Writing about future war… Guest Post By CG Hatton

Posted on March 6, 2023 by Mark Hayes

CG Hatton is a writer of anti-military military scifi. I have waxed lyrical about her novels for years and I have been patiently waiting for book 7 of her main series and in no way tapping my foot… CG is not the first CG Hatton to write, a distant relation Cyril Gertrude Hatton was both a writer and a pirate who sailed the Spanish main in the 1600’s. Cyril was as much an explorer as a pirate, made his own paper from tree bark and monkeys droppings, upon which he wrote detailed descriptions of native wild life in the West Indies, and their uses in the interrogation of Spanish sailors.

Original photo of Cyril ‘Gertrude’; Hatton on the Spanish Maine 1632**

Historian and Piratologist Dr Anne Forsdyke, self-proclaimed authority on the first CG Hatton published a paper on the ground that ‘Yes Gertrude’ is a strange name for a bloke, thats because Cyril was an assumed name and Gertrude was her real name and she only passed herself off as a man to be accepted as a pirate. ‘

Other historians dispute this claim on the grounds that ‘No woman could ever be so blood thirsty…’

To this Dr Anne Forsdyke responded ,’ Oh? You think so do your matey.’ brandished a cutlass and gutted three of them before she was restrained by a brave member of the Geology department.

Miss Forsdyke is now doing fourteen to life in a secure women’s unit at Broadmoor and the mystery of Cyril’s middle name remains unresolved, But by strange and uncanny coincidence the ‘brave member of the Geology department was one Dr C G Hatton, who later went on to write military scifi. What follows is a guest blog post by her.*

*some of this introduction may be made up, but not all…

** Photo may be a fake as photography hadn’t been invented in the 1600’s , or proof of time travel…

WRITING ABOUT A FAR FUTURE WAR WHEN WAR IS RIGHT HERE NOW…

Photo by Ian Robinson

As anyone who knows me knows, when I finished LC’s first book, Kheris Burning, I almost didn’t release it.

It was too close to home, too close to what was happening for real. My story of kids living on the streets of a war torn mining colony in a far off future, with tanks on every corner and soldiers patrolling the bombed out buildings, suddenly felt way too close to what was happening in Syria at the time. It wasn’t intentional. I hadn’t planned it that way. I’d always known, way back even before writing Blatant Disregard, that LC had grown up in a war zone. When he came to finally tell his story, those one line flashbacks from Book Two came to life all on their own.

And now, as I am finally getting to grips with Book Seven, I have NG facing the reality of invasion… standing against an enemy that cannot be reasoned with, that will not accept failure, that cannot be beaten… as, in the real world, we all watch the unfolding events in Ukraine.

I don’t write about war to write about war. I write military science fiction, but my heroes aren’t soldiers, at least they don’t want to be. Personally, I struggle with rank, and orders, and uniformity, and conformity… (that’s why I’ve never been able to hold down an ordinary job for long) and so do they. I write the stories of the guys on the ground, who want to be invisible, who don’t want to fight, definitely don’t want to lead, but find themselves facing enemies at every turn with everyone else looking to them for answers, for a way to find safety and stability, against a foe that will not ever stop. And I love that they don’t hesitate to step up to it, albeit reluctantly.

It is true that sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. As writers, we sometimes don’t go looking for inspiration, but we find ourselves embroiled in storylines we started writing years ago, that resonate now louder than ever.

One of my favourite comments on Kheris, and one that made me glad to have released it after all, was that it is ‘both a joyously fun read, and a window into the darkest corners of the real world’…

I hope I can pull it off again with this latest book.

If you haven’t read Kheris Burning yet, I have some free Kindle copies to give away and some free promo codes for the audiobook from Audible. Give me a shout if you’d like one xx

Note form Mark… CG Hattons blog post is a serious, thoughtful and insightful reblog of her original from her blog. My introduction less so…

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When a chap is not a chap…

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Mark Hayes

An internet friend reminded me the other day of an important lesson we all need to take on board and remember. When I say all I am talking about 49.9% of the population though the core message applies to us all. It is a message I have addressed more than once in blogs over the years and on occasion in other writings both fiction and none fiction. It occasionally even comes up in subtext in my Hannibal novels, but in the most recent novel ‘A Squid on the Shoulder’ in one chapter it moved beyond subtext.

I reproduced some exerts from that chapter here, because the central message is I feel an important one. This first section is really just to add some Context to what follows:-

Yet once again, somehow, I’d survived when so many others had not. This struck me as absurd.  

Why did I, of all people, keep surviving these things…? 

I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in some higher power guiding our lives. Saving perhaps she who resided on the throne of Great Britain, who’d been the only higher power in my life. Old Clockwork Ticker mightn’t be a living goddess, as some mad gin-sodden fools like my old mum chose to believe, but she may as well have been. The empire Britain rules in her name shapes the lives of billions within its boundaries, so call her a higher power if you will, but old Sticky Vic doesn’t shower favours on the likes of me. As for god, well, if there is one, it has always struck me that his ineffable plan is too damn ineffable.

