The Humpty Dumpty Controversy

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Mark Hayes

‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall’

‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall’

‘All the kings horse’s and all the kings men’

‘Couldn’t put Humpty together again’

I have questions, many questions, but lets consider first why did Humpty fall. Obviously, people do fall off walls we know, but in general not just because they are just sat on them. In actuality, sitting on walls is not an inherently risky proposition.

As to why he was sat on the wall in the first place, well the obvious answer is of course to better view a military parade. This is after all why all the kings horses and all the kings men were passing by and thus able to attempt to patch him up. Mayhap therefore he got over excited, tried to stand up on the wall in order to get a better view and doing so slipped and fell.

This could make sense, except he was already high up. this was no mere garden wall he was sat on. he had to be high up because he ‘had a great fall’, not a minor tumbler. A great fall that did irrevocable damage… So why would he need to stand up, he should have been able to see everything perfectly well and remain seated on the wall. And the rhyme very clearly says he was sat on the wall, and doesn’t make any mention of him standing on it. If the purpose to the rhyme is to serve as a warning about the dangers of walls surely it would make mention of his standing on the wall. so no he was defiantly sat. So how did he fall?

How indeed… Was he perhaps pushed, and if so by whom… And why?

But that is one mystery which much like the occupant of a grassy knoll in Dallas Texas will remain unknown one suspects… But let us move on to the second part of the rhyme… Which if anything is more sinister

‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ , ‘Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’

Well, this begs a question, several in fact. Firstly, who was in charge. All the kings horse and all the kings men is a lot of men and a lot of horses. perhaps that is a little too literal, perhaps it refers to ‘The Kings Troop’ a ceremonial unit of the British army. Also known as the Royal Horse Artillery, that has teams of six horses pulling 13 pound gun carriages. With other members of The Kings Troop escorting on horseback. The unit has 140 men and women in it and twice as many horses. that’s a lot of men and horses. perhaps how literally all the kings horse and all the kings men but as far as parades are concerned they seem the likely candidates.

But why would all of them try to put Humpty together again. Do any of them have advances medical degrees? I would venture the horses do not. So why are they even trying, can someone not get the horses out of the way? I doubt the one hundred and forty men and women of The Troop include any doctors either. Medics perhaps, but only a couple of them at most, and why is an officer not taking charge?

Besides which since when would the parade stop, should there not be a couple of members of the St John’s Ambulance kicking about? Or are they all off blagging free entry to football matches and Glastonbury?* Or were they paid off as part of the conspiracy. I mean there isn’t a public event that doesn’t have at least a couple of them about, drinking tea and smiling with the vicar. I bet they even got to see Ozzy’s final gig for nothing….

But no, not a sign of the St John’s Ambulance, or an officer in charge, just a mad scrabble of horses and men utterly failing to put Humpty together again, as if medicine and the setting of broken bones was some kind of jigsaw. have you ever tried to do a jigsaw with 140 other people and a herd of bloody horses, no wonder they couldn’t put him together again…. They were all fighting over whether to start with a corner piece and the edge of just dive into the middle…

So pushed not fell, and no medical staff in attendance. Some one had it in for poor Humpty clearly… But all of this is as nothing, when we consider one final question, the great question , the one that we all should be asking ourself and has been hidden by the madness of horses and men .

Humpty Dumpty, why do we think of him as an egg…?

He isn’t… At no point does the rhyme say anything to imply he is an egg. Humpty was never an egg, Humpty was a person, a person forgotten in all this because of that braggard Lewis Carrol, a man ever fond of his drug induced fantasy life, and obsessed with his niece Alice, went out of his way to rewrite history and convince the world that Humpty Dumpty was an egg by portraying him as such in Through the Looking Glass.

What was Carrol motive in doing this?

What was he trying to hide?

Will we ever know?

What we do know for sure is this, Lewis Carrol was a card carrying member of The St Johns Ambulance…

Remember this, if nothing else, Humpty was never an egg until they told us he was. Believe what you will, but never believe what they tell you.

Humpty Dumpty was never an egg…

*the St John Ambulance are a wonderful organization and its members fine people who give up their free time to help people. I will not hear a word said against them… They may be listening…

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To be a Writer

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Mark Hayes

To be a writer, you have to write… this was a conclusion I came to a few years ago, which still holds true. To borrow some advice from one more qualified to talk about successful writing than I…

download (1)

This then is the crux of the matter. You can say you want to be a writer, dream of being a writer, you can even have the word ‘Writer‘ printed in your passport, but that is all for nothing unless you actually do some writing…

The problem, as is often the case, is there are some many other things to do rather than write, which is at best a solitary activity you undertake in your writing cave. There are movies to watch, TV series to absorb, books to read (because if you don’t read a lot you will never be a writer), a social life to have, work of the paying kind to do, social media, video games, watching a bunch of grown men run around a field chasing a leather ball, walking in the sunshine, spending time with friends, with family, life in general. There is in essence a lot to do and only so many hours in the day.

How then do you find time to write?

How indeed…

Well the simple answer is you make time. When, well that is down to you. It could be a setting aside couple of hours on an evening or getting up a couple of hours earlier on a morning to get some words down, or you could use your lunch hour at the daily grind. The when is not really important, it juts has to be your when. It is the doing that matters. Making yourself do what you need to do in order to write. Making a pact with yourself to do so.

This at least is what works for me.

I go through phases, some times I write with near religious further. The words flow because I need to write them and my need to write them out weighs all other concerns. Other times I have to force myself to write as much as a sentence. On occasion I don’t write at all, then I feel guilty for not doing so and eventually the guilt out weighs the apathy and I make myself write again.

When I am mid novel, and have a self imposed deadline no matter how vague, I make myself write a thousand words a day. Why a thousand, well its a nice round number, it is also about three pages in a standard typeset for a trade paperback, but mainly because that thousand words is long enough that it takes a couple of hours but short enough that it only takes a couple of hours. So when the words are not flowing I can still push myself to write for that length of time, if I don’t hit the word count it doesn’t matter, the time at the coal face is what matters, and if you return to the coal face every day the words will start to flow.

When I am working on a third draft the time spent is more important still. The first draft and the second to an extent tend to involve a lot of solid writing. Blocks of text it is easy to count and measure. A third draft and every draft after that, if I am still counting them, is polishing. the process of turning a perfectly acceptable sentence into something more. The difference between a perfect readable but prosaic story and, if one may be pretentious, art.

Third drafts are where the blood stains the page, where the soul is rendered in ink. Third drafts can take a moment to change one word among several paragraphs or hours to change three words in a sentence, that you will change again the following day. And again, and again until you are happy with it, which will never happen but by the old gods and the new you will try….

Third drafts therefore can only be measure in time, not words written. This is why setting aside time to write matters, and getting into the habit of doing so matters. Over the years I have developed ways to do this. I take time away from writing, though I still write things when I do, but when I am working on a book I actively set aside time and make myself do the work.

Of course, when the writing flows and the blood seeps into pages painlessly, the couple of hours I set aside often run over, and I get lost in the work , which isn’t really work then. But if I don’t force myself to make those couple of hours each day to start with the tap is never turned on.

To be a writer you have to write, it really is as simple and as complicated as that.

Just to note. writing blog posts like one is also writing. Regular readers may have noticed these tend to become more frequent when I am not actively writing a novel. This is entirely deliberate…

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Dear Edgar 28 ~ The Mystery of Marie Roget

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Mark Hayes

There is a phase that appears at the beginning of TV shows, movies, and books, which can be loosely taken to mean the entirety of what follows is almost utter fiction. That phrase is ‘Based on true events’. It is a phrase that crops up often at the beginning of mysteries, particularly is the mystery in question remains unsolved. There is a mystic to such things. Unsolved murders in particular, because we all love a good murder mystery and trying to solve it before the reveal. All the better if it is a real murder mystery as we all think we are smart enough to figure out who the real killer was…

Books pertaining to solve cold cases are something of a narrative tool themselves. If a police/detective show runs long enough there will be at least one episode where some author has been killed because he was writing a book about an unsolved murder and his manuscript will have been burnt, or a single copy will exist somewhere that will point to not only the original killer but the authors murder too.

‘Based on true events’ is a cliche, a trope so common we pay it no mind. Writers have been using it for years… In fact it is not unreasonable to say they have been using it since the autumn of 1842 when our own Dear Edgar dipped his toes in that particular well.

Poster for the 1942 movie version

The year before had seen the publication of Poe’s ground breaking detective story ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’. It had been a somewhat unexpected success, critically lauded, and having created a whole new genre of fiction, Poe discovered he had a public wanting more. While he was relatively successful as a writer by this point in his career, he had never had a story for which a publisher might ask him to write a sequel before. Generally given the kinds of stories he wrote there was no opportunity to do so. But there was money in longer serialized stores, and C. August Dupin was a character that he could bring back again. In what was to become very much the norm for fictional detectives, short of hurling them off a waterfall they could come back to new mysteries again and again and even throwing them off a waterfall was no guarantee they would stay dead…

So with the success of the Rue Morgue to his back Poe started trying to come up with a new mystery for his ratiocination detective to solve. And when he failed to come up with a suitable mystery of his own, he resorted to doing what mystery writers have done ever since, he looked to a real mystery and set about creating a solution. Yes, Poe not only invented the detective story, but he also invented the murder mystery ‘Base on True Events’…

The body of Mary Cecilia Rogers was found floating in the Hudson River on July 28th 1841. The police case to solve her death, which was widely believed to be a murder, reached national new papers. For a time it was a big story, but when her fiancée committed suicide a few months later and left a note full of remorse, many presumed that was the end of the matter. The case however has never been formally closed. Poe took the bones of the true story, which he claimed he was rigorous in researching and relocated the events from New York to Paris, where Dupin and his nameless friend the narrator lived in relative isolation, a year or so after the Rue Morgue murders.

As this was the second Dupin tale it has the advantage over it predecessor in that it doesn’t need a protracted prologue. half the original story was an extend introduction of Dupin the character. A somewhat tiresome over done introduction that grins on the reader until you get to the actual detective story. Poe neatly dispenses with the need for this by just assuming anyone reading the story has read the earlier one, for which we may all be grateful as that first third of The Murders at the Rue Morgue is just heavy going. In this story we drop straight into the mystery. Which si to its credit.

Marie is a perfume counter girl, rather than cigar girl, and end up in the Saine rather than the Hudson, but otherwise the key elements of the real murder are all here. Like Mary, Marie disappeared for a week three years before. Like Mary, Marie disappears again only to turn up dead. her fiancée is a key suspect, despite his denials and the whole things has a whiff of scandal to it (not least because there is some implication of Mary/Marie having a back street abortion in that missing week three years before.) The newspapers both the realm ones in New York and the fictional ones in Poe’s story make much of this and the lurid details of events. Indeed it is this that drives Dupin to investigate himself after complaining that newspapers thrive on sensationalism rather than truth.

Dupin the precedes to investigate, mostly by reading the newspapers and speculating, which is where the story starts to fall down a bit. There is no scene of the crime for Dupin and his chronicler to investigate. No where for him to make deductions based on observation. Everything is very much a case of him reading about the crime and then making some, admittedly astute, guesses in order to solve the crime. There isn’t even a reveal as such at the end, the real murder is apprehended after Dupin directs the police to find the boat in which Marie was carried out into the midst of the river. But the murder is apprehended off screen effectively.

