Dear Edgar 29 ~ A Descent into the Maelström

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Mark Hayes

In 1962 Arthur C Clark wrote a story for Playboy about an astronaut locked in an ever decreasing orbit around the moon. The story was titled ‘Maelstrom II’, it is possible that this may have struck observant readers as an odd title considering Mr Clark hadn’t previously written a story called ‘Maelstrom’. Though one suspects while Playboy paid for stories and the magazines readers read them, no one bought the magazine for the short stories, even if they were written by a veritable master of Science Fiction in the middle of his career. So it is quite possible no one ever questioned the oddity of the title, when they read it on a rainy Tuesday lunch time in July, before they went back to looking at pictures of Norwegian model Unne Terjesen who was that months Playmate of the month

By strange coincidence, Maelstrom II was based on an original short story who’s main character, like Unne Terjesen is Norwegian, though admittedly a less tall, bronzed, blonde and beautiful Norwegian, as he was a fisherman in the story (not that fishermen can’t be tall blonde and beautiful). That original story was of course by our Dear Edgar, otherwise all of this would just be a somewhat tenuous excuse to use a picture of the very pretty Miss Terjesen for this blog post. The story in question being ‘A Descent into the Maelström’ and was the story Arthur C Clark drew upon when he wrote Maelstrom II. Hence the oddity of the title no body questioned.

The original story was first published over a hundred years before Arthur’s 1962 homage, in 1841, and despite been set at sea is considered to be one of the first real science fiction stories, as it bares all the hallmarks of speculative fiction. The fisherman surviving his strange adventure through observation of the nature of currents around a giant whirlpool. The maelstrom of the title. The maelstrom itself is a very real thing, know as the Moskstraumen. It lays in the northern Norwegian sea between the last few islands in a chain that runs out some twenty-five miles from mainland Norway and is a near unique natural wonder caused by the tidal currents, and the shape of an undersea ridge. Whirlpools form and reform as the tides shift and in strong gales can becomes enormous.

The Moskstraumen has been around a long time, as the map below from 1539 illiterates, though where the giant red sea serpents troubling shipping have vanished to is another question.

The narrator in Dear Edgars story is taken by an old fisherman up to the top of a cliff that overlooks the great bore, once there, with the view suitable admired and explained, the old fisherman starts to tell his story. He and his two brothers were, it seems, out fishing, when a gale descended upon them and as they turned for home they were blown northwards until they were caught by the current and the wind pushed them into the edge of the vortex which was all the wilder for the storm. The small ship, despite everything the brothers do to fight against the bore, is drawn further and further in circling the largest of the whirlpools in ever decreasing circles. All hope seems lost…

The old fisherman manages to keep his head, enough to realize the boat is doomed as larger objects are drawn into the heart of the whirlpool faster. Where as smaller less streamlined objects turn slower and descend slower into the watery maw. He pleads with his brothers to abandon the ship, but when they refuse he throws a barrel in the water and himself after it. He clings to the barrel for dear life as the whirlpool takes his small craft and his brothers down to the depths. He continues to cling to that barrel for hours, circling his doom, and sure he has merely delayed the inevitable, but then the storm abates, the whirlpool calms and the man is rescued by a passing fisherman. The last of the three siblings, his brothers long since drown.

He is of course not unmarked by the experience. The old man talking to the narrator is not so old. he went into the sea with lush dark hair a young man in his twenties. He emerged with his hair turned white and seemingly aged beyond recognition by the experience.

Now all this is an interesting enough story, based in a real place and even the science about the way objects react to a whirlpool is not entirely fatuous. It does however suffer a tad from a common affliction of Poe stories at this point in his career, which is to say there is a degree of padding. Were such a tale to be submitted to me wearing my anthology editors hat (a delightful bowler if you must know), I would suggest the writer lost at least 500 – 1000 words at the beginning and tightened it up. The early going is very descriptive of the view from the clifftop, long winded and dull. The real meat of the story starts when the ‘old’ fisherman tells his tale and even then it takes some getting going. That is not to say it is just padding, but it takes some getting through to get to the real story.

It is almost as if Poe was being paid by ‘Grahams magazine’ a fee based on column inches, and boy does the early going show it… Interestingly the same can be said for Arthur C Clarks tale in Playboy which paid for articles and stories by word count…

In any regard this is a strong story, well grounded and fascinating in of itself, even with the laborious opening 3rd. Whether it would girder more interest than the center fold is another matter but one suspects the center folds in an 1841 magazine were somewhat less alluring, and defiantly more ‘suitably’ dressed than the delightful Unne Terjesen in 1962. Though I have it on good authority, they were showing all kinds of ankle…

A TRIO OF SHIFTY LOOKING RAVENS, SLIGHTLY DIZZY FROM LOOKING AT WHIRLPOOLS

Should you read it : It is an interesting tale, I would say skipping the first third is not unreasonable and you don’t lose anything in doing so.

Should you not read it: its a inoffensive little tale, as tales goes

Bluffers fact: For reasons that make little sense, save perhaps the repetitive nature of swirling around a whirlpool clinging to a barrel in a raging storm has some musical merit, there have been several pieces of music ‘inspired’ by this story, including a piece by composer Philp Glass commissioned by the Australian Dance Theater, because that makes perfect sense… An early use of multitracking in 1953 by Pianist Lennie Tritano, which is quite quite odd… And an instrumental track by the Spanish Prog Rock band Crack on their one and only album.

There is something to be said for a story which inspires an obscure Spanish prog rock band with a whole one album to their name. I am not sure what that something is, but still, cool track if you like obscure progressive rock, and who doesn’t…

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Dialogues: What is beyond

Posted on April 24, 2025 by Mark Hayes

I wrote a dialogue between two, well lets call them people, one of them certainly is. The other, well at this point I am not entirely sure what they are myself. Its the kind of random dialogue that ends up in my scraps folder and may or may not see the light of day. I have an idea what its all about and the context behind it all, but little more than that. Sometimes these things just need to be written down.

What is beyond?
The place where he lays
The dead god?
Some call him such
And is he?
Is he what?
Dead?
Who is to say?
How long have you sat there?
Here?
Yes here, on the doorstep of a dead gods tomb, how long, for they say you’re always here.
Always is a long time, but in relation to eternity, I have been here but a moment.
I spoke to a guard yesterday who claimed to remember seeing you here when he was a child.
People grow as the years flow by.
Perhaps but he was near sixty and claims you’re the same now as you were then.
The memories of men can be fleeting, can they not? Clouded by the years that pass, what they remember now may not have been what was, merely what they believe to have been.
You speak in riddles my friend.
Are we friends now? You assume my friendship after few words, how brave of you.
Brave?
To trust so easily the words of others.
You’re saying the guard lied.
No, to lie is a conscious choice, he did not lie, he is merely wrong. I haven’t been here since he was a child.
So you were not here when he was a child then?
I did not say that, you need to listen to words as spoken and assume their meaning less.
Riddles again…
If you think so, but I speak plain enough for most.
So, you’re saying you were here when he was a child and you have not changed, but you have not been here since he was a child… So far longer…
Now you perceive the meaning of my words.
Interesting!
Is it?
You know, they say there was a great battle here once. Thousands of years ago.
Ten thousand of your years ago, and a great battle at that. A battle between men and things that were not men. Between gods and things that were not gods…
So they say, yes. Was there?
Yes.
They also say that is where the god was slain, the god they built this tomb around.
So they say.
Yes, so they say… And some say you have sat here since that day and watched the entrance of his tomb. Watching this open door, this arch way into darkness. They say you have sat here all these years. Thousands of years. Never sleeping, never eating, just sat watching this doorway.
Do they? They say much these ones who say these things.
Ten thousand years is a long time.
Is it? Perhaps it is, but that depends on your perspective. To a mountain ten thousand years in but a moment.
A moment in eternity…
(laughter,) No, mountains do not last an eternity, though it may seem so. To the mayfly a toad seems ancient. To a Mayfly a toad is not unlike a god.
Toad? Mayflies? mountains? Riddles again.
Not so, I speak plainly. You merely do not grasp meaning. But then does a mayfly grasp the nature of the toad.
Am I a mayfly then?
To that which lays within, yes.
The dead god.
You may think of him as such, or perhaps think of him as the toad, though he will not thank you for doing so.
I do not seek the thanks of a dead god.
That is well for you are unlikely to receive them.

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Justice for Pluto

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Just over 18 months ago a group of ecliptic individuals sat around in a not particularly dark room and plotted a murder, or as they saw it, in truth, a mercy killing. Blades were sharpened, arguments made, counter arguments presented, then when all was said and done Harvey Duckman Presents was slain…

There were reasons for killing the series, the old model didn’t work well. The anthologies took stories of multiple genres on a shared royalty deal that while sound in principle became increasingly unmanageable and as often happens a small minority of the writers involved turned out to be ‘problematic’ which marred the series for the main driving force behind it the incomparable Gillie Hatton (scifi writer C.G.Hatton). It was a case of a couple of rotten apples spoiling the barrel. The joy of editing and producing the series was sucked away by a few discontents* to the detriment of the many.

*if you are the kind of person who threatens legal action over a owed royalty of £3.24 and sends snotty abusing emails in this regard, congratulations you directly contributed to the killing off of very anthology that first published your work. If your wondering at all about the likelihood of anything else you submit ever been printed in the new Harvey Series let me save you the trouble of asking. The answer will be no.

Harvey was killed, and in the end it was a merciful death, but from the ashes a new Harvey was born, under a new model that would hopefully become self financing. With writers been paid a set fee for stories once published rather than unmanageable royalties systems and focused anthologies rather than free for all’s. New Harvey’s that would be genre specific but still encourage new writers and the best of the old to submit stories.

It took six months after the mercy killing to get the first of the new Harvey’s out. Even that six months was a lot of work in the back ground and over half the stories in that first edition were originally submitted over a year before. It was a difficult start, and putting in place a support system for Gillie to enable her to do what she loved without dealing with the other side of the anthology’s she found difficult, took time to balance. There is now a team of readers who read submissions. A stroppy Yorkshireman to deal with writing rejection emails and dealing with authors questions. There is fun stuff too like cover designing and other stuff to do with the series. While along side the main series, where we publish a new anthology every 3 months, there is a flash fiction book that comes out ever month with tiny stories written to a new thee each month. the Harvey site with author interview, advice, and general fun things . A whole lot in fact. but central to all this is the main anthology series.

Which brings me to finding Justice for the mostly Trans-Neptunian planet that is considered to be the ninth planet in our solar system, and was somewhat unjustly relegated to a mere Trans-Neptunian Object* by some astrologer for several years before it was reinstated as a planet once more.

*There are in fact seven dwarf planets (though three are listed as ‘possible dwarf planets’) among the many other Trans-Neptunian Objects that have been identified. Two of them even have moons. The main reason Pluto is recognized as a planet is because it was discovered first. Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Quaoar, Orcus, Sedna, and Gonggong all could lay equal claim to planethood.

The most plausible reason why the other TNO Dwarf-planets are not recognized as planets is I suspect because learning all nine planets in order is already too much for some people before you add another seven dwarf’s. Given Disney’s recent issues with that number of dwarfs this may prove wise…

In any regard, while Justice for Eris (actually bigger than Pluto) would be a worthy cry, Justice for Pluto has more of a ring to it and will not leave people scratching their heads. Also Justice for Gonggong just sounds weird. So the name of the latest Harvey Duckman anthology remains Justice for Pluto. Just because we like the name… And it is out tomorrow (actually today but who is checking these things)

My own story is about the Catholic colonization of the universe and the ultimate proof of the existence of god, and is not at all a heretical homage to Iain M Banks with a knife missile murder Bot called Gladice… I have read most of the others because of my involvement in the project as a whole, its a wonderful mix of ecliptic Scifi, from some of my favorite writers, and a few who are new to me because seem destined to become favorites.

