I have something of a prelection for prose poetry, that is to say prose written with a certain poetical lint, serving to describe a scene or and idea, rather than tell a story in a more traditional manner. Those who have read my fiction will perhaps be unsurprised by this, specifically my short fiction which often adopts this style of story telling though the focus of a narrator.
Done well, and one flatters one self that one occasionally one succeeds, a reader should be drawn into a tale that is not entirely a tale. A tale that lacks dialogue beyond the internal dialogue of the narrator, is awash with description and depiction without the most common forms of narrative.
Done badly… Well you lose the readers interest long before the story is complete and they will wander off disinterested.
Also, almost every ‘rule’ expounded in modern creative writing courses rails against prose poetry of this form. This is not how you should write modern narrative fiction… Needless to say I don’t… But then I like to hang around with dead authors a lot, and prose poetry was far more common back in the day. Several Lovecraft ‘tales’ fall under this banner, Nyarlathotep been my favorite example.
Several Poe stories have elements of prose poetry to them too. Silence been a prominent example among the early tales. This should hardly be a surprise that Poe wrote short stories that were also prose poems. he was after all as much a poet as a story teller. But with the exception of Silence few other tales really fall into the category. That is until this next tale, The Island of the Fay, which is undoubtedly prose poetry in both structure and content. I should there for love it… Take this exert for example…
I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect—bright, slender and graceful—of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings
I should love this, and yet…
The trouble is ‘The Island of the Fay’, though beautifully written , haunting and indeed poetic… it lacks any actual story. Or to be more exact the story serves only to give the prose a direction, which is vague at best. There is a dream like quality to bits of it but it lacks any purpose. The main thrust is the loss of the spiritual, magical, world due to our expanding knowledge of science and mathematics.
The more we understand the world, the more of its mystery and wonder is lost to us… Which is a sentiment I don’t entirely disagree with. Yet it is lost within the narrative which wanders off track as the narrator becomes more fanciful, despite that been very much what should happen. THe narrator witnesses the last of the fay among the trees and shrubs of a isolated bit of wilderness. An island still enchanted with the older world we have move on from. The imagery and description of all this is a delight, yet somehow not what it should be.
Poes writing in this story is beautiful, and I honestly hope others feel a connection with it, yet for some reason I did not. I read this tale more times than usual when doing these pieces, wanting to love it, wanting to feel moved by it. It is prose poetry, of that have no doubt, it is wonderfully written also, have no doubt of that. But for a reason I can not define it fails to tug at my heart the way prose poetry normally does.
I can not tell you why it leaves me flat but perhaps it is because I feel it was almost something more. Every element is there to be something special, the prose, the poetic nature, the subject matter, everything… Yet some how it isn’t, for me at least. It is an almost story, almost wonderful, but falling far short of this.
The story itself has little real substance, it is there to frame the telling. But that is not uncommon in such a piece, and should be forgivable. And yet… as I say, it missed my heart.
THREE BEAUTIFUL RAVENS THAT SOME HOW FAIL TO MURDER MY SOUL
Should you read it : Despite what I have said, yes, and I hope it fills your heart with melancholy joy that I wished it would have filled mine with.
Should you not read it: There is no reason to avoid it
Bluffers fact: The Island of the Fay is also the name of the 120th release ( 29th studio album , there is a ridiculous amount of live albums) by somewhat eccentric German band Tangerine Dream. It was the first of the bands ‘Sonic Poems’ albums.
Once in a while, when least expected, I manage what could be mistaken for an intelligent thought on Blue Sky. One try’s not to get caried away by such things. Here though, for your possible amusement, are some of my own favorites, without any attribution, or indeed context in regard to why I said made them…
In the beginning there was darkness, and then the lord said “let there be light!” So, the question is, who was he speaking to?
The perfect sentence comes to you at 3am and then you can’t get back to sleep because you are thinking about it. In the morning it has gone…
I catch up with the news once a day , mid evening , for 15-20 minutes , then reward myself with a human interest story about a baby marmoset All news that is in any way important on any given day can be expressed and delivered in 20 minutes (+ human interest marmoset)
I should add the marmoset can be a flacons chick, a pig or a small horse, but never, and I mean never, a vicar in Croydon there are rules people.
Stare long enough into the void, and your eyes go a little squiffy.
Don’t have kids After a time they become adults Then they drag you out around Leeds drinking till the early hours… Don’t do this if you then have to work a table at a comic con the following day….
We left late stage capitalism for the fresh hell of corporate feudalism. As one of the peasants I am thinking of running off to the woods with a longbow, and building a tree fort.
You are never too old to follow your dreams, but as you get older, catching them becomes more of a struggle and indeed remembering what they were.
The true wealth of a society is not measured by how many of its citizens are billionaires. But by how few of its citizens live in poverty Anyone who does not understand that, has no business being in politics.
One feels compelled to point out this is perfectly normal abject terror, not some deep seated existential dread.
He thought he was but a flouncy blouse and case of syphilis away from being the next Bryon, but then I suppose aren’t we all.
‘enjoy a midnight salad’ This is doubtless an innocent activity and any less than innocent implications I may have read into those words only speak to how my mind works…
There is no name for the terror of awaiting your new novels first amazon review… The soul crushing darkness of hope and fear Somethings are too terrible to have names
What to wear on a blood moon you ask? The obvious choice is of course to wear the blood of your vanquished enemies, painted upon you with a mixture of ashes and spit, but a nice cardigan and a thick scarf are also an option.
I was about to ask “What cursed espresso macchiato song?” Then I realised this was a trap all along…
If you have enjoyed this wonder through the whimsy, you can always follow me on BlueSky, which is like twitter without the ‘twits’* by clicking on the link/picture below.
*twits been a polite term for racist, homophobic, right wing, cretinous trolls. Of which Blue Sky is delightful absent…
I am currently engaged, or more correctly have been engaged, in a project involving a book about the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft. You may be aware I previously wrote a book on Lovecraft’s fiction. A bluffers guide of sorts to his writings and stories. It started as a series of blog posts and accidentally became a book, which has been surprisingly successful for a book I never originally intended to write…
The upshot of writing that book is I am perceived as something of an expert on Lovecraft in general. Which given I hung around with him for about five years while I was researching and writing the first book, is not unfair. However a book about Lovecraft’s creatures and worlds is a very different tentacle shaped handbag to one about his fiction. The brief is more restrictive, and wider at the same time. Thus it is requiring a whole lot of additional research, because of course it does…
Or at least, I am doing a whole lot of additional research, whether it is required or not, because that is generally what happens when I work on non-fiction, or on fiction come to that… But with non-fiction this tends to throw up fun little footnotes*, which I have called ‘notables’ in my current WIP folder for this one.
*where as in fiction it tends to present itself as my narrator wandering off track for a while…
So here me, back up to my neck with old tentacle hugger, getting annoyed at him. Just like old times… thus here are a few ‘notables’ which will probably find the cutting room floor in the end but have amused me for one reason or another in the meantime.
1/ There is an ancient city named Sarnath (which dates back to beyond the 5th century BCE) in the Uttar Pradesh region of India. It was there the Buddha gave the ‘Dhammacakkappavattana Sutra’ or ‘The sermon of the deer park’ not long after he had gained enlightenment. It was also where the Kassapa Buddha (the Buddha before Buddha) was born, which was why the newly enlighten Buddha travelled there to teach.
Lovecraft claimed to have never heard of Sarnath, that he invented it himself, and that this shares the name with one of humanity most ancient cities is purely coincidental.
2/ It is more than likely that Lovecraft derived the name Shub-Niggurath from a passage in ‘Idle Days on the Yann’ by Lord Dunsany always one of Lovecraft’s favourite writers.
‘I liked not to pray to a jealous God there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love were being humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth, ‘
3/ There is a dark elongated region along the equator of the planet Pluto that for a long time had been known as ‘the whale’ due to its shape. A NASA team involved in the New Horizons mission proposed changing the name to the ‘Cthulhu Region’, and it was given the informal name ‘Cthulhu Macula’. The International Astronomical Union vetoed the idea, possibly due to a chronic lack of whimsey
4/ Aside the version of Dagon created by Lovecraft that appears in so many Lovecraft inspired texts, the Mesopotamian version of Dagon appears in a broad suave of literature. He is mentioned both Paradise Lost by Milton, and of all things Middlemarch by George Elliot.
5/ Nyarlathotep is not in the early Lovecraft story that predates the Dark Pharaoh, ‘The Crawling Chaos’ Lovecraft merely reused the name because he ‘liked the sound of it’
6/ The Selkie’s in the mythologies of the Baltic and North Sea peoples. Selkies Human – seal shape shifters who also inter breed with humans. Though in Selkie tales of Orkney and Shetland it is often the humans who mistreat the Selkies. Stealing their seal skins to force them into servitude of one sort or another. The humans are usually punished in the end.
Lovecraft would certainly have been aware of Selkie legends, and possibly inspired by them.
You may have noticed an aquatic to some of these, I have spent at least three days messing about with Deep Ones and speculating as to whether the race can not longer breed among themselves or not and so need to create hybrids to keep the race alive. And if water based lubricants are ineffective or not… It would however explain Hartlepool, and the towns obsession with hanging monkeys… Its been a strange couple of days.
(This is originally something I wrote for Hopeless Vendetta, in November last year. It is something of an autumn story, so entirely out of place mid spring… But I republish here because I want to, and readers of my blog and the hopeless one may over lap but not always.)
Quiddling* for Quizzels
The quills of a Quizzel have long been sought after by islanders as roasted in vinegar, they harden till the resemble long steel pins. Quills from the ridge that runs down their back in particular make fine needles.
It is said that if you cover a captured Quizzel in clay and bake the whole beast, they also make for fine eating, though if you over roast your clay packed Quizzel the clay will harden to the point you need a hammer and chisel to break it open. But on pulling the hardened clay shell apart all the quill’s will come free allowing you to devour the succulent meat of the Quizzel.
This same method can be used to cook hedgehogs, which are smaller creatures but otherwise much like the Quizzel, which some say tastes like chicken. Having tried this island delicacy only once I can say this much. Those who say it tastes like chicken have never tasted chicken.
The Quizzel is a shy beast, it is said to be about two foot long with an elongated nose, timid and known to hide in piles of leaves or other foliage. Given the propensity of Hopeless residents to bake them in a ball of clay I cannot say I blame the beast. When threatened they curl up into a ball. Quills extended. As the quills are both sharp and hard enough to go through leather soles, walking through piles of leaves is inadvisable if there is a Quizzel about. Nor is it wise to use them as an improvised football.
It is however perhaps the usefulness of the quills that has led to the age-old Island tradition on the last day of autumn, whence the islanders take down their family Quiddle sticks, hand them out to the children and send them off quiddling.
A quiddling stick is about three feet long with the bottom wrapped in old cloths to make a padded ball, this part is called the quiddle. Quiddling requires the stick to be thrust repeatedly into piles of leaves in the hopes that if there is a Quizzel in residence it will ‘spike up’ and thus be impale by its own quills into the quiddle whence it can be removed from the leaf pile safely.
The Quiddling hunt is accompanied by much shouting, screaming and running about and normally last for the whole of the morning after which successful ‘Quiddlers’ are supposed to return with their catches. Though, more often than not, the children get bored of the hunt and use the padded quiddling sticks to beat each other. Fights erupt. And eventually the adults declare the hunt at an end and the quiddling stick is returned to its place of honor above the fireplace.
The Quiddling hunts at the orphanage are particularly violent affairs…
Sadly, in recent years Quizzel have become rare, indeed in my lifetime I have never heard of one being captured despite the great enthusiasm of the annual Quiddling hunts. These days of course I do not partake in the hunt itself as such is the task of children. Instead, I share the many mugs of drop apple cider with the adults who reminisce about the great quiddling hunts of old. Mostly they reminisce about the fights.
Few if any can ever recall capturing a Quizzel, though they all swear to know someone who has.
*Authors note. Quiddling is an 18th century word, it means to fiddle about with trivial things as a way of avoiding the important ones. It has nothing to do with sending children off to hunt large hedgehog like creatures that don’t exist while the adult’s day drink. I was just quiddling about when I wrote this…
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…
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.
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.
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
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….
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.
The Passing Place 