There is a forth verse, I shall not repeat it here… To do so would seem unwise…
‘For She is Devine’ is the last story in the new Harvey Duckman Urban/Dark Fantasy Anthology. You do not need to read the other seventeen stories by seventeen other writers before you read that one, but you should. Its the only way to be sure…
Whom ‘She’ is, is a matter for your conjecture. She could be ‘The Sibel’ of ancient Rome. She could just be a woman who claims that is the case to add mystic to her illegal den of vice and corrupted youth. A dark forbidding goth club named for an ancient standing stone.
This is in no way draw from the authors experiences and he has shed no blood on these pages…
“Man was made to mourn,” says the poet. But not so:—he was made to diddle. This is his aim—his object—his end. And for this reason when a man’s diddled we say he’s “done.”
‘Diddling’, or to give it it’s original title ‘Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences’ is by way of a humorous essay pretending to be an academic work, rather than a story. It is certainly a fun little read, as long as one accepts this central conceit.
The text exhorts the virtues of the diddler, by going through a series of short cons, or diddles. These are all the kinds of cons you see in movies and TV shows when they are introducing a likable rogue or conman. You know the kind of thing, a man pretending to be a store keeper, to pocket your deposit on goods that aren’t his to sell. Another selling a fake ring to a credulous pair.
When I was a child, in the early 80’s the A Team would come on, and everyone love BA Baracus, played by the indomitable Mr T , but I preferred ‘Face’ the quick witted conman of the team. One of my favorite movies growing up was ‘The Sting’, fast talking con artists are fun folk heroes as long as they are stealing from the credulous greedy folk who are as bent as the conmen involved.
That is always the line by which we are sold a story about conmen, the victims of the con have to be greedy criminal types themselves. In the sting its a mob boss they are trying to con, in the A-Team it was always the ‘bad guy’ or those who worked for them. Grifters grift those who deserve to be grifted…
Of course in reality the people who get conned are the weakest and most venerable and conmen are not people to be put on pedestals, but criminals making off with pensioners life savings…
Poe’s essay on the art of the diddle is a fun read, but little more than that. It also make no effort to make the victims deserve to be conned. Its clever, quick and moves form one short con to another in rapid first succession but its not a story and if anyone but Poe had written it it would be a long forgotten piece in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier that filled half a page with nonsense for a quick pay day for the writer…
You could almost say it was a con… and the editor got diddled…
TWO RAVENS, ONE HOLDING YOUR ATTENTION WHILE THE OTHER PICKS YOUR POCKET…
Should you read it: I had to, you can chose to pass
Bluffers fact: Lord Gorden Gorden, who had nothing to do with Poe, and was really active 20 years after Poe wrote this story, was a diddler of the old school. He claimed to be descended from the ancient kings of the Scottish highlands. His real name was John Crowningsfield the bastard son of a Lancashire clergyman and not even Scottish.
He was a conman who was so successful when he finally fled America with ill-gotten gains form swindling a railroad tycoon it almost lead to a war as thousands of Minnesotans volunteered for military service to invade Canada after three future members of congress were arrested in Canada when they tried to abduct him.
The to-read pile on my bedside table is out of hand, it has taken on a life of its own, it sneers at me in the night and bides its time. I fear it has achieved sentience, or been processed by some forgotten old gods spirit* and one night soon it will take its moment and collapse upon me. Braining me with a copy of the complete works of Poe, two dozen paperbacks I have promised myself I will get read, several more hardbacks including one about pre-teen cannibalism, a history of dragon infestations in the modern era, and at least one book I had forgotten I even owed involving sheep.
*the to-read piles has over the years held many a volume on myths, paganism, and Lovecraftian horrors… it was bound to happen
I have little doubt one day the police will break in my house after i have been ‘missing’ for several weeks to discover my body, under this pile of books. There are worse ways to go.
Among the Lovecraftian horror of the to-read pile are a couple of books by friends and fellow Harvey authors Kate Baucherel and Ben Sawyer. Books I have been planning to read for well over a year, books in a series that both authors have new books coming out for this month.
Yes, they have managed to write entirely novels while their previous ones sat on my to-read pile, gathering sentience and planning my demise…
Yes I feel guilty about this…
Monster at the Gate, A Holly Trinity novel by Ben Sawyer.
I read my first Holly Trinity story in a early Harvey Duckman anthology (the original series), which I believe was the Christmas edition. It was one of the stories that really stood out. Ben had submitted it to Harvey after he met Gillie and the crew at Scarborough SciFi earlier that year. I was delighted when Ben followed the short story up with the novel he had been working on about his supernatural protector of York.
The pages of Harvey have been filled with many a Holly short story since (as well as other stories by Ben who is an annoying good writer) I read and reviewed the first Holly book, Holly Trinity and the Ghost of York, way back in 2021 and said at the time I was looking forward to the sequel. I see Ben at events and occasionally share a table with him, and say how much I am looking forward to reading the sequel, and it has sat in my to-read pile for over two years staring at me….
So anyway, with his next book due out this month, and in order to placate the forgotten old god of the to-read pile, I made myself pick up Monsters at the Gate, and of course when I started to read it, this turned out to be no chore at all. It was instead a joy…
With the ever present back drop of ancient haunted city of York, which is a character in its own right, its sleeping protector is awake once more, and her past is coming back to haunt her… I know, irony…
Holly Trinity is awake, the arch-bishop has turned to the strong stuff, because she fears what it might mean, the Gjallarhorn has sounded, via text alert, the horned man is running amok in the city streets. Luckily Holy has a new umbrella, with a zip line and The Hounds of Love on mp3 on her phone.
Mira has her own problems. Which is to say she has to keep lying to Sam about what she gets up to on her galivants with Holly. However exactly do you tell your significant other you off saving the world from monsters with the King under the mountain, when you are supposed to be working in a bookshop… And what is he doing with that Delia girl from the archeological dig?
Then there is Treasury House, the most haunted house in York , which is like saying the most chocolatey chocolate in a Rowntree’s chocolate box… Bad thing happened there in the eighties, and for Holly the memories are fresh…
Someone wants to bring about the Ragnarök, They have been planning for this a long time. Luckily while Holly doesn’t have a plan, no one has realized she is making it up as she geos along, she hopes…
Monsters at the Gate is a wonderful ride through the streets and history of York. there is Mystery, horror, and humour, which is a tricky mix, Ben pulls off perfectly. As before I can not wait for the next one… So it will probably end up on my to read pile and become and old god before consuming me in a deadly book-slide, which is like a landslide with books… Or I may just read it straight away, which seems wiser.
Bens new book The Masque of the Mummers a Holly Trinity Novel , is out later this month but not yet available on pre-order so I can not link it here, I have not even see the full cover yet as Ben seems to want to keep that to himself, Though this is some of the art work… And isn’t that a thing….
Monster at the gate and the original Holly Trinity novel are well worth a read while you wait.
Now I am off to lite some incense and offer blood sacrifices to the forgotten old god in the to-read pile. Hopefully that will placate it a while longer…
The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
If, as I posited, The Tell-tale Heart is much beloved of English Lit teachers the world over for its use of a corrupt narrator, this tale is its companion piece. Buoyed by the critical success of ‘The Tell-tale Heart’ which had been published in January 1843, in the spring of that year he put pen to paper on a second such tale and wrote ‘The Black Cat’. The similarities between the two stories are easily drawn*…
*hence its popularity with English teachers who like a lesson plan that writes itself…
Both stories have narrators that make claims as to their sanity, and in both cases that sanity is clearly questionable. The central theme in both cases is guilt, and in both their increasingly irrational behavior leads to murder, and there eventual arrest as the guilt drives them over the edge. They are in effect quintessential phycological thrillers, a genre that owes much to these stories.
There are however a few issues with The Black cat when you compare it to Tell-tale heart, one of which is the very nature of a story written to a formular. The success of the first story influenced the structure and telling of the second which leaves it reading a little forced in places. It does not quite have the flow of tell-tale. There is also an added element in which Poe preaches from the pulpit of abstinence. The narrators deteriorating mental state is attributed to his alcoholism.