Hannibal is not in the best of places at this point, as you may guess. Things have happened and he is it is fair to say a little distraught. Which leads to an excess of engine room gin and some deep soul searching on the subject of what a chap does and doesn’t do. These excerpts are part of a longer narrative obviously but the bits I have pulled out express what I believe to be an important truth, which is why feel they perhaps need to see a larger audience than just those who read my often quite silly steampunk novels…

A lot of crap is spoken at times about chaps.  

‘A chap doesn’t cry,’ they’ll say. ‘A chap doesn’t bare his soul and weep like a baby,’ they’ll add for good measure. But what they really mean is ‘A chap doesn’t do that in front of another chap…’ It’s part of the code. It’s part of what’s expected, because they are told, as we all are told, ‘A chap keeps a stiff upper and doesn’t blub…’

Hettie, as I have said before, was in many ways a chap. I mean, obviously, she wasn’t a chap, but she was more a chap than most chaps could ever aspire to be… 

And another thing they say is ‘a chap doesn’t break down in front of another chap,’ no matter how much a chap has had to drink. No matter how black the day. No matter what burdens a chap is shouldering. No matter what. 

A chap soldiers on and the most you should expect from another chap is for them to tell you to buck up and behave like a chap ought to, because it’s just the done thing. A chap, that is, a man, well…  

What it comes down to is a man doesn’t cry… 

Hettie didn’t say a word, just sipped her drink and sat across from me, head bowed, not encroaching on my despair. Like a good chap does. Even a chap who is not a chap… 

Hettie also didn’t say a word when I started to weep.  

Call it exhaustion, mental and physical, after all I’d been through in the last few days. Call it delayed shock. Call it the drink. Call it whatever you want. I sat there and I wept, tears streaming down my face, utterly distraught… And Hettie didn’t say a word, she just sat there with me, like a good chap does. Even a chap who isn’t a chap.  

I wept.  

And then Hettie put down her glass, picked up her chair, moved it next to mine, sat down again, put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me down onto her chest. And then she just let me get it all out, all that pent-up emotion, all the fear, all the horror, all the anxiety and dread. She let me just open the flood gates and empty the dam.   

And all through this, Hettie didn’t say a word. She just sat there with me, like a good chap does.  

Even a chap who isn’t a chap.  

Because when it comes down to it, a good chap, a real chap… Well, a chap like that knows that all the horse shit that is said about what a chap does and doesn’t do is just that, so much horse shit. Chaps sometimes need to weep, and chaps sometimes need another chap, even a chap who isn’t a chap, to just sit with them and let them do so. Without all that ‘A real chap doesn’t do this’ nonsense.  

And you, dear reader, perhaps expect me to make a joke round about now, some irreverent witticism, some callow remark, some off-colour observation about resting there on Hettie’s chest… 

But no… Not this time.  

Hettie sat with me, held me, and let me get all the welled-up guilt and sorrow of the survivor out of my system, and never said a word, because there was nothing to be said.  

And afterwards, once I’d gotten it all out of my system, once I had moved past it all, once I was once more my usual callow self-involved self, Hettie still never said a word about it. 

Because a good chap, even a chap who is not a chap, but is more a chap than most chaps will ever be, a chap like that knows when nothing needs be said. Instead, they just offer a smile of understanding, that nod of recognition that you need at that moment, and says nothing afterwards when that time is past, because nothing needs to be said. Instead, they’re just there for you, in that moment when you needed them to be.   

And sometimes a chap who is a chap, and a callow, bitter, sarcastic, swine of a chap at that, sometimes a chap like that just needs to know that someone gave enough of a damn to let them not be a chap for a while and just be a hurt, scared human being hiding in the darkness from those fickle gods of fate that chose to torment our souls… 

Excerpt from ‘A Squid on the Shoulder’ Chapter 6

This is just a piece of fiction. I don’t pretend it is in any way deep or profound It does however have an important message its heart, at least one that is important to me. That being that sometimes a man needs to be able to weep, or talk, or just throw down the walls that society expects them to have and not hide there fears and feelings.

I say a man, it all equally applies to women, but women tend to find such things easier, or at least society doesn’t expect them to ‘bottle it up and crack on’ in quite the same way.

If you find yourself being the Hettie for someone in this situation, that is to say the friend that someone turns to, then sometimes all it really takes to help them is being there. Being there to listen more than anything. Being there when they need someone to just be there, is the simplest and yet most important thing of all, You don’t necessarily need to say anything, though that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t if you think you can say something that helps.

And, if you ever find yourself needing a Hettie, no matter whom your Hettie or Hettie’s for that matter happen to be, never be afraid to reach out. Even if your Hettie is a grumpy ageing goth and Yorkshire-man who occasionally tries to string some words together in a meaningful way.

And never, ever, buy in to the idea that there are things a chap just doesn’t do…

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Dear Edgar #1: Metzengerstein

Posted on February 28, 2023 by Mark Hayes

In 1832 a now former Sargent Major in the United States Army had almost reached the age he’d claimed to be on his enlistment forms four year earlier. Why he lied about his age when joining the army is a bit of a mystery as he was 18 at the time but while he was at it he also lied about his name, the recruitment papers stating it as being Edgar A Perry.

During his time in the army Edgar managed to publish what became the first of several poetry collections. This first collection was about as successful as poetry collections from unknown poets tend to be which is to say it had a print run of 50 copies and there was only ever one print run. There is probably an attic somewhere in an old family home that still has 38 of them tucked away in a cardboard box…

Edgar A Perry left the army, by finding another man to cover the remainder of his enlistment term, and then promptly went to West Point to train as an officer cadet but not before he revealed he had lied on his original enlistment papers. His cohort of clearly got on well with him as they helped effectively ‘crowd-source’ a print run of a revised 2nd edition of his book of poetry, with many of them giving 75 cents each to get him up to the total of $170.00 he needed to do a new print run.

From which we can determine that the ‘crowd-sourcing’ poetry books is not a new idea, and 19th century US officer cadets are fans of obscure literature. That one of the poems lampooned West points commanding officers may have had something to do with this. Sales were again much what you might suspect for an obscure volume of poetry written by an obscure poet and another cardboard box of books is doubtless in an attic of a former Poe family home somewhere…

In 1832 however, now disowned by a father who was too busy spawning the plethora of Edgar’s half-siblings, and having buried recently his legitimate elder brother who died of complications brought about by alcoholism, the unsuccessful poet had his first real publishing success when he submitted a bunch of stories to a writing contest held by The Philadelphia Saturday Courier. Five of his stories were published over the course of the next year. This then was the beginning of the literary career of the most influential writer of the early 19th century. Arguably one of the most influential writers there has ever been, because the former Sargent major Edgar’s real surname wasn’t Perry, it was Poe.

That first published story was Metzengerstein: A Tale in Imitation of the German.

‘Metzengerstein: A Tale in Imitation of the German’ is a bit of an odd duck. As is that full title the second part of which was added four year later when then a relatively successful Edgar Allen Poe building a reputation as a writer agreed to it being republished in the Southern Literary Messenger. German horror literature was popular at the time so the addition of the subtitle is one suspects a publishers gimmick and how much input Poe actually had with the subtitle is debatable. It certainly disappeared again when Poe added the story to his 1840 collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, or more correctly in Volume 2 which wasn’t quite as popular as the first volume. It not having the one about the collapse of a noble family line in it.

Noble lines are however very much central to the plot of Metzengerstein. The Metzengerstein’s of the title and their rivals the Berlifitzing’s. the two Hungarian noble houses have been at odds for generations, since at least one of them with more than a little Moorish blood in the mix… The exact cause of dispute between them is, we are told, lost to history. Though there is a tapestry which seems to suggest a beheading in battle or two may have been at fault. Which just goes to prove that the instagram of the medieval period was apparently as forgettable as the modern equivalent, because even with the tapestry right there no one can remember why the two noble houses hate each other…

There is however an old prophecy:

“A lofty name shall have a fearful fall when, as the rider over his horse, the mortality of Metzengerstein shall triumph over the immortality of Berlifitzing.”

A prophecy’s go its a tad vague, but then vague is generally what you expect form a good prophecy about two ancient noble houses. Though Poe moves heaven and earth to make this tale fit around the prophecy in the end.

The current Baron Metzengerstein, is a young reprobate called Fredrick, while his opposite number Count Berlifitzing is an old man clinging to life in the ruin of his family estates. The Berlifitzing family is at the end of long years of decline while the Metzengerstein’s have being long in the ascendancy. The current Baron however came to his title young and started laying wasting to the family fortune as fast as a teenager left alone in the family home for the weekend with a key to the drinks cabinet lays waste to the Pernod…

Then comes the night old count dies and the Berlifitzing family stables burn down the same night. the young baron, is examining an old tapestry while well into his cups and he sees one of a great unnatural seeming horse, at the murder and betrayal one of the Counts ancestors by one of the Barons.

Then things get a bit weird. Fredrick witnesses the tapestry burn, but only the bit with the horse in it. Then a horse is found that the Berlifitzing stable hands swear is not one of theirs, though it clearly appeared when the stables burnt down, and Fredrick develops something of a equiphilic attachment to the beast. Which may or may not be the old count reincarnated into an adult horse… And this eventually leads to the tragic end to the tale…

It is all a little odd, which is fine… But it is also a story that’s odd because it isn’t quite sure what it is, or to be more exact the reader can’t be entirely sure what it is. The other stories that followed it in the Saturday Courier, all of which he wrote at the same time, were satirical humorous affairs, and there is much of this tale that could be perceived as satire. Yet if that is the case it is a somewhat poe-faced satire, as opposed to Poe satire.

It is also a horror story with little in the way of horror to it. What horror there is, is visited upon or witnessed by the young Baron, whom is not a character it is easy to sympathise with. Sure it is harsh to say he deserved to bare the brunt of this climax to a multi-generational rift between noble houses, but he’s an unlikable brat who treats his servants like… erm… servants.

There is a case, made by those reading this tale from an academic lint, that this is all an allegory, to do with the relationship between family’s and generations, or that it is autobiographically inspire and to do with Poe’s relationship with his step-father… Except Poe reputedly despised allegory as a literary form, and as for the autobiographical element… well lets just say its a stretch shall we.