In the end this is a story that disappoints, the constraints of ‘Based on true events’ are in part the issue. Having written the story so soon after the murder of Mary, when the truth was very much unknown is a good hook to pull in contemporary readers. Mary’s death was big news, speculations as to how she died were wide spread, the real murder had more than one fictional accounting, which was not uncommon at the time. Poe’s story is unique only in respect to being told as a detective story, and the way in which he drew parallels with a fictional crime rather than directly related Mary’s death. Poe’s postscript to the story, published with the third installment, makes the connection between the two abundantly clear. But the problem there is the modern reader only knows there was a real crime because of that postscript. The death of Mary Cecilia Rogers is a long forgotten crime almost two centuries old, not the current ongoing newsprint scandal.

Because it speculates on an unresolved murder, the story in itself is unresolved. The murder an unnamed sailor who’s motives remain unclear. And in all it reads much as an exercise in Poe displaying his own cleverness in trying to examine and try to explain a crime. It starts to become dry and lifeless very quickly after the first aspects of the murder are explained. and Dupin feels like nothing more than a dispassionate observer. It has neither the craft of the first Dupin story nor the skill in the telling. But then fiction is always best when it is fiction, and even if inspired by true events the further for the truth the better in most cases.

This second Dupin story is disappointing, a difficult second album with none of the invention of the original. It was not however the last, The Purloined Letter did not come along for three more years, but when it did, it out shone both this tale and arguably the more famous The Murders at the Rue Morgue. But we will come to The Purloined Letter in due course…

A TRIO OF RAVENS, ALL FEELING SLIGHTLY ARKWARD IF THEY ARE HONEST

Should you Read it: There is a certain completism that suggest you should read all three Dupin stories. The character develops little in this one but still noticeably, though the final tale is what pays for this one being underwhelming

Bluffers fact: It is no secret that Poe inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A fact Sir Arthur made no attempt to hide. In the very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, Watson compares Holmes to Dupin. Holmes replies, somewhat untypically

“No doubt you think you are complimenting me … In my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow… He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appears to imagine”

Bonus Fact: Maria Montez who played Marie in the 1942 movie version died a mysterious death herself, when she drown in her bathtub in 1951, reportedly, according to the papers at the age of 31, (she was actually 39). Maria’s daughter Tina Aumont was also an actress with a long career in Italian cinema which included the lead role in the Surrealist classic The Howl, a masterpiece of a movie no one I have spoken to in the last thirty years has seen apart from me… Honestly your all philistines… Despite her extensive filmography Tina did not appear in a single movie I could reliably claim to be inspired by a Poe story, which is frankly irritating as has she done so it would have made for a delightful if tenuous fact…

Tina Aumont in The Howl, an Italian masterpiece you have never seen, one suspects
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The cost of AI

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Mark Hayes

There are those who will read this and think it is a rant. It is not a rant, I am not ranting, but I could.

The use and proliferation of AI is decimating creative communities. There are some obvious examples of this, artists and graphic artists being one of them. AI art is everywhere and not as easy to spot as we occasionally fool ourselves into believing. Yes the seven fingers woman is an obvious example, but for every obviously fake ‘photo realistic’ piece of art, there are hundreds of bits of clip art, back ground and other stuff that is manufactured on mass with AI and flooding the market. As I have used both royalty free clip art to put together book covers and paid one off fees for bits of clipart work as well, as soon as I go to the sites I have used in the past I can see the sheer amount of AI clip art that has been generated. It is hard to find clip art that is not tagged as AI generated on reputable sites now due to the sheer volume of AI swamping the market.

Graphic art is however the tip of the iceberg.

Let us look at another example. A whole industry of audio book narration grew up in the last 10 years. Home studio narrators have sprung up, many invested hundreds or thousands in bespoke home studios, with expensive recording equipment and sound dampening tiles and god only knows what else. It has however paid off, many making a good living in the new cottage industry of audio narration.

At least that was the case, up until the turn of the year, when AI voice narration reached a point where it is good enough to fool most people. Or at least be acceptable despite its failings. Instead of paying anything up to £180.00 per 10000 words to have your book recorded and produced by good quality audio artist. AI narration has becomes and option. And the big bad river company has made its AI narration offering free to use for authors who publish with them. As the big bad river company is also the biggest market for audio books in the world and owns the main platform they also control the keys to the kingdom. They set the production/quality values for audio books. As such their AI audio narration is defacto to the required standards.

Is AI narration as good as human narration, no. But it is getting to the point it is hard to tell, it is no longer flat and emotionless, it has inflection , it has fake breathing, to make it sound real… Which is very odd as producing out loud breaths etc. is something professional narration produces do, yet AI is putting it in to sound more human.

Many self published writers look at AI narration and see a door that was previously closed to them, or required them to figure out how to DIY their own and learn sound production in order to make audio versions of their work, and are excited at the idea. I can’t even blame them as I know how often I get asked if there are audio versions of my books, and how cost prohibitive getting them professionally recorded would be. But I am not about to go down that road. Generally the kind of ‘writers’ who ‘write’ using AI, were the first ones jumping on the AI narration train. But some real writers are starting to use Amazon’s AI narration tools because its free. And other AI narration packages because its a cheap option, in a cost prohibitive market.

But the real cost is a human one. A new creative industry has died that was full of interesting voices doing great narration and audio production. Artists who did not just record a writers work but added to it with with a voice and infection. Home based narrators have lost 50 -80% of there work overnight and the industry is not dying, it has been murdered. Audio artist making a reasonable living doing good work have gone form turning work away or passing it on to there collogues to fighting over scraps. A cottage industry side hustle that became a full time home based job that worked with their life style has been ripped apart and turned into a side hustle at best or they have just found themselves going back to the ‘real jobs flipping burgers and stocking shelves.

