The Passing Place

Retro Book Reviews: Fahrenheit 451

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Mark Hayes

Paper burns at 451 Fahrenheit, or so the legend goes… Regarded by many of Ray Bradbury’s finest work Fahrenheit 451 remains as prescient today as it was when it was first written back in the 1950’s. It sits within the cannon of Dystopian classics like ‘Brave New World‘, ‘We‘ and ‘1984‘ as both a terrifying vision of the future and a warning to the present. But unlike the other three, I have just mentioned, ‘Fahrenheit 451’ has a surprisingly positive message about the human spirit. In rereading it with a view to this blog, (and because it has always been among my favourite novels), I was struck, as ever, by this one passage.

“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. see the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that. Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”

― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

As a guide to living your life, you can’t go far wrong with those words. Though more aspire to them than ever succeeded in following them I am sure, myself included. If it seems a message out of place in a dystopian novel, that’s because it would in any other, but ‘Fahrenheit 451‘ is a strange fish in many regards. It is also more prescient than it’s bedfellows from Orwell and Huxley. Fahrenheit world is one where the intellectual is held in low regard.

If you have read other ‘retro’ book reviews I have done, you will be aware I try to treat them as freshly published novels, to see how they stack up against their modern counterparts. If Bradbury was releasing this today there would need to be very little, if anything, changed within the text. The future the novel envisioned is one that we are only closer to living than we were in 1953 when the novel was first released. It was always a novel of the near future, it was just a near future that little bit further away than Bradbury foresaw. A glance at US politics and the prevailing ethos of the nation is all it takes to see the parallels between the world as it is, and the world of ‘Fahrenheit 451‘. The intellectual, the scientist, the economist, the academic, in general, is increasingly disparaged. Science as a whole has become a thing to denigrate. Just look at the rhetoric on climate change, or the way in which science budgets are being cut, or the way the Liberal ‘elite’ were portrayed as remote ‘intelligentsia’ in the last US election, castigated not just by the right but by large portions of the traditional left as the shift to popularism held sway. Intellectual has become a dirty word in political circles. All of which is echoed in ‘Fahrenheit‘ world of firemen and book burnings.

The rise of social media and screen life has become ever more prevalent. We may not sit in a single media room in our houses, surrounded on all sides by screens that push the latest soap opera upon us as Guy’s wife Mildred does in ‘Fahrenheit’. Instead, we carry our screens with us everywhere, engaging in the banal, and contributing to it. Pictures of our food, selfies, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, flood our collective minds. We are all constantly connected to the outpourings of the global zeitgeist of popular culture while becoming ever more disconnected from our neighbours and relationships beyond the screen. Anti-depressants are handed out like candy, meditation of the mind, by popular prescription. Another echo from within the novel as Mildred takes happy pills when ever a conversation gets her down. We may not have firemen to burn our books but to quote Bradbury once more…

And, that we have, in. many ways, there has been a steady, but an increasing decline in the reading of books over the last several decades. As this article in the Atlantic explains.

Bradbury’s vision is as much a vision of a near future now as it was then. It speaks the same warnings it ever did. Warnings of the death of the intellectual liberalism, and its replacement with a populist autocracy. The context may be different, but the parallels with the current political climate are there all the same. Indeed there are so many echoes it is at times hard to believe this is a novel from the fifties, not one that has slipped off the word processor in the last year or so.

Yet as I said when I began, the message of ‘Fahrenheit 451‘ is surprisingly uplifting for a dystopia. Unlike ‘1984’ for example, the protagonist does not end up accepting the status quo, just another cog in the machine ground down by the system. Instead, it ends with Guy joining the strange resistance group who have set themselves the task of saving books by memorising them. It’s a message that says, ‘We will not be beaten, we know this day will pass and a new day will come,’ Which is perhaps a message to us all when we look on despairingly at the current state of the world.

Posted in dystopia, reads, retro book reviews, sci-fi | Tagged #scifi, amreading, bookreviews, dystopia | 1 Comment

The Rare Unsigned Copy: and other mistakes

Posted on July 6, 2017 by Mark Hayes

“You don’t really want one of the signed copies, what you really want is one of those rare unsigned copies.”

Laughter echoed around the bar at the Blackpool landlords amusing quip… Possibly because this was one of the funniest things anyone said the whole weekend. The noticeable exception to the laughing voices of many lifelong friends was my own. Not that I harboured any great resentment at being the butt of that particular joke. I am more than capable of laughing at myself. I have also been known to throw the occasional harsh one-line observation around. As my dad, a dour Yorkshireman to his core, is often fond of saying, if you can’t take it, you shouldn’t give it out… Equally, I was in fairness, as amused as anyone else. As one line observations go, it was a sharp, poignant and amusing one for sure. Far more, I suspect, than the landlord in question knew.

All this took place at the annual gathering of itinerant souls known as ‘Adamscon’. A gaming weekend that I and a few of my closest friends attend in February each year in a small hotel in Blackpool. It was once known as ‘Hayescon’, before Mark Adams who organised it with me every year, realised I had stopped doing any of the actual organising five years before. So back in 2011, its name changed, and it has been ‘Adamscon’ ever since. It remains one of the most entertaining weekends of the year, and a good time spent with friends I see less than often enough…

The rare unsigned copies in question were copies of ‘Passing Place‘ my second novel. It had been released a few months earlier, and several of those present in the bar room had requested signed copies from me on the release of the book. Indeed between them and others, I had worked my way through two large shipments of authors copies. Which to my mind of course raised the question,

Why would any of you actually want a signed copy from me anyway?

It was this observation that led to the Landlords quip, just after another friend had bemoaned the somewhat impersonal nature of the message I wrote in his copy. (Actually, it had been one of thirty books I was signing in my living room at midnight, in order to post them out in the morning. I had ceased coherent thinking by that point, or I would have written something more personal to the friend in question. But, as I eluded, I still found the idea of signing copies of my novel a bit bizarre. I still do. I have lots of signed books. Ones I have gathered over the years from the likes of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. Some signed with a great deal of flourish like the one below, but people asking for sign copies of my own witterings still seem mildly absurd…

As I said, I did not laugh and was alone in the bar room in not doing so, but mainly this was because I realised just how right the Landlord was. To my knowledge at that time, the ‘rare unsigned copy‘ in question belonged to a gentleman called Frank de Vocht. I know this because he was kind enough to write a fabulous review of the novel (see below). I also knew this because I had sold exactly one print copy through Amazon at the time…

A journey to nowhere and everywhere. Loved it…

By F. de Vocht on 26 Sept. 2016

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

This book is an (unexpected) gem as far as I am concerned. I read the writer’s first book as well, which was also an enjoyable read, but this one fitted a lot better with the genre I normally read. It’s a very interesting mixture of fantasy, horror, a doorman with a past, a club with a forest attached, an engaging personal journey…all mixed with a bit of suspense.
…oh, and there is a cat. An odd one…
In summary, it combines many different things with a story that goes nowhere and everywhere, and I will be waiting impatiently for the sequel….

Like most self-published authors, E-books are where I get the majority of my sales. I go to the effort of setting up a paperback version of the novel because some people, my mum, for example, don’t like Ebooks. Also because frankly, I like to have at least one copy of my novel I can hold in my hand. It feels more real that way. It seems odd to me to say you have published a book if it is only in pixel form… I don’t say that out of any disrespect to those who only publish in the virtual form, I just like bits of paper with ink on them…

In fairness I am not alone, a lot of people just like to have paper copies. However, the cost is prohibitive, print on demand books are a little more expensive than the average new release paperback, and never get reduced in price. Unlike trade paperbacks, they don’t turn up in ASDA on the three books for a fiver stand. So while you might order author copies to sell at fairs and send out to people, copies bought through Amazon are generally a rarer commodity. Even more so when the majority of those who are likely to buy the novel in paperback ask you for a signed copy, rather than buy one through Amazon. Where in there resides a problem…

Here then is the point of this post, beyond an amusing anecdote involving me being the butt of a landlords joke. Signed copies are a lovely idea. I doubt there is a single author, self-published or otherwise, who doesn’t always feel pleased when someone asked for a signed copy of their latest novel. So we all happily will sign a few copies for people who ask. But in the cold light of the day what we are doing is kicking ourselves where it hurts the most, because, in the wider scope of things, we are hurting our ability to sell books by doing so. Ironic I know, but here is why…

By sending out signed copies on request, and a lot of signed copies at that, I lost a lot of Amazon sales on release day and the week or so that followed. Yes, I sold copies of the novel and was more than happy to do so. Indeed, I was gratified that some many readers expressed such interest. But it had a definite impact on Amazon sales figures and prevented the novel rating highly in the first week or so in its genre. To understand why that was a problem, you need to understand how Amazon sales can work both for and against you as a self-publisher…

To understand why that was a problem, you need to understand how Amazon sales can work both for and against you as a self-publisher. The way Amazon markets books internally has everything to do with rankings. The higher you rank in your genre, the more likely they are to recommend you book. As an experiment pick up your Kindle and search for books in your favourite category, ‘Time travel sci-fi’ for example…. Go on I’ll wait for you a moment…

Go on I’ll wait for you a moment…

See how it came back with the top 100 books in that category… that the top 100 by sales figures, nothing else. It’s not the top 100 ratings or most positive reviews, it is pure and simple on sales, which makes sense if you’re a multinational trying to make money selling books. People have bought this before, so more people are likely to buy it in the future… And yes, you can alter the search parameters, but the default is the number of sales every time, and people don’t normally change the defaults setting. The best way to find your audience through Amazon is, therefore, to sell books on Amazon, pure and simple. So selling your books direct, having scribbled a nice heart-warming message on the blank page at the front, is cutting your own throat in many ways.

Then there is the second problem, the review problem. As I have discussed before Amazon reviews are important to you as an author. Amazon can, and will, publish reviews from people who didn’t actually buy their copy on Amazon. None verified purchase reviews unlike Franks review above, are however far more likely to be rejected by Amazon. Amazon will almost certainly reject none verified reviews unless you have a lot of verified ones. They will use reasons, such as it is a review someone on your friends’ list, by another author, etc. While they would protest otherwise, one suspects they will reject as many as possible. So though nice people with signed copies may struggle to leave a review.

Finally, the nice people with signed copies are less likely to leave a review anyway. The majority of reviews are left because people get a nice email from Amazon asking them to review a product they purchased. ( if you have bought anything from Amazon ever you will have received more than your fair share of these.) Also at the end of a kindle book the leave, a review message pops up to remind you as well. So signed copies will also inevitably lead to fewer reviews.

So there you go, a little wisdom for the budding author there, don’t do signed copies ( except for your mum perhaps, and the proofreaders/editors who I always send a copy to as a thank you …) Say thank you, apologise that your unable to do so, and promise to sign their Amazon purchased copies if they happen to bring it with them to the barroom of the hotel in Blackpool in the middle of a rainswept February…

Of course, I am more than likely to forget this insight when I release my next novel, and lovely people ask for signed copies, but there you go, I never said I am good at taking my own advice …

Adios

Mark

Other witterings of the subject of self-publishing…

Posted in humour, opinion, Passing Place, publication, self-publishing, Uncategorized | Tagged #amwriting, #passingplace, opinion, self-publishing | Leave a comment

The Temple: The complete Lovecraft #21

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Mark Hayes

“He is calling! He is calling!”