In the end its is much of a nothingness as a story notable mostly for being Poe’s first to see print and because Rudyard Kipling notes its inspire him to write ‘The Phantom Rickshaw’ which is in turn most notable as being the title story of a collection that included ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ which later inspired the movie of the same name… This is a somewhat thin claim to fame for a story.

Metzengerstein also inspired a song of the same name on the ‘Theatres des Vampires’ album ‘Horror Masterpiece’ which is… well Italian Industrial Goth Vampiric Black Metal is surprising as it may be to some readers not really my cup of lukewarm blood.

That said the next track on the album is a cover version of Aha’s ‘Take on Me’… Which is unique in its own kind of wonderfulness. Also my cousin Jane decided she hated Aha back when the original came out because Morten Harkat looked very much like me in the mid 80’s (when I wasn’t in black eyeliner and going down the Phonograthic) But lest not delve into the insanity of the late 1980’s and stick with Poe shall we..

In the end this is not Poe at his finest, but then I wasn’t really expecting it to be, first stories seldom are and all I really wanted was a bench mark. As is traditional I am going to score each tale, but as tentacles is so Lovecraft and last year as a measurement of awesomeness I will instead be marking Poe’s stories out of Ravens. In this case just a couple, which is not much of a gauge I know but you have to lay down a bench mark somewhere…

TWO RAVEN OUT OF AN UNKINDNESS

Should your read it: Well its not going to keep you up at night, make you laugh or make you particularly thoughtful so you can give it a miss I suspect

Should you avoid it: No reason to do so beyond it being a bit dull ( unlike Italian Industrial Goth Vampiric Black Metal which is probably best avoided )

Bluffers fact: While Metzengerstein was indeed published by the Saturday Courier after it was entered in its writing competition. It wasn’t actually the winner. It was also originally ascribed to that most notable of writers Mr A Nominous, unlike the rest of the Saturday Courier stories which carried Poe’s moniker.

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Dear Edgar

Posted on February 23, 2023 by Mark Hayes

About a year ago I published a book that started out as a series of blogs in which I read the complete works of HP Lovecraft. A project I started as ‘filler’ posts for the blog. I’d expected the project to take me a year, and be fairly untraumatic, it took five years and there were times I thought it would never be done…

But in the end ‘The Bluffers Guide of The Writings of HP Lovecraft‘ was born and the book has been surprisingly, and no more so than to me, well received. More than a few readers have asked if I have plans do more Bluffers Guides. The simple answer to which has always been no… But I find I sort of miss doing a big blog project and delving into the complete writings of an author was a fascinating exercise at times…

When I didn’t want to raise Lovecraft’s feted corpse so I could shout at him…

The problem is there are few writers who really meet the criteria, which is to say lots of short stories, few if any novels, a complex but wide ranging reputation, but also, importantly, someone I’m happy to devote time into reading. It also has to be someone that people will be interested in reading about, otherwise I am simply writing a blog to myself…

This lead me to Dear Edgar, the writer who most inspired Lovecraft and one who remains relevant today, while often misunderstand and mostly famous for a few of his short stories and one poem in particular about the most fashionable members of the crow family… There is a lot more to Poe than mysterious deaths on the streets of Paris, old clock workings in holes, gossiping organs and the downward descent of noble lines. He wrote humour,satire, gothic horror, science fiction , Romance, adventure, Parodies and even something called Ratiocination fiction…

Sixty six short stories published over a 17 year period from the age of 23 in 1832 to 1849 when he died relatively young at the age of 40. Though he died young, he led an interesting life, not without controversy. His work achieved real fame mostly after his death, before that he was popular mostly in Europe rather than his native US. The real tribute to him is however the influence of his body of work on those who came after him. None other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for example credits Poe with inventing the ‘detective’ novel. To this day The Mystery Writers of America Awards are called ‘The Edgar’s’ in his honour.

Jules Verne wrote a sequel to Poe’s ponderously named ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ a early science fiction story. That other early giant of the Science fiction world HG Wells was equally enamoured with Poe’s fiction.

As for his tales of Gothic Horror, well someone called Howard Philip Lovecraft credited Poe constantly as being his greatest influence… So, if you are looking who to blame…

Frankly though when it came down to it, Dear Edgar is the most obvious choice for a writer to follow up old tentacle hugger… At this point I am looking forward to the journey, or course I sad that five years ago when I started reading the whole of Lovecraft… So I ordered a really nice folio edition of his complete works that should arrive tomorrow… And grabbed a cheap kindle version of the same a couple of nights back

I mean its not like Poe married his 13 year old cousin, had a record of depressions and other mental issues. Once failed to show up for an interview for political office because he was too drunk. died of substance abuse, possibly by suicide, and had a reputation as a scathing critic that led many of his contemporaries to despise him… So he’s a nicely uncomplicated character universally liked…

I am sure I won’t read the first few and then be given to quote the raven… But how often these blogs will turn up and how well this one goes is another story. After all Lovecraft only took 4 years and a lot of rage to get through…

Posted in amreading, amwriting, book reviews, books, Dear Edgar, Goth, horror, humour, indie, mental-health, opinion, publication, quotes, rant, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Auguries

Posted on February 8, 2023 by Mark Hayes

The following is a excerpt from the cutting room floor after being sliced out of my WIP where it was to be the start of the second chapter. It may end up reworked and find itself back in there at some point, but I decided the story need to go else where, but as a central idea I am a tad enamoured with this one. But as King once said, sometimes you ‘have to kill your darlings…‘

The ‘I’ who is speaking in the excerpt is Lucifer Mandrake, magician to the Court of Victoria Sax-Coburg.

Auguries

I am sure you will have read in the less reliable periodicals of the practises of voodoo. In some part magic, in other a religion, oft attributed to the former slave populations of the Caribbean and southern states of the American republic. Lurid tales of priests, and in a certain kind of even less reliable periodical priestess, enacting strange dark rites, raising zombies to do their bidding, entreating with powerful spirits, and naked dancing with serpents… They also tell of those same priests casting auguries by biting off the heads of chickens and letting the blood run into offering bowls fills their own spital and ‘other’ bodily fluids.

The periodicals always say ‘other bodily fluids…’ while clutching at their pearls, I have found.

Such reports are of course wildly exaggerated and ‘colourful’ for want of another word. They expound on these questionable savage rites undertaken by members of a questionable religions of savage origin. No doubt such things delight the readers of such periodicals. It is after all the reason they read them. That and the artist impression of semi naked heathen women dancing with snakes that always seem to be used to illustrate the shocking nature of these acts… It’s astounding, don’t you think, that so many of these acts are undertaken by half dressed young girls, rather than well wrapped up matronly women of a certain age… But I would choose to let you draw your own conclusions as to why that is, and why certain periodicals feel the need to allude to this on the front sheet of there publications.

In actuality, of course, voodoo rites of augury are little different from those practised throughout Europe and indeed the rest of the world for centuries, right back to the roman empire and beyond. Admittedly priest of Voodoo do have a habit of using chickens in their rites of course. but the chicken itself is no more magical than any other source of augury. Voodoo priest use chickens, supplied by those who seek auguries, for much the same reason as Celtic priest used to use rabbits.

I myself have found it perfectly acceptable to use a frying pan and a quarter pound of lard. Place that over a naked flame and throw in a couple of sausages, a rasher or three of bacon, a fresh egg. As for spitting, the only spitting that goes on when I cast an augury is from the sausages.  

In fairness, the one element that absolutely must be involved in order to cast an augury is blood. Which is unfortunate. Every thing else your average voodoo priest might do, or at least is reported to do, is window dressing and theatre, but the blood from the chicken, snake or whatever, does matter. Though a little nick and a couple of drops would be enough in all honesty. There is no need to bathe in the damn stuff, and I am quite sure in actually they know this and just nick a finger or something most of the time and keep the chickens for eggs in a coop round the back.

To be frank however, I prefer not to go around cutting myself every time I want to cast a simple augury. Which is why I prefer a frying pan, because if you throw in a slice or two of black pudding then away you go. This particular morning however, I did not like what I saw between the fried egg and the mushrooms, and I don’t mean suspicious black bits that were the charred remains of ancient bacon…

A storm was coming, dark things on the horizon, a great gnashing of teeth, dogs and cats doing unnatural things together. That sort of thing, nothing specific, just general ominous stuff. But whatever was brewing it wasn’t the Earl Gray…

However, on the bright side, while it comes down to the blood and the bacon sausage and eggs are merely trimmings, I like a voodoo priest with their chickens or ancient druids with brace’s of rabbits, need to eat and to be frank a good breakfast sets up for the day.

Lucifer Mandrake originally featured in Mandrake a story in Harvey Duckman volume 8. The charcters world is more Victorian Urban Fantasy than steampunk. It was rather fun and spawned the novel I am in the process of writing which may find it’s way into the world by mid summer.

Posted in amwriting, books, dreamlands, fantasy, fiction, horror, humour, indie, indie novels, indie writers, Lovecraft, novels, reads, rites, steampunk, supernatural, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Further Words to Music

Posted on February 1, 2023 by Mark Hayes

When I write, I write to music. I have mentioned this before…

The music changes,depending on mood, and what I am writing. Often times the music influences the words, not so much on a individual basis but in sense of place, emotion and feeling. So sometimes the right music is needed for what I am attempting to write. As it hard to write intense emotion while listening to Aqua sing Barbie Girl…

In fairness I have still never deliberately listened to Aqua sing Barbie Girl…

Sometimes however I just stick You Tube on and start with a random song and see where the algorithm takes me. This can be distracting when a song comes on that doesn’t quite fit the mood I am trying to find with a piece of writing, but in general the algorithm doesn’t take too much prodding to steer the right course. If you keep clicking back to moody goth tracks eventually the random little bugger gets the message and it starts to dredge up the moody goth music you know and love, and you can slide into the right mood to write the grim darkness of begotten souls you were aiming for, while the current vitality of a Hungarian born actor from RKO’s hey day is explained to you by a band named after a German school of design…

In case your wondering Bela Lugosi is still dead, which is comforting given the alternative…

Once in a while though, and much to my delight, the algorithm will throw out a song your have never heard before, by a German Goth duo that sounds like early pre-Mission Wayne Hussy era Sisters you never really hear anymore.

