The Passing Place

The Vanities Of The Strong

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Mark Hayes

I have seen the future of humanity, and it is war.
War on a scale unprecedented.
War that will consume the world, leaving millions slaughtered in the mud of Europe.
War that will cause misery untold as nation fights nation with all the might of the industrial age. A generation of humanity blighted by the worst of us.
Then, a mere generation will pass before the world is plunged once more into darkness unceasing. Conflict on a scale un-reckoned by our night-mares, embroiling all in its embittered grip. It will wrap the world in choking hands and bring suffering to all it touches.
Factories of death, the dreams of madmen will be built. Trains will carry men, woman, even children to their gaping maws. Marching them in their millions to chambers of slaughter, a systematic butchery of a race.
More machines will fill the air, raining down their payloads upon the great cities of Europe, to leave them nothing but shells of their former glories. Their broken remains scorched and chard by the firestorms.
Meanwhile better bombs level whole Asian cities in single blasts. Leaving nought but invisible death in poisoned air behind them.
Such a weapon once conceived can never be forgotten, and the world will find itself waiting on the abyss of a single button. Tottering on the edge of it owns end when the mad shall be the only strategy.
Ideologies of east and west will clash, in a century of blood, ceaseless in the undertaking of little wars that keep humanity on the edge of annihilation. While the world’s people will suffer evermore under the yoke of tyrants both overt and hidden. Until the cause of money becomes the foremost of all ideology’s.
An ideology that eats away at the earth itself. Burning it up to feed the ever-growing appetites of those few who extend their power over the many with the propaganda of technology. Feeding lies through invisible transmissions that saturate the minds of humanity, reducing them to cattle for the factories of the rich.
Ripe for the slaughter.
Ripe for exploitation.
All to keep the system of war and hate moving forward.
All the advancements of the ages, all the wonders of humanity’s devising, all the ingenuity of man turned to one sole purpose. The slaughter the weak, to feed the vanities of the strong.
Would that, in one action, a simple changing of the past, this future could be averted.

H G Wells, unpublished introduction to the Time machine 1895.

(prologue form the forth coming The Wells of Time: A Hannibal Smyth adventure )

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A Biography of Depression

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Mark Hayes

There is this pit which, I believe, we all walk around the edge of at some time in our lives. Though the lucky among us may never notice they are doing so, the worst they may experience is a cold shiver on the back of their neck, and an urge to tread carefully or even tiptoe around for a day or two, without even knowing what it is that makes them feel that way.

Others will only perceive the pit, tread carefully for a while and then move on.

Others still may find themselves walking around the edge for a long time at different parts of their lives, but through luck and perhaps the odd guiding hand they never slip into it.

For some, however, occasionally the ground will give way under their feet, and they will stumble. If you’re really lucky at that point, you might catch yourself, or you may find a handhold or a ledge to abate your fall. Someone may reach out a hand and grab you, pulling you back to firmer ground. Yet they still may find themselves slipping down into the pit all the same.

And some of us just fall when the ground gives way.

It’s dark down there in the pit, dark and cold, and a long way down. The people walking around the edge seem like shadows, which taunt you and remind you that you too were once only walking around the edge.

Yet even in the deepest parts of the pit, you can see the sunlight. That’s why you can see the shadows. You can still see the way out, for all the sides are steep. You can still imagine that if you call out someone may drop a rope to you, and half pull, half drag you back up to the rim. There is, you see, allows hope while the sun shines…

Except at night there is no sun, at night there is only darkness, and those shadowy figures of hope are but noises in the distance. Half-forgotten. Until even the sun is but a memory, daylight a myth.

It is there, in that darkness that I have dwelled more than once in my life, dreaming of the days in the sun I can no longer remember.

Depression can take anyone. It’s not what it seems, it’s not what people say, it’s not weakness, it’s not just a dose of the blues either. It is all too human, and few, lucky people have ever passed through their lives without glimpsing that pit at some time. Many may never fall down the whole way, but most stumble at some point, and all too many fall for a while.

As for myself, I am perhaps more inclined towards it than most. Some of us just are, it’s in our make-up. For me, to the extent for a long time, that pit has been my norm. Something I have only come to realise of late because when you dwell in the pit, or around the side of it for a long time, the norm is what it becomes.

Knowing that does not really help a great deal, save that in recognising the place in which I dwell for what it is, I can try to find a way to climb out and walk in the sunshine for a while.

The first time I dallied with none existence, with seeking an end, was in my early teens. I am not sure I recognised it at the time for what it was. It was not a desperate cry for attention, as some would consider it. Nor was it some expression of teen angst taken to extremes.

More than anything it was an aspect of control I could exert upon my life where I had none. I made a choice to survive, to continue, and not to end it. It was a choice in my hands that it was being able to make that choice I believe saved me from the ultimate expression of the logic of nihilism. I did not choose to end my life because I could choose not to.

Both my novels draw influence from my own experience. As the old adage goes, ‘write what you know’.

In Cider Lane both the main characters have their struggles with the pit. In the case of Susanna, the pit is morphed into the cave of her psyche. That dark place to which she retreats. While hope and the sunlight play a major part, it starts to form the pit in many ways.

Passing Place deals, among other things, with the grief, the main character feels after the death of his wife, who herself took that ultimate choice we all have. While the novel covers many other things, my pit looms deep with its pages also.

One of my favourite reviews of Cider Lane states

‘ Hayes captures the essence of trauma to perfection in his book Cider Lane: Of Silences and Stars. It’s a difficult feat to write emotion. First, you must submerge yourself within the walls of the pain that we try so desperately to avoid.’

It’s a strange review to be pleased with perhaps, but it makes me feel that I managed to put across some of the themes I was aiming for.

Why and I taking about all this?

Well for several reasons, including the desire to write this stuff down, as writing things down is one of the ways I deal with the world. Which is probably why I feel driven to write novels and just in general. It’s my form of therapy.

But also a recent Facebook post from a friend reminded me of an organisation I have never used, but who’s number I carried with me at times when I walked the pit. It was a simpler post with a few words and the phone number of the organisation.

The Samaritans are a charity that takes its name from the biblical parable of the good Samaritan. They have their detractors and plenty of mockers, but it’s an easy target to mock because no one wants to believe they would ever need them. Even those that dwell in the pit.

As I said, I carried their number about for years, in a fold of paper tucked in my wallet. I never rang them, but the number was there if I ever felt I needed to. It helped, in a strange way, and was enough to have the number.

For many others just having the number is not enough.

Samaritans respond to more than 5.4 million calls for help every year. If even a fraction of those calls actively prevented a suicide attempt, then that is still a terrifying number.

The pit is deep, and dark, and sometimes you cannot see the sun, but there is always someone standing on the rim, waiting for your call.

You can call Samaritans for free anytime from any phone (UK) on 116 123 (USA) 1 (800) 273-TALK this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill, email jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find details of your nearest branch.

I have written about depression before here, so this is not a new subject. The first post can be found at the link below.

Depression talking about it

#samaritans

Posted in depression, opinion, rant, rights | Tagged depression, mentalhealth, rants, samaritans | 2 Comments

Valuing your craft

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Mark Hayes

How do you value the results of your craft?
It’s one of those questions that’s always hard to answer, and harder to answer as a writer than, for example, as a carpenter.
A carpenter makes a table. He cuts the wood, joins the pieces together, sands down the rough edges, lays on a few layers of varnish, then polishes it all up, Then if he adds up the cost of the materials, and ascribes some base value to an hour of his life, he can figure out how long he spent making the table. Add a reasonable percentage on top and voila he has his value, and can look to sell his table at a price that reflects its worth. If he is a highly skilled craftsman making bespoke furniture he can charge a little more, because people can see the value in his work, but ultimately they are paying for a singular item with a solid as you like value.

For a writer, however, the value of his craft is something much harder to ascribe. Ironically because while what is written is singular and unique in nature, the way we market it is not.
If for example, you add up all the hours I spent on thinking about, writing, editing, redrafting, proofing, final editing, typesetting, revising again, when I wrote Cider Lane. In the same time, our carpenter could have made a fair few tables I would posit, or else he would have made a very beautiful and very expensive table.
The novel it took me a year to write between the first word I typed on the screen and it reaching publication. Add up the hours spent and you get a rather large figure. One which a reader does not as a rule see, hence the iceberg below.

Despite this the craft of writing is for me a labour of love. I don’t write to make a living, I have a full time job and writing is a hobby, though if I could make a living doing it I would, truly professional authors are few and far between. While I get my share of readers, I would need to sell a whole lot of books to replace my day job, and that’s not going to happen any day soon.
This does not mean I do not want to be paid for my work, it’s not how I pay the mortgage, but fair recompense for the work I put in would be nice. All the same it is hard to ascribe a value to your work. A balance between trying to find new readers and trying to get a fair return has to be struck, and unlike our carpenters table placing that value on our work remains a difficult proposition.

There is compensation, however, as when we sell a book we can sell it to more than one person. the words we craft are not carve into a stone tablet by hand after all. We can figure out the cost of paper and ink easily enough, print on demand sites will tell you exactly what the minimum is and we can just add a value to that to figure our the price of a book. I use Createspace for my own, though they are plenty of others. Some possible better, a few worse.
I’m a Bibliophile, I like seeing paper copies of my novel, and like selling them direct when I get a chance, though the paperback market is not where I sell most books, it is still somewhere I like to be.
E-books are however the main marketplace for new and aspirating self published authors. E-books which bring their questions of value. With the E-book it’s not even a physical thing we are selling, just binary strings that hold together to form a readable text. We’ll sell it, then we sell it again, it’s a never ended supply of binary code. Which make it harder to ascribe a value, because ultimately your selling nothing but a copy of that code.

All the same, however, how do you place a value on a novel, it’s not just about the time spent writing it. A novel, any novel, is a little pieces of the writers soul laid bare. I say this fully aware of how pretentious it sounds, gleefully aware in fact.

Market economists (a grey inhuman bunch, lack any real soul) would tell you that the market finds its own values, through supply and demand. (see note). they would advise however that if a new writer wants readers he is best advised to give his work away. Make it free and they may come…. create a free supply and your will be at the peak of the demand curve.

Which is true enough, but do people value anything they get for free?

I know myself I have seen free e-books advertised and ignored they simply because ‘if it’s been given away its probably not worth anything’ . I am a child of consumerism after all.

yet if you set a price at the minimum ( on amazon that £0.99 ) it may drag in a couple more readers but still it suffers from the ‘if it’s cheap it must be worthless’ factor.

Other readers have go so used to free books on the internet they just don’t understand why they would have to pay for something. I have genuinely had people cursing at me on +facebook for saying no when they ask for a free copy. the world is ever a strange place, and people expect something for nothing for all they value it less for being free.

I recently dropped the price of Cider lane from £1.99 down to £0.99 in the hope of selling a few more books. Which is what inspired this ramble, or the mixed feeling I had about doing so inspired it at any rate.
I know that while I care nothing about money made from book sales, I do care about people valuing my work and the feeling of value I ascribe to it myself. Readers are important to me, I would not want one reader paying me the true value of my work (I did the maths and on hours alone its about £20,000 worth of work in time). I would vastly prefer 20,000 readers, but it still feels like giving it away. As does the option to do just that on amazon for a week which I resist all the same.

Artists (any for of artist) seldom get true value for the work they produce. Less so in a culture that glorify’s the average, pays footballers millions, yet wants movies for free.
But if we do not value our own work, who will…

Cider lane , available now on kindle for a fraction of the value of my soul, of which it is a slither…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mr-Mark-Hayes/e/B014JD4F54/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Note, I am doing a degree in politics philosophy and economics. What I have learned is this. Economics is politics with the humanity removed, people are figures on a spreadsheet, their hopes and dreams an irrelevant factor. They never consider if they should do something, only the effect it will have on the little green bits of paper they obsess about if they do. this is why few socialists are economists.

Posted in books, cider lane, pointless things of wonderfulness, publication, writes | Leave a comment

Nanowrimo 2016

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Mark Hayes

The keyboards are cooling off, The maddening race is over,The final words are done, if your lucky.

Congratulations to anyone who succeeded in the attempt, and the same to anyone who tried by fell short.

Cider Lane came out of a Nanowrimo three years ago, that fell short at the final hurdle, as I remember I got to 38k that year, the final novel, after a good 18 months more work, redrafts , edits and raging at the keyboard… was published at 86k, but that #nanowritmo started it all.

So if you fall short, don’t despair…

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dyslexia

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Mark Hayes

This is an unapologetic rant which started on facebook when someone pointed out an error I had made spelling popularism.
I have placed it here only because having ranted I realised it was perhaps something I felt I needed to say to a wider audience than the friend in question who pointed out a ‘U’ i should not have had in a word. It was a very minor thing to rant about in many ways, but the rant came from deep within. I was far from my happiest at the time I wrote it…..

Any particular reason you are nitpicking away at someone who sufferers from dyslexia XXXXX?
I ask only because of your desire to do so and in doing so make me either feel or indeed just look stupid, while you feel a modicum of superiority by pointing out a single letter in a word I have misspelt in a two line facebook post is both mildly irritating and somewhat perfidious in nature.
My spelling is seldom perfect. However, what small satisfaction a person may gain from pointing this out should perhaps be weighed against the utter irritation I feel when this is done.
I am broken, a sad but true state of affairs. My brain does not work the way the majority of people’s minds work. It sees and translates language differently. Indeed I must force it to twist back upon itself, to take an extra step to understand the words on a page, be they ones I read or those I write.
I read slower than most people, despite this, I read with ravenous ferocity, but slower all the same.
Not because I am stupid, but because my brain needs an extra moment to perform that additional translation that others do not need to find.
I despite Karaoke, not because of the thing itself, but because I am incapable of it, I can not read and understand words quick enough to sing along.
I abhor reading aloud, even when I used to do it each night for my children because I stumble and fall over words, that extra step all the harder when I have to speak them too. I read to them each night anyway, because I loved them and wanted them to love books and the wide world of imagination, despite it often made me feel inadequate to be stumbling over words in books like ‘the hungry caterpillar’ and ‘a bag of wind.’
Most people’s brains are reading ahead before words leave their lips, mine is struggling to keep up.
At primary school, I was held back, had special classes, because my reading age, when spoke was behind, and I felt utterly stupid because of it. Yet in every other subject but English, provided I did not need to read aloud, I was far ahead of my peers, because I am actually far from stupid. But the child I was did not understand that, only that I was in that special class, the one everyone else looked down upon.
I have read the classics, I have read modern classics, my home is in many ways an extended library, my son even described it as such to his girlfriend. I have hundreds of books, and I have read them all, yet I read them slower than most people for all that.
I am doing a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, at the ridiculous age of 46., its taken me 6 years, because while I could have done it in three, I could never have read all the course material if I had tried to do it that way, because my brain doesn’t work properly.
It’s a pointless degree, done for the challenge of doing it, but I have forced my brain around it all the same.
I have written two novels. They took me years. And only because of the help of those willing to proof read have I managed to make the final books mostly error free, because even with all the computer software in the world, which is helping spell check this, my brain still does not see typos.
I have done all this, and yet there are times I still feel stupid, like that child at primary school when someone points out the inadequacy of my spelling. I still feel stupid and shite about myself, even though I know I am by no definition stupid. Whenever anyone points out a typo or a grammatical error in a fucking two line facebook post. Because despite all I have, and all I have done, I can still be made to feel stupid. I can still have someone point out a one letter typo and feel utterly shite about myself and my broken dysfunctional dyslexic brain, because I have been feeling that way since I was a child

Occasionally I feel the need to get this stuff off my chest …

Posted in dyslexia, opinion, rights, writes | Tagged #dyslexia | Leave a comment

#passingplace 2

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Mark Hayes

More single shot Passing Place promotions pictures

The wolf king of Winter

The corner of your eye

The world-tree in the garden

Faces in the dark

Posted in Passing Place, pointless things of wonderfulness, publication | Leave a comment