The question of whom is doing the calling above, well that’s one open to interpretation, but whoever it may be they reside in an ancient temple submerges deep below the waves of the Atlantic… Of course, this being an H. P. Lovecraft tale, and involving a ‘calling’ from one that dwells in a temple deep below the waves, I would invite you to draw your own conclusions… as Lovecraft neglects to clarify what dwells within the temple, leaving it instead to the fevered imagination of his readers, whom with the hindsight of the modern eye can easily make the leap to Howard’s most famous creation, old squid face himself…

This though is a tale written in 1920, for all this is the 21st post in this blog series, we are still in the early days of H.P.’s career. The foundations of his mythology were still only just being laid, it was still some six years until Lovecraft penned ‘The Call of Cthulhu‘. In all likelihood, Big C had not even begun to form as an idea in the darker recesses of Howard’s mind. At most this is a tale based upon the germ of an idea, the thing in the temple may have been many things, but Cthulhu it wasn’t, not yet at any rate. Indeed one common theory is that the temple is part of R’lyeh, the city in ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth‘, though that tale was not written until the back end of 1931, eleven years later, so one would suspect this is an even greater stretch of logic…

The tale itself tells of the last few weeks in the life of Karl Heinrich Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, the somewhat brutal, cruel and arrogant commander of an Imperial German Navy U-Boat in the first world war. He is a man with little to recommend him, so sympathy with the main protagonist is not easy to gain, but then that can be said for many of Lovecraft’s characters. The narrative opens with the sinking a British Frigate, and von Altberg ordering his crew to then sink the British lifeboats against the generally accepted rules of conduct for the war at sea. As I say, the commander is far from a pleasant man, but he is also the architect of his own demise in this regard, for it is this cruel act that sets in motion a chain of events that leave the U-Boat at the bottom of the ocean, his crew all dead, and the strange lights of the temple of the title calling to him.

There is a lot going on in this tale, which is one of the criticisms thrown at it. Unlike most of Lovecraft’s fiction, which tends to focus on a primary aspect of a tale, and focus events around it, ‘The Temple‘ wanders down many supernatural pathways. The strange piece of ivory found on a body clinging to the side of the U-boat after the sinking of the frigate. Dead sailors swimming around the sub. The craft itself get caught in strange currents dragging it southwards, losing power and all control as the craft sinks slowly downwards, while the crew mutinies (before being summarily executed by von Altberg.) Indeed most of the crew are eventually killed by their captain for one reason or another after they suffer from nightmares, strange visions, strange noises and other horrors. There is, as i say, a lot going on in this story and it doesn’t all quite gel as much as the writer wished. All the while von Altberg witnesses his junior officer Lieutenant Klenze, the one who took the strangely carved ivory figurine, descend into madness as the U-boat itself descends to the ocean floor.

It is Klenze who issues those ominous words I started with, “He is calling, he is calling.” Just before von Altberg helps the Lieutenant into an airlock, giving a final ‘mercy’ to the madman, or perhaps just to finally shut him up… All before the currents take the U-boat to its final destination, a ruined city on the ocean floor which von Altberg assumes (wrongly one would surmise, this being a Lovecraft’s lost city of a cyclopean nature) to be the fabled Atlantis, in which there lays a temple from which strange lights can be seen through the portholes. Finally, the tale ends with von Altberg walking out of the airlock himself in his diving suit, and walking towards the temple, the strange sounds and hallucinations driving him to the end of the ‘iron Germanic will‘ of which he is so proud. But not before he places his logs in an airtight bottle and releases them to the ocean currents.

I should declare some history with this tale, it is one of my favourites, as much for its flaws as anything. The criticisms of the tale, its lack of coherence, the many elements that swamp the reader, I agree with. But I take the narrative to be written by a narrator on the edge of sanity. While Klenze falls to madness before von Altberg, Altberg is not far behind. Indeed, one interpretation of the tale which I have always held to personally is that Klenze and Von Altberg are one in the same. Von Altberg is watching himself go mad, and observing it dispassionately by believing that it is happening to his junior officer… While that interpretation is perhaps a stretch beyond what Lovecraft intended, (and may have something to do with being a member of the ‘Fight Club’ generation) it does make the tale hang together more and answers some of the criticisms of the story.

While I am fond of this story, however, I can also see the flaws so it scores only four tentacles out of six, but I recommend it all the same. There is an ominous to it, it speaks of more to come, it speaks of old gods in lost cities and the madness in the dark which could consume us all. While the ideas at its core are far from fully formed, it lays the foundations for the mythos and the horrors to come. This is Lovecraft feeling his way around the edges of everything that makes his writings what they are, and finally, it hints at what is to come, who is to come, what lays beneath the waves, the eater of minds, the edges of sanity and the void below.

‘He is coming… he is coming!’ indeed…

Further Lovecraftian witterings

Posted in Lovecraft, mythos, retro book reviews, rites | Tagged amreading, cthulhu, horror, Lovecraft | 3 Comments

Self-publishing: A Guidebook for the Tourist#7: The ‘Free’ book experience

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Mark Hayes

Back in March, I published a post about ‘free’ books. It was rather a long one and went into a lot of detail on the subject and my opinion such as it is. To quote myself (because no one else is ever likely to go around quoting me.)

If you have written your first novel and are thinking of making it free, even just free on a kindle countdown type deal… STOP NOW… Seriously, don’t do it, you’re making a grave error.

Safe to say I have opinions on the subject. You can read the full post here if you haven’t read it previously. This post covers the same ground to an extent, but from an alternative perspective. This is because I recently put ‘Cider Lane‘ on a free promotion for a week. Yes, I am aware that contradicts my own advice… but there were reasons and the circumstances are different to the context of the quote above.

With this in mind, I thought it might be helpful to share the details of the experience here. So while I may be repeating myself a little on the subject, for which I apologise, I would like to make it clear my views on ‘Free’ have not changed. This post is not so much about making the choice to give away your hard work, but the implications and results of doing so.

A little perspective first, however. ‘Cider Lane: Of Silences and Stars‘ was my first published novel, and it came out two years ago. Which is to say, I sent it out to the world and ran for cover. Publishing your first novel is a mildly terrifying experience…

Is it really ready, does in need one least edit, one last proofread, will anyone read it, will anyone care, will I look like an illiterate incompetent wazzock who should never again be allowed within one hundred feet of a word processor…

Then to further add to the terror, some people bought it, read it and occasionally even left a review behind. People expressed an opinion, something I actually invited people to do, while being terrified of what those opinions might be… But on the whole, despite my basic background paranoia, and utter conviction I was being humoured by most people, they seemed to enjoy it. More people bought it…

Then, as is the way of these things, sales started to drop off…

This came as little surprise, as it would to anyone else, I suspect. No matter how much of your own hubris you inhale. With a few notable exceptions, the first month of sales of a new novel will always be largest. You may get a bit of a surge if you release a new book and it is successful., but for 99% of indie writers, the first month is the one where you get the majority of your sales. It is when family, friends and your extended fanbase are likely to buy a copy. Such sales are a lot easier to get than sales to people who have never heard of you. Indeed, a wise self-publicist will try and optimise these sales, build up pre-release hype and get the book as high in sales charts as possible, because that’s how you get noticed beyond your fan base. (Interestingly this is also the basis of the biggest mistake I made on the release of ‘Passing Place’ but I will talk about that another time.)

