tell you the titles of all the Harvey stories I’ve had published without looking it up. Particularly if they were standalone stories. But not remembering if the three previous Hannibal Prequal stories had been published in the Harvey Duckman Anthologies or just two of them… Well that’s just a little odd.

Partly this is a case of becoming a victim of the success of the series. We are about to publish our 13th anthology and I have stories in each of the previous twelve. Indeed I have two in the 11th edition due to reasons… Partly this may also be because my memory is dreadful, which worried me for other reasons. However in order to solve this problem I actually had to get the books off the shelf and look up the each of my stories in the contents page of each book.

Vol1 The Cheesecake Dichotomy (Hannibal Smyth early years)
Vol2 The Strontium Thing
Vol3 Narrative Particles
Vol4 ‘The Elves’ and the bootmaker (Hannibal Smyth early years)
Vol5 The Salmon Swim Both Ways
Vol6 The Tower
Vol7 The Strange and the Wonderful: A tale of the Passing Place
Vol8 Mandrake
Vol9 Twenty-seven
Vol10 The Ballard of Johnny Two Bones
Vol11 Pirotherapy
Vol11b Black Hearted Jack (as Mark Seyah)
Vol12 Little Plastic Santa’s

Its quite a list, as I said I didn’t remember them all. Thankfully I am not so far gone I could not remember them once I looked them up. Its also a list I am quite proud of. There are a lot of different types of stories among them, different voices, different worlds. Some serious, some not so much, in fairness it is hard to write an intensely serious ‘feelings’ story full of strong emotions and a deep internal monologue when your writing a story about a radioactive penis. Some what easier to do so in a long Lovecraft-esque prose poem of a story about a man becoming a hybrid deep one and returning to the sea. (please note this is not actual poetry… I would never write such a thing)

Other stories have lives beyond the text. Mandrake for instance started as this one short story and is now becoming a novel (possibly more than one) of Victorian Urban fantasy. The Strange and the Wonderful is probably part of another novel (the sequel to Passing Place) though not so much in it current form. Other stories begin and end in the pages of Harvey Duckman, though one day i will have to write the second of The Tower stories, because it infuriates people that so much was left hanging for their imagination to sort out at the end. It’s almost as if i did that on purpose…

The reason I was looking at Hannibal stories in particular was two fold, firstly because I don’t have enough projects on to keep me busy, I’m only writing five books , I clearly need to think about writing something else as well… Yes, alright fine , no need to point out the flawed logic there…

As it happens I enjoy writing the Hannibal Early years short stories, and they are well liked by a small but chirpy collective of readers, they also collectively form a complex but coherent narrative, that I am writing somewhat out of order, possibly backwards. I even know where the last of those stories would take us. There are more than the three stories currently in print and a forth is about to join them in Harvey 13. Hence i wondered if all three of the others in print (in Cheesecake, Avarice and Boots) had originally been printed in Harvey or just two of them. As it happens is just the two. At some-point the ones in the Harvey and else where may find there way into a definitive novel covering Hannibal Smyth’s early life up to the point he is sitting in the New Bailey waiting for a noose round his neck and a short drop into oblivion…

I have personally been far more involved with Harvey 13 than any Harvey previously. the bulk of the work is still being done by the ever wonderful Gillie Hatton of 6E publishing, but I am one of a triumvirate of submissions editors curating the collection to an extent… So I have a degree of pride wrapped up in this one and more skin in the game. It is however a great collection of stories.