Alan Turing

Posted on October 21, 2016 by Mark Hayes

As a nation, the British were lucky in the second world war to have Alan Turing. His genius directly shortened the war by two, possibly three years, and in doing so saved millions. Further to this, we know the Nazis were working on their own atomic bomb development program. If they had had the time and the resources to spare, which they would have done had the war lasted another couple of years, they may well have completed it before the Americans. Alan Turning shortening of war then may well have saved many British and American cities from the fate of Hiroshima. Indeed, perhaps the whole world from a premature nuclear holocaust.
As a nation, the British were unlucky after the war in that homosexuality laws caused us to lose one of our finest minds. Had Turing lived, then silicon valley may have been built along the Thames. The powerhouse’s of the internet age could well have sat somewhere outside Richmond, while the rest of the world was running just to keep up.
But more importantly, Alan Turing was unlucky to be born in a nation which persecuted one of its finest minds, among so many others, for the ‘crime’ of loving another man.

When you read this, more than likely on your mobile phone, or maybe your laptop or tablet, I would like you to think for a moment. You are doing something you can only do that because of Alan Turing. Something you can only do, not because his genius led us to the point where you can hold in your had a device that can access the sum total of all human knowledge. (That device you use to look at funny pictures of cats). Which it is entirely possible is the case.

But something you can only do because had it not been for Alan Turing the city you were born in may have been nothing more than a pile of irradiated rubble. A pile of rubble over which a much misused ancient Hindu symbol of peace on a black and red background flying over it. Something you can only do because you were born at all, which you may not have been had we lived in a world under the black jackboot of fascism.

Tonight (when I wrote this on 22/10/2016) I was watching the news when a Tory government minister talked away a bill named in Alan Turing’s honour. A bill which would have pardoned homosexual men whose sexual orientation was criminalised in the 1950’s. A bill which was to be named Turing’s law, because it was this same act that led one of our finest minds, indeed, one of the finest minds the human race has ever produced, to commit suicide after been chemically castrated by order of the British government.

I, a straight white guy, not that it’s relevant, have never been much enamoured of the Tory party. Which will surprise no one who has ever talked to me about politics. I, therefore, have little love for any government of which the Tory party is a part. But under David Cameron, they legalised Gay marriage. This was in my view a great step forward in equality and humanity. I have always been able to marry someone I love, and see no reason what so ever why any gay man or woman should ever have been denied the right to do the same. With that in mind, I have been known to point out the gay marriage bill to those who roundly castigated the Tory government.

“Yes,” I would say, “they are not the government of these blessed isles I would wish for, but at least they are heading in the right direction on this subject if no other. There is hope…”

Tonight (22/10/2016) they have proved otherwise….

Posted in opinion, rights | Tagged lgbt, opinion, rights | Leave a comment

Polarising America

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Mark Hayes

The polarisation of American society over this Presidential Election is the worst I have ever witnessed.
The partisan hatred between Republican and Democratic camps has grown in vitriol and anger with each passing week. Each side seems entirely blind to anything the others says. To a point where it has become astounding. The level of debate has become not about ideas or policy but which of the candidates is the worst person. Indeed rather than question their own candidate over anything both sides opt for the path of least resistance. Instead of trying to justify the actions and words of their chosen they attack the other candidate.
This is, to be fair to both sides, not a new tactic. I am sure if we could look back at the senates of old Rome we would hear Pro-console Trump denigrating Pro console Clinton, rather than explain the plan they didn’t actually have to get the rats out of the sewers beneath the Coliseum. A major campaign promise of course…