‘Cider Lane’ has been successful sales wise, in my own terms, but after a minor surge with the release of ‘Passing Place‘ it has settled down to the odd sale once in a while. The market for it has fallen away and even reducing the price of the E-book makes no real impact. As it stands it is listed for £0.99 and it’s not going to start selling a great many copies no matter how hard I push. It has, to put it simply, had it’s run. An odd sale now and again, while it may please me, is unlikely to make much of an impact on the rest of the world.

So, why keep it listed on KU, after all, I have said before listing it on KU is pointless unless you use the promotion tools? Well, the simple answer is because I forgot to unlist it. Also, truth be told, because it actually makes me slightly more as a KU book, and it still gets the odd KU sale… I can’t, however, put it on a promotional sale, (0.99 is as low as it goes). The only option, therefore, is to put it out on a free to buy promotion. Which on principle I abhor.

However, I am not losing much putting it up on a free promotion. Yes, a few people may pick up a free copy rather than buy it, but that only really means anything if those few people were going to buy a copy anyway. It is not even as if I make anything on the sales. (0.17 per book is not going to buy me a retirement home in the Algarve) Ultimately, readers mean more to me than money at the end of the day. After 24 months, its safe to say everyone I could tempt to buy a copy has bought a copy, and if I could shift fifty more copies on a Free book giveaway what do I actually lose?

(£8.50, if you’re interested in the maths, or the price of a round of drinks for me and my girlfriend on a Friday night in Leeds, and quite a lot less than I make in my day job.)

Fifty free book sales seemed a reasonable target, gettable but a nice number, and even with all my reservations on Free books, the upside of gaining potentially fifty new readers was enough for me take the plunge. It was also a way to test my own theories of how best to approach a sale, and if I could hook readers with one book, well that’s certainly to my benefit as a writer. If I was going to do it, however, I was going to do it right.

Right means some concerted advertising on social media, Facebook posts on book groups, several tweets each day, posting on Goodreads, posting on my blog so my mailing list was informed etc. A certain portion of each day (about an hour as it turned out) devoted to getting the message out and letting people know a couple of days in advance. And, importantly, making use of my network of other authors etc to help get the message out, which is to say, I asked people to share a post and give likes etc. All the things I listed I the previous post on the subject in fact. Which certainly worked better than I expected.

I don’t normally go into details about book sales, but my target of fifty ‘sales’ over the five days of the offer proved to be wildly out. In the first day, thanks in part to Amazon’s approach of highlighting promotional offers, I sold 133. By the end of the five days, it was just the other side of 250. Five times my conservative target. I was in short very pleased and still am. If these figures seem small it is important to remember this is a book that has been out for two years and has already sold fairly well. None of these ‘sales’ I suspect were to people who had even heard of me, or ‘Cider Lane‘ before the promotion started. These are all cold sales, the hardest ones to get.

In terms of ‘sales’, this makes for the best month the book has had since its release. Even if only a fraction of the buyers read the book (again see my earlier post on ‘free’) its a lot of new readers, but let’s be optimistic and say everyone who took advantage of the free offer will read their newly purchased Ebook, or at the very least start to read it. I could be looking at a nice boost to sales of ‘Passing Place‘ in the next couple of months, even though the two novels are wildly different both in subject and genre. I could also be looking at a few reviews, (ever the optimist, as they have failed to materialise so far but one lives in hope).

Most importantly for me personally, however, is ‘Cider Lane’ is getting read by a whole bunch of people it wouldn’t have reached otherwise. All my reservations on ‘free’ books remain. If ‘Cider Lane’ was not 24 months old I wouldn’t have done it.

What then have we learned through this experience, well I guess people like a bargain, but people like a freebie more. Whether they value your work when they get it for nothing is another matter. Hopefully, a few will, hopefully, some will go one to read ‘Passing Place‘, the forthcoming Hannibal Smyth novel ‘A Spider in the Eye‘ and other books I write over the years. Also, if people have read and enjoyed it they may suggest it to other people, which in turn will sell a few more copies of ‘Cider Lane’. There has been a noticeable upswing in sales since the free offer, not many, but in comparison to the last month before the ‘free’ sale, it is a definite improvement, so some have recommended it to others.

Has the ‘free’ offer been a success? Well, time will tell on that score. It is not an experiment I intend to repeat, the law of diminishing returns being what it is a second free sale would be less successful one suspects. My reservations on the use of free promotions remain, but if your novel has been out a long time and has ground to a halt with sales, and importantly you have other books out as well, it is certainly worth considering.

There is a distinct lack of quotes in this post so I will leave you with a favourite of no relevance at all….

adios for now

Mark

Links to my own social media, by all means, connect with me on them.

FACEBOOK TWITTER GOODREADS

Other posts on writing and self-publishing are collected here:

https://markhayesblog.com/publishing-and-writing/

Posted in publication, self-publishing, writes, writing | Tagged freebook, self-publishing | 3 Comments

The Happy Thursday Good News Slot #1

Posted on June 28, 2017 by Mark Hayes

We are bombarded with bad news. In these latter days more than ever. 24 Hour news channels that seldom have anything but doom-laden bulletining’s of scandalous regard. War, Politics, terrorism, the celebrity death race, more war, scandal’s, police killings, mass shootings, the rise of the far right, natural disasters, sex scandals, rapists, paedophiles, global warming, global warming deniers, Brexit, Syria, Trump, Russian aggression, North Korea, racism , homophobia, sexism and lastly good old fashioned war because there is always more than one of them….. 24 hour a day, day in day out, week in week out. Year after year. A never-ending treadmill of the worst of humanity paraded out before you on your TV screen, through your radio, through social media and trending on Twitter, all the bad news, all day every day…