My own, as I said is a new Early year Hannibal story, The Aspidistra Of Social Inequality. Which is a Hannibal title if ever there was one… It is joined by some fabulous tales and story’s by some new writers and some old hands …

Jake Matthew Carpenter – The Midnight Coach
Tamara Clelford – The Adventures Of Little Bear
R. Bruce Connelly – COPS: FTD
Eloign deBrohn – No Picnic For Bears
John Holmes-Carrington – Vaihtava Karhu
Christine King – Jolly Jack Tar
Peter James Martin – The Teddy Bear In The Loft
Jon Pentire – Avery
David Medina – Hell Is Other People
Will Nett – The Teddy Bears’ Quick Nick
J.B. Rockwell – A Cricket in Hell’s Acre
Davia Sacks – Mama’s Bear
Ben Sawyer – Everything’s Fine in the Mushroom House
Liz Tuckwell – The Collector
Ross Young – Igor and the Abandoned

Harvey 13 will be out soon, I’ll probably mention it when it is… Hannibal Smyth The Early Years, well that may be a while in coming… Just five other novels to finish first.

Posted in amreading, amwriting, books, fantasy, fiction, Hannibal Smyth, Harvey Duckman, horror, indie novels, indie writers, indiewriter, Lovecraft, novels, Passing Place, pointless things of wonderfulness, reads, sci-fi, steampunk, supernatural, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Books of magic and the magic of books

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Mark Hayes

I had never been able to walk past a bookshelf without having a look at the contents

Lilian Brooks

I like a good quote, if your a regular reader of this blog you are probably aware of this fact. I like the one above because, well… I’ve never been able to walk past a bookshelf without looking in my life. This is because books, as Stephen King put it ‘are a uniquely portable magic’. They transport us to different places, different times, different sets of rules and inside different minds, both the minds of characters and the minds of the authors themselves.

Books are powerful because perhaps more than any other medium they offer us a window into the souls of others. Movies and tv shows offer up a vision, but it is the directors vision. Music is at its best a shared experience between musician and listener. Books on the other hand are something the reader experiences alone. Every voice is a voice you ascribe to the speaker, be it the authors literary voice or the characters within. And how you experience the reading a book says as much about you as it does about the author.

Some books need to be wallowed in, read slowly, a chapter or two at a time in those stolen minutes between heading to bed and sleeping. Some books need to read all at once, because their magic is in the turn of each page, the pace of the story, a story tripping over itself to be told. These books are travel books, that is not to say they are books about traveling, there are plenty of them, but they are books you read while traveling. Books that can be measured in a plane ride, or three hours on a train. Stories that are best read all at once, with short chapters that spur you on to the next…

Sometimes such books are written to be just that, a joyous fun read that wiles away the passage through the clouds, or the click clack of rails. Books you can not take your time with because there is a unurgency to them that wants to be read all at once.

Which brings me back to the quote I started with, or to be exact the book it came from, which is the second in a series. In the back of this book there is another quote, a quote from a review of the first book in this series, Dormant Magick By Lilian Brooks

The joy is in the reading, it has a splendid pace to it, well written and well structured… Everything keeps moving along, both in terms of plot and the relationships of the various characters within the coven. It doesn’t allow itself to become too predictable.

That’s a good quote, I should know as its quoting me. There is another odd bit of book magic for you. When you a ‘Praise for xxxxxx’ or ‘Also by’ and find yourself being quoted it always lends itself to a rye smile, particularly if you know they have cut something out of the quote… But it does beg the question does the second book live up to the first or does it instead wallow in the kind of saccharin over-sweetness that plagues many novels in this sort of genre, which the original didn’t, as I took pains to point out…?*

* I actually love the fact that authors occasionally quote my reviews, and if they want to do so they can chop them up anyway they wish. It just amuses me when they miss out the bits I considered important.

Rising MagicK By Lilian Brooks

I read this book in a morning, on the sofa, after songbird woke me one early dawn on a Saturday a hour before I would normally have gotten up for work through the week. Not really wanting to start the day, but wide awake, I made myself a good coffee with one of the last of my coffee pods, opened the curtains to take advantage of the day light, and proped myself up on the sofa arm to read for half hour or so before I started the day properly and got on with stuff.

Three hours and two more cups of coffee later, I put the book down having finished it. Its that kind of read. The kind you start and actually can’t put down. The kind ideal for lazy Saturdays on the sofa in the morning sunlight,. or long train journeys or flights to foreign climes.