The problem, however, is the sheer vitriol that is expressed in these attacks. If any other candidate had said or done half as much as Trump, they would never have made it to the candidacy. Yet rather than turning against his increasingly controversial statements, or even questioning them, his supporters rally to point out the flaws in his opposite number Hillary. Mrs Clinton herself is far from saintly, though the list of political ‘crimes’ she has committed is increasingly hysterical in nature, and I do not use the word in the sense of comedy here.
Yet this is not actually all Trump’s fault. Indeed Trump is a symptom, not the disease, the disease is the right wing media, the Republican parties lurch to the right in recent years.
Back when Obama ran against McCane, the Republican candidate was the first to espouse rhetoric that became the birther movement. He refused to stand and watch while others tried to claim Obama was a Muslim or a foreign national by birth. He was also the last Republican candidate to make a stand against the ridiculousness of that protracted lie. While Romney 4 years ago did not make direct reference to it, he also did not try to expunge it from the campaign. For the 8 years of the Obama presidency, the vitriol of the Republican press, the Fox network and the blocking tactics in the Senate have widened the gap between reality and republicanism. The rhetoric is no longer the ever hopeful, positive, optimistic ‘shining city on the hill’ of Reagan. Hatred, anger and blame have become the watch words. The darker extremes of the Republican movement have moved to the floor.
It’s not just Trump, look at the state of Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LaPage, a man who spouts racism, anti-immigration, sexism, and obscene remarks so often that it has ceased to be news-worthy anymore. Yet he remains in office. A man who describes himself as a Trump supporter before Trump even ran for office. Indeed, if anything Trump for all his outrageous statements is a mild manor political animal compared to LaPage. (for more on Lapage read the NY Times item linked below)
None of this is to blame the Republican party supporters alone, the vitriol runs from both sides of the debate.

download-1

In the latest debate, a presidential candidate talked about haveing the other arrested and imprisoned if they won ( and forcing the AG to do so). It was the kind of statement you would expect in some 3rd world directorship, (BTW the last American president who tried to force an AG to prosecute someone was Nixon. The AG resigned as it was unconstitutional, and beyond the powers of the presidency, but then that candidate seems to have no idea about now the political structures of the USA work, so somehow it’s unsurprising. Yet even this has led to further bunkering down of the respective sides. It no longer matters what you say, it only matters that you can point to the other side and say they are worse.
“Lying Hilary…..” as has become Trumps rallying cry. This from a man whose capacity for mistruth seems even greater than his ego. Yet even when Trump is caught out with lies, they are brushed aside by his supporters.

“I never said that…” a response to the claim that China made up global warming to disadvantage American business. Yet he most certainly did and on Twitter. Yet his supporters response is to point out the ‘lies’ of the other side. It’s a case of ‘forget my wrongs look at her wrongs’, and again the Clinton campaign is not blameless here.

My fear goes deeper than this. However, it is that after November the 8th what will be left behind no matter who wins (and I hope it’s not the bewigged one ) is a divided nation, scarred across political lines at war with itself. Because currently, all I can see is people talking about how much they hate the other team, and utterly ignoring anything about their preferred candidate…

Luckily for me, I don’t live in the US, my opinion is of no weight, and perhaps that very separation gives me the ability to see context more. But what I see is a divided nation, and I can not see that whoever wins in November will change that. Some divisions run deep, and America looks more and more like two desperate sides facing off at each other.
Well, at least, that’s never caused a problem before …..

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/us/paul-lepage-maine-governor.html?_r=0

Posted in politics, rights | Leave a comment

Interviews

Posted on October 9, 2016 by Mark Hayes

I don’t do many interviews. There is a reason for this. I don’t get asked to do interviews very often … In fact as far as I remember the only actual interview I have done previously was for the publisher’s book club when they gave me an award, and that site closed down shortly afterwards.
Not due to my interview, but due to illness I hasten to add.

Luckily Jianne who ran that site is on the road to recovery now, though it’s a long hard road , but I digress and only mention this because I have talked about Jianne’s problems and the ridiculousness of the American health care situation before on here.

Anyway that aside I still have never done many interviews, because I don’t ask people to do them. Publicity is all well and good but I prefer to grow organically, and some ‘interview’ sites are scams that ask for money for the interview etc. Paid publicity is a choice, but know what you paying for is always my opinion and I do not trust the scam blogs that I have seen out there. However, on occasion people just ask if you want to do an interview. As Mercedes Fox did for her blog, and I had loads of fun answering her questions.

So if you have a moment swing by her site (link) , enjoy and take a while to read some of the other stuff she has there.

In other news more Passing Place and Cider Lane teasers to enjoy 🙂