And I am as bad as anyone else, I add to hurricane ‘Betty Bad News’ with the occasional post on politics or mini-rant on Facebook and elsewhere. I could be writing a post now about everything I perceive as wrong with Trumps Administration, With Mays deal with the DUP, The root causes of the Glenfield fire, and pile opinion like oil upon the bad news waters of the world. After all, that’s what everyone else seems to do. I may think there is too much bad news out there, but if I start writing blog posts about the bad news all I am doing, in the end, is adding to the darkness… So, to put politeness aside for one moment, screw that…

Instead, here is good news, happy news, news that will hopefully bring a smile to your face, or return some semblance of hope at the very least. As with all attempts at a regular ‘Good News’ slot that isn’t linked to the literal translation of the Latin word Gospel, it is no doubt doomed to failure. There is the famous allegory of the ‘Good News Show’ (most probably an urban myth, but one I have a fondness for). A station manager sick of nothing but Bad News made a show that would only give out good news, many applauded the idea, no one watched it, the sponsors pulled out and so it lasted only a couple of weeks. Humanity it seems prefers its news to be of the bad, preferably terrible kind.

I have a couple of motivations for doing this all the same. The first being that it’s nice to give out some good news, and the second being that if I do this every week, I will have to go and find some good news every week. Which regarding my occasional battles with depression can only be a good thing. Imagine what the world could be like if we all sought out some good news to tell people about each week…

Well yes, okay, the world would still be an unmitigated mess, but it would be a start at least.

Without further ado then, or at least no more meandering wittering on, here is this week good news bulletin.

The Giant Panda. So long the butt of erectile dysfunction jokes. Is no longer an endangered species… Yes, Mr and Mrs Giant Panda have been getting it on, enjoying relations of a charnel kind, have indeed, been dancing the naked tango in the among the bamboo, getting jiggy with it, enjoying each other company in intimate ways, having, not to put too fine a word on it SEX… Yes, this famously fringed species has thawed out enough to produce some babies, quite a lot of babies. So many that the symbol of the WWF (the wildlife charity not the American wrestlers) may have to change from the old black and white teddy bear.

This is, in my tinted view at least, good news for the planet as well as the pandas. In order to save the Giant Panda, it has taken the work of conservationists, governments, and ordinary people giving a crap, working together to bring back a species that has been on the brink for the entirely of my forty-seven years on this planet. Breeding pairs in the wild were almost unheard of in the seventies, though not bothering to breed pairs were less of a problem to find.

So well renowned was the issue of panda mating habits (or the lack of) that watching Giant Panda ‘not’ having sex in zoo’s around the world became a bit of a public obsession. Not that long ago due in one attempt to get the London Zoo female panda Char Char ‘up the duff’ to used a London colloquium, was the subject of a regular slot on Radio 4’s drive time show PM. The laboriously named, ‘The Char char the London zoo panda, pregnant or not pregnant update’ slot was broadcast at about 17.35 each day. Where in the name of the slot was read out followed by a ‘pregnant’ pause before the announcer would say “not pregnant,” pause again and then conclude with “That was ‘The Char char the London zoo panda, pregnant or not pregnant update’.

(Note for Americans and other lifeforms alien or otherwise – No, I didn’t make that bit up, that really was a BBC Radio 4 drivetime slot on the PM program, it ran for about seven months. It was considered to be vaguely humorous and not in any way was some weird, quaint piece of English eccentricity. Radios 4 is considered by many to be the finest radio station in the world, mostly by people who like updates about the pregnancy or lack thereof, of London Zoo giant panda’s, and to listen to the Archers…)

But back to what I was saying, good news, the giant panda is no longer an endangered species, merely a vulnerable one… both thanks to, and equally according to, the WWF

https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/giant-panda-no-longer-endangered

Okay so Vulnerable is not a word which inspires great confidence in regards to species, but all the same, it’s good news for the Giant Panda, even if it will be less of a boon to afternoon news slots on Radio 4

That news of the pandas’ retreat from the brink broke in this article in September last year, and it took me this long to be aware of it says much about the news media, and indeed new media’s attitude to good news. …

Adios for now from the good news desk….

( oh and Manatee are apparently no longer on the endangered list either, so that’s nice too….)

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/31/us/florida-manatee-threatened-species/index.html

Posted in goodnews, opinion, rights | Tagged goodnews, panda, wwf | 2 Comments

Misquoting Kipling and other musings…

Posted on June 27, 2017 by Mark Hayes

A question that occurred to me today while working on the final draft of ‘A Spider in the Eye’ a Hannibal Smyth adventure, which I thought I would share. It’s a question of integrity, writers and indeed the integrity of that which we ‘borrow’. Like most authors, I have a propensity to use a good quote in my writing every now and again. Not least, one suspects, because I equally have a tendency to quote the words of others in conversation. In particular the words of other, far more accomplished, and far better-known authors.

It’s not rocket science after all, ‘ to be a writer one needs two things, to write a lot, and to read a lot.’ So one is by one’s vocation more likely than most to drop the odd quote into a conversation. As I just did btw, as ‘to be a writer one needs two things’ is a direct quote from that great sage of the written word Stephen King.

Writers read a lot, and we are like magpies, we pick up shiny things and return them to our nests. Our shiny things just happen to be quotes as often as not. It’s a rare day indeed that I don’t find a reason to reference a Terry Pratchett, or a Douglas Adams, or some other writer when I am ‘talking toot over a pint of ‘large’’ (Robert Rankin Reference for those taking notes). Quoting comes naturally to the writer, and a writer collects them like a waitress collects tips. Sticking them into a pocket to count up later. Even if we don’t always admit we are quoting, or even realise we’re doing so when a turn of phrase or an idea occurs to us, but for the most part we are fairly honest collectors rather than outright thieves. However, on occasion, there is a temptation to pass off something as gold which is gilt at best, because on occasion there may not be a quote where you actually need it to be…

Hence the question that occurred to me, when I came across these couple of lines in my earlier draft of ‘A Spider in the Eye’…

What was it that old hack Kipling said of Calcutta? ‘A garden of Imperial excess. A garden walled with squalor.’ Ever a man who sought to be ‘of the people’ was old Rudyard.