The story picks up where book one left off, and follows a similar pattern. Short sharp chapters, that invite you on to the next one. Alyssa Bright and her little cavern of twenty-somethings living a less quiet life than it should be in the most haunted and haunting town on the Yorkshire coast. There’s a big reveal I saw coming in the first book but somehow was still surprised by when it was finally revealed. There are real locations transplanted into the story that if you know Whitby at all will delight you. There is also a sense of brooding ominousness to the story. An ominousness that leave you reading for the next book in the series ( which luckily for me happens to be on my coffee table as I write this).

It is very obviously a part of a longer series, and you should start with book one which I reviewed last year. If you read that and enjoyed it read this one. If you didn’t read the first book, do so.

One final aside, the main charter is called Alyssa, as discussed previously there is now apparently a rule that states all lead female characters in urban fantasies must be called Alyssa . No one knows why this is…

Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, fantasy, indie novels, indie writers, reads, writes | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Strange drafts

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Inspired by a conversation late night in the pub, mostly centred around advice to prospective writers and how best to get started with the whole being a writer thing… Starting with the single most important piece of advice you can give any writer…

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. ~ Richard Bach

I edit my own stories to death. They eventually run and hide from me. ~ Jeanne Voelker

Any book without a mistake in it has had too much money spent on it. ~ William Collins

The first draft is black and white. Editing gives the story colour. ~ Emma Hill

Just get your story down ~ Nora Roberts

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone. ~ Erica Jong

First drafts are for learning what your story is about ~ Bernard Malamud

The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that’s what gets me the best material. ~ Jennifer Egan

Happy writings… May all your first drafts be all they need to be, written…

Mark x

Posted in amreading, amwriting, editing, fiction, humour, quotes, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Reading Maybe…

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Mark Hayes

I often reread books, indeed there are books I have read so many times I have had to buy new copies, that is a reading habit that stretches over decades. David Gemmell Legend for example I know I have read at least ten times since I first picked up a copy in the early 1980’s. However reading a book you penned yourself, well, that is a vastly different experience.

I hate reading my own books. I suspect as a writer I am not alone in this.

There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is the difference between reading for fun and reading as a writer. I’ve read the entire Belgariad sequence at least five or six times over the years, those books (all 12 of them) are like a warm comfort blanket. If I need to switch off the world for a while rereading one of my favourite books is almost always my escape of choice. When however I write a book I reread it five or six times minimum in the writing process oft times many sections of a book probably twice that. I work in a series of drafts, I always have, I know some writers who do things other ways but the only way the words work for me is multiple drafts, up to six or more for a novel.

There are reasons for this, one of which is dyslexia, and the weird way it affects my typing. I will often write the wrong word, not because I can’t spell, but because my fingers garble up the messages from my mind. I type fast, but it takes me a long time to type, because in any given sentence there will be three or four typos, some obvious, so not so much, sometimes the word I type is a word so close to the ones I intended to type I don’t even notice, often it is a matter of tense or plurality. Everyone does that occasionally, its one of the reasons editors are so valuable, but I do it constantly. Here’s an experiment…

I’m going to type this line twice, the first I will correct the second I won’t.

I’m going to type this senatnce twicve the first I will correctb teh second I won’t

Now some of that is just bad typing, but actually most of it is my brain not communicating my words properly. Also I was very self conscious typing that second line rather than doing so with my normal flow. So it actually makes more sense than normal… I can type slower, but when the writing works the ideas cascade and deliberately typing slow stops that process in its tracks. So I don’t. I type a few pages maybe then go back through fixing all the errors (most of them at least) And keep doing that till I finish the draft…

That’s draft one, draft one takes some time.