Edgar’s brother Henry had died some twelve years earlier from complications brought on by alcoholism. Poe had witnessed this decline and had his own problems with the demon drink, he had lost jobs because of it and was at periods in his life a drunk, then tee total, then fell off the wagon. the Black Cat was written due in a period of sobriety and written with all the virtue of an ex-smoker coughing loudly as he passes the smoking shelter. This is to say he was a reborn abstainer and evangelical in his condemnation of those who drink…*
*Till the wagon hit a bump and he bounced off again…
In any regard, The Black Cat is a story told to us by a condemned man awaiting the noose. A man who first makes claim of his sanity before professing a loves of animals. All animals. A man never happier than in the company of a faithful dog, or cuddling a rabbit. A man who marries young to a woman of similar disposition. All is joy in the house hold of many pets, sand would have continued so had not the man found another love, that of the bottle. In his cups he has a temper, in his cups he might kick out at a hound or throw something at a rabbit. The animal come to fear him in his drunken states, as does his wife who he admits to rising a hand to when he is worse for drink.
All this is very candidly told, as is his treatment of the couples large black cat, Pluto. Pluto who unlike the other animals has not becomes afraid of him , but one drunken night, when the cat scratches him, he takes out his pocket knife and blinds his pet cat in one eye. He then becomes oddly resentful that the cat then becomes scared of him. Imagine… developing a fear of the thing that took one of your eyes…
As an aside, as a former cat owner before Boomer died a couple of years back, anyone who has ever owned a cat will tell you getting scratched is something that happens with even the most even tempered of cats. Play with a cat and eventually it will claw you in its own playful way. Gauging out their eyes for doing so is something of an over reaction one feels … But back to the story.
Resentment builds and the narrator end sup hanging Pluto from a tree in another drunken rage. I must admit sympathy for what happens to the cat murdering drunk after this is somewhat lacking in myself and I expect in the average reader… Also, no one seems to spare a thought for the poor tree in all this though. Did the tree ask to have a feline nailed to it? You just know all the other trees are going to mock her now and call her ‘cat-tree’.
“Oh look at her, acorns are good enough, oh no, she was poor defenseless animals hanging form her boughs.”
The woods can be very catty at times…
Having killed one cat, and given a poor oak tree a complex, the narrator comes to won a new cat. One which looks almost exactly like the other cat. He could have bought a ginger tom, or a nice little tabby, but no he obtains another black one, a black cat entirely like the Pluto, even to the extent of only having one eye, except for a white patch on its belly, a white patch that comes to resemble a gallows.
Drunk once more and incensed by that patch of white fur that seems to taught him with his cat murdering crimes he tries to kill the new cat with a hatchet. And when his wife tries to stop him, he kills her instead, and without a great deal of remorse he walls up her body…
The feline has the last laugh though, as when the police come they discover the body because the cat has been walled up with it and is still very much alive, and its howls cause the police to discover the wife’s body. Hence the narrator is now a condemned man
There is a lot going on it this story, and sympathy for the drunkard is minimal all considered. The tale grows ever wilder, and aspects of the supernatural are ascribed to the black cat who the narrator almost in passing remarks are known in folklore to be witches in disguise. The supernatural nature of the second cat is heavily hinted at and guilt plays a part, as does the occult reputation of Black cats.
Where the story falls down however is it is trying to be The Tell-tale Heart, but the narrator is not as obviously insane. A drunk is not as interesting as a mad-man, and though the narrators actions are horrifying, he knows this in his sober state, and does not try to justify them. It is all a little too twee, and a little too preachy. But the biggest problem is perhaps that I was reading The Tell-tale Heart only a couple of blogs ago, had there been more stories between them the unfavorable comparison would be less presented I suspect.
English Literature teachers should take note of this…
FOUR RAVENS, NONE OF HUME ARE HAPPY ABOUT BEEN AROUND A CAT…
Should you read it: Well yes, but perhaps not too soon after The Tell-=Tale Heart
Should you avoid it: Trigger warning abound, domestic violence, animal cruelty etc…
Bluffers fact: Pluto the cat was not named for Pluto the planet. Pluto the planet was not discovered until 1930 (though one suspects it was always there…) which was almost ninety years after this story was written. Instead he was mostly named for the Roman god of the underworld… Pluto was also the Latin root verb for wealthy, hence a plutocracy is governance of a society by the wealthy… As if there has ever been any other form of government.
Unrelated, but worth a mention, I have a story in the Harvey Duckman Anthology, Justice for Pluto. A book which does not take its name from the cat in this Poe story
No not prancing about on horses, which I do not do having no wish to inflict a poor horse with my riding skills, the other kind of eventing season… This October I will be at out there meeting reader and trying to seem like a rational normal human. While talking to a man in a Deadpool costume, a girl carrying a large foam sword and arguing with a dalek..
So you can find me, in the company of a couple of other writers , kite Baucheral and C.G Hatton at a number of events in the North.
I will be the one in the bowler hat, kilt and Newrocks….
If you are near any of these, pop along we would love to see you. I’ll be happy to talk nonsense about books, the blog, Lovecraft, Poe, and anything else…
(there are also other things happening at each of them clearly)
there is another event in November as well but i am buggered if I can put my fingers on the details right now
The naming of individual Harvey Duckman anthologies is a long and complicated process. The first of the new anthologies, for a long time as we put it together referred to only as ‘the steampunk one’ eventually became Folly and Madness after much discussion in the bar at the irregular Thursday night meeting of authors…
A sober affair that definably doesn’t take place most Thursdays in Connections Bar on Norton High Street.
A similar discussion lead to ‘the post-apocalypse one’ being named Death +70. A name that stems from the idea that after an apocalyptic crashing of civilization it would take the world no more than 70 years for the world to recover and for the last survivors to die off. I honestly am not sure who suggested that one, but once suggested there was no other name it could be.
This brought us to the first ‘Urban/Dark Fantasy’ anthology, and Gillie named that one ‘Rum and Rosemary’ based on what she was drinking at the time. We all assumed this was based on the other use of the word Rum, (uncanny and strange), and Rosemary being a herb associated with folk magic. We also assumed that Gillie’s professed surprise when was all assumed it was this other meaning of the word rum was put on and in no way genuine…
The ‘Science Fiction’ one was one of those pub sessions as well. We bounced names around, before Anna mentioned Pluto, some one said it was good it was a planet again and someone else said it had been a injustice when it was down graded. ‘Justice for Pluto’ became the collective cry.
We then faced a discussion over the next book, the original plan was to do ‘a second steampunk book’ but I, the steampunk author of the collective, suggested that this would be a mistake. That steampunk was a tad narrow and we should expand it to be an alterative history book. the inevitable what should we call it conversation was derailed quickly by me saying ‘ A different Tuesday’.
Occasionally inspiration strikes, Tuesday is always the weirdest day, and the title just felt right. Once spoken the title was never going to be anything else…*
*Except it is, Gillie added an ‘On’, making it ‘On a different Tuesday’ because it looked better on the cover…. Breaking the three word pattern… But still inspiration alone picked that one.
The next Harvey, due out in a few days, is ‘the second Urban/Dark fantasy one.’ Of course a long discussion was required over drinks to come up with the right name. I absolutely did not just type Three Turns Widdershins into the Facebook chat, without any thought…
For those unaware, Widdershins is an old Scottish word, adopted into English in the 1500’s. It means to circle something in the opposite direction to which the sun travels. That is to say anti-clockwise. To turn widdershins is considered to bring on bad luck, or to involve evil. It is ‘the wrong way’ around the maypole. In folk magic if a circle of witches were to move around widdershins they would be invoking the devil, or some other spirit of the dark.
To make three revolutions (or turns) around something, say a standing stone, is to invoke the darkness three times, and three is a powerful number in witchcraft… Which is the reason behind this delightful old folk rhyme
Three turns windleshin’s
Around the Lochfa’ston
Three turns windleshin’s
an’ call the other’s names
_
Three turns windleshin’s
a’fore the moon does rise
Three turns windleshin’s
And fear not the dark
Now if you have heard that rhyme before, which you may have done as a child, you may have never known its dark connotations… You almost certainly, and thankfully, have never heard the third stanza, it is seldom repeated and only recorded in some old books and a few scattered modern volumes on witchcraft. I will not record it here either. The third stanza of a folk rhyme,. A rhyme known to be spoken as a circle of witches goes around a stone three times , one stanza for each rotation… Well..
The third stanza holds the power after all, until the third stanza is spoken, and that third turn taken, this is just an old folk rhyme. Just words. Nothing more….
So no, I will not record the third stanza here…
That would be unwise…
The next Harvey is due out on the 10th of October…
I really don’t remember just why ‘Three Turns Widdershins’ came to mind as a fully formed idea for the name we should give this book. Nor why everyone agreed so readily. I am not sure if they know why either…
Luckily there is no way Gillie would have let all the words of an ancient summoning ritual be put into the last story in a book… She would never let me do that, obviously… Not knowingly.
Any more than I would do that, though now I think on it…
With apologies for the title of this piece to those pillars of post-punk The Alarm, 1976 was a long hot summer full of discontent, and a musical revolution that changed everything. A year in which Pete saw his dreams come true, though that didn’t make him a hero, just one of the lucky few…
Oh sorry that’s The Alarm again…
Strange as it may seem that song, about the spirit of 76, the summer of Punk, of The Damned’s New Rose, Of the Sex Pistols sing God Saves the Queen, of safety pins, bondage trousers and mohawks… Refences decidedly unpunk Beetles and the Cavern club. The song was however part of the sound track of my youth, and one of the first singles I ever bought when it came out in 1985 a decade after the birth of punk. I am, you see, too young to have been a punk. In the summer of 1976 I was 6 years old, playing on a beach, and had no idea for the turmoil been created in the emerging Punk scene in London and elsewhere. Which considering it was laying the seeds for much of the music of my own rebellious youth is something of a shame.
Over the decades since I got to see a lot of the bands of the punk era first hand, Stiff Little Fingers playing Alterative Ulster at Leeds Poly in the late 80’s, The Damned, having morphed into their Goth pomp at St Georges Hall in Bradford, The Stranglers several times, Siouxie Sioux no where near enough times. And even a Sex Pistol…
The sex pistol in question was why I started out talking about the punk by mentioning The Alarm, because the only time I have ever met a sex pistol was at the bar after a gig at a relatively small venue in Leeds where ‘Dead Men Walking’ had been playing, A band that consisted in its first incarnation of The Alarms Mike Peters, Kirk Brandon of Spear of destiny, Pete Wylie of the Might Wah (no I don’t know why either, neither did he really), and The Sex Pistol, the legend that is Glen Matlock.
In the least spirit of punk way, I thanked Glen for a great gig, then I struggled back to the table we had grabbed at the back of the pub with three pints of lager and a packet of crisps (actually two pints of Guinness and a glass of coke for my cousin who was driving, and no crisps… but what are you gonna do..)
Glenn smiled, gave a nod of the head in response and took his own pint back to the table by the stage where the roadie was stripping down the PA, Peters was laughing with a bloke in an Alarm T-shirt and Kirk Brandon was talking loudly with the ever annoying ‘Spear’ fans. I have no recollection of where Pete Wylie was, I am not sure he did either.
Anyway that is that, the entirely of my ‘I met a Sex Pistol’ story… Thrilling wasn’t it..
The next time I saw dead men walking there were a still a four piece but the void left by the departure of Pete Wylie had been filled by a guitarist wearing trademarked plastic sunglasses, another 76 legend, the Captain himself… But moving on from this rather niche music journalism… To the reason you are reading all this… Which is the fault of a somewhat more accomplished Music journalist, who probably owns even more guitars than I do, and can undoubtedly play them better than I. Stephen Palmer, who has written A History of Punk: Punk and Pistolry, a book all about the heady days of 76 and 77, the birth and death of first wave Punk.
I was too young to have been a punk when it was rebellious to be so, my musical awakening consisted of Big hair, eyeliner and the merciful release label. But goth, new wave, post punk, industrial and new rock wearing splendor only happened because Punk turned the world upside down in 76-77 and reinvented music. Just how much they changed the music world. All my heroes started out on indie labels, all my heroes were influenced by ‘the spirit of 76’ not the Alarm song but the spirit of punk.
I know the music, As I said earlier I have seen many of the bands over the years, or at least later incarnations of them, but I don’t doubt that while the later versions were probably more polished musically, and the audience as enthused as ever, an audience of middle aged, balding men, trying to pogo like they did in their teens to bands that are no longer rebelling but remembering when they did, is not really the same as being at the 101 club when a pre-pistols Sid Vicious drummed for Susie before she was Siouxie…
Stephens book is a window into the heady days of punk, set against the politics and life in Britain at the time. Not just the music but the fashion and anger that surrounded it. The attitude, venom and the characters that made it such a unique moment in British Musical culture. Stephen knows his music, and clearly loves the music of the era. His passion for the subject is obvious throughout, making this an insightful joy to read.
The insight is to a world long passed, almost half a century passed in fact since the opening barrage of John Lydon sneering out ‘God Save the Queen’ with all the revile and venom he could muster caused outrage. But for all the outrage, for all the establishments anger, the musical world was never going to be the same afterwards. The pistols were inspired by the Ramones, the pistols in turn inspire pretty much everyone else to one extent or another.
This book is a window on an era, a moment in musical history, a moment of social change and upheaval. The beginning of the end of post war establishment Britain. Punk had arrived…
Its a great read for anyone, even those born too late to have been there …
Last night I had an idea… Well, more than one, which was a bit of a problem. The last thing I did before turning out the light was scrawl in a notebook the out line for a book I have been considering for a long while. This outline consisted of nothing more than a bunch of chapter names and briefs outlays, but from small acorns…
The book I outlined before the light went out doesn’t currently have a title . Not even a working title. It exists purely as a concept though one I have been delving into for a long time now, and that has been touched upon in a few blog posts over the last few years. It is a book about Pagan spiritual identity, and quantum physics. Two subjects seldom spoke of in the same breath but two subjects that I believe are intertwined. The latter can inform the former, and the former give depth to the latter.
It is in essence a book about Quantum-Paganism*. This is not the smallest possible form of paganism, and yes I am making that joke before anyone else does. Though in fairness to that joke, the temple of the quantum pagan does have a congregation one, so maybe it is… But speaking as that congregation, it is not quite as unlikely as it sounds. Paganism is for many at heart a connection to the natural world as well as the spiritual. The two entwined in many respects. Quantum Physics teaches us that everything is connected, indeed connected in stranger more wonderful ways that we might imagine. This is a very personal belief system to me, as it helps me explain, well, me. Many pagan belief systems are deeply personal. This is to be a book about mine…
Whether anyone would want to read it is anther matter, but I seldom worry about such details.
With the lights out I lay in bed and my mind drifted over the ideas as I gently slipped into a peaceful sleep… In exactly the same way a force nine gale is peaceful… My mind is ever a busy place, and the howling was most unquiet and woke me again at five, which given I went to bed at two was not ideal…
Once I awoke I had other ideas… One of which was that I really should try and get back to sleep (this did not happen though I lay there trying to do so for some time.) It was then , as I lay there, my mind annoying abuzz with what may pass for ideas if you don’t look too closely, that I tried to make myself forces on one chain of thought. Its an old trick that sometimes works. Quiet the storm of voices by focusing on one…
Which brought me to another book idea, one I have done more than outline in a notebook but also less than outline. Indeed, the lack of an outline is the biggest problem I have with this one. None of the outlines I have previously played with have felt right. I have a few thousand words of bits and bats written but no real direction. I know what the book is about, who the book is about, and what it needs to be, but it hasn’t felt right, and I have been wrestling with one for about a decade.
Then last night, or rather this morning while I was trying to make it back into last night, I had something of a break through. Scarlet started speaking to me, as she has previously only whispered. So perhaps, just perhaps, it is time.
Time to return to Esqwiths Passing Place, someone unexpected just didn’t walk in passed Sonny the doorman. Yet somehow, he notices, is stood by the bar. A young girl, way too young to be in a bar, even this bar… Scarlet is here, though she isn’t Scarlet yet, she is going to be. Scarlet Sometimes, who is not quite living her life in order, and is not quite what she appears to be.
Fellow Harvey writer, Doctor who cosplayer, and supplier of sweets to small children Ben Sawyer has defiantly not taken any inspiration form Robert W Chambers for his next novel… Which I am looking forward to immensely, and will be out at Halloween…
If you have never heard of Robert W Chambers and don’t understand the reference I am not entirely sure why you are reading my blog, you have clearly never read it before, but hello and welcome we always like a new face/willing sacrifice around here. Or unwilling ones come to that… Anything that will keep Hastur at bay a little longer.
The Passing Place 