In case you’re in any doubt, and if I have made a half descent job of the gilt you hopefully are, Kipling did not say that at all. Indeed if he ever had anything to say about Calcutta, it would not have been in reference to the Calcutta I have him referring to. This Calcutta is almost entirely fictional. A Calcutta in the strange and alterative modernity of Hannibal Smyth’s world. A world of Airships, Steam powered camels, Clockwork Queens and in which the setting of the sun over the British Empires was avoided by liberal use of gaslight. In short, a world that Kipling never saw. Which is to say the quote is entirely made up, as it is apt for the use I am making of it and it’s the kind of thing Kipling might have said in the circumstances.

And there in lays my question… Have I, and for that matter other writers, a right to put words into the mouths ‘or pens’ of others?

Of course, the question and its answer are redundant, because writers of fiction do it all the time. And I will add an end-note in the book along the lines of ‘no he didn’t I made this up’ which will sit in between the more humorous end notes that already exist. It si no different in truth than putting the words into the mouth of sub-leftenient Vladimir Putin (a rather obnoxious, pompous ass of a Russian navel officer obsessed with the creases in his uniform, his own manliness and being taken seriously, in Hannibal’s world, it may not be biting satire, but I try and make it nibbling at the very least…). Or indeed putting words into the mouths of Professor Jobs and Doctor Gates my two competeating belligerent and entirely ‘mad’ scientists fighting over the rights for ‘eye’ technology. “Bloody Jobs is obsessed, ‘eye’ this ‘eye that, eye , eye , eye, its an ocular fetish it tell you’ as Gate’s complains bitterly to Hannibal at one point.

A novelist is, when push comes to shove, one who makes up stuff and write it down when all is said and done. Why should the same not apply to quotes as it does to parody….

Quotes however are different, when we use them we should use them with care. We are stealing wisdom and selling it on the black market, such is not a thing to be done lightly. And who reads end note properly anyway. Well apart form me that is, I am mildly obsessive about notations, but I have read Prattchet for years and there is a joy in a good footnote…

EBooks are a problem here you see. In a paper book you can put down foot notes, that little ‘not he didn’t I made this us’ is at least quickly apparent. But eBooks will not format foot notes properly.

it can be done, but it is a level of coding beyond the self-publisher as a rule. I work in IT, and know my way around software and I have struggled to make this work, you have to go right down into the code of the book itself, rather than just translate a word file to a mobi etc. and its different in every format. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and in the end it is a lot easier to just add them as end notes.

So, where does this get us, well no where really, this post was never more than a collection of vague thoughts on the question after all. It is not like there are any real rules here. Unless you are selling a whole lot of books and the estate of ‘Kipling’ decides to sue you for defamation, or misrepresentation (somewhat unlikely all the same) It really comes down to your individual integrity and opinion I guess. As a self-published author I do not have any legal team pointing out these issues to me, and frankly I suspect the heirs of Kipling have better things to do with their time. If someone picks up on a miss-quote I make and thinks it genuine then does it really matter when it’s a miss-quote of a long dead writer? God knows there are enough miss-quotes about on the internet which can do far more harm in the era of ‘Fake News’ some politicians would have you believe we are living in. It’s not like anyone reading a novel like ‘A spider in the Eye’ is doing so without a certain degree of suspended disbelief to start with.

At the end of the day I will continue to make up the odd quote when it suits me. Oh I am very careful when I do so, and almost every quote that slips into a book like ‘Passing Place’ is entirely genuine. But then ‘Passing Place’ for all it is a fantasy, is rooted in the real world… or reflections of it at least. ‘A Spider in the Eye’ is rooted in its own alterative modernity, so the odd historical figure may be found saying things they never actually said. After all why would retired submariner and second civil war vet Johnny Kennedy say anything about a Berlin that never had a wall down the middle of it, even to his second wife Norma Gene. But if I do imagination up a quote I try at least to make it something they might have said all the same, or frankly why use them at all. There in perhaps lay the truth of this question. If your going to put words in the mouths of others, at least try to make it something they could have said.

That is after all, probably all the majority of a writers predecessors would want, they were all Magpies as well after all…

But I will leave you with this real and genuine quote of Kipling, which I have always been rather fond of …

Posted in opinion, self-publishing, steampunk, writes, writing | Tagged #amwriting, amreading, quotes, writing | 5 Comments

The Picture in the House: The complete Lovecraft #20

Posted on June 26, 2017 by Mark Hayes

Lovecraft’s tales cover a broad spectrum, but the best of them are those that inspire a visceral response deep in your gut. The ones that get under your skin, gnaw the back of your mind and invoke your inner fears. ‘The picture in the house‘ does this in spades, as it slowly builds up the tension within both narrator and reader.

Published in 1921, it was the first of his tales to root itself in the New England countryside of his imagination. While earlier tales were set in within the region, it was with ‘The Picture in the House‘ that New England itself becomes a character in a wider sense. Indeed Lovecraft makes no bones about doing so in one of the early passages in the text.

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure of the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteem most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.

It is this passage that really sets the tone for the whole story. Strange though it may seem to compare the backroad farmhouses of New England to Germanic castles and lost cities in Asia, it manages to convey a sense of dread that seeps through the pages. It is the same kind of dread inspired by ‘Evil Dead’ style cabins in the woods. You know the moment you see it that something dark lays within its walls. It is a theme that Lovecraft returns to time and time again in his later fiction, building his own grim new England landscape. ‘The Picture in the House‘ is also the first tale to make mention of ‘dear’ old Arkham and the Miskatonic Valley, though only in fleeting reference, it lays the groundwork for what was to become ‘Lovecraft country’ as it is sometimes referred to.

Speaking of ‘Cabin in the Woods’ there is something of a reference to this tale in Josh Weldon’s movie, in the horror inspiring picture on the wall that hides the two-way mirror between rooms. Though ‘Cabin in the Woods’ is a movie littered with references to most of the horror genre, this is far from the only Lovecraft inspired aspect of the movie, but I digress…

That said, ‘The Picture in the House‘ is actually an engraving in an old, rare, and thankfully entirely fictional book. One of Lovecraft’s tomes of dark intent, so liberally sprinkled throughout his work. In this case the ‘Regnum Congo‘ a somewhat vile work on ritual catabolism. The book is in the possession of the inhabitant of an old New England farmhouse the narrator takes refuge in when a storm comes upon him suddenly, in the mistaken belief it is uninhabited, and it is whence his terror begins.

There are many echoes of classic gothic horror in this story, for all its New England setting. The pace, the slow build up of tension while nothing overt is happening, the way you can feel the grim darkness of the ending waiting for you, it echoes much of Poe and the early chapters of Dracula. As I said, it draws you in and gets under your skin, like an itch waiting to be scratched and growing all the more engrossing until it becomes everything and you can stand it no more. This is then, Lovecraft at his eerie, unsettling best.

It is not universally praised, though for me it is seminal Lovecraft, even the carefully understated nature of the ending, letting the reader’s imagination colour around the edges. It makes it all the more brooding and chilling for what it does not say, but then the best horror is always the darkness of the unknown, given light by the reader’s imagination …

After so many strolls through the dreamlands, getting back to pure horror is a welcome relief, and ‘The Picture in the House’ is most certainly that. For that alone, and the chills that reading this tale still sends down my spine despite having read it several times before it gets a slithering 5 tentacles. It may not be the best work, and indeed I may praise it too highly just because it comes after the disappointment that is ‘Celephais’ But it’s a tale that needs to be read, preferably on a dark stormy night, in a silent house with no one upstairs.

So what caused that floorboard to creak?

Further Lovecraftian witterings

Posted in Lovecraft, mythos, retro book reviews, rites | Tagged amreading, cthulhu, Lovecraft | Leave a comment

Celephais: The Complete Lovecraft #19

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Mark Hayes

Regular readers may have noticed there has been a bit of a lull in Lovecraftian posts for the last couple of months. Indeed the last of these was ‘The Tree‘ way back in early April. There are several reasons for this, I have been busy working on the final edit of my next novel, real work has been busier than normal, I finally upgraded my old Xbox 360 to a PS4 and bought a copy of Fall Out 4… and ‘Celephais‘.

‘Celephais‘, a tale much beloved by Lovecraft’s fans, leaves me cold. It has always left me cold, and I have never been quite sure why. Indeed I had been dreading Celephais ever since I started this self-set challenge. It has been looming on the horizon since I first put together the list of stories to read and knew where it fell in the chronological order they were written, which if you have not guessed yet, is the order I am reading the Lovecraft tales. ‘Celephais‘ has sat leering at me since I read ‘The Tree’, but if you’re going to read them all, then you have to read them all, and that is all there is to it. So read it I did and tried to put my thoughts together for this post. The page was blank save for one word, however….

Then I read it again because I have made a point of reading each tale twice before I write the blog, which is normally not too great a chore (A Reminiscence of Dr. Samual Johnson aside, which was slightly torrid to read a second time). Yet, after the second reading I still only had the one word.

I left it a while, deciding I was probably in the wrong mood for the story, and besides, I had Molerats and Super mutants to kill after waking up in Vault 111, and I had to get Hannibal Smyth to India at the behest of ‘OoldIiron Knickers‘ Ministry. I had much to do, and I was sure when I went back to it in a better mindset ‘Celephais’ would inspire a few more words on my part…

Time past, as it is want to do…

So I read ‘Celephais’ again, or at least attempted to, though every time I did I gave up a page or two into what is admirably not even a long tale. Eventually, I even summoned up the willpower to finish reading through it again and wrote down my thoughts. One word again, same word again…

Let’s recap a moment, ‘Celephais‘ is much loved by the Lovecraftian literati, they clearly see something within it I do not. So let’s talk about the tale itself a moment. Celephais is part of the Dreamlands stories. Indeed in many ways, it is an archetype for them, everything you would expect to be in a Dreamlands tale is there. It Dunsian nature, its separation from the real, its strangeness and oddity, a man seeking a world beyond the mundane and taking solace in his dreams of a far off land and a strange city… it is little different in context from ‘The White Ship‘ or ‘Polaris‘, the latter of which it shares many hallmarks with. Both of which I have a great deal of time for, but perhaps therein lays the problem. I am reading these tales in order, and ‘Celephais‘ feels like it’s been phoned in. It has all the hallmarks of the other Dreamlands tales I have encountered in this challenge but lacks the originality of them. Perhaps read in a different order it would be ‘Polaris‘ which felt stilted, rehashing ideas, and to be offering nothing new. Though, as I have said, I have read it in the past and it left me cold then as well.

In short, Celephais is best summed up by that one word I kept writing in my notes, an achingly Yorkshire word filled with derision. I know there are many who will disagree, and I hope I have at leats offered a context for my review. I will expand on it a little at least and make the review three words, but no more, as if I must expand further I would have to read Celephais again, and it’s just possible that in doing so, I will never get to ‘The Picture in the House‘… So here is the review…

Celephais, it’s twaddle…

With that in mind, I will give it IMO an overly generous…

Because it’s not ‘A Reminiscence of Dr Samual Johnson’ which is the best thing I can say about it…

Further Lovecraftian witterings

Posted in dreamlands, Lovecraft, mythos | Tagged cthulhu, dreamlands, horror, Lovecraft | 4 Comments

‘Beyond Redemption’ and the bedside table…

Posted on June 4, 2017 by Mark Hayes

I read a lot, as most writers do. Indeed it is more or less a prime requisite for the job. The great sage himself, Stephen King, says…

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Which is not to say I have ever found reading a chore, far from it. I read with a velocity which has never diminished no matter what else has taken hold of my imagination. At any one time, I have several books on the go, scattered about the house in various places. I always have at least one book on my phone that I am reading with the Kindle app on my lunch hour. On my desk at home, there are always a couple of books laying open at whatever page I was reading. While the bookcase at the side of the sofa always has a book or two that sit on top of the rest as they are in progress. There is a shelf in my kitchen (with a couple of cookbooks) that always has at least one paperback sat on it. Even the smallest room in the hours has a couple of reference books and the occasional graphic novel in the cupboard below the sink, in easy reach.

Yet of all the places for a book to reside in that twilight time between being purchased and having been read, the bedside table pile is the king. It’s the prime spot. The place reserved for the books I want to read the most.

I have, you see, always been a nocturnal reader. Those twilight hours between going to bed and going to sleep are the ones who call to me the most. Insomnia in all its vainglorious machinations has been both villain and hero most of my life. I would always sooner read than sleep, and many are the hours I have stayed awake reading when I should long have been dreaming, a good book will see me to the dawn. So if I know, it’s going to be a good book… On the nightstand is where it goes.

As a consequence, there is always a large pile of books on my nightstand, all struggling with the internal politics of the book pile, and the couple of rules I strictly ignore.

Rule 1 ‘New books to be read go to the bottom,‘ A steadfast rule that is seldom properly applied. There is a paperback at the bottom of the pile which has been there over a year because while I really want to read it, it keeps getting gazumped by incomers.

Rule 2 ‘Always finish a book before starting the next,’ An equally steadfast rule often ignored. There is a Niel Gaiman book of short stories I have been reading for six months because I tell myself that the rule does not apply to collections of shorts. Which also applies to the Necronomicon, though in my defence reading everything by Lovecraft for my blog is supposed to take me a year…

But back to rule 1, and the politics of the book pile. A new Pratchett (if such a thing were still possible) would go straight to the top (and lead to rule 2 being ignored as well.) A new Stephen King, by comparison, would slip in half way down. Unless it was a new dark tower novel in which as all bets are off… A new Jon Ronson or Matt Haig would slip in at the bottom, as much as I enjoy their books, I have to try and work through the pile somehow, but the lower reaches of the pile are a bit of a wilderness at times, and books get lost there before being moved to one of my other mind feeding stations around the house.

All of which waffle brings me to the actual reason for this post. C.G.Hatton’s latest novel Beyond Redemption. The second of her Thieves Guild Origins series. A YA sci-fi series that ties into her mainstream sci-fi Thieves Guild universe. This is her sixth novel in all, and I was looking forward to it immensely. When it arrived, it was going to be a bedside table book of the first order, of which I had no doubt. I have read all her pervious books, recommended them to others, reviewed a couple on the blog. It’s safe to say I am a fan. There was no danger of rule 1 being applied… It went straight into the upper reaches of the pile. Which is something that is always a bit of a risk…

Here is the thing, almost every author I have ever read has thrown me the odd curve ball, those disappointing books that are just not as good as the others in a series. They may not be bad per-say, they just don’t quite live up to the hype. Even when that hype is self-generated by my own expectations. Every Author will fall below your expectations on occasion. Even the Dark Tower series has its ‘Song for Susannah‘ the one book in the series that left me a little flat, not that it’s a bad novel, it’s just not the ‘Drawing of the Three‘, or the ‘Wolves of Cala‘. Book one of ‘Origins’ Kheris Burning which I reviewed last year set a very high bar, as YA novel with real strength and depth to it. The four books in Hatton’s main series ‘Thieves Guild’ (the first of which, ‘Residual Belligerence‘ I reviewed a couple of years ago) set the bar fairly high as well, but Keris Burning, in particular, stands out as a high water mark. I found myself wondering if my expectations were too high, so ‘Beyond Redemption’ stayed in the pile for a little while longer that its high placing would suggest. Trepidation beset me, as much as I wished to read it, I did not want to be disappointed when I did…

Then, eventually, after a couple of other books got read first in a strange disruption to the normality of the nightstand politics of the book pile, I picked up the courage to read ‘Beyond Redeption.’ Hoping all my trepidation was misplaced, and more than a little worried I was going to be disappointed. Such being the logic of fools…

So, as a review let me say this, you need to read ‘Kheris Burning’. Not because this novel does not stand on its own, it does. Not because this novel disappoints, it doesn’t. Not because Keris Burning is the better novel, it’s not… But because Beyond Redemption deserves its Herald. It’s a great novel, a wonderful read, it’s fast, pacey, and once I picked it up I read it in two sittings, which would have been one but for Insomnia failing to win out against the demons of sleep. Like Kheris, there is more to it than just a straight up adventure sci-fi, themes from the first novel come through to the second, but those themes have moved on to bring in more complexity underlying what is always a fun read that draws you along and draws you deeper with each page. You need to read ‘Beyond Redemption‘ because it’s just as damn good. Written with a joy of the storyteller’s soul, fast-paced, surprising and full of the unexpected. You just should read ‘Kheris Burning’ first.

C.G.Hatton continues to defy my expectations, the astounding standards she has set herself in her previous works she just keeps hitting that high bar again and again. If she has a ‘Song for Susannah’ in her she has not written it yet. Who knows, maybe she will just keep defying my pessimistic expectations with every novel. One thing is for sure she will keep going to the top of the nightstand and ignoring rule 1 with each new release…

Anyway, here is the link and due to the wonders of the internet, you can read a little of it for free as well…

Oh and if C.G reads this at all. I noticed what you did in the also by’s blurb for Kheris Burning… strangely flattered

Posted in book reviews, pointless things of wonderfulness, reads | Tagged #scifi, bookreview | 6 Comments

E-Book Giveaway…

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Mark Hayes

As the title suggests I am giving away Ebook copies of my first novel ‘Cider Lane: Of Silences and Stars’ on Kindle this week. (Follow the link to read more.)

This is for one week only, or five days technically as the offer ends at midnight on Friday. I am doing it in the somewhat vainglorious hope that it will help to get a few more reviews on Amazon (because another 5 reviews will put the novel past the 20 review barrier on .co.uk and a few more for the .com version.)

Also, I decided to make this one off offer, because having spent a year or so writing the novel in the first place and a couple of years promoting it, I have reached the point where I just want as many people as possible to read it and don’t greatly care about making any money from the novel. Not that I ever expected to make much or indeed cared about making money from it. If you get into writing purely to make money, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons and probably on a hiding to nothing.

This is, however, the one and only time I will do this because I value the little slither of my soul that Cider Lane represents a little too much to just give it away all the time.

So, please take the opportunity to grab a copy if you wish, and if you are of a mind after reading it to post an Amazon review, please do so.

On .co.uk

on .com