It is then the reading starts. Every draft after draft one starts with a read through, and generally lots of notes. Round about the third or forth draft I hopefully have something I would let others read. By the fifth I may even let someone read it, and it may go to my editor the wonderful CG Hatton. Then if it gets past that somewhat ominous stage it need to be read through again, and have a final edit , then read through again for a check , and then set up for proof copies, which are then read again to check everything…

And then someone complains in a ‘review’ that they found a typo on one page and it ruined their immersion…

That’s my process, it’s slow, its laborious, and for every word that got to the printers in the final book I have probably written five, but it works for me. For the most part it works for my readers. Every writer faces their own challenges, dyslexia is just one of mine. I don’t use it as an excuse, dyslexia is a by-product of having a mind that functions a little differently. I like my mind, it makes me who I am.

One of the reasons for this blog BTW is just to say to anyone who wants to write but is dyslexic, don’t let that stop you. Don’t let anything stop you.

I will also point out I know writers who are not dyslexic who have equally arduous writing regiments. Everyone has there own method of shedding blood onto the page, I do not claim to bleed more than anyone else. Besides the blood is in the words, not the writing of them. If you ain’t shedding a little blood as you write your doing it wrong…

It does however mean that by the time I finally publish a book I have read it through its various incarnations innumerable times. As it is my novel I also struggle to read it objectively suppressing the urge to edit. I have trained myself to read as a writer when I read my own stuff, just rereading them for pleasure is virtually impossible at this stage. So the very last thing I want to do again is read them again…

Currently I an rereading my 2020 novel Maybe…

Maybe is my second most successful book, at least when it comes to on line sales. While the first Hannibal novel is more successful, it is also over a year older. Maybe has out sold it A Spider in the Eye, though not by much , consistently since it release. It is, however, out on its own for Kindle Unlimited reads. It is also the first book of a trilogy, and also the only book so far written in that trilogy.

It has also been very popular with readers, who keep asking about the sequel…

From a commercial point of view I should be writing the sequels, but for one reason or another they keep getting put on the back burner. (A global pandemic didn’t help either) Also commercial success, nice though it would be, doesn’t motivate me, has a lot to do with this. However, I do want to write the sequels and frankly I should get on with them now the first Hannibal trilogy is complete. But my original plan for the series was a book every six months and its been over three years since I wrote book one. So…

Currently I an rereading my 2020 novel Maybe…

Its quite good…

Posted in amediting, amreading, amwriting, dyslexia, Hannibal Smyth, indie novels, indie writers, indiewriter, novels, reads, steampunk, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What is it about Alyssa?

Posted on May 13, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Names are funny things. My name for example is derived from Latin and means ‘Consecrated to the god Mars’ and ‘warlike’, those that have met me may scoff at this. Other names can be a bit odd too. While other are a perfect fit. Take Alyssa for example…

Alyssa is a feminine given name with multiple origins. Alysa is an alternative spelling. As used in Western countries, the name is usually derived from the name of the flower alyssum. The name of the flower derives from the Greek ἀ- a- (“not”) and λύσσα lyssa (“mania”); the flower was formerly thought to cure skin diseases. It shares many variants in common with the name Alice and is occasionally considered a form of that name as well.

So ‘Not mania’, who would give a child a name which ostensibly is saying to the world ‘hey its okay I’m not suffering from a mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity’. I mean, its a statement I’ll give you that, but is it a statement you need to make for your child when you name them?

Of course no parent actually goes into that kind of depth as to the names they pick for their children. Otherwise naming a child would take for ever, I mean I didn’t name my son a name that means ‘exalted’ or ‘strong’ and certainly not ‘mountain of strength’ on purpose… Nor did I deliberately give my daughter a name that literally means ‘Woman of high rank’ or ‘princess’. The fact that both my children have Hebrew names is also a coincidence.

Parents are generally all a little strung out when it comes to naming children so don’t really do much research as a rule (though they will tell you differently if you ask them about one of the most important choices they ever made in there life. Speaking of which I went to school with a girl called Paige Turner I’ve always suspected her parents were sadists…) But there is another bunch of people who get to chose names for individuals. All be it that the individuals in question are creations of the mind rather than genetic material.

These people have no excuse for not doing some research into the names they give out. After all most of them have spend many hours of their life researching how to get rid of bodies, how difficult it actually is to stab a person in the heart, the effects of various poisons, decompression rates in ambient spring temperatures in northern Europe and other such perfectly normal things to have in their internet search histories…

I speak of course of authors…

Which brings me back to little miss ‘hey its okay I’m not suffering from a mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity’ or in the short form Alyssa… and why I bring this up. I’ve just finished a book who’s main character is a young woman called Alyssa. The book is full of strange goings on involving magic. Elemental magic prominently and witchcraft, covens. Its modern urban fantasy written by a talented female author from the North East of England. It is pacey, fun and full of mystery… While Alyssa is at the centre of the mysteries and fighting to control her own innate magical abilities while facing a shadowy threat and trying to come to terms with her past and her future…

Alyssa or ‘hey its okay I’m not suffering from a mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity’ Seems a good name for the character all considered.

Here though things get a little odd as there is a very good chance a talented authoress from the north east of England is reading this right now and thinks the above is me talking about their book. I’m not, or maybe I am…

Confused? Well let me explain, the next book I intend to read is a book who’s main character is a young woman called Alyssa. The book is full of strange goings on involving magic. Elemental magic prominently and witchcraft, covens. Its modern urban fantasy written by a talented female author from the North East of England. It is pacey, fun and full of mystery… While Alyssa is at the centre of the mysteries and fighting to control her own innate magical abilities while facing a shadowy threat and trying to come to terms with her past and her future…

This is a completely different book written by a different talented author from the North East of England… Both books have the word Magic in the title, though one of them spells it magick and both have surnames beginning with the letters BRO… Oh and I saw both authors at a scifi convention in Scarborough last month, where I bought copies of their latest books.

Books who’s main character is a young woman called Alyssa. The book is full of strange goings on involving magic. Elemental magic prominently and witchcraft, covens. Its modern urban fantasy written by a talented female author from the… You can see where this is going right?

In actuality, while both modern urban fantasy’s these are very different books, the one I am reading next is called Rising Magick and is the second of the Whitby Witches novels by Lillian Brooks. I read the first last year and really enjoyed it though its not my usual fayre. The second has been on my to read pile a while and got joined by the third so its been bumped up over some others, hence reading it next.

(As I am talking names, Lillian Brooks is actually a pen name, so a name the author chose for themselves, which makes you wonder if they looked up the meaning of the name before they adopted it. I have, because I’m me and its the kind of thing I do…’Pledged to god’ is an odd choice for practicing pagan, that’s all I’ll say, though I guess its not specific about which god so maybe not…)

The book I have just read is ‘Of Magic and Lies’ by Maggie Brown. Who’s main character is a young woman called Alyssa. The book is full of strange goings on involving magic. Elemental magic prominently and witchcraft, covens. Its modern urban fantasy written by a talented female author from the… Yes yes I know… There is making a point and then there is driving it home with a hammer, like a stake through the lifeless heart of a vampire, but enough about my Tuesday nights…

As far as I am aware these two talented Ladies, Lilian and Maggie, have never met, unless they met at Scarborough last month which is possible. Certainly it would seem unlikely they had met before that and collectively decided there main characters should share a name. It is pure coincidence that I manage to have books by both of them to read consecutively and the main character in both has the same name. Or they both chose Alyssa because ‘hey its okay I’m not suffering from a mental illness marked by periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity’ Seems a good name for their character all considered. Or perhaps they never looked it up and they just liked the name…

Funny things names… As for authors, you can’t trust them. They know how to dispose of the bodies…

Book Review ‘Of Magic and Lies’ by Maggie Brown

I’m never quite sure what to expect when I pick up a book by a new writer. Particularly one writing in a genre that I don’t read a great deal of. While I love certain kinds of Urban fantasy I don’t extensively read within it, and rarely the type of urban fantasy that is aimed in general terms towards a female audience, deliberately or otherwise.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with what I guess I would describe as ‘Chic lit Urban fantasy’. Its just not generally my cup of herbal tea. Herbal tea is also not my cup of herbal tea

That said however, the things I look for from any writer in any novel is solid writing, vivid descriptions, ‘real’ characters, intriguing plots, mysteries and the right kind of pace for the story to draws you along. Give me that and I don’t really care what genre I am reading, because you’ll hold my interest. This ‘Of Magic and Lies’ does brilliantly. There is mystery aplenty, Maggie’s writing is artful and involving, and some of the vivid descriptions are, well, very vivid…

The story is told mostly from the perspective of Alyssa, but on occasion from the perspective of the two men in her life. One her protector, the other well, that would be telling, but this too is skilfully done. Swapping perspectives like this could have broken the story, particularly as the two men know far more than Alyssa does about her past and the truth surrounding her, instead the second and third perspectives are used lightly. There is mystery to each of these characters and Maggie manages to keep that mystery while dropping little hints along the way. Nothing is quite what it seems.

There are other characters too that are intriguing, there is a certain amount of set up going on in this novel for a wider series, not just following on from this one but other novels running parallel to this series, which is a brave writing choice on the meta scale and one that could have unbalanced the novel, but Maggie manages to keep the main story on track while weaving the hints of her wider ministries into the novel with a certain seamlessness of which I am somewhat envious.

If you like urban fantasy, witches, the fay, and magic, wrapped up with a bit of feisty sexy chic lit style this is a novel for you. It’s also the novel for you if you just love a good read, good story and intriguing characters.

So there you go, apparently all female main characters in Chic lit Urban Fantasy’s are called Alyssa, its a rule apparently, who knew…

Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, fiction, indie novels, indie writers, novels, opinion, pagan, reads, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Getting struck by lightning

Posted on May 12, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Seeking Inspiration is like seeking being struck by lightning, occasionally one must encourage the lightning a little. Others have said this better than me…

Here then are some quotes on subjects of which I am fond. * may they inspire.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. ~ T. S. Eliot

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet. ~ Emily Dickinson

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato

We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in. ~ Ernest Hemingway

If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart. ~ Terry Brooks

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it. ~ H.G. Wells

The first draft is you just telling yourself the story. ~ Terry Pratchett

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~ William Wordsworth

*This is certainly not just a quick way to fill out a blog post…

Posted in humour, indie writers, indiefriday, quotes, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Inspiration and the future (mine, and everyone else’s)

Posted on May 12, 2023 by Mark Hayes

Just waiting for inspiration to strike, as a writer, is standing in field on a warm summer day staring up at a clear blue sky, waiting for lightning.
It could happen, but you could be waiting a long long time…
If you want to be struck by the lightning you need to go stand in the field in the middle of a thunder storm and be prepared to get wet, windswept and bedraggled…
Even then, its is just a little more likely, but you will look awesome…
If you really want to be struck by the lightning of inspiration, you need to put in the effort, wear a full suit of plate mail, get a big iron sword, go stand in the field in then middle of the worst thunder storm in history and wave the sword about cursing the names of Thor, Zeus, Perun, Indra, Jupiter, Taranis and any other thunder god you can think of…
You still might not get struck by lightening, but at least you’ll have a story to tell. Even if the story is about a madman standing in a field curse thunder gods in full plate mail…
To quote Steven King, ‘Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work…’

Nimue Brown puts this more elegantly than I in this blog, you should read it…

Nimue Brown's avatarDruid Life

Inspiration isn’t something that always turns up on demand. For a person attempting to work creatively this can be a bit of an issue. It’s certainly the case that trying to create can be a way of inviting inspiration to come to you. If you aren’t making room for inspiration to happen, it’s not so likely to show up. Time contemplating can also work. Getting on with life and hoping inspiration will strike isn’t very effective at all.

My major source of inspiration has always been other people. That can work in a number of ways. Sometimes I get very excited about a person and that fills my head with ideas and makes me want to write. Some of the things I’ve written have been for specific people – that can mean writing blog posts on request, writing poems for people. I wrote my most recent book – Beyond Sustainability…

View original post 340 more words

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment