Cogkneys, Minoan’s and Devilish Preludes

Posted on June 11, 2025 by Mark Hayes

Anyone following this blog over the years will be aware my taste in reading can be a tad ecliptic. Well buckle up buttercup, ecliptic was three turns back.

Completely Ribald : for your pleasure. By Mr Arthur Foot and Miss Tilly Maydme

The Cogkneys are one of the alter egos of Karl & Andrea Burnett who have been entertaining steampunks and others for over fifteen years with ridiculous songs, ribald jokes and props that are fully in keeping with the music hall traditions, mixed with all kinds of modern pop culture refences. This book contains those fifteen years of lyrics and poetry with such delights as

‘Hot Glue Gun Blues’ which if you have ever tried to put together a cosplay costume’ of any kind you will recognise.

‘Oh those naughty Tentacles’ because lets face it why not

And the seminal work ‘My Childhood Sweetheart is Featured in an Erotic Daguerreotype I Purchased From the Tabacconists’ (something of a nod to the 80’s classic ‘Centrefold’ by the J Giles band)

Fifteen years is a long time, and there is a lot of this sort of thing… and a wonderful thing it is too. But there are also several short prose stories and a novella which feature the Burnetts alter egos, and the same music hall style risky humour and interplay that anyone who has seen the Cogkneys live will recognise and laugh along with.

This is a very silly book, a heavy tomb as well as it was fifteen years in the making, it is also not a book you sit down to read, its a book you leave on the coffee table and pick up occasionally while you drink your tea to peruse for a couple of minutes… An hour later you will remember you acctually intended to do something else, and you will , the moment you stop giggling…

You should buy a copy for that reason alone, and if you get a chance to see the Cogkenys live, or any of their many alter egos, pop along. You will be entertained, I promise you this.

A final note, Karl Burnett once appeared in a play called ‘The Drag King in Yellow’ this was his finest achievement as the play is one of the greatest works in the history of human civilization. He fails to mention it this at all in this book, which seems something of an oversight…

Labrys & Horns: An Introduction to Modern Minoan Paganism By Laura Perry

I am the worlds worst pagan. I say this because I follow no particular tradition but my own. I have a self constructed belief system based on a heady mix of paganism and quantum physics. You can read something of this here if you wish. Because of this I read a fair amount of physics journals as well as modern pagan books. I also have little rituals, that I don’t even recognise as rituals. But as I say I am the worlds worst pagan, but I am open to pagan thought.

Laura Perry is someone who came into my orbit (on face book , blue sky and blogs) because of Nimue Brown. Laura is not the worlds worst pagan… She is an expert in Minoan culture and a practising member (and one of the leaders/founders) of Ariadne’s Tribe, a world wide pagan group following the tradition and practises of Modern Minoan Paganism.

Partly this book explores the history and culture of the Minoan civilization that flourished on Crete between 1900 and 1400 BCE. Before the Mycenaean Greeks, and a thousand years before the classical Greeks. To put that in perspective, if we were now classical Greece around the time of Plato, the Minoan’s culture for us ended before the Norman invasion… Minoan culture was a long… time ago, Old Kingdom Egypt ago. What we know about them is based mainly on archology, luckily there is a lot of archology.

What we know about Minoan religious practises is also based mainly on archology, and not a little guess work, though very educated guesses informed by the archology and what was recorded by the ancient Greeks a thousand years later which would also have been guess work and biased by their own beliefs which to an extent grew out of Minoan culture.

It is an interpretation of Minoan belief systems based on years of research that forms the other part of this book, along with guidance and practical advice, for those that may want to follow the path of Ariadne’s Tribe, or incorporate aspects of Minoan ritual into their own lives.

This book is on every level fascinating no matter if you feel a personal connection to Minoan belief or you just wish to explore one of the most ancient Mediterranean cultures and walk the footsteps of our forbearers. It is also written with an accessible richness of humanity to it that makes it a joy to read, no matter what you may believe, or be open to believing…

A final note. Above my front door, on the inside of the house, facing into the house, is a greensman mask, hand painted by me, that I hung there several years ago because it felt the right place to hang it. I reach up and touch it when ever I leave the house to go out into the world for a while. It is not a conscious thing, and before I read this book I had no idea why I did so, indeed barely realised I did. Now I know why, because even the worlds worst pagan needs little rituals to ground themselves in this world…

Devilish Preludes by Ben Sawyer

Ben Sawyer is a lovely fellow author from York who writes about Holly Trinity, a sleeping protector of the city who awakens when she is needed to fight monsters and ghosts, with an umbrella and a Kate Bush mix tape. I know Ben because he writes for the Harvey Duckman anthologies and I have shared many a table with him at conventions trying to convince people to buy dead trees covered in ink.

Last year he released a short story in ebook on Amazon and I pointed out he could have made it into an admittedly slip, paperback, which he could put on the table at conventions and sell the way drug dealers offer dime bags for free to get people hooked… But with dead trees cover in ink. He ignored this advice, so I berated him some more when I next saw him in Leeds at a convention, after I had been drinking with my son the night before and had the worlds worst hang over having been dragged to the dive bar he manages till five in the morning.

Apparently Ben finally took my advice… This however is not that book…

This short tome holds within it three short stories that expand the Hollyverse. For a start only one of the stories features Holly herself, and only one is set in York. The first is some what chilling and involves the mystery of who puts rope swings on trees. The second involves rules, and ‘The Department’ of whom Ben could write a while series of novels I suspect (and may encourage him to do so) . The third, well I have not read the third yet for a reason but I have no doubt it will be fabulous.

If you have never read any of Bens, Holly Trinity novels, you should dip your toes in the water with this little book. If you have read both of Bens current Holly novels ( the third is due in October this year) you will need no encouragement to read this book, so get on with it.

A final note, the reason I have not read the third story in this book is I have not yet finished Bens second novel because my to read pile is rediculous…

A Final Final note: For various reason I have not completely finished (or at least finished with) all three of these books, not entirely, The Cockney’s because its a coffee table book, and I have lost my coffee table, so it is sat on my desk. I delve into it now and again when I want a smile. Laura’s because in parts it’s a refence book on practical paganism and you never finish a book like that, you return to it constantly, and Bens because I need to finish Monsters at the gate first.

I reviewed them now because it felt like the time to do so .

Posted in amreading, book reviews, druidry, fantasy, humour, pagan, steampunk, urban fantasy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dear Edgar ~31 : The Colloquy of Monos and Una

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Mark Hayes

I generally like a little philosophical pondering. While in my own fiction I generally endeavour to write an engaging story before anything else, the odd bit of philosophical pondering and even metaphysical debate has been known to find its way in. The mysteries of existence have ever fascinated me, and I studied such for my degree. I am, technically at least, a philosopher, and have been known to read Nietzsche, Descartes, even Plato for fun. All of which would suggest that I should enjoy this, the second of a trio of dialogues our Dear Edgar wrote to engage in pondering upon matters of existence between spirits in the after life…

However, given the first of the trio was The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion which I found less than entirely engaging, I tempered my ardour somewhat in advance. The first of these tales earned a solitary raven with good reason. It was at best dull, at worst somewhat unreadable. More importantly it didn’t really have anything to say, instead the spirts in question discussed the end of the world, the inspiration for which was a doomsday cult for an Armageddon that never happened. The story of the inspiration was far more interesting that the dialogue Dear Edgar wrote.

This did not bode well… But I took an open mind into the story.

Unlike the previous dialogue this tale is acctually a philosophical and metaphysical dialogue between two characters. In this case the characters in question go by the names Monos and Una, which are in turn the Greek and Latin for one. Between them they, and by extension Poe, explore themes of life, death, the nature of existence, and the relationship between the mortal world and the spiritual.

One of the issues with this piece of philosophical meandering wrapped up and a dialogue between two spirits is however is it fails to do what the best philosophy almost always does, its fails to express anything with a succinct beauty. The quote up above ‘All that we see or seem is but a dram within a dream’ is not from this dialogue, it is from a poem Pow wrote nine years later. Yet in comparison it is a much better piece of philosophy than this laboured piece, at least in my opinion for whatever that may be worth.

Written on the footsteps of The Island of the Fay there is a general theme informed by Poe’s growing abhorrence of North Eastern states of America’s increasing drive in the 1840’s towards mechanization and a primally industrial culture. He had developed the opinion that there was a need to return to nature to redefine the soul of humanity. There is however more than a degree of hippie-dippieness going on here. There are broader themes in regards to life, death, the impermanence of existence, decay both moral and physical.

It really is a bundle of laughs….

I am in fairness doing this dialogue a disservice here, compared with its predecessors this conversation has a lot to say and explores several interesting themes. It does however suffer from the same issue as the first in that it is a conversation between two entities who have passed beyond and, importantly, not an actual story. Instead it is a frame work for our Dear Edgar to explore his idea’s and concepts. It is rich with imagery and somewhat beautiful if occasionally macabre prose. It isn’t however a narrative, which, to be fair, it was never intended to be. The characters of Monos and Una are sympathetic allegories of unity and loneliness. The conversation is interesting in the abstract, but a tad indulgent as philosophy.

The problem I have with it is it isn’t a story, and while philosophically it is interesting Poe is far better at expressing complex themes and idea through an actual narrative than in what is a forced and somewhat disappointing way.

TWO RAVENS EXPRESSING CONCEPTS OF IMORTALITY WHILE DEAD

Should you read it : If you enjoy a philosophical meander

Should you not read it: If you are looking for a story, just avoid this as there isn’t one here.

Bluffers fact: By the time this ‘story’ was published (September 1941) Poe was several months into his stint as editor of Graham’s Magazine. Of his time at the magazine he said this.

“Perhaps the editors of no magazine, either in America or in Europe, ever sat down, at the close of a year, to contemplate the progress of their work with more satisfaction than we do now. Our success has been unexampled, almost incredible. We may assert without fear of contradiction that no periodical ever witnessed the same increase during so short a period.”

So, he was not full of himself at the time at all….

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Extra-dimensional conjurer…

Posted on May 28, 2025 by Mark Hayes

An interesting on fellow Harvey writer Ben Sawyers blog in which he accuses me of being an extra-dimensional conjurer…

I’ve been called worse ( and I may add that to my BlueSky handle…)

The Places in Between

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Dear Edgar 30 ~ The Island of the Fay

Posted on May 21, 2025 by Mark Hayes

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.

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Occasional unattributed wisdoms

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Mark Hayes

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…

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Researching Lovecraft

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Mark Hayes

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.

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Quiddling for Quizzels

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Mark Hayes

(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… 

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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.

Posted in amreading, amwriting, books, Harvey Duckman, indie novels, indie writers, indiewriter, reads, sci-fi, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment