Atheljack and Ethejill went up the hill

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Mark Hayes

‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water’

This begs the important question, to wit, which idiot built a well at the top of the hill? The water table is reasonably consistent meaning the best place to dig a well in any given geographic area is always at the bottom of a hill, as you don’t need to dig down as far. Digging a well at the top of the hill would require you to did down the full height of the hill and then sink down to the water table.

Arguably of course there is one reason to dig a well at the top of a hill, that being if the hill houses some form of fortification, say a small castle or fortified monastery. Then sinking a well at the top of the hill makes perfect sense. A supply of clean drinking water in a siege situation being important after all, not to mention just the daily convenience of a water supply.

However no mention is made in the nursery rhyme of this being the case. ‘Jack and Jill do not go up the hill and ask permission of a guard to enter the fortress in order to fetch a pail of water’ They would certainly need to enter the fortress because a well outside the walls would defeat the objective of having a well at the top of the hill in the first place. As such this scenario seems unlikely.

Now admittedly, were Jack and Jill to go up the hill to the fortress and ask for permission to enter, and that permission be refused by some over zealous guard who then shoved Jack down the hill. Thus explaining Jacks clumsiness as he ‘fell down’ the hill in the manner in which men of Irish decent often ‘fell down the steps’ of Bow street Police station on there way to the cells in the 1970’s, cells located on the ground floor of a single story building.

Were Jill to offer entirely deserved protestations to the guard after they shoved Jack down the hill, this would explain why she too went ‘tumbling’ after. While it is clearly abhorrent to the right thinking that such an action be undertaken by a guardsman, they had just shoved Jack, so the shoving of Jill is hardly something they would shy away from one suspects.

Could this nursey rhyme in fact be a hidden warning about the perfidy of the lackies of authority in a feudal regimen? Well if so it could have made it a lot clearer, at least mention the castle, it is just lazy writing otherwise.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water

then knocked upon the castle gate, and ask the guard to facilitate

The guard said no, because he was a cog in the feudal power structure and liked to exert his power

He shoved jack down, and broke his crown and then sent Jill tumbling after.

I will admit not of this scans very well.

In essence though this seems unlikely all round. If the guards on the castle gate were unfriendly to the locals this would suggest an occupying power, such as the early Normans. The castle likely a wooden construction of a standard mote and baily design, and that Jack and Jill were of local Saxon descent. But this is just not mentioned in the nursery rhyme either. Nor indeed does a Jack and Jill appear in the doomsday book. Jack and Jill were not common Anglo Saxon names. Unless the names were originally Atheljack and Ethejill

Atheljack and Ethejill went up the hill to the castle to fetch a pail of water

This also doesn’t scan, but it does bring up another question, why were two of them going up the hill to fetch a single pail (or bucket) of water. Realistically could they not carry two buckets each. So if two of them are going why are they not fetching four pails?

Maybe the family only had one bucket? Well sure but why send both of them in that case? And are we not assuming they are related at this point? How do we know? At no point does the rhyme say they are. Let us allow for the moment that the castle is perhaps long ruined and abandoned. Which would explain why it is Jack and Jill not Atheljack and Ethejill. Why are these two going up to the old ruins with a single bucket between them?

Is it really to ‘fetch a pail of water’ or is there something more going on here. Let us consider for a moment that Jill might be naive enough to agree to accompany Jack to the ruins at the top of the hill to get water. We can perhaps assume these are country folk, and perhaps not overly educated, Jack has convinced Jill to go looking for water at the top of a hill amidst an old ruined castle after all. This does however suggest that the most likely reason Jack fell down the hill is that Jill resisted his amour, and she came tumbling after because she lost her footing in the melee between them.

In any regard, for Jill the lesson here is do not go looking for wells at the top of hills, no matter how much Jack tries to convince you that you should. I mean its an old well in an abandoned castle, its unlikely to be clean water fit for drinking in any regard. As for Jack, consent is an absolute you utter swine, I have zero sympathy. So I am not going to send for the doctor, even though it obvious you probably have concussion.

I’ll just patch you up with vinegar and brown paper.

Occasionally the long dark winter nights are lonely and my mine wonders while I stare at the shadows unable to sleep.

Posted in reads, writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The wages of ink and paper

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Mark Hayes

There is an oft expressed view within both independent and traditional publishing circles, whence writers are encouraged to ‘fake it till they make it’. Or at least believe it is something they should do. The argument being something along the lines of ‘if you want to be successful you must first be considered successful or no one will take you seriously. It is a view I have on more than once occasion spoken in opposition of, because it creates a false concept of what success is, and what making it entails.

This leads to some authors thinking they are failures and there work has no value because everyone around them is telling them how successful they are being. People on occasion share sales figures on twitter, generally just after they have done a ‘free book ‘ promotion. Because ‘Look I sold all these books…’ that they gave away for free, makes them look more successful.

As an aside, because it is a subject I have spoken about before, free book promotions are the worst idea anyone has ever come up with. they devalue your work and the work of others. They also do not achieve the aim of getting more readers, or even more reviews. If anything it just makes the market for your books smaller, because readers who might of bought one of your books just got dozens of books for free. They tend to ascribe them little value and often just collect free books because they are available free, not because they have great intent of reading them.

In any regard, the main problem is one of expectation. New writers ‘expect’ to sell loads of books, this is often not the case. More often than not in fact. Less than 1% of authors could make a moderate living out of writing. and of those that do perhaps only the top 1% make a sizable living. Or about 1 in 10000. I may be being overly conservative with this estimate, but not by much.

In a bid for some kind of transparence I occasionally put up real figures of my own sales. And as the year has turned the figures for the last calendar year are available to me fully so it seems like a good time to do so.

Some notes by way of reference.

  • I released no new books last year.
  • The last book I released was a small anthology (the strange and the wonderful) two years ago.
  • the last novel was over three years ago.
  • I have 11 books in print

That is all to say this years sales are not bolstered by new releases this is all back catalogue only.

KENP

KENP is amazons kindle unlimited market, you have to opt into this as a writer and agree to exclusively publishing through kindle with a given book. All my books are listed for kindle unlimited simply because I have tried going wide to other markets (apple B&N etc) and it just doesn’t work, there is a reason apple has the kindle app on their phones despite it being in direct opposition to their own service and that is simply market share.

Unfortunately KENP is, and has always been, rife with scam merchants. There is a reason for all those annoying adverts on You Tube about making money via amazon by ‘writing books’ and it is all to do with how KENP is set up. However not to go off on another rant about KENP, here is the short version of how it works.

  • Kindle unlimited subscribers read books
  • Authors are paid by the number of pages read
  • Kindle unlimited is a great way to find readers as kindle unlimited subscribers are naturally readers.

Unfortunately the ebook market in general has been swamped. It was swamped before AI now everything is far worse. Amazon to there credit are trying to manage AI books away from their platform but it is a bailing bucket in a storm. Despite this however my page reads for the last year are actually up despite the lack of new releases, Jan 1 – Dec 31 in 2023 they were 64,460

But as you can see in the lower graph it is still about half what KENP reads were before AI started to rear its hydra like head.

Total reads for 2024
All time total reads

77,243 page reads in a year with no new releases is however not bad going, but you need to bare in mind I have a reasonable back catalogue of 6 novels, a compendium of the Hannibal novels, 2 anthologies and a nonfiction book on Lovecraft so while these are not bad figures this is not to say they couldn’t be better but it is actually better than expected. I would hazard a guess it has improved mainly because Amazon have been weeding out AI books from there kindle platform and actual authors are getting in fount of readers more often. Time will tell however how true this may be.

If you take the mean number of KENP ‘pages’ in my books as being about 400 (which is probably about right, but KENP page counts do not match print page counts) then I have sold around 193 worth of books through Kindle Unlimited

Books

print and ebooks 2024

In total, purely through amazon and not including direct sales at events, I sold 231 books last year, only 78 of which were print. The graph is also slightly misleading where it says ‘all 16 books’ as it is count from a list that includes two books that no longer exist, and a play I never expect to sell and only existed in print as I wanted print copies. It also double counts a couple of books as the kindle and paper versions list separately, in actuality I only have 10 books on the market and again, in a year of no new releases these are reasonably good numbers.

In total, KENP, kindle and paper if you add them together I sold around 424 books on amazon last year. Which is the figure I care about, it is also despite no new releases, up from last year.

What that equates to in money you can see below

Add to that direct sales at events ( I did not do many last year) and I probably made about £1000 last year in book sales. Clearly I am not packing in the day job any time soon… However this was a quiet year without any new releases. I sold books, I had nice feed back from readers, I am happy enough .

Of course to sell that number of books on amazon I did paid amazon marketing. On which I spent a little bit more than that £881.50 in sales, events all cost more to be at than I make in sales generally And if i wanted to figure out the actual figures I probably made a loss of around £500 minimum if not more in order to sell a few books and find a few readers. Had I done more events, baring local ones, that loss figure would of been a much bigger number.

To be clear, when it comes to my vocation as an author I do not care about money. I do events because I enjoy them, enjoy meeting readers, and enjoy getting out there among them. I do not care about losing money on what some might consider my hobby ( I do not consider it a hobby, I am not a hobbyist writer, I am a novelist, it is a vocation, it is who I am) I am lucky in that I have a day job that pays the bills, heats the house, buys gin, and allows me to invest in my joy.

Also to be clear, I am successful as a writer, at least within my own terms. The point of putting this blog post together is to be open and honest about what those terms are, what ‘success’ for me looks like. The only figure in all this I care about is readers found, the only aspect of this which is important is did those readers enjoy the books. And for the most part in a year without new releases I found a goodly number of new readers and as far as I know most of them enjoyed the books.

My advise to any author, be they starting out or a old hack like me, is write what you love and decide what success looks like on your own terms. Do not get drawn into the fake it till you make it culture so prevalent on social media, and don’t try to measure your success against others.

If you can write something, something that touches a persons soul, that makes them think, wonder, or consider the world anew, that makes them weep in that good way, or laugh , or frightened, chilled, or more importantly brings them a little joy, then you are a success. Even if you manage to do that with just one book sold to one person.

Posted in amwriting, opinion, publication, self-publishing, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The personalities of books

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Mark Hayes

I am passing the time working through an old WIP that stilted at 15k, but which I keep coming back to. Its a couple of years since I worked on it, and I have got to a section in which a bookshop owner, who may or may not in actuality be a wizard, and has not really been introduced into the story yet so this is generally in flux, is contemplating the bookshelves… I have absolutely no idea if this passage will survive should I ever write the whole of this novel. It was however joyous to rediscover this bit of fanciful nonsense, because I can not remember writing it (this happens more often than you might think…)

This is somewhat rough and ready as its part of an incomplete first draft…

A Question of books

Books, he had determined years ago, develop personalities if left unread for too long. They gather a sense of self in much the same way they gather dust, sunlight turns pages yellow and slowly bleaches cover if left exposed. The cosmetic changes were, admittedly, more obvious but the personalities books developed were more subtle and harder to define. Nevertheless, he remained convinced this was the case.

Autobiographies, for one thing, tended to develop a high opinion of their own importance, while Biographies tend towards servility. Romance novels wilt as time passes, losing their passion to be read. Histories on the other hand become stuffier as they gather dust and assume a greater veracity upon themselves in direct corelation to how out of touch they become. Novels, meanwhile, have a habit of becoming steadily more fanciful and acquiring unrealistic aspirations.

The variation in personality was never more pronounced that between the fiction and non-fiction shelves, which tended to leer at each other. One considering the other to be lacking in true worth. The others considered there opposite numbers knew the measure of everything but lacked the imagination to raise the human spirit.

He considered both sides to be equally wrong on all counts.  

One thing he had noted was that all books, with the possible exception of wilting romances, have in common a desire to be read, with the singular other exception being books of magic.

Books of magic, perhaps as a by-product of their nature, are secretive. They hide away their words in jealous guardianship. They do everything they can to dissuade the causal browser from opening them and perusing their pages. He had witnessed them actively shrink into the recesses of the bookshelves and gather motes of dust upon themselves like a protective shroud. The last thing a book of magic wanted was to be read, for with the act of reading the magic within them was released.

Romances on the other hand just did not know when to let go.

‘If you are looking for the spell books, look for the books trying hardest to be inconspicuous’ he would tell you, if you were to ask. If he was inclined to impart such knowledge at least, which as a rule he was not.

In truth he as happiest if he spent the day in the bookshop, saw no one, and no one came in asking him to impart knowledge.

A good day was a day spent with a pot of tea under the cosy, a plate of fondant fancies beside the tea pot, lounging in a comfy chair, while perusing a random book from his stock. Particularly, if he was of a mind, reading a certain kind of fantasy novel. The kind that often featured him.

He loved reading the bits they got wrong.   

Posted in amwriting, books, fantasy, fiction, humour, reads, sci-fi, supernatural, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

As days grow lighter… coming things

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Mark Hayes

We have past into winter, and the sun has begun its return and the writer within me is excited for the new year to come. My literary year of 2025 is going to begin early with a new Harvey Duckman Anthology due out on the 10th of January. It is an anthology of dark and urban fantasy which we have entitled Rum and Rosemary. Gillie ultimately came up with the title and left some debate on the ‘Rum ‘ part, as rum has more than one meaning. In this case it almost certainly mean ‘strange and uncanny’, but Gillie it has to be said, is a pirate at heart…

In any case, with a brief of ‘urban or dark fantasy’ I naturally chose to invent a new genre instead, because that just not broad enough. Thus I wrote ‘Euryale’ which would more correctly be described as a Suburban fantasy. Any classical scholars among you may recognize the name, but for those that do not Euryale is one of Medusa two half sisters. Unlike, medusa who was a mortal woman ravaged by one god then cursed by another for being ravaged (the moral compass of Greek gods was ever deeply questionable), the two other gorgons Euryale and Stheno were wholly divine in nature and thus immortal. Of course the real problem with immortality is what do you do with all the time?

It is partly for this reason that my version of Euryale is working in a charity shop in Cheam. The one with the odd name, next door to the Acropolis Kabab shop run by Mr Popodolpois, who like many a Greek father, made many sacrifices to put his not overly gifted soon through medical school. Just don’t ask him to elaborate on those sacrifices…

Aside from my own story Rum and Rosemary will contain another thirteen thought-provoking, edgy, atmospheric, oft times darkly funny and always entertaining short stories from Anna Atkinson-Dunn, Kate Baucherel, John Holmes-Carrington, Liz Tuckwell, Christine King, CK Roebuck, Laura Buckley, Keith Errington, Davia Sacks, Nimue Brown, Angela Smith, Ben Sawyer and JA Wood.

And is available for preorder on kindle, there will of course be hardback and paperback editions from the 10th of January.

The next Harvey anthology will be Science Fiction Which is another broad church of course. We are always looking for submissions, if you are interested in writing something for us click on the image below.

In 2025 we will also be doing three more Harvey collections, in order after Scifi they will be the expanded ‘Alterative history/steampunk’ then once more ‘Post apocalypse/Dystopian’ before we come back to ‘Urban/dark fantasy’. There is also always just generally weird stuff which we will find home for. And if we get several stories that fit together in ways we have not yet thought of then we might open another.

In other exciting news I can absolutely, positively confirm I will have a new novel out in 2025. The long awaited Lucifer Mandrake novel is finally with my editor and The Esoteric Cricket Ball will defiantly be out this coming year. Which will be the first new novel I have released since February 2022. Which seems a very long time between novels for a novelist. I did release The Strange and the Wonderful anthology , and The Complete Hannibal Smyth in the mean time and my book about HP Lovecraft, but 3 years between novels seems like an ice age. But finally the Mandrake novel is almost ready to be unleashed.

Exactly when is another matter, I have a self imposed deadline for all final edits, typesets et all by the ide’s of March for reasons of symmetry, but that really depends on how much redrafting it needs once I get it back from my editor. But still, exciting times afoot…

I did not spend all those three years have been spent in the company of Queen Victoria’s Personal Arcanist. There are other novels I am also working on , one of which is the second of the Maybe trilogy which is now four years over due.. I am hoping to have that written by autumn. there is also the urban fantasy with the working title ‘The Elf Kings Thingy’ which keeps dragging me back in. And a couple of other projects.

However I have one more project, which I will tempt fate by mentioning (the contract is not yet signed), which is that I have been asked to author a non-fiction book. If that happens, which I am reasonably sure at this point it will, it will have a very definite deadline. Thus Mandrake must be complete because if it isn’t, the non-fiction takes priority from the ide’s onwards. I will illuminated more on this subject when I am in a position to do so…

In any regard, a new year is dawning and I will will be writing for at least four anthologies, have at least one new novel coming out and hopefully more non-fiction and another new novel before the end of the year.

And finally, a happy new year to all my regular readers. the blogs stats for the year just eclipsed 2020 (lockdown was a busy year for blog posts) making this the most visited year in the blogs history. So I guess I will have to keep this going too

Much love

Mark

Posted in amreading, amwriting, books, fiction, indie novels, indie writers, indiewriter, publication, sci-fi, steampunk, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Oceans of the mind

Posted on December 17, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Earlier this week the wisest of all muses asked a deep and meaningful question upon her blog to which I responded with somewhat frivolous delight or at least that was my intent.

This is the original post, by Nimue Brown, which is probably far more insightful than the rest of this one is going to be, so you should probably stop reading my inane waffling on and go read her deep insightfulness instead https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2024/12/13/considering-meditation-and-thoughts/

This is to say her question was both interesting and asked in seriousness on the subject of a thoughtful post on meditation and thoughts. Not least on how her own thought processes worked and asking if others experienced thoughts the same way. My response was written in an off the cuff manner expressing an idealized metaphor for how I think my own mind works. Of course this is me thinking about how my mind thinks.

Thinking about, and trying to understand, how you think is a bit like trying to understand the universe from within it standing on a small blue green planet on an unremarkable spiral arm of a not very remarkable galaxy only able to perceive the visible expanse of a universe, the mass of which our calculations show we can not detect 90% of.

Here is another analogy of which I am fond, when it comes to mankind’s understanding of divinity and the true extent of the cosmos is the ant in the rain forest. Which is to say an ant can not comprehend the truth of forest due to it been insignificantly tiny in comparison to the forest and only able to perceive the merest fraction of the branch of a single tree. Though when it comes to true understanding of the cosmos, we are but a microbe on the back of the ant trying to perceive the ant on which we reside, we have no concept of the forest, thus we can not comprehend in truth that this may be but one of many forests.

Thinking about how we think is both at the heart of the human condition and imposable to truly grasp at the same time. Not least because we are doing so from within our own thoughts. We can not stand outside the universe and look upon it, we can not truly understand the mind from within it. We do not even know what the mind is.

Before you point to the contents of your skull, yes, we know what the brain is. It is an incredibly complex organic interface that processes information fed to it both consciously and unconsciously. If it is damaged it becomes harder to interact with the world, process information, and express thoughts. But none of this means it is where you mind resides. It is merely the interface between mind and body. Science can not more point at the mind than it can the soul. The mind may lay within the chemical, hormonal soup of the brain. It may hover in an undetected dimension of existence a foot and a half in front and slightly to your left, connected to you by a silvery line of thought, unlikely? Possibly but the simple truth is we do not know where the mind resides, so unlikely doesn’t mean impossible and the hovering mind in another dimension theory wonderfully explains many a thing…

Also, when thinking about thinking, I have no idea how anyone else thinks, no one does. Literally on the most basic level none of us have any idea if how we experience the universe bares any true resemblance to how anyone else does. We do not know if everyone sees the colour blue the same way, or indeed if anyone sees the colour blue the same way you do. Our eyes may mostly see wave lengths of light the same way, but this doesn’t mean our brains interpret those wavelengths in the same fashion as anyone else. No one can say, how they think, just as no one can truly say where the mind is. And if we can not say how we think, then we can not know we thinkin similar ways to any one else.

My reply to the question posed by Nimue’s post was to compare my thoughts to the ocean. Some may consider that pretentious of me. But i was not trying to claim my thoughts are deep and mysterious. Often they are shallow and obvious. Show me a goth girl in a tight skirt, corset n boots and my thoughts will almost undoubtedly be shallow and obvious, for a moment at least or two. The metaphor of the ocean has little to do with depth. This though is what I said.

The ocean is never calm, even when the surface seems calm the currents beneath are ever moving changing and washing up against strange shores. So the ocean is never calm, even when it might seem so to others and to be calm is an athame to the ocean. The waters must move, ever change, be they the depths or the shallows, crashing upon the shore, or out passed all horizon. Fed by rivers and seas, pulled by the moon in tides of gravity, while in the deepest places the heat of the earth pushes through mountains.

Then the storms come. The wind, the rain, the great surges, the tempests of chaotic rage that churn and boil the waters, sending them crashing against the land. A deluge of uncontrolled ferocious nature, implacable, untamable, undeniable in its existence.

The ocean is never calm…

Occasionally I think of the ocean, mostly I think like it.

While I like the metaphor the truth is it is only that, a metaphor. In truth I am not sure it truly answers the question, but then I don’t know the answer, I merely know the experience of thinking and how my thoughts shape and turn.

At this moment ‘Hersham boys’ by Sham69 is bouncing around in my head, because its the last song my alarm music played this morning before I got out of bed. Its not really a favorite song of mine but until something dislodges it , it has taken up residence, with its ‘Lace up boots and corduroys’.

Also a this moment there is a conversation going on and leaning towards a conversation edging towards an argument between Kenton West, who sounds like Stephen Fry for some reason, and Eliza Tu-Pa-Ka , who doesn’t, over the qualifications of Captain Wilberforce to serve as Chief officer of the Air ship Maybe’s daughter. Kenton is carefully not answering questions by asking other questions and Eliza is on the verge of a tirade, just as Benjamin Kenton’s grandson, is running up the muddy field to intervene. That particular conversation has been going on for three days. And the word document it has not been written into is sat open on my desktop.

Also at the moment I am annoyed about the people who live next door whom’s teenage son need a clip round his ear to stop him throwing stuff into my back garden. This is low level anger that will explode at some point, or not.

Also, I am getting flashing of scenes from the web series I was watching last night, made by a bunch of New Zealanders 7 years ago, based on PUBG a game I have never played but have developed a deep understanding of. All hail pan man… And thinking I must message my adult son and mention it to him as he will love it.

Also Nimue just sent a message about her plans to do terrible things to me at Christmas, which I am assuming she means in her murder village novel in which I am cast as villain and victim. So I am thinking of replying.

Also at this moment thinking while writing this blog , and at work watching emails , trying to understand what the guy in the office on the sub-continent wants me to do with a server given his very vague instructions. Thinking about the face of my ex-wife for some reason, possibly because my son came to mind and thus my daughter.

Also I want coffee. While I contemplate the greater essence of human consciousness, and the contact I need to sign but am oddly scared to, to write a book about Lovecraft. the worry about the current edit of the Mandrake novel I am waiting back on. Why wearing lace up boots and corduroys would make people call you ‘the Cockney Cowboys?’. Is the second maybe book narrative two slow. Do I really need Kenton West in the novel at all. Why am I writing this blog post, what is it actually about. Is the universe finite. What colour is blue if its not blue. Why does WordPress insist on spell checking to American spellings. ‘Hersham boys’ ‘Hersham boys’ Cute goth girls in tight skirts n corsets. Is there a point to any of this? What point was I making again ? erm… oh yes…

The ocean is never calm…

Posted in big questions, depression, pointless things of wonderfulness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A semblance of Truth

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Mark Hayes

The Wonderful Nimue Brown has a new book out. one I originally reviewed when I was sent a first draft copy about three and a half years ago. I reposted that review in August this year expecting it to be out soon after and yet such are the strangeness of the fogbanks surrounding Hopeless Maine it finally was published… today. So here is my review, again, for anyone who missed it the first couple of times

Semblance of Truth : A Hopeless Maine Novella

Now as it is quite possible you are aware, I am a bit of a fan boy when it comes to the work of Nimue and the esoteric creation Hopeless Maine (and Nimue’s writing in general). So when I was given the chance to read a early copy of Semblance of Truth I jumped at the chance.

The narrative is in effect Frampton Jones journal, written by him, for him and him alone, as he tries to catalogue events on the island as a whole, as well as those events that only effect him personally. Things he could never put in the paper, because even in a place as strange as Hopeless Maine certain things would strain the credence of belief among his readers. The are are also somethings he just wants to keep to himself, like the worrying way his cutlery keeps disappearing and the notes someone keeps leaving him, that are written through the medium of fish…

As the islands journalist Frampton also keeps track of births, deaths, and has to report on (these attended with various levels of willingness) various civic events like founders day, the annual church picnic, the fossilized bones of one of the islanders ancestors walking around the shore. The grand enterprise of building a bridge to the mainland. The not so grand failure to build a bridge to the mainland…

Because the narrative is told in journal entries, some long, some short, some of significance Frampton is unaware of, some that seem unimportant yet which he worries at… the narrative slowly unwinds in the present tense in the respect of how he writes it, while it is all in a very immediate past tense. Things he has just done, or witness, or seen , or not seen, or at least he hoped he did not see, but has a horrible suspension he did see, and what’s making that noise in the kitchen? As well as important advise on the rearing and care of meeps, as well as the importance of not going mad and forgetting to harvest your meeps, and why you should not feed your meeps off cuts of meat.

It also means when he starts top go a little mad for a while his descent in to insanity, and climb back from the brink are equally chronicled… Unless of course in his mad periods he is actually seeing the world of Hopeless as it truly is, and why is no one reply to his fish writing? And what really happened at the O’Stoat house? Who’s that orphan who disappeared the night Miss Chambers was killed by…. by what killed her…? then turned up again! Oh why am I thinking about the orphan? She’s clearly not important… Now! Where did all the spoons come from? Should I ask Gerald? Is Gerald real…?

Poor Frampton, a minor character in a world where events are happening he isn’t equipped to understand. Yet he strives, with a certain ineptitude, to make the island a better place, or at least understand it better. As a journalist he is a man who seeks the truth and to illuminate that truth for the betterment of all.. (and there lay proof that Hopeless is a very strange place, me thinks.)

As you now have the chance, you should invest and read this delight, Also think well of Gerald … I went to order it myself and discovered I have pre-orded the paperback in august and forgotten I had done so. Yay! I now await its arrival

Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, indie novels, indie writers, sci-fi, steampunk | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

What’s in a name

Posted on December 5, 2024 by Mark Hayes

As the old saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover.

But, while that is good advice for life in general, when it actually comes to books then of course people do. I will not pretend I don’t. If a book cover doesn’t ‘speak to me’ I am unlikely to give it a second glance. I have long suspected the same applies to almost every reader, to one extent or another.

There are other factors. Is the author one I recognise and have read before? Because if its a book by Nimue Brown it could have a plain brown pager bag for a cover and I would buy it, read it, and undoubtably love it. The same applies to books by CG Hatton, Kate Baucherel and a whole host of authors you have possibly heard of.

Somewhere in the world there may be someone who feels this way about books with my name on them. Obviously they are dangerous people who should be reported to the authorities at once. But still, they may exist…

Then there is the title. Titles matter more than authors names, because you never by a book because of the authors name unless its a name you know. (This is except in the case of books by celebrities, which are sold almost entirely due to the name of the author, were seldom written by the named author, and interest me not at all…)

Titles matter, a good title will pull in a reader like a good cover and unlike a good cover a title is subjective to the artform inhabited by the writer. Getting the title right should matter more than anything else. A plain cover with a good title should be enough to sell a book (this has never been the case)

I do like a good title. For example ‘The Long Dark Tea Time of the soul’ is one of the finest titles ever devised, despite the fact its is my least favorite Douglas Adams book. Admittedly that is like saying a particular orgasm was your least favorite orgasm. Its still a fucking orgasm, ‘The Long Dark Tea Time of the soul’ is still a fabulous Douglas Adams novel. Its just not quite as brilliant as ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’…

In the past I have managed what I like to think of as some reasonably good titles. In particular I am fond of the titles of the Hannibal Smyth trilogy ‘A Spider in the Eye’ , ‘From Russia With Tassels’ and ‘A Squid on the Shoulder’ , some of the Hannibal short stories have titles I am rather pleased with too, The Cheesecake Dichotomy’ and ‘The Aspidistra of Social Inequality’ in particular. Yet the book that probably sells itself by title best is ‘Maybe’ because that singular word does a lot of heavy lifting. So titles matter, which is also why almost every novel I have written has started with a working title that has changed later down the line.

The working title for the Lucifer Mandrake novel has been ‘Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanovian Proxy’ since I first started working on the novel itself about three years ago, It has been a long road but mostly because I have run off and written other things a lot. The bulk of the first draft was written in three major bursts of creativity. The last one since early October this year.

The second draft took only three weeks because, because the first draft involved much redrafting as I went along, which is not normally how I write but has been on this project. Much about this project has been a tad obtuse in that way.

Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanovian Proxy’ remains a smart intelligent title in many ways, but it lacks for something. I like it because it is a very 19th century style title which fits the era of the novel, and it is very much what the book is about. Ergo a plot to replace Queen Victoria with her uncle Ernest of Hanover, which is not even remotely as far fetched as you might believe at first glance. Before she first took the crown Ernest had many who supported his claim.

If this had happened the Victorians would have been Ernestians, and the Victorian Era , the Ernest Era, which is an oddly delightful thought. As men in tall hats with beards are very earnest as a rule…

Early in her reign there were at least three separate assassination plots perpetrated with the expressed aim of placing the King of Hanover on the British throne. So the Hanovian Proxy is not even remotely far fetched as a plot… Of course the Newtonian Sorcery, necromancy, fae realms, undead Lords, and transcendent glamours that actively exists in novel may be slightly more far fetched and probably are not based on real events. Also this weird game call Cricket gets mentioned once or twice but that is almost certainly made up….

The problem is however while ‘Lucifer Mandrake and the Hanovian Proxy’ maybe a good title for many reasons, it just doesn’t pop, for want of a better word.. It also suggests nothing of the nature of the novel aside one major plot point, which is the most mundane plot point in the novel. So while I was focused on the second draft I also played about with titles. In the end I have gone with a subtitle that fits the novel better in my opinion and says something more about it.

Thus the none working, final title* will be ‘Lucifer Mandrake : The Esoteric Cricket Ball’ Hopefully that will inspire a few readers to pick up the book, but on that we must wait and see… But as I say, titles are important. The most important thing being that you as the author need to love the title you give your work. If others do, well that’s just a bonus.

I may have also finished the cover, after a lot of playing with the design aspects form the ‘first draft’ of the cover I posted bin a pervious blog post…. Or not as I am still fiddling with it (not sure about the authors name font, if it should be the same as the main title font , or the sub title font) Opinions on that may be helpful if anyone has one…

*unless it changes between now and publication

This novel started out as a short story and a lot of research in 2021 there is a post about it from, way back then HERE

Posted in amediting, amwriting, books, fantasy, Hannibal Smyth, Harvey Duckman, indie novels, indie writers, indiewriter, novels, reads, self-publishing, steampunk, supernatural, writes, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Necromantic Pontifications

Posted on November 30, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Necromancy, one has always considered, is a somewhat misnamed. In the first instance it has less to do with death than you might imagine. It is true the root of the word comes from the Greek ‘nekros’ for dead body and traditionally speaking it is considered the darkest of arts. Even the sagacious forefather of modern magic, Newton wrote ‘There is no art that blackens the arcane more grievously than that of the necromancer.’ But in essence the animation of a corpse, that most emblematic use of necromancy, is in actuality using magic to bring life to the lifeless.

That is necromancy at its most basic level. The manipulation of the essence of life. It is tapping into that which is the vital spark of existence and making use of it. As such in reality it is no darker than any other magic. It is merely a magic that can be put to dark uses, as can any other, for all the stigma attached to it.

That stigma alone is, however, enough to discourage the open study of necromancy as an art. Thus it remains the least understood of all disciplines. It also doesn’t help that its practitioners cloak necromancy in layers of secrecy behind arcane mutterings and rituals. The mystery that shrouds it attracts a certain kind of individual, as does its reputation as the darkest of arts, and like other ‘dark arts’ it remains a popular group activity. There remains that, oh so familiar, image of a coven gathered around its magus in cloaks of shadows. The acolytes wearing long Sigel embronzed robes, faces hidden beneath deep hoods, stood in circles of flickering candles and mouthing archaic chants. Strange dance like movements, benedictions and the odd profane act, or three, being performed before their leader. Their master. Their great magus. I am sure you can imagine such rituals, but like almost all such things, most of it is just for show. A sop to the credulous and of course the credulous compromise the majority of most any coven.

In truth, theatrics aside, a magus mostly makes use of his coven much like a leach makes use of a thigh. They tap into and take a little innate power from each member of their coven, or at least such innate power that the acolytes might possess. This requires little ritual in truth. Merely a strong enough willpower, desire and willingness to draw upon the vital aspects of others. Be what you draw from then be their innate arcane power or something else.

In the case of necromancy that something else most likely the essence of life itself.

All of this is of course unpalatable to any gentleman of moral fortitude. But moral fortitude is not a prerequisite among your average magus, unlike a degree of nihilism which almost certainly is. More than one magus, once they feel the bite of age upon them and see the first grey hairs among there ravenlike locks, will be tempted to use a little necromancy to ‘rejuvenate’ themselves.

‘What, when it comes down to it, is the point of having acolytes other than so they can lend aid to your designed. Lend you their power. Lend you a year or two of their life perhaps… Well, would they really miss it?’ as the thought process goes…

It is also, in point of fact, easier to draw life than to draw arcane power from the average acolyte. For one thing your average coven acolyte has next to no innate arcane power, but they all have life. Well, for a time at least…

And there we return to my point, necromancy is not about death, but about the manipulation of life. The name is therefore a misnomer.

I will grant however necromancy is still somewhat deplorable. As are those who make a study of it.

It is however, on occasion, quite useful.

The above is a passage may be from the not entirely named yet Lucifer Mandrake novel I’m currently working through the second draft of. It is, however, in of itself a self contained humorous monologue on Necromancy. In the novel it serves structural purpose, bookend a the cliff hanger from the previous chapter and making it hang a little longer. It may or may not be in the final edit, but as it is self contained humorous monologue of the kind I often write for this blog I thought I would post it here. MH

Posted in #amwriting, amediting, amreading, amwriting, books, fantasy, fiction, humour, rites, supernatural, urban fantasy, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How to kill a hero

Posted on November 28, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Electrophorus electricus, or to give it is none Latin name, the Electric Eel, is one of those things that keeps cropping up in pulp fiction’s. It’s what the hard up bond villain type puts in his shark tank, if he can’t afford sharks and doesn’t want to fork out the cost of piranha food.

Shark tanks, clearly the classy choice are of course ridiculous, as most sharks do not attack humans anyway, you need a very big pool and just keeping the tank correctly chlorinated would be a challenge. Frankly you need a whole aquarium rather than a tank.

If, as is likely, a shark tank aquarium with suitably vicious sharks is not possible, then of course a tank of Piranha’s is a perfectly good mid-budget choice your for average villains lair. Except of course, most breeds of piranha actually prefer to eat fruit. In fact all but one species of piranha are entirely harmless scavengers. Even if you do get the right kind of piranha (if your interested its the red bellied piranha) they still seldom actually attack large animals or go into a feeding frenzy. You’d have to keep them nigh on starved most of the time and just hope the hero doesn’t turn up within twenty four hours of the last feeding time…

So, what does an evil melomaniac intent on world domination chose for his principal defense against the interfering hero? Well a tank of electric eels would seem perfect, would it not. No tricky moral issues about keeping them on the edge of starvation just so they will dispense with the hero. Just a big tank beneath a fall away floor with a fry of electric eels and your all good. (that’s the right collective noun btw, though a bed of eels or a swarm is equally acceptable, a fry just sounds right for a collection of electric eels don’t you think).

Also,, side note, the collective pro-noun for a group of Emu’s is ‘a mob’. To any one old enough to remember Rod Hull this will sound correct… But back to electric eels.

There is however one slight problem with stocking for hero inhuming tank with electric eels. The first of which is unless your hero has a hereditary heart condition the chances of even multiple eel shocks killing them is limited. Usually deaths attributed to electric eels are actually drownings, as they can knock a person unconscious, but generally not your fit healthy hero types. Shocking they may be, but no more than the latest scandal involving the heir to the dutchy of Northumberland and the girl who works at Tesco’s…

Then of course there is the other problem, all be it a problem of semantics, you don’t actually get a fry of electric eel’s, or a swarm, or even a bed of them… Because electric eels while very much a thing are not actually eels. They are in fact a species of South American knifefish, breath air, are more closely related to cat fish than eels and don’t swarm…

In the end, as ever, the only correct way to deal with an annoying hero infiltrating your super villain lair is to shoot then in the head on sight, without it may be added, revealing your plans and defiantly without any monologuing…

Also, we advise you add regular opticians appointments to the evil henchmen’s health plan. While we are aware having your henchmen all wearing glasses ruins the ‘stone faced bastards’ look. But lasers are not just for world domination and shooting down government satellites to plunge the world into chaos. they can also be used for corrective eye surgery these days.

Todays blog was brought to you by Psychotic Billionaire Monthly, the magazine of choice for the would be Super Villain

Posted in amwriting, humour | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fascinating Folklore, Taurus and the book pile

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Mark Hayes

In a desperate bid to avoid death by collapsing book pile*, I made a concerted effort yesterday to sort out the to read pile on the bedside cabinet. One of the issues with the great to read pile of doom was my inherently bad habit of adding books to it while never removing the ones I have acctually read. As happens if I leave this task long enough, it had gotten out of hand, and there was a real risk that ‘Hero with a thousand faces’ was going to brain me one night.

*There are worse ways to go

In any event this had led to me finding a bunch of books that need putting on book shelves, some of which I read, loved, planned to review, but they were forming the foundations and super structure of the dark tower of book doom so they were not so much forgotten about but irretrievable. For many reasons, if I review a book I like to have it sat on my desk while I am doing so…

Anyway, fascinating insight as that may be to the beside cabinet of a bibliophile, on to some reviews, starting, as a delightful Flemish research witch has me on a folklore kick at the moment with with Fascinating Folklore… A book that answers a question much on the lips of the zeitgeist these days. Did anything good ever come out of Twitter..?

Fascinating Folklore: A compendium of comics and essays

Back in the dim long forgotten past, when the world was bright and joy surpassed hate as the currency of short text based social media there was (and still is) a hashtag called #FolkloreThursday. With that hashtag in mind PJ Holden and John Reppion started a weekly comic which would be based on a different bit of folklore each week. These proved popular and fascinating, So it is perhaps no great surprised this book came out of those comic’s.

Within there are those original comics PJ drew and also short essays from John delving deeper into the folklore behind each of the stories he got PJ to draw. The result is this compendium, half folklore comics half short essays on folklore, all intriguing, delightful and enriching. I knew a lot of the subject matter to one extent or another, but there was plenty here that also was new to me. The pair did not restrict themselves to the British Isles for one thing, instead they span folklore from around the world, as well as a fair grounding in the myths and mythology from which it sprang.

The comics are a mix of dark and sinister to the uplifting and joyous. All beautifully drawn in different styles to suit each subject, they really exhibit Holdens full range of artistic skill and flair. The short essays by Reppion equally are skilled crafted words that explain and enlighten but are never dry and dusty. Together they bring each of they many talents to bare and the outcome is somewhat unique.

This book is perfect for someone interested in folklore but who needs a nice introduction to the broad suave of everything that falls under that banner. As well as old hacks who forget they don’t know everything… As such I can highly recommend it. It is also perfect for children, as its bloody, dark, and full of viscera, all those things children love… So they will not even notice the education they are getting while they read it.

As this book is only available in Hardback (and frankly its the only way to read it.) I do not have my customary kindle link. here however is a the link to amazon if you want to check this out. Which you do…

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fascinating-Folklore-Compendium-Comics-Essays/dp/1912634724

Several years ago I was selling books in a park with several other authors one of which was Stephen Palmer, a brilliant fiction writer and a fascinating writer of narrative non-fiction. We exchanged at least three sentences, one of which was, “I am nipping to the Tesco’s down the hill, do you want anything?” Which just goes to show what fascinating people we authors are, and the intellectual nature of our conversations. In my defence, I really wanted a sandwich.

In any regard I was later to read, and love, his steampunk/Victorian urban fantasy Conjuror Girl, which started with the splendid Monique Orphan.

For reasons best known to himself Stephen contacted me earlier ( much earlier) this year and asked if I would be interested in an ARC copy of his latest book, a narrative non-fiction work exploring the relationship between humanity, the constellation of Taurus and the sacredness of bulls. I said sure. Failed to find time to read the arc and ended up buying the book when it was released where it got placed in the to read pile of doom. Eventually I did read it over the course of a couple of months because it a book that lends itself to being read a chapter at a time, as each chapter is a separate entity. This is not me disparaging the book, or saying it was difficult to get into. There are some books, books that lend themself to been read in episodes between other books. That’s just how I like to read. Novels are all absorbing and need to be read beginning to end. Short fiction and books like this one which is a link series of short narratives, lend them selves to short reads between novels.

In any regard I finished I am Taurus months ago but like Fascinating Folklore it became lost in the foundations of the to read pile and the review I had written notes for got forgot about… So somewhat delayed…

I am Taurus

Spanning from the prehistory of the ice age as portrayed in the cave paintings of Lascaux of our ancestors hunting the now long extinct aurochs, the great wild bovines of northern Europe, right up to the running of the bulls in Pamplona. I am Taurus examines how human cultures have long been influences by and linked to the spiritualisation of bulls.

This is not however an arid intellectual book of anthropology or archology. Each epoch is examined form the point of view, as the title suggests, of the bull. A narrative from the scared beast, be it the hunted honoured by the hunter, the sacrifice offer to the gods, the sacred bulls that were the ‘dance partners’ of young Minoans, the golden calf of Canaan, or any of the other times the bull has featured heavily in human culture. Which is to say, often.

This is a unique and fascinating perspective, and one that Stephen crafts in such a way that it draws you in to each chapter. He is a master of narrative exploration. There is a beauty to the writing, a richness and a vibrancy about it that just makes each chapter its own unique joy. As a writer of fiction, I love narrative, so perhaps I am biased, but this is the way dure people in to thinking about our collective humanity. It is a joy.

Anyway, the to read pile is safer for now, and these books among others have found there true homes on my bookshelves, though I suspect I shall revisit them both over time. They are both books to delve into, and refresh your acquaintance with time and again.

Posted in amreading, book reviews, books, rites | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments