David Hartley

Cover of Fauna showing a woodpecker on a tree

Blue Cover of the naming of moths by Tracy Fells against daffodils

Cover of Museum of Shadows and Reflections

#IndiePressDay
Some great short story collections by indie presses I have discovered via social media inc. Fauna by @davidhartley.bsky.social
The Naming of Moths by @theliterarypig.bsky.social (@flyonthewallpress.bsky.social)
The Museum of Shadows and Reflections by @clairedean.bsky.social

My father and brother reflect on the philosophy of creativity…

Reasoning with Rickerly Why creative people do it. and why you should do it too.

Philosophy, creativity and Rickerly:
uneasywords.com/2025/04/24/reasoning

I’ve created a little zine about being a Writer-in-Residence in an old train station in Sweden.

It’s called ‘Sprites of Svenshögen’ and you can pay what you like to buy it.

All proceeds go to Medicines Sans Frontieres. Just paypal me; paypal.me/DavidHartley

This response to a Scandinavian residency is mischievous in its charm. A zesty zine.
Available at the moment only from @davidhartley.bsky.social

Revealing the event poster for @johnironmonger.bsky.social 's launch at @serenitybookshop.bsky.social Stockport! Hosting this conversation on climate change, politics and bears will be our very own animal expert and writer @davidhartley.bsky.social

www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/sto... #books📚💙

A reasonable question with no known answer.

But I can’t help but imagine an Ent writing this, asking on behalf of the trees.

But it equally applies to lone cyclists on little bridges, and people lurking with cameras

Found a pristine child’s board game in the woods on New Years Day, complete with the dice, the marble and all the pieces for the run.

This tree seemed to be offering it. I sensed a Jumanji-style curse.

A little further along: an abandoned Amazon delivery bag. The curious detritus of Xmas.

I’m entranced by signage. Especially those that tell us not to do things, which seems to be 99% of them.

Do we absorb all this condemnation subliminally? Does it shunt us into submission? Make us suspicious of everyone and everything?

Quietly, carefully, with a fingertip, I touched the pipe.

An old entrance to a garage no longer in use. The sign at the top says SER ICE presumably missing a V in the middle

Gates upon fence upon mesh upon doors upon shutters.

No entry, do not park, begone, banished, none shall pass. Sir, you shall be iced.

Why do we expend so much energy and material shouting and stopping and preventing? It does us such a disservice.

I got a nice surprise today. The story I wrote for a
Comma Press course has been published in the anthology Obscura: New Uncanny Tales, edited by @davidhartley.bsky.social.

You can get it on Kindle now for only 99p!

amazon.co.uk/Obscura-Unca...

Weird to suggest that indie bands should have musical instruments at their gigs is woke. But plonker gives the insult a lovely bouncy feel, so it’s all good

A silhouette of a goose dwarfed by the tide of the river Mersey and eight red and white cranes on the distant shore

A solitary goose somehow separated from the flock.

The cranes of Liverpool look on, like eldritch gods approaching to claim their latest soul.

Ferrymen to cross the Mersey

Passed through a wonderfully liminal space last night.

The glowing digits of the cinema lobby. Thrill and disappointment promised behind each door. The number 12 flipped somehow, like a magic lantern projection.

It was late. I had the whole of screen 11 to myself for 3hrs26mins. Blissful.

The inside promised adventure.

Curious to see that English word there.

It was a proving ground for graffiti artists. But there was no one there when we visited.

A man in a green baseball cap and a black coat walks across grass towards the shell of an abandoned two-storey building. There’s a yellow warning sign on the building stating that the place is unsafe

Currently writing and thinking about this man and this building.

The former is an Estonian sound poet and keen wanderer. The latter was built by the Soviets in the edgelands of Tartu and never used.

The yellow sign told us not to go in, but we did.

Steps leading up to a rusty iron bridge

The walkway of a bridge. The sides are blue corrugated iron dense with graffiti. The ground has the words ‘MEAT IS MURDER’ sprayed upon it

Close up of graffiti on the blue corrugated iron of the bridge. It reads ‘King Charles is a Wanker!’ And beneath that someone else has written ‘So Wot?’

A distressed bridge hidden in the depths of the suburbs, only used by those who know it is there.

The graffiti is almost exclusively Smiths lyrics. The ground tells us that meat is murder.

But the bridge feels furtive, secretive. Probably best just to enjoy the funny ones, then hurry on through.

We don’t get enough hot air balloons any more. They’re always a slice of magic

A pair of feet in colourful shoes and leg warmers

My sister’s feet.

We’re inside an inflated disco cube placed upon a lawn at her care home. Lights, lasers, a soundsystem, a smoke machine. She’s about to start dancing, her favourite activity.

The theme is 80s. The colours are brash and bold, like her. The song is Atomic by Blondie.

A fairly unremarkable picture of woodland. But this (we think) is the location of England’s only Viking burial ground.

A whole community of Danes buried beneath gentle mounds, many not yet excavated.

It is now a makeshift rifle range. Pallets riddled with bullet holes. We didn’t hang around.

Loraine James in a moody aura playing her intense electronica

My music orientated brother took me to a moody bar in the backwash of Salford.

In there, this serious woman making serious noise. She was joined halfway through by a drummer for more noise.

Walked home in the rain feeling wholeheartedly blasted. A strong evening all round. Loraine James.

Four openings set in a diagonal pattern showing the scene beyond a bird hide. One shows sky and treetops, another shows water and grass, the third just grass, and the fourth frames a bird feeder shaped like a miniature house

In the bird hide. Where we hide from birds and, perhaps, where birds hide from us, or from other birds.

Openings frame the sky, the water, the ground, and the house where the seeds live.

Let us gather, with our spyglasses, and wait. Let us identify species as the beaked ones set to their feast.

I have been reliably informed by a bird expert friend that this may not in fact be a jackdaw.

The blasted corvids strike again with their gothic similarities.

Perhaps a juvenile crow? Any other insight on this matter?

A sticker on a lamppost that reads ‘Negative Space’. Another beneath it shows a skull with the words Evil Acid Cult. In the soft focus background there’s a canal and a stack of shipping containers

I’d been teaching a course which featured @lmcknighthardy.bsky.social’s wonderful essay ‘Negative Spaces & Ambiguity’ from Dead Ink’s Writing the Uncanny. Then I took a stroll along my local canal.

Here on this post, this sticker.

Beyond it, shipping containers holding who-knows-what, or nothing.

A picture of a jackdaw with a crucifix tombstone being used as the background of a computer monitor

This Jackdaw sits on my second screen with her mossy tombstone in the background.

If I angle myself correctly, and squint while I work, I can pretend she’s sitting on my shoulder offering gothic advice and uncanny pointers.

Whatever helps get words on the page, eh?

Thanks Kate, I’ll give that a try. Why must we be cursed with backs? What good are they, really?

Four rows of old fashioned bottles containing remedies and tinctures within a Victorian apothecary

Backache, neck-ache, stiffness, discomfort. Wrestling with pillows and cushions to try and out-kink the knot.

In need of ancient tinctures, most likely. Or just to stop a-hunching so much over laptops and the wilds of Hyrule.

Out-Kink the Knot is a great title for a band and/or erotic novel.

Still have a very vivid memory of reading this in Whitworth Park in Mcr, not far from where some of it is set, freaking myself out by wondering what a feather to the throat would feel like. Great book, astonishing writer

A cast iron cooking pot by a smoke blackened wall, such that might be used by a witch on Halloween

If you’re in need of a image for promoting anything Halloween related, feel free to use this.

I took the picture, but you don’t need to credit me. How could I possibly possess this gathering of light and atoms.

But if you use it for nefarious purposes, dammit I’ll hex you. I’ll hex you so hard.

Absolutely thinking the same