The Perplexing Puzzle of the Pickled Dragon

As part of my preparation for writing Human Nature (my latest Pax Britannia offering) I have been researching Jenny Hanivers, or, to put it another way, faked fantastical creatures.

Whilst trawling the Internet for information on this subject I came across the following article from 2004. Some of you may have heard this one yourselves already but it was new to me. As I looked into this subject further, I came across this.

It's interesting because it demonstrates what lengths people will go to to get their work published and there's also a parallel with my own work. The whole thing was a hoax (of course) set up by a struggling author whose book, Unearthly History, in now in print.