The Passing Place

The Descendent: The Complete Lovecraftian #45

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Mark Hayes

One of the problems with a writer dying young, apart from the whole dying thing which let’s face it probably puts a bit of a crimp in your day, is what happens to your legacy after you die. By legacy, I am talking specifically here about all those scraps and scrawls of half-finished works which are crammed into draws and dusty box files around your study. Because a young writer, the young in general, never really consider the possibility of departing this mortal plain…

Well okay, yes they do, quite often in fact, it’s the subject of a vast raft of youth culture, and sub-cultures, it’s one of the reasons black eyeliner is always popular among youths of a certain mindset… But unless you actively contemplating taking the exit ramp, are ill in the terminal kind of way or find yourself shipped off to a war zone, most of us under fifty never really contemplate the idea of actually just dying…

Why and I talking about this, well its because personally, as a writer myself, I wouldn’t want the unfinished products of my fevered mind to survive me, because they were unfinished, quite often they are unfinished for a reason. I have hard drives full of unfinished novels and scraps of this that and the other, half-baked idea’s, random thoughts which amounted to nothing, little side alleys of description which never led out to the main road. But just because I have never really considered what would happen to it when I die, and because I suspect there would be little interest in it anyway, I have never really put any thought into what to do with it. Though as its all up on my cloud, it will probably just dissipate away when someone stops paying the bill. I suspect I won’t need to have the hard drives run over by a tractor to avoid anyone releasing my half-written works, unlike Terry Pratchett who had his hard drives destroyed publicly in this way after his death.

In the case of H.P.Lovecraft, who died young as well know, his old box files and folders were raided by those who wished to preserve his legacy and let’s be honest here, make money off it, for every scrap and half written extract they could scrape together into something printable. If this was in line with Lovecraft’s wishes, we will never know. Certainly, he gifted his papers away, but if he intended these small abstracts to find print is somewhat questionable.

As for my own view on them, well for a start Azathoth is one such abstract, which I gave a solitary tentacle as it is just 500 words of something which was intended to be much more, than lay abandoned for years until Lovecraft died. I don’t consider it worth reading because it was never intended to be read by the author. And this is not in an ‘it was the last thing he was writing when he died,‘ unfinished work. Azathoth is just a scrap of an idea, which may have become his greatest work later in life had he lived, but it was a long forgotten scrap he had not gone back to, and probably never intended to. So I don’t feel they have much business been out in the world.

‘The Descendant‘ then is another Azathoth, all be it a longer extract. (three times longer at 1500 words) It is still only an extract, a possible idea, a fragment of a narrative that will never be complete. Written a good ten years before he died… So I think it is safe to assume he never intended to return to it. He may have reused some ideas from it, ideas we can’t see because wherever he was going with this narrative, we have no incline. But at a guess, he went there in a later tale, if his idea was worth pursuing because nothing lays fallow in a writers mind for ten years without being used.

It’s a shame we don’t know more as its an interesting fragment, and as a Yorkshireman myself I would have been interested to see where Lovecraft went with this tale of a noble house of my homeland, certainly, the little extract below is enticing, (right up to the word tittered, tittered, no Yorkshireman ever tittered, I mean really, tittered….)

Lord Northam, of whose ancient hereditary castle on the Yorkshire coast so many odd things were told; but when Williams tried to talk of the castle, and of its reputed Roman origin, he refused to admit that there was anything unusual about it. He even tittered shrilly when the subject of the supposed under crypts, hewn out of the solid crag that frowns on the North Sea, was brought up.

Scarbrough castle on the Yorkshire coast… (which is not very Lovecraftian, but quite nice and has a gift shop…)

But that just it, its interesting in a vague kind of way, but its interesting to me as a writer, not to me as a reader. It’s a scrap of unpolished prose, even if you ignore ‘tittered’, Lovecraft would have polished this within an inch of its life before he published it, and I suspect ‘tittered shrilly’ would be one of the first things to go as it just sounds wrong. But hey, we will never know. Which is kind of my point, why would Lovecraft want anyone to read a scrap of a first draft that was never fully realised?

So, to sum up, ‘The Descendant’ is of interest to only completists who want to read those small and incomplete twigs that reach out to Lovecraft’s greater mythology (there are a couple tiny things that you could argue do that but its really not worth the bother for a vague mention of someone looking for a nameless city in Araby…), those who write themselves in an abstract academic kind of way and, well that about it. What is isn’t of any real interest to, is to readers and in my opinion, it probably should never have been published at all. I suspect you can guess how many tentacles it gets… and I am been generous…

Next up.. Cool Air, a frigid little tale of undying interest…

Further Lovecraftian witterings as ever can be found here

Posted in amreading, book reviews, cthulhu, goodreads, Goth, horror, Lovecraft, mythos, Nyarlathotep, opinion, reads | Tagged #amwriting, azathoth, cthulhu, horror, Lovecraft, lovecraftian, Nyarlathotep, writers | 1 Comment

Fear of the Darkest Kind…

Posted on May 16, 2018 by Mark Hayes

One of the hardest tricks for an author to pull off is the series, and before you pull me up on that I know what your thinking as you read that, almost everyone writes in series… But that doesn’t stop it from being a problem I have found with the works of many a writer, because what I am talking about is writing a good series. A real series which continues to grow and expand with each new novel.

Anyone, (within reason, as the anyone I am talking about here is anyone who can write) can write a series of books. All you have to do is leave an open enough ending to do so, which often comes down to don’t kill off your protagonist, and let your antagonists get away, or be mere pawns for a greater antagonist. Depending on the genre, you don’t even need to do that, just having a few common threads running through your novels is enough to write a series of detective Ricardo Random novels. A few little links to the greater chain and your away.

With sci-fi and fantasy novels, more than other genres, a series tends to be a sum greater than its parts, or at least that’s what writers tend to be trying to achieve. It is also something of a norm for such genre’s. Readers like a series, they like something akin to the epic, something they know will grow around them, often as the world seems to grow around the protagonists getting ever more complex. It is also, all too often where for me as a reader they fail.

To pick a reasonably random example, mainly because I was discussing the books recently with a colleague at work who had them recommended to him, Robin Hobbs ‘Farseer trilogy’ is a series of novels I found disappointing. Despite the first novel of the series ‘Assasins Apprentice’ being one of the best fantasy books I read the year it came out. The problem was each of the sequels seemed less accomplished, though they were equally well written. Hobbs later novels set in the same world followed a similar pattern, and I can’t explain exactly why I felt this, but the first novel of each trilogy was easily the best, and then each trilogy seemed to lose that vital spark which had made the first book so compelling. Don’t get me wrong, Robin Hobb is a great writer, and her books are extremely good, they just don’t quite work as trilogies for me, there is something about her sequels that always seem to be a letdown.

Hobb is far from the only example, its a criticism I could and occasionally have leveled at many writers, and it is one I am making purely as a reader, so perhaps that’s just me. It doesn’t harm Robin Hobbs book sales, and she has a whole lot of fans out there so what do I know?

One of the problems is often sequels fail to have the same momentum, or they retrace the successful formula of the earlier books in the series. Take Harry Potter, while I loved the first couple of books, by the third my enjoyment of them started to wane. The rinse and repeat to the plots were a problem for me, which was to an extent was bound to happen given the formula to which they were written, but Harry goes to school, Harry falls out with everyone, everyone believes Harry is a liar, Harry saves the day and is a hero again started to grind on me. And yes, I dare say Miss Rowlings is not going to be too worried by my opinion, but its just that, an opinion.

Harry Potter is also not really a great example of my main problem with series, because Harry Potter was written with a clear end in mind. My main problem with series is better expressed by Robert Jordans ‘The Wheel of Time’ novels, an epic series of novels that grew to 14 books, three of them completed after the author’s death. This was despite the original plan been for three novels and you can see the point in the middle of book three where Robert Jordan’s publishers told him how well the book sales were going for the first novel… Suddenly halfway through book three, the big bad everything was building towards became a minor antagonist and the series was redrawn to its eventual epic scope. Which would not bother me as a reader at all had not the later books slowed down enormously, take on a ponderous aspect and basically drag out everything. The joys of the early novels were lost in this turgid swamp of new plot lines, new characters and less and less pace. By the time I gave up on the series around book eight the ‘Wheel’ was turning so slow it took a whole novel for a few weeks to pass in the main storyline. For me at least, the Wheel had virtually ground to a halt and I never went back to it.

So, if your paying attention to all that, you’re probably thinking, ‘ok, we get it, Mark, you don’t like series…’ Which isn’t true, I like a good series, in fact I love a great series, I just want one thing, one vital aspect which for me is the most important aspect of any series. The thing that makes a series great, is keeping that same vital undefinable spark that made me love the first book. Build on it, sure. Expand the stage, widen the ideas, bring more to the party, be better than the original, yes. Just don’t for the love of the fictional sky deity of your choice grind it down, don’t write it for the sake of writing it, and don’t just go through the motions. Robin Hobb’s novels (sorry to Mrs Hobb btw as I do really love her writing and recommend her books despite this opinion) would have been so much better if they were in pairs rather than trilogies. There is just something about the story arcs, the way they are written, and the stories themselves that would work so much better for me is they were across two books not, as it feels to me, with the second book stretched out into two to make them a trilogy because ‘trilogy’ is the standard form of the genre…

Okay, that’s my little rant out of the way. Why the rant? Well, that’s because with a degree of trepidation born mainly of my knowledge of how often I have been disappointed with later books in a series I sat down to read a new book by one of my favourite authors. The degree of trepidation was also greater than it would typically be when reading a novel in a series by one of my favourite authors for two reasons.

Firstly because I actually know the author personally and they are therefore not just an abstract figure who writes books I enjoy. (As opposed to Neil Gaiman for example whos books I also love, but I have never met him, I don’t have his email address and I don’t talk to him on a semi-regular basis over a pint and if I dislike his latest book for any reason I wouldn’t feel overly upset for him as I wouldn’t be likely to speak to him about it at any point.)

Secondly, despite some minor protestations on my part because I like to support other authors by buying their books, I was given a copy of this one by the author herself. (As opposed to Neil Gaiman who has never seen fit to send me a copy of his latest novel.)

As this particular book is the seventh book in a series, and I know how series often begin to chafe at me after a while, well if you have not got the gist of why I sat down to read this novel with a certain and definitely quantifiable degree of trepidation then you really have not been paying attention to the top half of this post… So all that said read it I must, not least because I was also looking forward to it and have been since I was sent a tiny bookette with an earlier draft of the first chapter of the novel back in September last year which the author had had printed for ComicCon… ( see this post on that subject last year if you haven’t before... which also explains all too much about me I suspect.)

Darkest Fears is as I said the seventh book of C.G.Hattons series set in her Thieves Guild universe. Its also, depending on how you count them either book 5 of the main series, or book 1 of the second series, books five and six been YA prequels to the main series… (And if you care for my own recommendation it’s read them in the order they were written, and if you have never read any of them do so…) So all that’s in mind it definitely falls into the epic series category,, so trepidation….

Also, bear in mind I don’t post bad reviews, ever, because if I don’t like a book I put it in the category of ‘it’s not for me‘ and move on. I won’t lie or sugar coat a review and I prefer to say nothing about the sliver of an authors soul they are putting out into the world if I don’t enjoy it myself because I would rather write ‘read this book it’s awesome‘ and encourage someone to read something I loved, than in any way undermine something that I didn’t enjoy that someone else probably will. (yes I know I have been less than nice about several authors earlier in this post, but they are big authors with broad shoulders, its not the same as me reviewing an indie author’s novel, and it’s purely my opinion on their novels, god knows given their sales my opinion is utterly irrelevant. I also have never reviewed their books on Amazon or elsewhere) So again as this is a book written by someone I know and who is probably what people less neurotic than I would just call a friend… So trepidation…

Anyway, what follows is the review, which is as ever utterly honest, from the heart and not in any way sugar coated that I will post on Amazon later today. (spoiler alert, clearly I liked it or I would not be posting a review. But if you’re paying any attention at all you probably figured that out by now as I would not have written this post at all if I didn’t.)

Darkest Fears By C.G.Hatton

This novel grabs you from the first paragraph and never lets go. The old cliche is ‘Once I started reading this book I couldn’t put it down’. Darkest fears is not a book you can’t put down, it’s a book that won’t let you put it down. It takes hold of you and drags you along, the action starts with the first sentence and never lets up. A joyous torrent of a story that sweeps along.

Like all C.G. Hattons books, it is incredibly well written, with an unending pace, a twisting gordian knot of a plot that turns here and there and back on itself yet never loses the reader, keeps surprising you, keeps you guessing, and always constantly enthralled as it pulls you ever deeper into the rich, expansive wonder of the thieves guild universe and those who inhabit its darkest corners and brightest stars…

Be warned, this book drives off the demons of sleep and if you read it at night you will find yourself still awake come dawn as the first rays of the sun great you as you finally read the end, exhausted, exhilarated and begging for the next book in the series…

Some series disappoint, Hattons Thieves guild novels never do…

Don’t take my word for it; you can read a little of it for free here

In case your in any doubt after that btw, all my trepidation when I sat down to read Darkest Fears, were blown away before I got to the second chapter. As I said at the start of this post, which may seem like a long time ago now. ‘One of the hardest tricks for an author to pull off is the series.’ C.G. pulls off the trick and then some. I really can’t recommend her novels enough, and god knows I have tried in the past as I seem to review one every year ( odd that, its almost as if she writes one a year… )

On a side note do you know how hard it is to avoid spoilers when you’re writing about the seventh book in a series so you have to avoid talking too much about anything that would spoiler the earlier books? I am reduced to writing superlatives and damn it I am running out of superlatives for these novels …

If she will insist on giving me free copies of her books then I’ll continue to tie myself in knots of trepidation, but I have come to the conclusion she is not going to start disappointing me as a reader any time soon ( I wrote about that last time I reviewed one of her books, there is a full list at the bottom of this post BTW) . If anything all that happens is her books keep getting better and upping the damn bar from the last one.

So if you have not tried C.G.Hattons novels before, why the hell not? Get a grip, will you! How many glowing reviews from me does it take?

The first four are for reasons that escape me completely are only £2.99 on Amazon, because frankly they should not be so cheap and the first one is free… LINK HERE

My other reviews of C.G.Hattons books can be found at the links below (and yes they all seem to have a lot of me waffling on about this that or the other before it gets to the actual review, sorry about that but if your in the least bit surprised by that you have never read my blog before…)

Residual Belligerence (the first novel in the series)

Kheris Burning

Beyond Redemption

Posted in book reviews, books, fiction, goodreads, indie, indie novels, opinion, pointless things of wonderfulness, reads, sci-fi, Uncategorized | Tagged #scifi, amreading, amreadingscifi, authors, bookblog, bookreview, bookreviews, books, novels, reviews, sciencefiction | 5 Comments

The Sunday Reviews #3

Posted on May 13, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Okay, your used to the drill by now no doubt and probably see no reason to read this first bit of waffle. Which is fair enough because I’m not sure why I’m writing this first bit of waffle. Other than as a little introduction to the three indie novels I am throwing up short reviews, based on the Amazon reviews I posted for them today. You may recognise the 4th novel in this little list, and the review for it isn’t written by me, its included purely because it’s a new review from this week and a bit of nepotism does no one any harm (also because its the 18th review on amazon.co.uk for Cider Lane and I am so close to the magical 20 reviews I can almost taste it…)

It’s Grim Up North By Sean Wilkinson

Geordie zombies, is this key side on a Saturday night

Grim up north it may be, but it’s also fun in a frivolous entertaining bloodthirsty way. The walking dead meets Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and a mad survival nut shows why planning for the apocalypse is not that mad an idea in the first place

The Last Necromancer By C.J.Archer

Grim Romance

The Victorian world can be a grim place, and if you fall off the edge it’s even grimmer. Even if you can raise the dead. Archer manages to make her world feel real an draws you into it so well for a while you forget it isn’t real

Bitcoin hurricane by K.R.Baucherel

Bright Futures

Baucherel caught me completely off guard and laid bare a somewhat gross assumption on my part. Did so with some style, a simple enough curveball to thrown at the reader, but it was somewhat masterly pulled off, I was well and truly hooked, because I am a sucker for having my assumptions thrown back at me…

And finally this week, this little review of another indie novel which won an award once, the review is by someone else clearly, as I am not that nepotistic.

Cider Lane By Mark Hayes

Powerfully Emotive

From start to finish, I found myself overwhelmed by powerful imagery and difficult emotions. Cider Lane is altogether beautiful, tragic and sad. The characters within are sculpted and honed to perfection, and their journeys satisfyingly illustrated.

(review by Christopher Hill 9 May 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase)

Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, cider lane, fiction, goodreads, indie, indie novels, novels, publication, writes, writing | Tagged bookblog, books, indie, indiebooks, indienovels, kindle, kindleunlimited, novels, writers | 2 Comments

The Writers Imperative…

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Mark Hayes

I have to write.

Let me just say that and put it out there, because some people I am sure we see that as an odd thing to say, but I have to write. It’s an imperative, a drive, and addiction. I can’t explain it clearer than that. It is not a choice, not really, not as such. I have to write.

If, as is probably the case, you’re not afflicted in this way yourself, then I am sure it will seem a strangely melodramatic statement. After all, this is writing we are talking about, it’s not a drug, not like nicotine, or caffeine, or alcohol or heroin (three of which I have been addicted to at one point or other in my life). When I have tried to explain this need to people, one or two have made the odd salient point like this…

‘It is not a chemically driven dependency, it’s simply a choice, after all, you chose to write, or not to write…’

Which is, on one level at least, perfectly true. Except it’s not, it never has been, and those who tell me this are missing out the most important thing about addiction… Addiction to anything is ultimately a matter of the mind. A physical addiction to drugs is only half the problem with drug addiction, otherwise, when someone kicks a habit and gets cleaned up, they would never run the risk of slip back to old habits. There is a reason AA hands out chips for sobriety. There is a reason why an alcoholic remains an alcoholic their whole life, even if they don’t touch a drink for decades. Chemical dependency may be a physical effect, but addiction is much more than just a chemical dependency.

So when I say I need to write and explain it is an imperative born of an addictive personality, that is exactly what I mean by the word ‘need’. It is a drive, a compulsion, a dependency upon which my state of mind rests. Sometimes it is a soft drive, sometimes it is no more than a tingle at the back of my mind, other times it is an absolute need, an absolute imperative. I need to focus my brain, to release the pressure, to let my mind run free, and if that sounds weird, well I never claimed to not be a little odd once in a while…

To be clear, however, I don’t need readers (oh I like them, want them, love them and love people reading my various witterings, but I don’t need them) I don’t need validation of my writing, or praise for it or to sell lots books, all these things would be and are nice but none of them is the actually the reason I write. I write because what I need, actually need is to write, and I have known this for a long time. Here then is a truth, somewhat simplified, but born of experience.

Writing does not make me happy, but not writing makes me sad.

When I’m not writing, and here I mean not writing at all rather than not doing so at a given point in time, then I slowly roll downhill towards the borders of depression. Not writing may not depress me in of itself, but it puts me in a place where depression can take hold of me if other factors fall into place. Depression is not being sad btw, that is an often made mistake, being happy or sad has little to do with clinical depression, which is why I said the above statement was somewhat simplified.

Lets just put it plainly when I am not writing I am on the road to depression. The need, the inner drive I have, which makes me for want of another word ‘need’ to write is an imperative I cannot escape. Its also an imperative I have no desire to escape, for I know full well from where it comes. Indeed, why would I wish to escape from the thing which is my escape…

When I was a teenager, a gawky, awkward, too clever by half, difficult and misfit of a teenager, I struggled with the world. And yes, that’s what all teenagers do to one extent or another, but I struggled more than most. Struggled to the point I considered leaving it more than once. Struggled with a depression that raged undiagnosed from my early teens to my mid-twenties, and this was the mid 80’s, the approach the world took to depression was somewhat less sympathetic at the time. I learned to self-medicate, the way most teenagers do. But I also learned the best self-medication for me was to write. Somehow, losing myself in a world of my imagination for an hour or two, hammering words out on my dad’s old typewriter while I played the sisters of mercy on the record player took me away from myself. Or perhaps it truer to say it took me to myself, my real self, the one that was not so awkward, gawky and confused. Writing became my medication, my escape and my release. Melodramatic as it may seem if I had not turned to writing I suspect I would not be here now writing this, and not because I was not a writer… Because there was always an alternative way to escape. The one from which there is no coming back…

As I grew older and slightly less awkward, the imperative to write stayed with me. It long since ceased to be about escape and my writing is far more complex and different from those immature scribblings of yesteryear. But the drive to write remains, not just as a coping mechanism, but as part of me, a dependency I have built, which given the alternatives I could have chosen is at least a creative force within my life. A good imperative, a desire and need that makes me better than I would otherwise be. But it remains a need.

I have to write…

Why then am I telling you all this my eclectic bunch of blog readers and anyone who stumbles over this along the way? Well its mental health awareness week, in the middle of mental health awareness month, and my need to write is much to do with my mental health, or to be more exact maintaining my good mental health. I don’t write an awful lot on the subject of depression. Writing may be my therapy of choice, but it is personal therapy, a mechanism that works for me that no clinician ever prescribed. I don’t need to write about my lifelong struggle with depression (and I am not currently under the influence of that old black dog.) But I have written about depression a few times in the past, and if by writing this and dropping links to my previous post on the subject I succeed only in helping one person in some small way come to terms with, or raising their awareness of, the disease of depression by a microscopic amount then its an exercise of worth. Writing is my way to fight my demons, talking to someone, which I never did, is probably a better place to start, and having a general conversation about depression is something we all need to do sometimes…

Previous posts related to this subject…

Depression and talking about it

A Biography of depression

Darkest fears: behind the masks

Obsessions

Posted in blogging, depression, rant, writes, writing | Tagged #amwriting, depression, mentalhealth, writer, writerslife, writing | 4 Comments

A Perfect Storm…

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Last night, around 11pm, somewhere between one too many coffees and the point where my mind stopped denying my body needs sleep, I hit a perfect storm. One of those rare moments when everything just clicks into place. A moment when my fingers found the words before my brain even processes the thoughts which put them there. A moment when the streams of consciousness ran uninterrupted from the highlands of my imagination and fed a hundred tributaries into the great river of narrative. A moment when writing was so easy and so all-consuming that every distraction, every procrastination, everything else beyond the keyboard and screen before me just melted away. A perfect moment, a perfect storm, and then it just held me there, caught within its thrawl, while the words flowed around me. Which reminded me fleetingly of Van Gogh, for when the storm raged it had been beautiful and terrifying, sweeping me along.

At some point, I believe it was about 3 am, the storm ended. Mainly it ended because of my need for sleep becoming overwhelming. In truth, the storm still raged as I lay in my bed trying and failing to sleep. Lighting flashes of inspiration wanting to be earthed to the page but these were just a mere squawl, the after storm wind and rain that takes its time to fade away. My exhaustion overwhelmed them in no time, and I fell into a fitful dark sleep…

When the morning alarm sounded too soon, I was no less exhausted than I had been when I finally forced myself to bed the night before. I was late to work, far later than I usually am. My brain still dizzy, still feeling like it had been on fire, a dull headache brewing, a need for caffeine just to function. It has taken till not to be able to process the wreckage left behind by the storm. So only now as I read through the words I struck against the anvil of my keyboard last night can I see what was achieved.

Some six thousand new words, three chapters redone, renewed and the whole curve of narrative flow against which I had fought for what seems like months has been altered down it new course. I think I have finally fixed the thing I knew was wrong but could not name nor see. I think I can ride the afterglow of this storm all the way to the great sea.

Storms are destructive, violent, and destroy much in their wake. Even a perfect storm creates much destruction in its wake. But destruction is a powerful creative force in its own right, and sometimes as a writer, they are exactly what you need. The trouble is you can not call them forth. You can’t demand they happen, you can’t even tempt them towards you. You just have to open up your word file, or lift your pen to paper, try to write and see what happens. Sometimes you get no more than a smattering of rain, a light drizzle, and sometimes the rain doesn’t come at all. But there is no point in hiding beneath umbrella’s, you have to get your hair wet one way or another. And if you let the rain come you may find yourself in a torrent, if you’re lucky.

Last night I hit a perfect storm… and it was wonderful…

Posted in opinion, pointless things of wonderfulness, Uncategorized, writes, writing | Tagged #amwriting, amediting, nanowrimo, writerslife, writing, writingtips | 1 Comment

In The Vault: The Complete Lovecraftian #44

Posted on May 8, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Not for the first time, and not for the last, I find myself with little sympathy for the unfortunate main character of a Lovecraft short story. Let’s face it, Lovecraft’s characters often get what they deserve. Okay, that may seem harsh, after all, who actually deserves to be driven to the point of madness by the scurrying of rats through the walls, or by listening too closely to the music of the wrong violin, or just because they are led down into the depths of subterranean tunnels below a crypt by their own morbid curiosity… Well in some cases no the characters don’t deserve their fates as such, even the hateful among them. But there are some who, when push comes to shove, get off lightly all things considered, and one such character is George Birch, erstwhile undertaker for a small New England town by the name of Peck Valley.

George is not a pleasant man, who does an admittedly unpleasant job, unpleasantly. He cuts corners in his trade, cheap coffins and has little or no respect or for those who are left in his care. A ham-fisted man with light fingers when it suits him. He steals from the dead of those little trinkets they were buried with, and if he has a spare coffin, he’ll make a body fit into it and save himself the expense of crafting one the right size. After all it not like its going to matter to anyone that the six-foot town clerk is in a five-foot-five coffin. Just loop off a foot or so literally, and he’ll fit in there nicely, what with it being a closed casket and all.

So, as you can imagine, it hard to find yourself overflowing with sympathy at this point for George. That sympathy doesn’t increase an awful lot when his sloth and general workshy idleness leads him to find himself locked in a vault with seven coffins that he was due to get buried days before but had not quite gotten around to. If he had just oiled the lock and fixed the latch when he had first noticed weeks before it was starting to stick… Well, everything that happens to him afterwards could be entirely avoided.

This whole story could be seen as a morality tale against the evils of workshyness, laziness in general and callowness in general. Lovecraft puts a lot of work into establishing the character or more accurately the lack of character of George. Unlike some other Lovecraft characters, this is one you’re supposed to despise, and on one level the tale is entirely successful in that. As George tries to escape his self-made prison on the backs of those in his care, literally as he piles up their coffins, you’re left with a certain anticipation of the comeuppance he has coming to him.

There is much of the grotesque in this story, not least the main character himself. It’s grim, dark and nasty. Unfortunately, it is also a tad on the predictable side. Nothing about the ending is a shock, even though it was written with a shock ending in mind. Perhaps that is a reflection of my own jadedness. The twist at the end is just so, ‘this is the twist at the end‘… You can see it coming and I would be prepared to bet most people if asked, fifty words form the end to guess the final twist would, even if they did not get it exactly right, have a fairly good stab at it. It doesn’t bite you is all I am saying…

All that aside, if you reject the conventional wisdom that the reader must be able to identify with the main character and at the very least ‘like’ them, no matter how nasty they are, this is a fine example of how to write a character who no one will like and get away with it. Throughout reading this, I felt like a cheerleader to the story, I don’t mean in a short shirt and pompom way, trust me no one wants that… but in that I was cheering on the end, looking forward to George getting what he deserved, the spiteful, idle, thieving, sloth of unpleasantness that he is…

Its that cheerleading aspect that really kills this tale a little for me though in the end. there is no real horror, or shock, or indeed anything disturbing about the story. It doesn’t unsettle me, or make me wonder, or make me thoughtful of the possibilities it throws up. It just is.

When I really like a Lovecraft story it is because its unsettling, because it makes me think, and sends me off on strange tangents. Instead ‘In The Vault’ is just a creepy little horror story the like of which I have read a hundred times by a hundred different writers. For all its grotesque nature and its hateful main character, it’s just a bit too bland, a bit too run of the mill and there isn’t really anything much about it. Which is about as damning a thing as I can say of any Lovecraft story. Its well-written reads well, but in the end, it is just nothing much, it doesn’t even have something to be angry about, or disapprove of, or complain overly about… So a couple of tentacles seems fair, but I begrudge giving it that many for some reason, but then perhaps I am gravely wrong in this case…

Next up Lovecraft takes us to my native Yorkshire in ‘The Descendant’… Bye Eck…

Further Lovecraftian witterings as ever can be found here

Posted in amreading, cthulhu, fiction, goodnews, goodreads, horror, indie, Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep, rites, sci-fi | Tagged amreading, cthulhu, horror, Lovecraft, lovecraftian | Leave a comment

The Sunday Reviews#2

Posted on May 6, 2018 by Mark Hayes

Last Sunday I dropped three short reviews for indie books I have read in the last few months because I was working through a backlog of Amazon reviews. As it proved remarkably popular I thought I would do another one this Sunday, that and because it will encourage me to finish working through my list of indie reviews I keep meaning to do and don’t get around to. I have kept the same format from last Sunday. These are short snappy reviews and meant as nothing more in-depth than that. If I have longer reviews of an author’s other books I will drop the links in at the bottom.

This weeks trio are by three ladies of Sci-fi, all be it different genres within the ecliptic that is the sci-fi genre. C.G.Hatton’s space opera romp, Shelley Adina’s steampunk eccentrics, and Jodi Taylor’s time twister, between them, cover a broad church of style and settings, but they all have one thing in common, great writing…

Blatant Disregard by C.G.Hatton

Everything you want in sci-fi and more

When the first book of a series blows you away, as ‘Residual Belligerence’ did me. You tend to expect more of the same and are so often disappointed when a sequel does quite match up to the original. Blatant Disregard blatantly disregards that norm delivering on the promise of the first novel and then ups its game still further. A fabulous sequel that just ups the already high bar. Read it, read it now (after you read the first one…)

Lady Of Devices by Shelley Adina

A wonderfully impossible never-was

Steampunk is hard to write well, a balance needs to be struck between the fabulous and the grim realities of the past, to make a world that feels real for all we know it never was. Lady of Devices strikes that balance perfectly and for a while, as you read it you can get lost in the wonderfully impossible never was…

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Historical in places, hysterical in others..

Time travel and that age-old problem with paradoxes is a well-trodden road by many a writer. It takes a good one to lift a novel above the cliché…J T manages to pull this off and drag you along on a whirlwind ride of possibly and implausibility that never seems implausible at the time. It’s not perfect, but I am sure there’s much more to come from St Mary’s practical historians…

All reviews are utterly honest, I don’t and never will do paid reviews of any form, and I don’t intentionally set myself up as a reviewer. I am just a writer who happens to read a lot, which is something most writers do… I review things I read because as a writer I know how important reviews are, and how nice it is to receive a review, unexpected ones even more so. This will probably be a semi-regular feature, and I am unlikely to run out of books to review. But, if your an indie author feel free to get in touch, though I don’t promise I’ll read everyone’s books, as if a novel doesn’t directly appeal to me I will pass. I would much rather give a good review than an ‘its not really for me’ review of a book because I am only vaguely interested in to start with.

Previous Sunday reviews…

C.G Hatton’s first novel in the Thieves Guild series reviewed

and Kheris Burning, Beyond Redemption, Darkest Fears (almost)

Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, goodreads, indie, novels, opinion, reads | Tagged #amwriting, amreading, bookblog, bookreview, books | 2 Comments

He: The Complete Lovecraftian #43

Posted on May 3, 2018 by Mark Hayes

New York, New York; the big apple, the land of dreams, where the canyon walls are made of concrete and glass, full of life and people of all creed and custom, the melting pot of the western world. Who could not love it…

Well, Howard Phillips Lovecraft for one… Old tentacle hugger hated the place and after a couple of years there he could not wait to run back to the small-town of Providence, Rhode Island where he was born raised and in the fullness of time died. His brief life in New York was as unhappy as his brief marriage, which was the reason he moved to New York in the first place. His matrimonial problems may have had much to do with how he felt about big city life, but never a man for self-analysis old H.P. blamed the city for his woes more than he blamed himself, and just in case anyone was unsure of his opinion on the matter the first half of ‘He’ goes to great lengths to complain about New York as much as is humanly possible. If that’s your idea of a good read, then good luck to you, but personally I dislike the thinly veiled wallowing in self-pity and NY hate fest that is the first half of this story. Suffice to say, H.P. never bought one of these T-shirts…

If, and I do mean if, you can drag your self through that first half of ‘He’ then it is, however, worth the pain. The second half of the story is far more interesting and revolves around a meeting between the narrator and a strange individual on a park bench in Greenwich Village. The strange individual, the ‘He’ of this tale, is dressed as if he has stepped out of the 18th century, and he offers to take the narrator on a tour of the parts of the city few even know of, the back alleys and long forgotten courtyards boxed in on all sides, which you can only get to via the buildings containing it. And because its exactly what you do when you hate the city and a strange man dressed out of time comes up to you offering to take you down the back alleys, off the narrator goes, following his odd guide through the darkness…

Yes… Alright… that does seem a stretch, but since when were Lovecraft’s narrators entirely the sanest of people…

Eventually, ‘He’ takes the narrator to his house, a strange building that itself seems older than it should be, and there hs starts to tell the narrator his tale. He is indeed a man out fo time, and he talks of a bargain he struck with the natives of the land, back when the land was still open hillsides and New York was still called New Amsterdam… A bargain struck for secrets and rituals of power. A bargain he paid for in blood when having got all he wished he dispensed of his debt to the natives in the finest traditions of colonialism, and with a little-poisoned rum…

‘He’ shows the narrator visions of the past and the future, visions of a future for the city that so terrify the narrator his screams are enough to wake the dead… Which, this being a Lovecraft tale of betrayal and dark power’s gained from ancient tribal wisdom, the dead in this case have a bone or two to pick once awakened…

The second half of ‘He’ is wonderfully written, and wonderfully envisioned. It is one of the better short tales that Lovecraft ever wrote. It has pace, drama and a growing sense of unease about it that build up momentum as it moves to its climax. It has craft, it has guile and it has an edge to it that Lovecraft occasionally lacks in some other tales of this era. Frankly, I love the second half of this tale. The first half is however awful…

So skip the first half is my advice, and that first half is why this just gets three tentacles, each of them earned in the second half, it would have been six if I had not had to sit through his melancholy mopping around New York like a bad Emo want to be with a personality bypass…

Further Lovecraftian witterings as ever can be found here

BTW I have never been to New York, and do not own an I Love N Y Tshirt. So what do I know, Lovecraft may be right about the Big Apple, but I don’t really care for his opinion on the matter, and sure as hell don’t want to read it ever again…

Posted in cthulhu, Goth, horror, Lovecraft, mythos, Nyarlathotep, reads, rites | Tagged #amwriting, amreading, cthulhu, horror, Lovecraft, lovecraftian, Nyarlathotep | 1 Comment

The Quotable Writers Block…

Posted on May 1, 2018 by Mark Hayes

We all get a touch of the dreaded writer’s block every now and again. Just as we all get a touch of the procrastination fairy, hit by wayward narrative bombs and once in a while manage to string a few words together without anything getting in the way. While right now at this moment I am not suffering from writer’s block of any kind, quite the reverse, in fact, I still find solace at times in the odd quote here and there, from the wise, the worthy and the occasionally witty. As I have not done a quote blog for a while, and yet they remain absurdly popular, I thought this one had reached its time in the sun, it no so much about writer’s block, as of how best to get past it. Not all the advice here is actually recommended, however…

“Writing about a writer’s block is better than not writing at all” ~ Charles Bukowski

“When words don’t come easy, I make do with silence and find something in nothing.” ~ Strider Marcus Jones

“Yes, I felt very small. The typewriter seemed larger than a piano, I was less than a molecule. What could I do? I drank more.” ~ Albert Sánchez Piñol

“You could see writer’s block as mental constipation but I like to think of it as cultural anaemia.” ~ Stewart Stafford

“Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won’t carry a quitter.” ~ Edgar Freemantle in Duma Key (Stephen King)

“Writer’s block occurs when a writer has nothing to say. Unfortunately, not all writers experience it.” ~ Ron Brackin

“Writing is a sickness only cured by writing.” ~ Niall Williams,

“Inspiration is the timid beast that comes to your open hand once you’ve fallen asleep having given up trying to coax it from its hiding place.” ~ Shaun Hick

“Writer’s block is just another name for fear.” ~ Jacob Nordby

“They told me I’ve got writer’s cramp. So is that better than the block?” ~ Joyce Rachelle

“Overanalysis leads to paralysis” ~ Rebecca Jane

“Considering I’m a writer, you leave me strangely bereft of words.” ~ Kelly Moran

“If you surrender to your imagination, the story will write itself.” ~ T.N. Suarez

“Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was stuck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card.” ~ Terry Pratchett,

“Writing something new is an effective way to get rid of writer’s block. Or you can observe the people around you and fantasize like I do.” ~ B.A. Gabrielle

“Don’t waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.” ~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

And the last word on writer’s block, that puts it in some perspective, from the ever wise writer of Slaughter House Five…

“Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Finally, a little peanut of parting best wishes to my fellow writers…

Posted in blogging, goodreads, humour, pointless things of wonderfulness, quotes, writes, writing | Tagged #amwriting, amediting, blogging, humour, quotes, reads, wordpress, writerslife, writing, writingtip | Leave a comment

The Sunday Reviews

Posted on April 29, 2018 by Mark Hayes

I have been known, like most authors, to make mention of the importance of Amazon reviews to the budding author. There are all kinds of mechanics in the background of amazons marketplace that ‘help’ an indie writer find his or her audience, and it is unfortunately very much a numbers game. It isn’t so much the quality of the reviews or even the number of 5-star reviews you get. It is all down to how many you have. Indeed, it’s better to have a couple of dozen reviews that average out at 4’s or less, than half a dozen 5-star reviews, simply because of the way Amazon treats your novels. It’s a silly system, but its the one indie authors have to live with. What is worse is its a system that is constantly gamed by the unscrupulous, and which Amazon try to refine often to the detriment of the honest writers rather than those who try to cheat the system with stacks of fake paid for reviews…

Anyway, that minor rant out of the way (read more here if you want to understand how the system works). It occurred to me, as it often does, I am behind in my reviews because I know the importance of them I try and review any indie book I enjoy, even if it is just a few words… So I spent a few minutes on my Kindle earlier catching up on my reviews.

As I have done some quick reviewing I thought I would throw the reviews up here as well, for those who may be looking for something new to read. (of course, you could always buy one of mine instead but I spend enough time trying to convince people to read my own books, give these a try as well if they appeal to you…)

Love, Lies & Clones: A Futuristic Mystery Novel by [Schultz, Joynell] Love, Lies, Clones By Joynell Schultz

Vivid and engaging near future sci-fi

The core idea behind this fun ride through a near future world is solidly imagined and brought to life vividly, with an engaging story. At times it slows a little and I felt it was missing something, yet if I was pushed I could not tell you what it was. But I would still recommend it to anyone who enjoys a mix of mystery and introspective SciFi.

Adventures with the Wife and Blake By Neil and Sue Perryman

Anything but bleak

Blake 7 is a bleak 80s universe of oppressive state rule and rebel idealists. sue, the wife’s, observations on this gem are anything but bleak, but a joyous breath of fresh air, even when she is so, so wrong about Villa…

The Wharf Butcher Micheal K Foster

Well Paced Strong Read

A book grounded in the northeast, the sights, sounds and people, which adds a scope and feel to the novel. The characters feel right and hold your interest, while the plot moves along at a good pace, While it is not a genre I read often, that this novel held my interest in a genre that normally struggles to do so speaks highly of it