Added to this, one of the ways audio books got made was split royalty deals where the narrator and the writer took an equal share of the royalties. Many indie writers have gone down this route in the past, because it is more viable for them and narrators like them because royalties are a small but steady income flow if a book does reasonably well on audio. The problem here is however audio platforms are now been flooded by AI audio , which means rather than been one book in a shop, your one book in a warehouse… Sales for audio books continue to trend upwards, but in a flooded market place individual books get lost and are just never seen so audio sales for individual books are down… Share royalty deals are no longer covering cost and narrators and writers are making less for their work than they were a year ago…

I have Never made audio versions of my own novels, because of the cost, but I will never use AI to do so. I would have used an artist to record my work if I could. Just as I don’t; use AI art no matter how convenient it may be. Just as I would never use Ai to write anything , literally anything… let alone a book .

I don’t ghost write, but I know of writers who do, and writers who have made a living ghost writing. But guess what, that is another industry been decimated by AI. Why pay for a ghost writer to do a first draft of a book for you, when AI can write one for you…

The anthology series I am on the editorial staff of gets swamped by AI written short stories, all of which are crap, but we have to sieve through them to find real stories written by people. As far as I am aware we have never failed to spot a fully AI story , or an story someone used AI to draft. We very clearly state in out T&C that AI is not accepted but it doesn’t stop people trying. I had a long conversation ( that involved some harsh words from me) with a ‘writer’ who enthusiastically told me they used AI to write short stories. I had to explain how using prompts and keywords is not writing, any more than using them to make art does not make you an artist. the conversation did not go well, they blocked me, I am sad about this…

The book industry, audio paper and e, is also been destroyed by volume, two years ago there were around 1.5 million books available on the big bad river. Two years ago, there were perhaps 20,000 audio books on the big bad rivers audio platform. There are 20 million books on the river and 2,00000 on the audio platform because of the flood of AI crated drivel
Writers find it harder and harder to reach an audience, because the audience can not even see them amid the flood waters.

AI is killing art and artist on so many levels and in so many ways.

So no I will not be making an action figure of myself using AI, or anything else with AI, I will not pay for AI art for book covers, I will not use AI narrators for audio books rather than pay real narrators, I will not use AI editing tools I will use an editor, I will not use AI to design a coffee mug , or a poster or anything else. And I sure as hell will never use AI to write a skill that has taken me all my fifty five years to learn and one day I hope to master.

What I will do is pay humans to do these things when ever possible, use art made by humans and buy books written by humans. because the cost of AI is not just our souls but also actual people. Do we want a future where computers do the art that lines the pockets of the mega rich while we flip burgers? because what has happened to audio narrators will happen to every other industry. I am not a luddite, I am a tech geek, but AI is a bad road and we need a turn off, before there is no art left, just soulless AI generated garbage, that costing independent artists of all stripes there livelihoods and their license to be artists in the first place.

What is perhaps even worse, those independent artists who survive will not be able to reach an audience due to the floor waters of AI junk

There are those who will read this and think it is a rant. It is not a rant, I am not ranting, but I could.

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Dear Edgar 37 ~ The Landscape Garden

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Hello and welcome to mark is about to ignore his own rules. Dear Edgar as you may well be aware is covering each of sixty six stories Edgar Alan Poe wrote in order of publication. The Landscape Garden is the thirty seventh of these tales. It was published in September 1842 issue of Snowden’s Ladies Companion, a magazine for women, published by William S Snowden between 1834 and 1844.

The months following the publication of this story saw the same magazine serialize ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ Dear Edgar’s sequel to ‘The Murders on the Rue Morgue’. It could be posited that, though details are sketchy to say the least, that ‘The Landscape Garden’ was given to Snowden because Poe was running late with his second C. Auguste Dupin story and having missed a deadline gave the magazine this story as a place holder. Which is the best you can say for it in many ways.

The Landscape Garden is not even described as a story, but rather as a sketch. It takes us on a tour of a beautifully landscaped garden. In essence it is a piece for descriptive writing that lacks for any real plot as such. Which is part of the problem, as its just not very interesting, this is not what you read Poe for… The other problem is that it isn’t really a finished piece of work. We know this not least because the sketch was to become part of the longer more complete work ‘the Domain of Arnheim’ published five years later.

So the rule I am about to break is this, normally I read each story in this series at least three times. Once without making any notes, just to ‘read the story’ once more to make notes on anything that I may need to mention, and a final time after the piece has been written, just to make sure I am happy with what I have said. This is the same approach I took with Lovecraft project a few years ago, and more or less works, though when a story isn’t great it makes it much more of a chore.

This story however, I have read once, and as I know it is going to be subsumed by the sixty-first story, once on this occasion is enough, indeed once too often.

It is also why this is a relatively should piece, because frankly there is very little to say about it

THE RAVEN IS NEVERMORE…

SHOULD YOU READ IT: No, perhaps if your are a keen gardener…. but no not even then. Wait till ‘The Domain of Arnheim’ as at least that is a complete story

BLUFFERS FACT: The entire of Snowden’s Ladies Companion can be found here at the internet archive in the form of microfilm scans of the original magazines. Yes I went to look and yes it is fascinating. There is a remarkable lack of any perfume adds, advice on how to obtain a better organum, and no fad diets. There is however a couple of pages of sheet music…

In other news, I have concept art for the cover of the book this will all become one day, in a year or so one suspects may be more. It will probably not have this cover but I like it for the moment, opinions on it would not be unwelcome…

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10 years down the Lane

Posted on July 14, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Ten years ago this month I published my first novel. I wrote it in July the year before, then spent a year redrafting it several times, while trying to convince myself it wasn’t just a mid-life crises project. I had always wanted to write a novel, I been writing for the better part of three decades, but now I had actually written one. It was finished it was done , it was as good as I could make it. The only thing left to do was to send it out into the world. It was terrifying…

A novel, as I have become fond of saying because the analogy appeals to me, has the authors blood on the pages. ‘You have to bleed a little in the ink, least the words not mean anything’ to misquote Ian Astbury. The other analogy I use a lot is a novel contains slithers of an authors soul. Both are equally apt when it comes to that first novel. It is also something of the ginger stepchild of my novels. I write an ecliptic mix of Urban fantasy, steampunk, and Urban science fiction. I write worlds of magic, or madness powered by steam. I write speculative fiction…

That first novel however is none of these things. It is a contemporary romance between two broken individuals, an exploration of two psychologically damaged, deeply traumatized individuals trying to exist in a world utterly unsuited for them. There is a lot of blood on the pages because when I wrote it I had a lot of blood to shed. Also I was trying to write something meaningful, not to me, but to the reader. Here was pain, here was trauma, here is the light at the end of the tunnel, and yes its an on coming train.

Cider lane is not a nice book, it not a comfortable read, when it is funny it is funny in counterpoint, when it is charming it is charming despite itself. It was never meant to be a comfortable read and if I achieved anything with the novel it was that. Which only added to the apprehension when it came to putting it out into the world.

To understand why I was apprehensive, why indeed I was terrified, one has to consider who I was. My mother taught me to read, she sat with me every night and made me read to her. Forced me to do so when I had hated the very thought of reading. I was dyslexic, though no one knew that at the time. In the late seventies dyslexia wasn’t something anyone had really heard of. If your child struggled with reading, your child was held back and singled out for ‘special’ classes. Stigmatized and considered to be ‘just a bit thick’. Teachers didn’t bother with the ‘special’ kids too much. Of course the trouble with been a very bright child who has yet to learn the word dyslexia, is that you know your are consigned to the ‘just a bit thick’ ‘special’ kids, so you believe it…

My mother bought a book about Dyslexia, which I discovered years later as it was hidden from the world in the back of a wardrobe. Then she made me read to her, as unlike the rest of the world, she did not accept that I was ‘just a bit thick’. As it happens she was not wrong, but thirty five years later when I was about to publish my first novel, in the back of my mind, I was still that kid who was ‘just a bit thick’. Why the hell did I think I could write anything, let alone a novel. Why the hell should I inflict my damaged psyche onto the world? Who the hell would want to read it? Why the hell would I want them to?

Can you say imposter syndrome? Oh I had it bad, I still do in fact. I seek friendships with people smarter than me, because they are the people I want to spend time with, and yet people smarter than me intimidate me. I try to write books that are clever, witty and wise, yet feel I am none of those things, most of the time. I am a terrible fraud, and someday someone will realize this and they will send around the people who will stop me from writing, for my own good.

Ten years ago this month, I published my first novel, and I was terrified.

Cider Lane remains the troubled child of my novels. Some people like it, some people should never read it, some love it, a few hate it. Its not a nice novel, its not a cozy read, and I left a lot of blood on the page, in places too much. It is also not a novel i would write now. Which is not to say I don’t like it or am not proud of it. I am very proud of the novel, I think it is unique and I love it now as I did then. I am just aware of its flaws and that it is the difficult child.

Passing Place, my second novel, contains my soul, the blood on the pages is the bright scarlet blood of the veins. My later novels hide my soul away and disguise the blood. Oh its still there, it just isn’t quite on display in the same way. Perhaps because I am a better writer now, or just because I bleed in a more controlled fashion. Hannibal Smyth, Lucifer Mandrake, Benjamin West, Gothe, Eliza Tu-Pa-Ka, and the rest are all slithers of my soul, they all bleed my blood on the page, but much of the blood is their own. Both Susanne and Colin from Cider Lane bleed directly from my veins. It is an uncomfortable book, it was never meant to be otherwise.

It also goes in hard from the outset. the first chapter is written exclusively from the perspective of a young woman suffering the trauma of watching her parents burn to death in a car crash she has herself just escaped. Her mind shrinking back to a primitive state of survival, deep in a psychological cave, withdrawn form the world. As first chapters go there is nothing soft and cozy about it, indeed the reason for the books eventual structure of alternating between the two main character stemmed in part from needing a different tone to buff the early Susanna chapters. Susanna’s perspective in those first few chapters are deep survival mode withdrawn from eth world. The counter balance are Colin’s chapters which are more open and flowing. Colin is just as broken as Susanna in his own way. More so in fact, his wounds are not as fresh, but they are much deeper, while Susanna had the resilience of youth on her side.

The structure of the novel, with the two main POV’s view flipping on alternate chapters is another of those things that some readers might struggle with. It is an odd structure, the kind of structure a novelist who doesn’t know better might feel is both challenging and interesting. And in actuality it was, once the characters inhabit the same space the first part of a new chapter covered the events of the previous chapter seen from the others perspective. This led to some interesting situations. such as Susanna behind a door holding a carving knife with every intent to use it, while an unknowing Coilin is trying to talk to her through the door. The two perspectives of that situation are very different…

Cider Lane is a complex, uncomfortable read, and I made some choices about structure and narrative I would never make now. It is a novel about surviving trauma, it isn’t supposed to be a cozy read. I don’t ask forgiveness for the ending, nor apologies for the telling. But terrifying though it was putting that first novel out into the world, for all its faults, I am glad I did.

I have not tried to sell the book for a long time. I don’t advertise its existence as such. I don’t take copies to conventions as a rule because its not genre fiction. It doesn’t link into to any other book I have written (Aside one nightmare scene in Passing Place that strikes home with those who have read both) It is however a book of which I am very proud, for all its faults, which are mainly faults of my making, I would never revise it now. Nor ask forgiveness.

Ten years ago this month I published my first novel.

We all begin some where, my journey started when I took a stroll down Cider Lane.

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Dear Edgar 36 – The Masque of the Red Death

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Mark Hayes

In the world of art there are many indisputable masterworks. True masterpieces that transcend the art world. Van Gothe’s Sunflowers. DeVince’s Mono Lisa. Vermeer’s Girl with a pearl earring. Goya’s The nude Maja, Giorgione’s The Sleeping Venus, that one by Monet everyone raves about, though I don’t see it myself, blurred landscapes with indistinct figures I ask you…

Fiction too has masterpieces, be it novels or short stories. Stories that are transcendent. Stories that are a slice of perfection, true and wonderous things. A perfect collection of the perfect words to convey a perfect story that becomes at once timeless and indisputable.

As I have oft stated that the quest of any writer should be for the perfect sentence. That no such beast exists, or at least that it is near imposable to achieve and is ultimately a futile endeavor should not dissuade the writer from seeking it. I have got close, once or twice. There are moments I think I have succeeded in my goal, but they are mirages in the desert. They draw you on with the promise of water, but your thirst remains unquenched.

There is no such thing as perfection, there is no perfect sentence, there is certainly no perfect story. At least not one that flowed out of my fingers as they scampered across a keyboard. But if such a beast does exist it is The Masque of the Red Death.

Two thousand four hundred and forty five words of exquisite, concise beautiful perfection.

Our own Dear Edgar wrote more than one story that could be considered a masterpiece, The Tell Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, Berenice to some extent and others. He certainly wrote many that could almost be considered such. But in my opinion none of them surpass this one. In The Masque of the Red Death not a word is wasted, or found wanting. Unlike many of his stories there is no meandering start or over done back story. The tale is told, a tale for the ages, one both complex and full of dark gothic imagery, but at the same time a tale of beautiful simplicity. A tale a reader can impose meaning upon and relate to as they might a contemporary piece even over 180 years since it was first published.

There have been countless adaptations, audio, cinematic, comic books, and the masked figure of red death turns up in countless ways through out pop culture. The figure of the red death is nigh on ubiquitous. While the idea of Prince Prospero gathering his wealthy noble friends and locking them all inside an abbey, whence they can party with excess, safe from harm while a deadly plague ravages the poor is one awash with modern echoes.

Boris Johnsons held parties in Downing Street while Covid ran rampant. The poor suffer while the rich drank wine in their ivory towers… The modern nobility, the billionaires, living in their private walled estates, their abbeys. If civilization starts to fall we all know who will be locked outside the walls and who will be within. Perhaps in that lays the long last appeal of the masterpiece. The prince, and all his rich sycophants that sought through wealth and privilege their own survival, while the poor died beyond the walls of their sanctuary, die of the same plague as those they cast to their fates.

His wealth did not save him, for in the end all are equal… to the Red Death.

The story, briefly for those who do not know it, is thus. Prince Prospero as I say, gathered his friend in an abbey, having first provisioned it to out last the plague that ravages the land. A plague called the Red Death because it causes those who contract it to bleed out of their skin. Once inside he has his guards bolt and weld the gates shut. Then he proceeds to have a party, several parties indeed a party every eve for six months while the plague ravages those beyond his walls.

 The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballêt-dancers, there were musicians, there were cards, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the Red Death.

After six months of parties the experience starts to wane, so he decides to spice things up with a masque ball. A ball spread through seven rooms each of a different coloured theme, blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet and the final room the black room illuminated with scarlet light, in which stands a clock, counting down the hours and chiming them in.

When the clock strikes midnight and the twelve tolls ring through the seven rooms a new figure is seen to join the masque. A figure dressed in a blood splattered funeral shroud, as if mocking the world beyond the walls, or worse those within. The prince is outraged, declaring the figure should be ceased so he may be hung at dawn for the impertinence of his costume. But fear spreads through the court and none dare approach the ghastly figure as it progresses through the rooms to the final chamber. Prospero gives chase , drawing a dagger to kill the offender who so mocks his court, but as he approaches he falls to the floor and dies in blood. The guests surge towards the figure, and try to grab him but the shroud and mask fall away revealing no one within. Then the courtiers begin to fall, and in a few moments the whole court succumb to the red death.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

It is a dark tale, a haunting tale, a tale that tells us in the end all of us die. That fate can not be cheated, before death all are equal and wealth and privilege will not save you. But dark or not it is as perfect a short story as you could imagine.

Many read into the symbolism with in the story, the seven rooms are widely considered to represent the seven stages of life birth to death, the clock marks time and death is inevitable. That it can be read as an allegory is not in doubt, but in essence this is all just backdrop to the story, a frame in which to mount the painting.

A FLOCK OF RAVENS EVERMORE…

SHOULD YOU READ IT: You mean you haven’t? Go read it now. Oh you have? Go read it again.. You have read it many times? Okay go seek out the reading by Christopher Lee on You tube, and listen to the perfect story read by the perfect narrator… www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymiHGQH54yQ

BLUFFERS FACT: Aside the masterful Christopher Lee version there is a beautiful version recorded by Basil Rathbone, the Shakespearian actor who was the authors first choice to play Rhett Buttler in Gone With the Wind. Basil was an actor of the old school who is best remembered now for his masterful portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in 15 movies in the 40’s and 50’s, (16 is you count The Great Mouse Detective). Sherlock Holmes of course owe his existence in part to Dear Edgars detective Auguste Dupin.

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Dear Edgar 35 ~ The Oval Portrait

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Mark Hayes

On occasion, when you spend time in the company of dead authors, you come across an obscure little story that inspired something far more well known. Occasionally the original feels like it is a pastiche of the more famous work. That is the case with this little tale by our Dear Edgar. But before we come to that let me illustrate this point with a little story of my own.

A somewhat casual ex-girlfriend of mine, was in an equally casual relationship with younger man, she was younger than me, he was younger than her. Both relationships were a tad torrid and doomed from the outset, but none of that is important, and it was fun for a time (and quite some time ago). The reason I bring this up is because one night the two of them watched the original Mad Max, the DVD of which she had borrowed from me, which was the main reason she told me this story.

In any regard, it gets to the end where Max handcuffs ‘the toe cutter’ to his car, and gives him a hacksaw, doing the whole speech… ‘The cuffs are carbonized steel and will take you twenty minutes to cut through, but you could cut through your arm in a couple of minutes.’ then sets the car on fire, leaving the Toe Cutter with a choice. Lose an arm or be blown up and die in fiery agony…

The young boyfriends response to this was ‘Seen that before, they stole from SAW’.

Now obviously he wasn’t the brightest as the concept of Mad Max being the much older movie did not occur to him. Despite the original Mad max been a low budget Australian movie that shows its age. But he had indeed ‘seen’ the whole arm or cuffs bit ‘before’ in his own objective time line SAW was the original, not the one inspired by another movie. I suspect it would have blown his mind to point out neither movie did that scene first…

Okay, so small wander through my own past over, lets get back to Dear Edgars The Oval Portrait. The story, which is about as short as Poe ever gets, involves an injured man stumbling into an abandoned Château. How he was injured? From who is he taking refuge? Does he like cream in his coffee? Was he ever in a complex casual love triangle with a younger woman? None of this is explained in the current version of the story. But this doesn’t matter the narrator story is not the story, the story is within the story, his story merely sets a framework in which to tell the actual story.

To pass the time while he hides out, or possibly convalesces, or whatever he is doing, our narrator examines paintings on the walls of the room, and reads a reference book that talks about them. Which is a perfectly normal thing to do after you break into a house with some undisclosed injury. Eventually he sees a painting he had not seen before in an oval frame. A portrait of a beautiful young woman. A portrait so captivating he is mesmerized by its for almost an hour. It is so absolutely life like, so ‘real’ in nature, the artist had captured the young woman in such exquisite detail, he is astounded by it. (this is the era before 4k HD clearly)

Once his memorization fades he looks up the picture in the refence book and then the story within the story is revealed. The painter was the husband of the young woman in the portrait. An eccentric who cared more for his work than anything else in the world, including the subject of the painting. The paining does indeed capture the life of the young woman, who dies while sitting for the portrait he insists on painting of her. The not entirely expressed implication is the life of the young woman was captured by the painting. Which is why it is so life like. It is life, all her life.

This is all beautifully written, it is the kind of story Poe writes so well, with a structured poetic prose that draws you along and lets you feel the old leather bindings of the book, and the capturing beauty of the painting. this is one of his shortest tales, and yet the perfect length for him to tell this story in the way it is told. Oscar Wilde praised this story for its ‘Rhythmical Expression’ which is hard to argue with, even if I was inclined to argue with Oscar. Speaking of whom…

Oscar’s praise for ‘The Oval Portrait’ came a few years before ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was published. He made no secret of aspects of the novel been inspiring by Poe. While admittedly in Oscars opus the painting shows the true face of its evil subject, the idea of a life been captured in canvas remains the same. Reading this story after having read Dorian Gray years ago, it struck me I knew this story, I had read it before… It was a hacksaw handcuffs moment…

This is, as I have said, a very short story. It is also far from the most well known in Poe’s bibliography, it is however well worth a read. It is a somewhat mesmerizing little tale, perfectly told. It is also very very Poe. A mans wreaked by obsession, the death of a beautiful woman… This has been going on since he wrote Berenice and Morella some seven years before. With his wife Virginia growing ill it was a subject very much on his mind by 1842.

A FULLY FLEDGED UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS

SHOULD YOU READ IT: Its a short read but a beautiful, if dark, twisted and somewhat disturbing, read. So yes, yes you should

Bluffers fact: This story was first published under the title ‘Life in Death’, in that original version there were several opening paragraphs that tell the reader how the narrator had been wounded and that he had taken opium for the pain. Poe removed these from the later version as he felt they added nothing to the story but ambiguity. Making the paintings life like nature seem to be a hallucination.

Having sought out the original version in the dark recesses of the internet, and utterly failed to find it, I must concede he was entirely correct to do so… But it does mean I will never find out if the narrator ever in a complex casual love triangle with a younger woman…

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The post-con collapse

Posted on July 8, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Working a convention is exhausting. I am not alone in this. Almost every author I know has much the same story. Conventions are draining, much I suspect because writers tend not to be the kind of people who are naturally gregarious. We chose to hide our personalities in books, we chose to spend time staring at words in the never ending search for the perfect sentence and to enjoy the world from behind the visage of the observer. We watch, we speculate, we consider, and we imagine. Directly interacting with it is something else entirely.

Now when I say this I do not mean that writers are incapable of been perfectly normal functioning adults. Though that said they are writers so normal left on the first tide and sailed off long ago. However in day to day life, when they are just a person who is also a writer, they can function just fine. It is however in the moment they have to present as a writer that things go a little sideways.

A writer at a convention stands, or sits, behind a table and stares out into the void of

  • ‘I used to read but I never get the time to any more’
  • ‘I don’t really read books’
  • ‘blank featureless stare follows by the smallest of nods and then wanders off’
  • ‘I will engage you in conversation for several minutes, say the book looks interesting, then say I have no money and wonder off again’
  • ‘I am a bored adult dealing with a child who is also bored and a significant other who is also bored and this have no interest in engaging with anyone on the off chance it would relieve my boredom’
  • ‘I’m a Cos-play girl, in a cos-play world, I look fantastic, in mostly plastic’
  • ‘Have you got a card or something,’ which may be ‘I don’t care but want to appear interested’ or ‘I read eBooks mainly, or just don’t want to carry heavy books about with me today…’
  • can I buy these on amazon?’
  • ‘Bert’

Of these only Bert is interested in anything you have to offer. Bert is a bit odd though, you worry about Bert. You worry about yourself because your talking to Bert, and you also worry that were the roles reverse you would be a Bert…

None of this is entirely true, there are plenty of lovely people who go to con’s. Most people in fact. The Cos-play girls are almost certainly lovely people as well, even the odd Dalek. I love cons and the people who go to them. but when I am working a table they can suck the life out of you with the sheer number of negative interactions. It is why I perfer to do them with people, like Kate, Ben or Gill. Two or more writers can keep each other going through the dark times between 12:30 and 2 when people are off having lunch and the same three cosplayers have wandered past for tenth time as dancing Deadpool’s with a smart speaker playing something atrocious, which is hilarious the first couple of times…

Working cons is a draining experience, working two in quick succession (Saturday and Sunday) even more so as you have to arrive early to set up and leave late to pack down, early mornings, long days, and the peopling…

I suspect my IRL boss for the day job was unsurprised to receive an text message on Sunday saying I was going to take Monday off.

On top of all this I gave out the very last of my pre-covid bookmarks half way through Saturday, and had none at all on Sunday. Given the ‘I only read ebooks, and/or can I get them on Amazon?, crowd are lovely people who I want to get my books that way not having bookmarks is a problem…

I had designed and order fabulous new book marks (see below), I order then weeks ago, they had not arrived in time for the two con’s. They arrived on Monday….

I may have sworn… a lot….

So anyway the advice for authors is this, do cons they are great. Take a Ukulele with you, and a silly hat. Smile a lot, even at the ones who aren’t going to give you a moment. Smile with the ones who waste your time a little. Smile at Bert, even if he worries you. Take a friend so your not suffering alone. Get plenty of sleep before hand, and allow your self down time afterwards

And importantly , order the bloody bookmarks at least a week earlier than you think is reasonable because they will arrive later then you think…

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Dear Edgar 34 # Three Sundays in a Week

Posted on July 4, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Occasionally, amid explorations of obsession and madness, horror and satire, existentialism and human frailty… You just need to tell a ridiculous tall tale or two to keep yourself amused. Nothing could be even slightly problematic about that could it…

Well…

Here is the thing, while this is nothing more than a tall tale, and wasn’t problematic to any great degree at the time when our Dear Edgar wrote this, reading it now with modern eyes can throw up the odd,,, lets call them niggles. And as much as I am a firm believer that if you read something you should read it in full knowledge that it is ‘of its time’, those niggles still bears a modicum of examination, not least because the niggles in this case are more directly reflective of dear Edgar himself.

In this tall tale our narrator, who never supplies us with his name, seeks permission from his grand uncle Rumgudgeon to marry the young and beautiful Kate, his grand uncles other ward. The grand uncle agrees with but one stipulation. The narrator can not marry the girl, who is his second cousin insists to the narrator that:-

You shall have Kate and her plum when three Sundays come together in a week — but not till then… …I am a man of my word. 

Okay, so ‘niggles’

Firstly the narrator wants to marry his cousin. Now it should be noted she is desirous of this too, and marrying your second cousin was not that unusual in the mid 1800’s. Half the royal families of Europe were related to each other in that way for a start, but still to the modern reader…

Secondly there is the matter of ‘her plum’ now I am not entirely sure what ‘her plum’ refers to in this context, only that it is mentions several times, and the grand uncle is some what desirous of her plum too, apparently…

Then there is another matter, the narrator has ‘seen his fifth Olympiad’ which is to say he is twenty as the Olympics’ are every four years. An oddly anarchic term in the 1840’s given the modern Olympics did not arise for another fifty plus years. His cousin Kate however is only fourteen. Now again this was not an issue in 1840’s America. this is not to say it was common, but it wasn’t uncommon or illegal to marry at that age, with a parents or guardians consent.

When he was twenty-six Poe married his own cousin Virginia Clemm officially in 1836 when she was fourteen. They obtained a marriage license when she was only thirteen in the neighboring state. I am well aware to our modern eyes this seems a whole heap of wrong. It would also be illegal now in the very states where it was legal then. I have also had people tell me they don’t read Poe now because to there mind he was a pedophile. Which were he trying to marry a fourteen year old today he would certainly be. And there is nothing wrong with their view.

That said, transposing the morality of today on to the past is something of a foolish endeavor and if your going to do so you should do so utterly, so you should probably stop reading Shakespeare as well. You have to take these things in context. Poe married Virginia legally with the consent (admittedly begrudgingly given ) of her parents. They went on to have a happy marriage. If you don’t wish to read Poe now because the morality of his day differs from your own I commend your integrity, I just don’t think your reasons for doing so are right.

More importantly I don’t think you should tell me, or anyone else, not to read Poe because his 1800’s morality is not your own 2000’s morality. This has happened several times… This is problematic because it is of it time, it was not problematic in its time. which is the point. If you want to know the difference, read some Lovecraft, there was a man who was problematic for his time…

But back to this ridiculous tall tale.

It is Kate, the would be bride, who comes up with a somewhat contrived solution to the three Sundays in a single week conundrum, with the help of a couple of navel offices who have circumnavigated the globe in opposite directions, both have crossed the international date line, so one is technically a day behind, and one technically a day ahead. So for the two sailors and the couple three consecutive days are effectively ‘Sunday’.

The uncle keeps to his word, and the couple marry… hussar.

Its a tall tale, its quite funny because of the way its written, but its nothing more than that short , funny , clever and written to make its reader smile.

THREE AMUSED RAVENS WHO SAW THE JOKE COMING BUT LAUGHED ANYWAY

SHOULD YOU READ IT: It is a perfect example of a tall tale, it is written to a punch line and writing to be funny in the tell as well as the end. As a writer it is interesting, as a reader merely amusing. But it is certainly amusing.

SHOULD YOU NOT READ IT: If you can not read this through the filter of the morality of its time, then you should not read it. Likewise if you can not separate writer and story. As I said earlier this is problematic because of its time, it was not problematic in its time. which is the point.

Bluffers fact: Crossing the international date line does not in fact change the day and the world keeps spinning, the entire premise of the story is wrong in that regard. As was Jules Verne when he used that plot device to have Phileas Fogg win his bet in around the world in 80 days…

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