Bare boned industrial synth, drum machine and guitar with flattened hollow vocals, a deliberate slow melodic rhythm that aches with agonies of passionate desperation.

At this point the writing stops while you fall down the rabbit hole of wonderfulness that is discovering a new band (new to me, they have been around for a decade at least)

Eventually of course, after you have managed to climb back out of the rabbit hole to write, you just add them to your play lists and start writing again.

But then you may want to share them with the world, because you can’t be the only one who loves minimalist early goth… Anyway if you do, enjoy… and if you don’t, well try it you never know you might 🙂

Posted in amwriting, books, Goth, indie writers, music, music, pointless things of wonderfulness, writes, writing, writing music | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Further Tales From Tantamount: The Ocean Remembers. February 1st of the Year of the Translunary Washing Machine

Posted on February 1, 2023 by Mark Hayes

We, the collective of cells focused on being the equivalent existence of a middle-aged Yorkshire-man with a purple beard, would like to suggest for your entertainment you peruse the following…

Meredith is a genius and/or mad, possibly raving… She doesn’t knit enough socks, and the juggling videos have been disappointingly absent, but Tantamount is back and for this we forgive her all other sins against humanity…

We look forward to futher updates on the activity of the influx of feral flamingos

Meredith's avatarMeredith Debonnaire

Original fiction by Meredith Debonnaire.

Being a found record of Certain Correspondences between Tantamount-Newly-On-Sea, and an unnamed Airballoon. Proceed at your own risk!

The following letter sent by exciteable carrier pigeon from an airballoon, given to a seagull, and delivered to Tantamount-Newly-On-Sea mostly intact.

Dearest Thora,

I miss you. I know this is obvious, but of course it bears saying anyway. I understand why you had to return (temporarily?) but I miss you like blood, like brine, like salt. I miss you like magpies miss treasure. I hope all is well. Come back to us, come back to us safe and happy and whole.

We are currently adrift over an archipelago of lost islands – they have sunk off all ordinary maps and exist only in the memories of those who saw them, and of course the fish and birds. They are gone from maps but remain in…

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The rules of write #2

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Mark Hayes

This is something of a follow up to the first post in, for want of a better word, this series. That first post sparked some interesting feedback. Most of which in essence I agreed with, but as with everything there are shades. This post is about those shades as I see them. As with any post like this it should be borne in mine that this is an opinion piece. This is my opinion, it is not necessarily correct, nor do I discount the opinions expressed by others

The opinions I expressed in the first post can be boiled down to ‘Write what you want, about whom you want’. Which is to say that despite not having being a teenage girl with deep seated emotional issues, dealing with the tragic loss of both her parents in an inferno she narrowly escaped. I can write ‘her truth’ and in the same novel write about being a former child prodigy, with complex emotional issues, who blames himself for a lovers death, turns to heroine before ending up a homeless drifter dealing with his own sense of disconnection and grief… His truth is no more my truth than hers, but this doesn’t stop me writing it.

The question becomes, and the only question that actually matters, did I write it well?

I’m not a great fan of talking about characters in terms of ‘her/his truth’. Though it is a concept I understand, my problem with the concept is it is by nature restrictive. Which is to say that the concept states that I, a white upper working class British man in his early fifties, should not write about the experience of an African American soldier born in the early 1900’s in the southern states of the US, because I can not know, or speak for, that characters ‘truth…’

One of the reactions to the first of these posts was that it was put to me that you have to consider the difference between ‘speculative’ fiction and ‘literary fiction’. Which is to say that my ‘write want you want’ approach is all well and good in ‘speculative’ fiction but it becomes problematic when you consider such an approach in ‘literary’ fiction.

In essence I don’t entirely disagree with this. Alex Haley and only Alex Haley had the authority to write ‘Roots’. Roots is biographical, ardently research and carefully conceived. It is in fact a masterpiece only Alex Haley could have written, as it is the story of his family. It is undoubtedly therefore ‘his truth’. For all much of it is fiction, it is fiction weaved through fact. It is also undoubtedly Literature… I could site other examples, I have read plenty. I would never try to pass off my ‘speculations’ in fiction as a real person’s truth. I have on occasion however been accused of ‘literature’.

The problem here is however what exactly when it comes down to it do we mean by Literature? For me there are two definitions…

a) a novel with a central message written with authority to expound upon an idea while telling a story

b) a genre novel + time.

An example of ‘b’ would be Wuthering Heights, no one in the modern age would claim Wuthering Heights is not literature, but at the time it was written it was ‘edgy chick lit’ of the regency period. The novels that can be determined to be ‘a’ on the other hand well that’s a stranger mix, and harder to define, as any list of Booker prise nominees will show you…

Simply put, in my opinion, there isn’t really such thing as ‘Literature’ … Literature is just another genre, no more worthy than any other. Which makes drawing a line between ‘speculative’ and ‘literary’ fiction somewhat complex

The first example I gave of the teenage girl and the homeless former addict are the two main characters in my first novel ‘Cider Lane‘. Cider Lane is hard to define genre wise as it doesn’t really have one, but it has been described as Literature by some readers. It has strong themes involving isolation, self harm, love, hate, trust, lost, grief and the importance of tin openers. It is a dark savage sort of novel, it is very grim in places, brutal in others, and ‘I hope’ life affirming in others.

But is it literature? I couldn’t tell you. What i can tell you is I was careful to make those characters real and true to themselves, much of the work in writing that novel was on getting those characters right. If I hadn’t the novel would not work at all.

That second example ‘The experience of am African American man in the early 1900’s in the southern states of the US’ is at the core of the forth chapter in what I personally consider to be my best piece of work, Passing Place.

That forth chapter in Passing Place is called ‘The Ballard of Sonny Burbank’ and like many of the chapters in the novel it is a self contained story that relates to main novel told to the main character by someone else. In this case it is the story of Sonny Burbank, a African American born in South Carolina at the turn of century in 1900, related by him to Richard the piano player, in a Pan Dimensional Piano Bar and Grill.

Sonny tells his life story to Richard, over a couple of brandy’s, drank in the correct fashion, from his birth in South Carolina to the death cell he found himself in twenty two years later. A life which saw him raised by a single mother who died before he reached his majority. A life that took him to the trenches of world war one, to the doorsteps of the cotton club, to a stock yard in North Carolina where he discovered the truth about the father that ‘abandoned’ him and his mother and then through false accusation to a cell on death row. It is written around the central idea of the five stages of grief as Sonny comes to terms with his life and impending death, and a choice, a simple but complex choice about the last freedom he has left to him, thanks to a piece of french metal he has been sharpening on the wall…

This story is in isolation perhaps the most complex and involved pieces of fiction I have ever written, it is heart wrenching, dark, cynical in places and considered some of the worst facets of humanity into the bargain. It is as close to ‘a truth’ as I am capable of writing and has all the hall marks of literature, despite it being a chapter in a novel set in a Pan Dimensional Piano Bar and Grill…

It is true to say I am more proud of ‘The Ballard of Sonny Burbank’ than I am of just about anything else I have written. If I was asked to point anyone at one piece of my writing to showcase what I aim to achieve, and want to be, as a writer ‘The Ballard of Sonny Burbank’ is what I would point to. Forget everything else, forget the rest of Passing Place, forget all the Hannibal novels, the Maybe novels and all the short stories in all the Harvey. ‘Ballard’ is the heart of all I wish to be as a writer. It is the piece of writing I hope the rest live up to.

To return to my point, I am not African American, I wasn’t born in 1900, I didn’t serve in the trenches of WWI, I’ve never sat in a death cell and contemplated my existence…. Yet ‘The Ballard of Sonny Burbank’ is, I would argue, both ‘a truth’ and as close to literature as I have ever written.

The important point however is that it is also the product of exhaustive research, care, thought, several rewrites to avoid some predictable pitfalls. That chapter went through at least five heavy drafts before I considered it to be complete. It needed all that because I am not any of the things Sonny Burbank is. I am a white upper working class Yorkshireman in his early fifties. To write Sonny’s truth needed a lot of work, it was not easy, I ditched several things i the process to rid the story of a couple of stereotypes it did not need. I wanted it to be what it turned out to be, as good as I could get it.

Is it Literature? Well that is a definition for someone else to make because genre fiction and Literature are interchangeable in my opinion.

As I said, the question for me and the only question that actually matters is, did I write it well?

To sum up, ‘write what you want’ but if you are doing so, ‘make it a true, do your research and make it as well written as you can’ and then, in my opinion, you can’t go far wrong…

Also, avoid stereotypes always… Its lazy writing and there is no excuse for that.

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Words in Darkness

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Mark Hayes

I am fond of the dark, of laying on my bed, naked to the world, staring into the void. I could be staring up at anything. Staring up at endless worlds of possibility. The dance of the infinite. The realm of gods and daemons, of the divine and the devilish. In darkness all things are possible. I could be looking up at anything.

Or just the ceiling…

I am not alone in my fascination with darkness, staring into the dark is a very human thing to do. We have been doing it since the first of us walked upright. Occasionally, the darkness stares back at us, if only in our imagination.

Hopefully just in our imagination…

But without knowing the darkness, how can you appreciate the light, or in the words of the king…

‘It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.’ ~ Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla

Of course, sometimes a person can slip into the love of darkness a little too much…

‘I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.’ ~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

‘I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.’ ~ Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems

‘A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.’ ~ Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

‘Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.’ ~ Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

‘I’ve always liked the moonless night best. It’s easier to say things in the dark. It’s easier to be yourself.’ ~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

Somethings are important to remember however, such as…

‘You don’t find light by avoiding the darkness.’ ~ S. Kelley Harrell

‘Darkness is just light turned inside out.’ ~ Beelzebub

‘The darkness makes everything disappear but it makes nothing go away.’ ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

‘Stare at the dark too long and you will eventually see what isn’t there.’ ~ Cameron Jace, Snow White Sorrow

But fear not, for the most important thing to remember if this final quote…

‘When its dark enough you can see the stars.’ ~ Charles Austin Beard

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Piano Man, A Guest Post by Will Nett

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Mark Hayes

William Nettleton is a fine name. Stick a ‘Sir’ in front of it and it brings up images of a big game hunter in the 1800’s with an elephant gun nestled under one arm, smoking a pipe of suspicious looking native tobacco while pontificating on how long he can avoid returning to his wife and young child William the younger, back in Britain by pretending to be lost in the Serengeti.

Sir Willian Nettleton, who fathered a string of mix race bastards over the course of his fifteen years of being ‘lost’ on safari finally returned to Cape Town when the gin ran out. Died of consumption in 1837 on the journey back to Teesside, so never met his his own namesake who had been born a few weeks after he first left for Africa, That William was to be the great great great grandfather of the current Willam Nettleton who for some reason shortens his professional name to appear cooler and writes as Will Nett…

(Its should be noted I made all of the above up : MH)

Occasionally Will Nett sends me blog posts , they tend to be entertaining, well received and deceptively intelligent reads… he normally does this when he has a new book coming out. If he has a new one out he hasn’t bothered to tell me this time. He has never claimed to be ‘lost’ in the Serengeti, he did once spend a very long time getting some cakes from a shop in Amsterdam though…

Piano Man by Will Nett

Like most authors, I’ll do almost anything to avoid writing. Buying a piano a couple of years ago seemed as good an idea as any. I’d always fancied having a crack at it, but would not have gone out of my way to find one, so when a friend was selling one, and another had a van in which to deliver it, I was first in line.

All we had to do was transport it the half a mile between our houses. Equipped with a couple of ratchet straps and an impressive collection of orthopaedic complaints that were about to be considerably exacerbated, we lugged it aboard with little incident, other than the loss of a single foot. That is, one of the piano’s feet. Between the four of us we’d done the hard part, so when we reached my front garden, and within 10 yards of the intended destination, we dropped it flat on its back, causing a sonic boom that could be heard as far away as the Peak District. It was accompanied by the distant hum of Carl Bechstein spinning in his grave. I bet Chopin didn’t have to go through all this rigmarole.

 If it was even vaguely in tune before, it most certainly wasn’t now. We heaved it into place; against a gable end wall as far away from next door’s attached living room wall that the architecture would allow, and the tuner set to work on it, doing a fine job restoring it to something playable, despite the damage we’d caused- the interior metal crossframe had broken some of the wooden parts and a couple of keys required attention.

‘Bechstein’s of this vintage are fairly sturdy,’ he pointed out, as I pored over the order book that I managed to source online from Bechstein themselves.

All-focus

The ‘vintage’ in question dated back to 30th September 1896, the exact date the piano was dispatched from the factory to London as part of an order of 5 similar pieces.

It had survived two World Wars, Spanish Flu, Covid, and yet, like many others, almost came unstuck on a Spencerbeck housing estate. 

But how to play?

Naturally, my ever auto-didactic mindset meant there was simply no time for lessons, or doing anything properly, so instead I immersed myself in a pile of records and YouTube tutorials- specifically the excellent Pianote channel. Given that I took no formal training, my classical repertoire extends only as far as the first ethereal few bars of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’, but it was the sidemen and women of my parents’- and now my record collection- that I most hoped to emulate; the broad countryfied strokes of the Rolling Stones’ Nicky Hopkins; soul man Billy Preston; Eagles and Elvis back-up Glenn Hardin; Bobby Whitlock; Leon Russell; Nickey Barclay. They all seeped into one another, as musical influence often does, but I developed a set of sorts comprising sing-a-long country classics like ‘Swinging Doors’ and ‘The Fool’ alongside some Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash for anyone who wanted to sob into their beer suds come closing time. Elvis songs come as standard given that they’re largely repurposed country covers and there’s a potential impersonator in every pub in the land, and my obsession with the r&b rumble of Ray Charles’ ‘What I’d Say’ found it’s way to the fore, too. I made a point of avoiding the works of one of my all-time favourite artists, the untouchable Nina Simone, lest I grow tired of her work from trying to recreate it.

I haven’t quite reached the recommended ‘10,000 hours’ theory of practice, but I played every single day for over a year, be it at length, or on occasion for a matter of minutes in a manner that would give any piano teachers palpitations. My appalling posture and Octopus-like hand placement and fingering- careful, now- soon became part of my whole style, but I wasn’t going to be invited to the Proms anytime soon. I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted to raise a tuneful racket.

I didn’t seek out pianos publicly- they’re few and far between in pubs and the like, now, but they suddenly seemed to materialise; an out of tune baby grand, also a Bechstein, over a now closed rock bar heralded my first public performance; an equally toneless stand-up dustbox in the corner of the Navigation led to a rousing ovation during a post-Boro match jam; I found myself in evening dress en route to a wedding playing in the lounge of the Scotch Corner hotel. A Belgian friend looked on baffled as I was accompanied by a gang of Scouse housewives- Scousewives?- in Toxteth’s Peter Kavanagh pub. I almost missed a flight playing, badly it has to be said, in an airport in Milan after a heavy few days.

The piano has brought much joy, and continues to do so, but more importantly gives me an excuse to avoid writing. You can expect my next book sometime around 2028.

Any requests?    

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