So let the cry go out, ‘Justice For Pluto…..’ the 4th of the new Harvey’s and this one is pure sci-fi

HARVEY DUCKMAN PRESENTS: JUSTICE FOR PLUTO

Harvey Duckman is back with a brilliantly quirky collection of science fiction tales, packed with spaceships and stasis pods, aliens and artefacts, sentient AI and space exploration, planetary science and more…

Looking for original, wonderfully imaginative stories from a bunch of fantastic writers? Sit back and enjoy a glimpse into our weird and wonderful worlds.

Featuring thought-provoking, poignant, atmospheric, sometimes darkly funny and always entertaining short stories from Mark Hayes, Phil Sculthorpe, A.D. Watts, Kirsten Luckins, Keith Errington, Anna Atkinson-Dunn, Kate Baucherel, Davia Sacks, C. K. Roebuck, J.R. Whitbourn, John Holmes-Carrington, Trisha Ridinger McKee, R. Bruce Connelly, Ben Sawyer and maybe even CG Hatton.

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Tales from the notepads

Posted on April 8, 2025 by Mark Hayes

At work, the one that pays the bills, I have a pile of notebooks. Some are very much ‘work’ notebooks full of notes for work. Others are note pads full of, well not work related notes, writers notes. Note’s I have taken when escorting contactors, or at my desk on a lunch time, or hanging on conference calls waiting to be asked to go and do technical things, and knowing no one is going to ask me for a couple of hours. Generally is its just ‘non-work’ the note books will eventually find there way back home to the note pad pile on the bookcase near my home desk.

Some notebooks are full of both work and writers notes, and so have to stay at work and get forgotten about . Often they are just small scenes I have half written in because an idea came to me. Often these were written several years ago, and I am not 100% sure what they were about. Other time I start to remember as I read them. Like the small dialogue below between a physiotherapist and his patient, the origins of which I remember…

This dialogue was written to take place after a the patient describes, in some detail the events that take place at dusk on the 3rd day of a battle. I know this because I have a mind map a couple of pages before this piece describing that whole scene in not form. Basically small descriptions of events to take place over a full chapter of with arrows and lines linking them up in some kind of order, only half of which makes much sense. Some of which is not entirely legible as my hand writing is ecliptic at best.

This doesn’t matter overly as I know the scene being described, which is Battle of Roncevaux Pass at which reputedly the most famous of Charlemagne’s Paladin knights met his end. It was supposed to be a long scene written with a dream like quality to it. A recollection, rather than observation, of the events at Roncevaux Pass. Which was to be followed, in the half thrown together idea of a story or a novel that may or may not ever be written , by this dialogue. Written out long hand on the page of a note book , then forgotten about for a couple of years or more till I came across it today.

“So Roland…”

“Orlando!”

“Orlando them if you prefer. What do you think all that means?”

“Is that not what you are suppose to tell me?”

“Well sure, sure. But I do not interpret dreams as such.”

“They are not dreams.”

“Are they not? Well let me ask you this. What year did the battle you describe take place?”

“the year of our Lord seven ninety three.”

“And todays date is?”

Grunted laughter… “it matters not.”

“It matters not? We are in the third decade of third millennium, yet you speak of observing a battle in the first. By my reconning some fourteen hundred years ago.”

“it is still no dream.”

“What is it then, if not a dream?”

“A memory…”

There are more notes. Another couple of conversations though less defined than this one. There is a note that says in the battle scene Roland refuses to fight, though this is contradicted later there is also this little aside

“let no man claim to be the best on life, least his vanity doth prove his undoing!”

“Yet you believe yourself so?”

“Of course, least tis between myself and Roland…”

I am not entirely sure who is speaking, though I suspect it is Renaud, Roland’s rival in many things. I have a lot of notes, I clearly had a lot of ideas when I wrote them and I know who sent me down this path in the first place, (looking at you Jessica Law). But I had other things to write and stories to tell so this whole Roland/Orlando novel idea was confined to a note book at work and for a time forgotten, till I read through my notes today.

I have many note books that tell similar tales, and more stories never written than you could ever imagine. I may one day get back to this one, or some other no doubt. My advise to any writer is to write things down, in note pads , in files on your computer, voice notes , what ever, but when you have ideas tame them. That is how novels get started. The Lucifer Mandrake novel began as I have said before form a small dialogue lost in notes I stumbled back over years later.

Speaking of which there were other unrelated notes in that note book including this one which I suspect was a passing note for Lucifer, one of them at any rate…

In the beginning there was darkness, and then the lord said “let there be light!”

Have you ever wondered who he said that to?

I mentioned this on Bluesky the other day and a friend there (summer oaks) pointed out he could of course have just been talking to himself, but then asked the somewhat pertinant question.

Who wrote down what he said?

I have not yet formulated an answer to that one. But I like to think it was a small cherub called Mildred. For more joyfully important conversations you can find me on blue sky under my actual name, which makes a nice change for social media @markhayes.bsky.social

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Research and the novel

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Back in August 2021 I wrote a post about the value of research to a fiction writer, and specifically in regard to a short story I had written called ‘Mandrake’ that was at the time had just being published in a Harvey Duckman anthology. This was the first time I ever mentioned the name Lucifer Mandrake on the blog and at the time I had no more than fleeting intentions of ever taking that short story and the characters within any further. February saw the publication of the Lucifer Mandrake novel I first vaguely posited way back then. It’s been a long road since then, but I thought I would revisit the concept of research…

Research is one of the most important aspects of the fiction writers toolbox, I am aware this may seem counterintuitive, after all its fiction. We just make it up don’t we? Well yes. But when ‘just making things up’ research is often far more important than you might imagine.

If you want the reader to invest in the world your characters inhabit you need it to be convincing. So, when writing something set in the mid Victorian period, even a fantasy where the ‘rules’ of how the world works have been tweaked, you still need the period details to be right. Mid-Victorian England is a very solid place and time. Your readers will know a lot about it, some of the things they know may not be entirely accurate, some may be down right wrong, but if you ever have to defend your historical accuracy in your version of Mid Victorian England, where magic is real and someone is raising members of the house of lords as zombies (some one is bound to notice the undead in the upper chamber of parliament eventually), you need to get the actual historical details correct. Or if they are wrong have them wrong for reasons of plot not oversight.

Doing that kind of research might sound a little tedious, but it isn’t for me because I love research. This may be because when I am doing research I’m not acctually having to write. Writing is work, and like most writers I know, we may love to write but the old gods and the new know we will try and avoid it as much as possible. Research is perfectly valid procrastination… We are not avoiding work we are working, its not our fault that this working involves a large cup of tea, a slice of cake, lounging on the sofa and leafing through Brewster’s book of Phrase and Fable* or Stotts Original Miscellany, The Oxford History of the Classical World, or the one bound in brown leather that is probably not human skin….

*It may be possible to be a writer and not have an edition of Brewster’s on the shelf. But I am not sure how. Mine is the fifteenth edition which replaced a battered twelfth edition when it fell apart after many years of use. They are now on the twentieth edition so mine is a tad dated. The first edition came out in 1870. It is the bible of English Literature…

Aside getting your setting and history right however there is another reason why research is important. It is a rich vain of story, colour, character and background to explore and more importantly steal. No matter how clever and interesting you think your plot may be. No matter how interesting your characters and the world you imagine, actual history and people are far more complex and interesting. For example, if you are going to write about an attempted assassinations of Queen Victoria it is probably wise to look up attempted assassinations of Queen Victoria. At which point you will learn more about the character and nature of the queen and her husband by reading her diary entry about one such attempt

Just before the second shot was fired and as the man took aim, or rather more while he fired, dear Albert turned towards me, squeezing my hand, exclaiming “My God! Don’t be alarmed”. I assured him I was not the least frightened, which was the case.

The diary of Queen Victoria June 10th 1840

A lot of the nuances of character of my version of Alexandrina ‘Victoria’ Saxe-Coburg, and Prince Albert as they appear in The Esoteric Cricket Ball (the Lucifer Mandrake novel) were informed by these words. Given they feature a lot in the latter third of the novel, while trapped in magical amber in a liminal void, and very much not existing in their public persona’s, getting the relationship between the prince and the queen right mattered. Getting it close to the real royal couple, or a facsimile there of, also felt important.

Lucifer Mandrake, in case this has passed you by at all, is a Victorian gentleman arcanist, by royal appointment to the court of St, James. (except they are not entirely a gentleman, Lucifer is on occasion Luci, though they are always themselves) They have many secrets, and a rather firm opinions on the subject of cricket… The latter being of some important to the original short story because a fair portion of it took place in the Lords pavilion. It was also important in establishing the character of Lucifer because Cricket in the 1850’s was very much the sport of hooligans, thugs and horary Henrys. Their abhorrence of Cricket gave Lucifer a window into their psyche, while also helping to explore certain aspects of the quasi-Victorian society inhabited by Lucifer Mandrake and his compatriot Sir William Forshaw (who unlike Mandrake is a bit of a cricketing enthusiast).

Cricket is, as any right-thinking Englishman knows, the pursuit of louts, drunkards, ruffians and gamblers. Yet, despite all this, somehow the sport of cricket itself remains terminally dull.

Mandrake and Forshaw are, to an extent, analogous to a Homes and Watson. Though I say this only because its the most obvious comparison as to how their relationship works. That relationship, one character being exceptional and unusual in some way, the other acting as the conduit of the more mundane everyman, is one that existed in fiction long before Arthur Conan Doyle first put pen to paper (Poe’s Dupin in The Murders on the Rue Morgue for one thing). But it is the one readers are most likely to make a comparative link to. This I will admit was entirely my intention, Mandrake even lives in Baker Street for god sake… Though the Holmes and Watson analogy was not set up for the reasons the reader might assume, but you would have to read the novel to find out why that is.

The point of this post is however to champion research for the writer. With it you can ground a story in reality. Doing so enables you to leave reality behind convincingly with your flights of the imagination. The number of small details research threw up I incorporated into the Mandrake novel would possibly astound you. Even seemingly innocuous details such as when they drained the marshlands east of Hackney can influence how the story goes. The London of today is not the London of yesteryear and you can not set a story in London without London itself being a character. You might need to know when buildings were built, when rivers were channelled under ground, when the underground was first planned, when the major train stations of London came into to being. All these things add to the world you are making your sand pit, the characters in that sand pit and the story you’re trying to tell.

So buy a copy of Brewster’s, and start doing some research… And of course you may want to buy a copy of Lucifer Mandrake : The Esoteric Cricket Ball to see if you can find the bits I fudged….

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Retail Theory, the downs, and why she hates everything…

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Somewhere down towards the bottom end of this post there is a book review. This is not unusual and regular readers will be well aware I am going to waffle on for a few hundred words before I actually talk about the book. The book itself however is unusual in regards to the usual mix of sci-fi/fantasy/horror/or just plain weird, that I tend to review here between everything else I write about. I say this because it is a non-fiction memoir about working in the retail sector, written by a delightfully funny woman who makes video shorts primarily (though not exclusively) about fashion and the fashion trade. This is, I am sure regular readers of my blog, and anyone who knows me will agree, not exactly my area.

I generally wear black Levi jeans, black band t-shirts, band hoodies of bands on 40th anniversary tours, and New Rocks cowboy boots. A couple of those black T-shirts that I still wear regularly (and I don’t just mean around the house, but out and about) are now a very light grey, and older than my eldest child. If that doesn’t sound too much of a fashion sin you probably need to know my eldest is a primary school teacher who will be thirty in December.

They made Band T Shirts to last in the early 90’s…

Of course I also occasionally wear tweed suits, waist coats and bowler hats when I am working at conventions. I am entirely capable of dressing myself and have a large collection of pocket watches, cuff links and pagan ear-rings, and LARP style quazi-medieval/Viking shirts. But fashion wise this is where I am at.

Aging goth, quantum pagan or cira 1890’s esoteric investigator… Lets just say fashion is not something in which I generally engage. I may occasionally have been fashionable for a few hours in the mid 2000’s but only because fashion came to me, not the other way round.

The other thing regular readers would know about me is that I am a little bit bi-polar, (in the exact same way as the ocean is a little bit moist). This is not an official diagnosis, I have never wanted or needed an official diagnosis, I know who I am and where I hang around on the spectrum. I am also luck enough that while I swing between depressed and manic, while never settling in the middle for any length of time, my downs are only so down and my ups only so up. I know my own symptoms and how best to manage them. For several weeks recently, I have been deep in the downs, both for what I would term as real reasons and the imagined ones (which are not imaginary, merely to do with state of mind, which is to say they are real to me) Those reasons are not important, and ones I suspect those who know me well could guess at. What was important was I needed a way to shift my focus and not dwell upon them even more. I needed distraction, as I sat staring at my desktop screen, trying to find meaning in pixels. One of the easy way to distract myself from darker thoughts is to ‘doom scroll’ which is a somewhat unfortunate turn of phrase in this instance but the one our cultural zeitgeist uses, so apt.

I doom scroll a lot, Wikipedia, goggle images, Pinterest, wander off on wild adventures that could be called research, and on occasion Facebook Reels, because the algorithm does a lot of heavy lifting for you, will throw random stuff your way and watches to see what sticks, pause to watch a whole reel and it will put more form that creator before your eyes… This is of course intrinsically dystopian, but it does mean you tend to get more of what you like, or things that makes you stare at them like a rabbit in headlights for too long…

Recently, while on a down , I spent a whole night watching reels featuring Billy Connelly. Before that it was DadBodVeteran a beard atached to a GenX guy standing on his poach commenting on stuff he has seen on the internet with a mix of disbelief, suppressed rage, and wisdom, all with a sardonic wit that makes me smile. There are others, lots of others, I mention Dad bod because he comes across as a particularly good guy, and he is well worth a watch.

The most recent creator the algorithms threw at me which managed to stick however was at first was a bit of an outlier. The Lady doing reels about fashion I mentioned earlier. The delightful Maggie Weber otherwise known as RefashionedHippie. Maggie does videos like ‘the fashion game, what is this’ where she shows you an item and asks you to guess what it is, and how much it costs. ‘This is stupid and I hate it’ where she shows you a item of fashion, mocks it, and them mildly rages about the price, often just before going on to point out that rather than spend $10000 on a what appears to be a sleeping bag you walk around in from Channel, you could buy 1000 actual high grade sleeping bags for the homeless through a charity… ‘Designing for humans 102’ where she ‘plays’ and abductee teaching aliens how to design cloths for humans, somewhat unsuccessfully though the aliens all work for well known designers…

Actually, I am not sure if designing for humans is comedy or a factual observation given some of the things Maggie has show me from Balenciaga…

Maggie is very funny, she is also warm hearted, loving, and passionate about her subject. She comes at fashion from the thrift store. She upcycles, and is a champion of all things Etsy and the like. She is very much a hippy in that regard. She uses the platform her comedy bits of the world of high fashion , low fashion, and other things that amuse her so she makes amuse you, to try and make the world a better place. Encouraging her followers towards good causes.

(Maggie actually had me in tears over one go-fund me she asked her followers to help out with that had been stuck for a year and her followers managed to fully fund in a matter of hours for a mother to move her and her daughter out of state and away from her daughters abuser. Again those who know me will know getting me to tear up is not overly difficult, particularly when I am in a down phase, but still, it is things like this that restore your faith in humanity.)

There are a lot of reels, I started working backwards through them on Instagram, as I did other things on the desktop. I started to resurface, to the echoes of Maggie saying ‘Hello’ on Instagram, making me, laugh, smile, feel less disconnected and then reconnected with that esoteric madness that is humanity. I think this was round about the Dawn French* moment I was back to myself fully…

*yes that Dawn French, who liked one of Maggie’s reels on Instagram, followed her, and possibly broke Maggie with happiness ( she did the dance). Having been more than a little in love with Dawn French since all the way back her The Comic Strip Presents days, I can completely understand Maggie’s excitement…

Five go man in Dorset : The Comic Strip Presents Circa 1982

In any regards I am still watching Maggie’s videos, backwards through the Instagram time line… But mostly because they just make me smile a lot, and I love the way she says ‘Hello’, rather than to deal with a wave of depression. But adventures in short reel videos aside, Maggie has also written a book (well two actually and narrated several audio books, but this post has been leading up to the book review I promised earlier…) A book called ‘Why I hate Everything’ which is an odd title when Maggie is such a positive influence on the world, but As it is a memoir of 10 years working in the retail industry in the USA, perhaps not… The book was a wonderfully engaging read, made me late for work three times this week because I ended up reading till stupid o’clock in the morning and I recommend it to anyone.

Why I Hate Everything ~ Maggie Weber

Retail is a strange place. I am aware I speak as a man who is less than fond of shopping, and who has never worked in a shop, but I have long been aware for those who do, retail is a strange place. Just how strange… Well that’s where this book comes in.

Be in a donut shop, a thrift shop or a ’boutique’, retail is indeed a strange world, all the stranger for the people who work in it, the staff, the managers, becoming one of those managers and needed to manage staff… And then of course you have the dark forces ranged against you at all times plotting your down fall and seeking to break your fragile spirit. You might also know these dark forces as ‘costumers’.

Maggie Weber did not so much chose to work in retail, as it was chosen for her. A teenager reluctantly in need of a summer job, possibly because her mum just wanted her out of the house, she ends up working in a donut shop staffed with a delightful collection of people who depending whether they work out front or in the kitchen out back speak Hindi or Spanish, and reluctantly English if all else fails. The Latino bakers have girlfriend problems and tie up the only phone line so you can’t take card payments. The manager communicates by notes and is in a strange form of stationary based warfare with his kitchen staff. Maggie meanwhile learns the dark arts of avoiding actual work (anything involving costumers) by holding onto a mop and looking busy, and many other lessons that set her in good stead when she ends up back in retail after collage when she takes a temp job at the first of three thrift stores and then a ‘mall boutique’ until she finds her actual vocation.

If things in the donut store were a little weird at times, this was nothing compared to life in a thrifty store. Where you occasionally help the shoplifters who look like they really need the help. Or point out how all the profits go to charities to guilt the other shop lifters who really don’t into paying for that $3 dollar top they slipped into their bag. And that’s before the extremely religious boss and the pro Christian hiring policies kick in. ‘When did the Lord Jesus first make himself known to you? Please answer in the from of an essay…’ And lets not mention The Matrix.

I said don’t mention the Matrix….

The world of retail is odd, the staff odder (and when teenagers worryingly dumb), the costumers down right weird, aggressive and detached form reality, and Maggie guides you through it all. The strange, the funny, the touching, the wonderful, the delightful , the horrifying and the oh my god my sides are splitting how can this be true but of forgive me lord I hope it is…

In short this is a journey, a delightful, heart warming, engaging, funny journey, and one well worth taking.

A final note, as I will drop Maggie an email to tell her I have written a blog post about her book as I would any other author, so she might read this.

‘Hello’ and Thank you

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Dear Edgar 28~ The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Mark Hayes

At some point in your life you will have learned of this story, you will most likely not recollect when and how you learn of it, but you know of the story. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is one of those stories that is part of the zeitgeist of humanity. It is a story so intrinsic to our collective culture, so ingrain within us, so referenced and repeated, that it exists beyond itself.

This is not the only story penned by our own Dear Edgar of which this can be said. The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Tell-tale Heart among others all exist in this strangely wonderful state of being known by us all, generally learned of in childhood somehow, in the same way as we absorb with the rest of our cultural consciousness. This is true throughout western culture, and within the western culture zeitgeist I am including Japan, South Korea and other places whence a commonality of literary architypes has grown. Edgar Allen Poe’s stories have been around a long time and they are no longer merely stories, they have becomes part of our collective consciousness.

That said, this might just be me…

‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ were ‘committed’ by an escaped orangutan. I say this certain in my own mind that you already know this. That in fact everyone knows this, or at least everyone likely to be reading this knows this. It is one of those things we, the collective hive mind of humanity, know. If I am wrong about this, and you’re not aware of this basic ‘known’ , my apologies for the spoiler. However, in my defense, reveling who, or in this case what, committed the murders in Poe’s fictional Parisian street isn’t really central to the story. It is just the part of the story we all know in our collective zeitgeist.

The real story in this tale is instead about how Poe’s amateur sleuth Auguste Dupin deduces this to be the case. The revel is not the conclusion, merely the point from which Dupin starts to explain how he deduced the truth of the matter. A common structure to just about every successful detective story (and by coincidence heist movies). Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Philip Marlowe, all reveal the culprit then explain how they cleverly figured out it was them. Which always comes down to a series of seemingly unconnected facts they have observed, through out the telling of the story. Little facts that are placed before the reader in slightly disguised ways so as to not seem important. Clues to the mystery that taken in isolation mean little but when the detective puts them all together the conclusion becomes obvious and undeniable. Even Dirk Gently does it this way. With Dupin however, Poe did it first.

In creating Dupin, Poe created an architype, not so much in the character of Dupin himself, though the aloof intellectual who coldly observes the smallest details, has little respect for the authorities, bored with the world in general and processing a superior attitude all round, has certainly been copied more than once. The same can be said for the way the tale is presented to us. Narrated by the detectives companion, a man of lesser intellectual gifts often astounded by how his friend reaches his conclusions despite the ‘detective’ oft insisting that they were obvious, if not ‘elementary’.

Auguste Dupin is, frankly, one screeching violin and a heroin addiction away from being Sherlock Holmes. Much like Holmes he is not a professional detective as such, and investigated the murder as much for his personal amusement as anything else, and while we know nothing much about the narrator, not even his name, he is the precursor of Doctor Watson and plays Watsons role of biograph and foil to the detective. This is not to say Conan Doyle ripped off Poe when he created Sherlock. Dupin appears in only three short stories by Poe, This one, ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’ and ‘The Purloined Letter’. So while he is a well rounded character, his legacy is hardly extensive. Instead what Sir Arthur did was take Poe’s idea and build upon it, some might say not unreasonably Doyle perfected it, but without Dupin there may never of been a Sherlock Holmes.

All that said, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is an imperfect progenitor of the detective story. It suffers from the annoying habit of our Dear Edgar that was becoming more prevalent the more successful his works became. The habit of long winded introductory sections to a story that have little if any real relevance to the heart of the tale. The previous tale ‘The Man of the Crowd’ did this, ‘William Wilson’ did much the same, even the otherwise sublime ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ suffered from it to a lesser degree. If Poe was writing today and submitted one of his tales to an anthology I suspect he would receive a rejection email or two telling him they loved the story but he needs to shed a thousand or so words from the beginning and get on with the real story.

He does this a lot and I suspect this has a great deal to do with writers at the time often being paid by the word for copy. That he was also editorial staff for many of the periodicals he first published tales in suggest no one was acting as editor here either.

This is not to say there is nothing interesting and engaging about the first third of this tale, there is a lot of set up in regards to Dupin’s methods of detection, but it could have been weaved into the story of the murders themselves with ease, and made of a more engaging tale as a whole, instead as a reader its a bit of a chore getting through the first several pages before the story really begins. But when it does begin it becomes a masterful construction, placing all the clues before the reader, half hidden in plain sight. And yes, due to the whole zeitgeist thing we all know when reading this who committed the murders anyway, but even so the weaving of clues throughout Dupins’s investigation is perfection. A perfection that the reader comes to understand after the culprit is revealed and Dupin reveals his deducted truth.

It is easy to understand how our dear Edgar created a new genre of story, the detective story, with this tale. the seeds of the great detective novels Christie, Doyle and others are all there. The zeitgeist of Western culture owes Poe a debt it could never repay for Dupin. Imperfect it may, this is the tale that took us all to Baker Street, and its influence continues including the Holmes and Watson style dynamic of the exceptional and his more mundane colleague, which I quite happily ‘borrowed’ for my own creations Lucifer Mandrake and Sir William Forshaw.

It doesn’t matter that we all know the ape did it, the story is not about the murder but about how the detective discovers the truth. And it that the tale is a vibrant today as it was it was first published back in 1841.

A MURDER OF RAVENS, OBVIOUSLY, BUT LOSING ONE FOR THAT LONG DRAWN OUT FIRST THIRD.

Should you read it : It is, as I say, part of our collective culture, so yes clearly you should.

Should you not read it: There is no issues as such, but if you want to skip forward to the part where Dupin first reads of the Murders that have occurred in the Rue Morgue in the newspaper (which I suspect is where a Conan Doyle story would have started) no one would blame you.

Bluffers fact: Back to Sherlock, because without Dupin, Benedict Cumberbatch might never of become famous enough to be hired by marvel studios to play Doctor Strange. Which begs the question, who could have played Stephen Strange better? I can’t think of anyone, so I believe we all owe Poe a big thankyou for that.

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Dear Edgar 27: The Man of the Crowd

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Mark Hayes

 It was well said of a certain German book that “er lasst sich nicht lesen” –it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes –die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burthen so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.

Opening paragraph, The man of the crowd By Edgar Alan Poe

When I first read the above passage at the beginning of this story I was somewhat enamoured by the idea of a book which doesn’t permit itself to be read. That bit of German, if your wondering also happens to translate to ‘it cannot be read’. A book that holds on to it secrets, and refuses to allow others to read it is a fascinating concept. What strange esoteric means does the book use to prevent people from reading it? Does it curse those who to do so with blindness, or just rip away their understanding of words? Do it cause strange deaths often mistaken for accidents to befall the prospective reader? Or perhaps it just send those who read it mad, thus unable to comprehend the words they have read let alone reiterate them to another?

What dark secrets could such a book hold, a book that actively refuses to be read and ‘prevents’ people from doing so? Who was the author (who clearly has no future in publishing creating books that won’t allow people to read them but that’s beside the point), who were they and why did they write it, did they go mad doing so, were the last pages written in their own blood and semen, sealing their soul, angry and haunted, within the pages of their final work, written on vellum made for the skin of their dead lover?

Or was it just print on demand from amazon?

Is it available in ebook? If so does the internet contain a new version of the demonic force that inhabits the book, or does it just screw up your kindle if you try and read it? How about audio, is it narrated by Christopher Lee and if so did he recorded it after his death?

Oh but this book sounds interesting my Dear Edgar, tell me more…

*cough

In actuality The Man of the Crowd does not mention this book again, nor is the book named in any way, neither does it have any baring on the story. Also, should you go to the trouble of a hunt around the darkest corners of the internet you will fined there is no mention of such a book anywhere in phrase or fable, be it German or otherwise, except for websites pointing back at this story from our Dear Edgar. Either Poe just made the whole thing up, or the book is very very good at avoiding been read, and is doing so by removing its very existence from the zeitgeist of human culture.

I like to think its the latter, call me a romantic.

In any regard, lets move on from all that and talk about the actual story shall we. The Man in the Crowd is a bit of an oddity and a lot of an allegory. Set in London, the biggest city in the world when Poe wrote this tale. It is a story about told us by a narrator who develops a monomaniacal obsession with a man he sees in a crowded street and determines that he needs to follow him discreetly to find out more about him. The man stands out because of all the people the narrator has observed he is the only one the narrator can’t categorize. There is in fairness something very odd about the man, if only that he seems to wander around the streets of London, without every arriving at a destination. Eventually, without ever speaking to the man, or indeed even being acknowledged by him, the narrator having followed him for the better part of thirty hours or more, just gives up his somewhat irrational pursuit.

This is after he has spent the whole day, and half the story, in a coffee shop watching the crowd pass by and going into detail about the various groups of people within it. Which is less interesting that you might imagine… Then comes ‘the man’ of the title.

There is a oddity to the man, just as there is an oddity to the title. A more logical title for this story would have been ‘The Man in the Crowd’. But it is not ‘in the crowd’ but ‘of the crowd’ as if the man is a function of the crowd itself rather than being part of it. An ethereal creature wandering the streets of London endlessly in ragged clothes, but ragged clothes that were once rich in nature. A man of dubious character with a concealed knife as the narrator notes. And wander he does, as the narrator follows him all around London through the night and into the dawn and all the following day. The man never speaks to anyone, never interacts with anyone, wandering in and out of shops and through markets but always seemingly alone and isolated amidst the greatest crowd of humanity imaginable.

This is interesting, but only interesting in terms of the title making it so, because the story itself doesn’t expand on the difference between been in the crowd and of it. Or who the man really is , or indeed what he is.

There are a great many interpretations of this story, people have ‘theories’ a plenty. Indeed I ended up swimming in interpretations while researching this story, many of which were far more interesting that the story itself. When you find far more analysis than plot however one is struck by the question, why? I have two theories on this one. the first is because the tale is so opaque, and frankly bland, it invites interpretation, as people try to find something interesting to say about what is in effect a story that is not overly interesting mainly because it just isn’t. The man is never explained and in the end the narrator simply stops following him. There isn’t so much as a sly grin of recognition in the end, or anything else, the man just carries on walking. If this is profundity, it is a profundity without profundity. Least ways nothing within the story makes it so, but people have certainly looked hard trying to find it.

So have I, as you may be able to tell. And yet alas I have come up somewhat lacking… But that is just the first of my theories…

The second theory, well. In the first paragraph Poe mentions a book that will not allow itself to be read, so perhaps that book changed this entire story around to hide itself within the tale, remaining unread as all the letters have separated from their words and formed new ones to tell a story other than the story the book doesn’t want you to read… If this is the case at least that would make the tale interesting, sadly there is no way to know…

TWO RAVENS CONTENPLATING A MURDER BUT NEVER BECOMING ONE.

Should you read it: Well, I am somewhat torn here, as the story in of itself is not overly interesting yet there is something here, clearly that so many people have tried to interpret. For me personally the idea of the book that shall not be read is by far the more interesting idea in the whole tale and that is only in the first paragraph. Besides if I say no, am I not just doing what the book wants?

Should you not read it: There are some minor antisemitic issues in the story. they are no more overt than Fagin in Oliver twist, but still, be warned…

Bluffers facts: Poe grew up in London, when fostered by the Allen family and would have known it reasonably well, but it is more likely that much of the London he describes here is based on the London of Charles Dickens rather than his own recollections. The London of Oliver Twist, though without the songs of the musical version.

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Miscast in petticoats

Posted on March 28, 2025 by Mark Hayes

The occasional naked bout of self publicity…

Lucifer Mandrake, Arcanist to the court of St James, by appointment of Queen Victoria Saxe-Coburg, is not having his best day. Someone has been resurrecting dead peers of the realm. The House of Lords is now inhabited by the undead. Sooner or later, someone is bound to notice. Well probably. Is this just a plot to derail The Witchcraft Bill? Or is it something more insidious, such as a plan to remove Victoria as head of state and replace her with the King of Hanover?

A post Newtonian Magic Victorian Urban fantasy In Kindle, Paperback, or hardback

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DWMWJ927

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Dear Edgar 16 ~ The Business Man

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Mark Hayes

At home, on the shelf above my desk, just to the left of the raven black quill and owl tormented ink stand, and in front of the leather bound scroll case of dubious origin, I have a porcelain phrenology skull, which oddly enough also as a small hole in its base in which you could mount a quill. Possibly this could also be used as an ink well, if you poured ink into the base of the phrenology skull, but frankly that would be weird. I suspect it was originally intended as merely a stand in which to house a fountain pen, not that I ever used it as such.

I picked up the skull at a charity shop at some point in the past, and keep it on the shelf because… well what kind of writer would I be if I didn’t have a phrenology skull?

Why do I mention this, well mainly because phrenology plays a part in the ‘origin’ story of ‘The Business Man’, but also because I like the word, phrenology.

The Business Man is another of Poe’s satires, and suffers to an extent with similar issues of structure as ‘The man who was all used up’, which is to say the story is more an extended joke than and actual story. Unlike that previous satire however this one hold a grain of truth that remains as relevant today as it did way back in 1840 when this story was first published in Burtons gentleman’s magazine.

The story itself is the life story of Peter Proffit, told to us by the man himself. ‘A Methodical Business man’ as he styles himself, though the read may think of him more as a crook, a shyster, conman and morally bankrupt. Though he does have some moral qualms when it comes to the business of postage fraud, an old con where by he would write fake letters to rich people, and hand deliver them, charging the recipient for the postage (which was how postage worked back in the days before stamps). His moral objections were not in regards to swindling the rich people with fake letters, but on behalf of the fake people, but with the unkind things being said about the fake people he is writing letters ‘from’. The recipients of his letters are so nasty…

This ‘postal’ fraud is the tip of the iceberg of the businesses Peter has tried over the years. All equally spurious at best. Such as the eye-sore business, in which you buy a plot next to a pleasant richly appointed building, and build an absolute hovel, before charging well above the worth of the land and the building so the mark can tear it down. The ‘mud-dabbling’ business where you employ a dog to get itself covered in mud then rub up against peoples shoes so you can charge them for shoe shining ( though he fell out with the dog who wanted half the profits so that was the end of that scam, the dog was never paid, but then he was a contractor after all…). The ‘assault and battery’ business, where you start a fight then sue the mark for attacking you. the ‘organ grinder’ business which is using a hand cracked organ to make horrible music then charging people to stop.

Peters propensity for these sharp practices in the realm of ‘business’ he blames on his nursemaid when he was a child swinging him around and banging his head on a bed post. The resulting permanent bump in his head in the region, he tells us, that according to phrenology controls ‘system and regularity’ Which might possibly be right next to ‘morals and honesty’ though I can’t find any of these on my phrenology chart, wo who knows, Though a good whack on number ten does you the world of good I believe…

Aside blaming phrenology for his sharp business practices peter doesn’t suffer form an overdoes of guilt. One does wonder where the bump of Narcissus would be, certainly Peter Proffit seems to have the same moral center some others who might pursue the ‘art of the deal’, which is probably why once he finally comes up with a scheme that makes him rich at the end of his self satisfied story he is considering running for office. One suspects sadly he would probably do quite well in current political climates in Poe’s native land.

The scheme that makes Peter rich in the end by the way, is breeding cats. Which sounds benign I know, but he starts breeding them because a law is passed to keep down the numbers of stray felines by paying a bounty on cat tails… The kind of business I can almost imagine another ‘Business man’ engaging in gleefully, in his red hat…

Unlike previous Poe satires, this one still resonates today. Possibly more so given the current occupant of a house on Pennsylvania Avenue who you could easily imagine going into the cat tail business, and the rest of Peter Proffit’s failed ventures. I am not sure that is a good thing.

A TRIO OF RAVENS CONSIDERING A HOMICIDE

Should your read it: Its a fun story, and funny,

Should you avoid it: no, but it is hard to detach yourself from the thought that the more things change, the more they stay the same, and satire makes little odds in the end…

Bluffers fact: This story was original published in 1840 as Peter Pendulum, It was later republished in 1845 as The Business Man with the main characters name changed. Possibly this is because Poe decided he didn’t want two stories in a collection with the word Pendulum in the title, and ‘The Pit and the Dangly Swinging Death Thingy’ did not scan…

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