Spacer’s Bet is the new sci-fi from Bonnie Milani. If you enjoy Anne Leckie’s Ancillary series, or Firefly, then you need to meet Iz and Kansas. Dive into this exciting prequel to the upcoming Aliya War series!

High in Shojai’s rear observation deck, Isfahan Hauler Shojai locked fists at her sides and stared out at her nightmare. The Shojai had dropped out of Jump space in the outskirts of RockPort’s star system. They were in real time now, while Shojai bled off Jump v in a long, slow deceleration. Here in real time the screens showed the glittering mist of the Milky Way edge on, an entire galaxy of stars stretching away into infinity. Nearer stars sheened the ship’s fat girth in silver.
The sight clenched Iz’s stomach. Terrible, horrible sight.
That wasn’t how she was supposed to feel, she told herself. She was Miner clan born and bred. She was supposed to appreciate stars. Her mind knew that. But the terror still ruled. It always had. Ever since Black Rock.
She rubbed her one sweaty palm dry on her coverall, tried to force her stomach to unknot. The fear was her enemy, she told herself, not the outside. She had no excuse for the terror. She couldn’t even blame Kansas, tempting as that was. Black Rock had been even more cruel to him than herself in some ways. No, the terror was her own weakness. Just as it was her own fault that she couldn’t focus on her nav exams. At the rate she was going, the only way she’d ever make it up the ranks was to buy a berth. And she’d have to win the Paradise Lottery to manage that one. She was simply going to have to—
A trio of blunt-nosed fighters flashed past the viewscreens, the wolf’s head logo on their bellies clear and unmistakable: Lupans.
But something was wrong there. Iz had a fractional second to wonder before the deck hiccuped. The sudden swell threw her to the floor.
The alarms screamed as she scrambled to her feet. The deck hiccupped again, harder this time.
Iz was already running for the emergency chute when she heard the human screams over comm. Somewhere far in Shojai’s depths, metal clanged as the ship’s emergency locks slammed shut. The screams ended abruptly.
Hull breach! Nothing else would trigger the emergency seals.
Iz ripped the emergency chute access panel open and cycled herself in. Dear gods, where was Kansas? She could only pray her hopeless, helpless brother hadn’t wandered directly into the line of fire.
She free fell the first fifty meters. Crew ER chutes maintained gravity at half ship normal. That was still enough to splatter her across the deck on impact. She grabbed the drop ladder every few meters to control her fall. The mech fingers of her right arm left a bright trail of sparks as it screamed down the metal. She jerked to a halt at M Deck. Maintenance was mid-ship. Iraq, her crew boss, was already on station, shoving, yanking, and swearing his crew into EV suits.
Iz grabbed her EV suit out of its hangar and started pulling it on. “Iraq!” she yelled as soon as she was suited up. “You seen Kansas?”
“Let the choom worry about himself for a change!” Iraq murphy-checked the helmet seals on a crewmate, sent the woman on her way with the jerk of a thumb. “We just lost everybody in Cargo Bay Two! We’re gonna lose Three in a minute – damn Dogs hit the emergency controls! Get down there – stat!”
“On it.” Iz locked her suit seals around her android arm. She changed her android hand’s settings with the twitch of a shoulder. The fingers locked together, then curled into a grasping claw. Iz slapped a hand across the access tube control, then locked her claw onto the transit line and launched herself into the vacuum of Shojai’s servo tube.
She cycled out of the servotube into what was left of the cargo bays corridor. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The bayside section of the hull was gone. At what had been cargo hold two the servotube hatch opened onto emptiness. The first blast had blown the cargo doors open. The second round had taken out the walls of the bay’s control room. The duty crew had been sucked out into vacuum. And none of them had been suited up.
Horrible, horrible death…

Spacer’s Bet is out now so you can snag your own copy or borrow through KU to keep reading!

A Bite of… Bonnie Milani

(1) Where is your jumping-off point when writing and how does it work for you?

There doesn’t seem to be any set starting point for a story. My first novel, Home World, started from a recurring dream that bothered me enough I had to work out how the situation in the dream could have happened. What I came up with grew into an entire future universe. Other stories, though, grew out of some vague character lurking in the back of my mind. That’s how ‘Cherry Pickers’ started: I didn’t know who Sam was, or where and I didn’t have any plot line in mind. I just had this huge, hairy, lovable tarantula hanging out in the shadows of my mind because he was on the lam from his wife. With a backstory like that, how could I not find him a story?

(2) If you could host a literary lunch, who would your three guests be (living or dead) and why?

Wow, that’s a tough one! Partly because sharing food, to me, is something of a sacred ritual. I’ve never been big on working lunches (except for the ones spent alone at my desk). Any get-together over food should be to share the pleasure of the group’s conversation as well as the food itself. So I’d look for a mix of garrulous writers from widely different times and perspectives:
Sir Terry Pratchett: to ensure we had someone who’d keep us chuckling at his unsurpassed wit and imagination
Charles Dickens: because this man could write and talk at the same time. He also, in his own way, shared Sir Terry’s sense of social justice albeit without the wry twist.
Enheduanna: the world’s first known author, for a bit of a woman’s historical perspective – she wrote in the 23rd century BC. And made sure she got her own byline, too! This lady – princess, high priestess, and poet – was likely the most powerful woman in her society. Her poetry helped cement the Akkadian empire, at least for a while. I figure she could hold her own in any conversation.

(3) Do you have a guilty pleasure?

Computer solitaire. I swear I lose more time to that game than I should ever admit.

After completing her MA in Journalism at Stanford, Bonnie Milani worked as a freelance feature writer before going on to teach writing at Learning Tree University. Her science fiction works have won multiple awards, including the Evvy Gold award and Readers Favorite. Follow her on Facebook!

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

I am wise beyond my years
I understand the joys and fears
I hear the hurt behind the smile
And where I can I stop a while
And listen to the words and sighs
Of those whose life has bid them cry
Oh I am wise beyond my years
I carry the stain of others’ tears

©️Jane Jago

The Dai and Julia Mysteries are set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules…

“Sheep.”
Dai pointed to the tussock pocked hillside that veered up sharply from the bottom of the valley. These sheep were a hardy local breed with grey-white fleeces and small curling horns. They moved with agility over the rocky slope, their flock spread out into groups, pairs and singletons.
It was early morning and the report of a new theft had them driving through the wild country that formed the hinterland between Viriconium and the coast.
“The first question I have,” Bryn said, his own gaze firmly on the narrow road ahead as it wound along beside a stream at the bottom of the valley, “is how do you take sheep from a hillside like that? I mean it’s not like they are in a field and you can just wave your arms at them and back up a trailer to the gate. You couldn’t bring something big enough to carry all those along a road like this anyway.”
They were heading out to the small crofting farm which had been the victim of the last sheep rustling incident, in the hope of gaining some insight into who might have known where the flock was when it was stolen.
“Dogs,” Dai said, wondering if he was right. “Or maybe people on quads?”
“At night?” Bryn sounded doubtful. “And over this terrain?” He gestured with one hand to the high-lifting hills on either side.
“Drones, then maybe? Though no one seems to have seen any around that shouldn’t be there, I did the checks. It does make you wonder.”
They reached the main farm buildings after a bumpy journey over a potholed mud and gravel track that led up from the road. Two skinny herding dogs with lolling tongues and high lifted tails followed the woman who owned the croft out of the door of the small cottage, built from local stone. She stayed by the house as Dai and Bryn parked up and got out, the dogs now sitting beside her. For a moment Dai was reminded of Canis and Lupo sitting beside Julia. These dogs had an owner not much taller than Julia was, but maybe a decade older. She stood, back held stiffly straight and chin lifted with an almost defensive pride, brown eyes fierce, her dark blonde hair half hidden under a woolly hat.
Bryn gave her a friendly nod as she looked between them. “You’ll be Hyla Edris, I’m SI Bryn Cartivel. We’re here…”
“About last night?” The woman’s voice sounded taut.
“That’s right. I was hoping you could help me understand a few things about what happened and then we might be able to get your sheep back more easily.”
Hyla Edris shook her head, and Dai was sure he could see an extra brightness of moisture in her eyes.
“No. You won’t be bringing my girls home. They’ll all be dead by now. But the fools that took them have no idea what they did.”
“What they..?”
“My girls weren’t bred for eating They were all bred for their wool. Five different rare breeds I had in my flock, from three different provinces. They were worth a lot, lot more than just meat on the hoof.”
“You’ll have insurance for them?”
“Oh, for sure, there is a man due out tomorrow to talk to me about it. Seems there was some problem with my paperwork. But that won’t bring my girls back, will it? And even though the money will help, my business is ruined.”
“You can get more sheep,” Dai said. “Surely even rare ones?”
The woman shook her head as if he was missing the point. Then she gestured towards a recently re-roofed outbuilding. “My business is spinning and weaving. I keep the sheep because I can’t buy in the wool I need. It’s not so simple as you think. But then you lot from Viriconium, you know next to nothing of what life is like for us here in the hill farms. We’re not all inbred yokels chasing round a few sheep, there’s some of us with a bit more going on.”
Dai spread his hands in a gesture of apology. “I promise we will do our best to bring those who took your sheep to justice.”
Which was when she saw the silver band of Citizenship on his finger and her face changed. A quickly hidden mix of fear and anger.
“Roman justice. Killing people for entertainment. That’s not going to help me… dominus.” She made the honorific sound more like an insult.
Bryn cleared his throat.
“I need to ask you a few questions about what happened. Where were the sheep last night?”
The woman drew a tight breath as if to get herself back under control.
“I had them in the low field because I was supposed to have them microchipped today.”
“So it would have been relatively straightforward for someone to steal them? No need to go all over the hills for them?”
“Very.”
“Who would have known they were in that particular field?” Dai asked and almost winced at the ferocity of the look the question earned him.
“Most everyone in the area.”
“Local gossip is that good?”
This time there was more of contempt than anger in her face. She put a hand into the pocket of the long coat she was wearing and pulled out a much-folded sheet of paper which she thrust into Dai’s hand. He opened it out noting the Demetae and Cornovii administrative area official logo at the top. It was a notice of compulsory microchipping of all sheep in the district. It included a list of names and dates for all the farms in the locality.
Dai passed the letter to Bryn who read it quickly.
“At least one other farm on this list has had their flock stolen,” he said.
“Now isn’t that just the coincidence.” Hyla Edris sounded bitter.

The Second Dai and Julia Omnibus  by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago which is FREE to

From ‘Dying to be Fleeced’ one of the bonus short stories in The Second Dai and Julia Omnibus  by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago 

I’m ambivalent about the concept, but if we have to do the thing I am very firm in my ideas of what the food should be.

Sandwiches. Tiny. Just acceptable. Cucumber – okay. Cheese – okay. Ham – okay. Not okay: peanut butter, any sort of fish.

Small cakes. Okay.

Scones featherlight. Absolutely essential. Cheese ones with chilli jam. Fruit ones with butter. Sweet ones with jam and clotted cream. In fact, just do the scones. The rest is shite….

Unless. Doughnuts. Never underestimate the joy of a doughnut.

And to drink?

Cappuccino. I fucking hate tea.

Or. Of course champagne. Pink champagne.

You can now have a collection of Granny’s inimitable insights of your very own in Granny Knows Best.

Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

Hustle it was as the little cross-country train was already tooting its whistle. Homes, who had the speed of an athlete when he chose to exert himself, shot over the bridge with Bearson and Yore puffing in his wake.
“You would think,” Yore grumbled, “that a serving officer of the law would be able to outpace a normally sedentary pig.”
Bearson didn’t bother to answer – being not built for physical exercise he had no breath left for debating police donkeys.
On the platform the train awaited, and if it were possible for a contrivance of wood and steel to appear impatient one would have said that the little train seemed to be waiting for them with barely concealed annoyance.
Homes had a carriage door open and the two confederates all but fell into the train.
“I say, you two,” Homes was in self-congratulatory mood. “I thought we were supposed to be hustling. It’s a good job one of us isn’t too fat to run.”
He barely evaded the heavy clout Bearson aimed at his porcine snout.
“If you are going to be like that I’m sorry I held the train for you.”
Bearson, who was feeling thoroughly disgruntled, glowered. “Well I don’t suppose you would have bothered of it wasn’t for the fact I have your ticket in my pocket.”
Homes chortled. “Good deduction old chum. But never you fret, I have your interests at heart.” He showed his sharp, yellow teeth in a gin before carrying on. “Yonder is an emporium where one may purchase a cream tea, or, should one be about to embark, a hamper containing scones, country butter, strawberry jam, and clotted cream.”
Bearson’s mouth watered.
“It’s an awful shame we hadn’t enough time to obtain such a thing.”
Yore sat up.
“I could make them hold the train,” he said determinedly.
“No need, old chap.” Homes was expansive. “If I’m not very much mistaken here comes our hamper.”
Indeed, two stout gentlemen in stripy aprons were cantering along the platform, bearing between them a large and obviously heavy wicker hamper.”
“Cream tea for Piglock Homes,” the fattest of the two cried in stentorian tones.
Homes threw the carriage door wide and hung out at a precarious angle.
“Over here,” he cried and the hamper was brought to the door.
After pushing it through the aperture the men held out their large, red hands. Homes put a shilling in each and the men saluted politely.
The guard came along and slammed the door and the train pulled busily out of the station.
Bearson and Yore picked up the hamper and followed Homes’ scuttling little figure. They found an empty compartment and Bearson opened the hamper.
He groaned. “Look at this.”
Yore elbowed him aside and stared at the Lucillan repast.
“I suppose,” he said in an awed voice, “this means we have to forgive Homes for being such an annoying little piggy.”
Bearson didn’t deign to reply, being too busy slathering a sultana scone with strawberry jam and thick yellow cream.
He passed it to Homes, who had settled in one corner of the carriage. Homes sunk his teeth into the sweet treat.
Yore, who had sunk into his Ulster like a grey phantasm of depression, blinked slowly. “I have a premonition of disaster,” he enunciated.
Bearson made a rude noise with his lips and passed the inspector a scone oozing cream.
“Stop premonitionising,” he advised, “it’s injurious to the digestion.”

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago

Bonjour mes petites,

C’est moi. Polymath. Polyglot. Polly Parrot (oops tiny family joke slipped in unannounced).  But one digresses. One is, bien sur, your favourite tutor and all round good egg. Superlative author, raconteur sans pareil, and most recently philosopher and photographer. For those of insufficient erudition to have grasped the simplest of themes one will reiterate. One is Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, author of that seminal work of sprawling imagination ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooh’. Known to one’s chums as IVy, to one’s confused and emotional parent as Moons, to one’s special friend Stavros as Kolos, and to yourselves as Magister, one is a kindly and tolerant soul and one who, moreover, voluntarily wastes one’s precious time attempting to impart at least the vaguest smidgin of knowledge into your dense and unintelligent noddles.

I was shocked into realising I had failed in my primary pedagogic duty, when I discovered Mummy had been reading my acute and suscinct grammar lessons online.

“You’re wasting your time with that ‘eye’ before ‘ee’ crap, Moons,” she slurred. “It don’t matter how perfect their prepositions and pronouns if they come out sounding like a bunch of ignorant prats because they’ve been reading your poop about stuffing sentences with pointless words. If they can’t sound sophisticated what’s the effing point? You’re trying to make them writers not bloody editors.”

I had to concede she had a point. So I shall digress from the strictness of grammar for one week to make amends. After all how can you, my dear disciples, write well if you have no idea of sophistication? Thusly I say unto you do listen with care, as this semaine one attempts to cure your little literary efforts of the inevitable rusticities engendered by your own lack of social polish.

How to Write Right – Lesson 8. The Write Touch of Sophistication

Whatever you write, from the turgidity of literary fiction, through to the popularised genres of ‘romance’ and ‘adventure’, there is very little that cannot be improved by the seasoning of sophistication.

You look puzzled my dear little hayseeds, allow one to elucidate. Call to mind if you will the seminal spy, psychopath, and lady killer, Mr James Bond. Ask yourself, if your grey matter can be brought to such an unusual exercise, whether there would have been such interest in a man who wore a flat cap, drove a Ford Focus, and drunk pints of mild and bitter. One thinks not…

A hero of suave sophistication is the essential leavening in the mix, lightening the doughy drabness of your prose and lifting it to coruscatingly crusty charm.

So, does one here you muse, how should one introduce such an aura?

There are, mes enfants, two possible avenues. One is that you, the author, are possessed of such ineffably suave sophistication that it imbues your writing without any effort on your part. However, looking at the shiny and occasionally snot-stained faces that surround one, this seems excessively unlikely. Which only leaves. The Rules.

1. Your hero NEVER wears an item of clothing that has not been bespoke tailored at enormous expense.
2. Your hero NEVER drives a conveyance that can commonly be purchased on the open market.
3. Your hero drinks only Russian Imperial Vodka, or vintage champagne, or cocktails of the sort not given witty nomenclature in Magaluf
4. Your hero NEVER eats in a burger bar. Nowhere without a Michelin star.
5. Your hero NEVER goes to the local pub. He will belong to a gentleman’s club.
6. Your hero NEVER attends an association football match. Rugger is just allowable.
7. Your hero NEVER eats fish and chips, cheese and pickle sandwiches, crisps, pork scratchings, pickled onions, or anything ‘southern fried’
8. Your hero is unmarried, wealthy, and has a devoted housekeeper
9. Your hero is a stranger to the tenderer emotions
10. And finally. Your hero is a crackshot, expert skier, fast driver, and player of games of skill and chance.

Follow these rules my little country dumplings and your work will accrue that sophistication you so desperately need.

For now, attempt to learn the rules and apply them rigorously. For oneself moussaka and retsina call.

αντιο σας

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Keeta watched the shaman paint figures for hunting rituals in black, ochre and red on the dark wall of the cave, watched him set the fire to bring the images to life—men hunting beasts to provide for the clan.

Then Keeta went to an unused part of the cave and found some of the coloured muds which were too old for ritual use. She drew her own images—images of the small furry predators, lithe and graceful, who shared the cave with the clan and kept it vermin free.

She lit the fire and so created the first ever cat video…

E.M. Swift-Hook

Picture by Jane Jago

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

We had jam yesterday
And we’ll have jam tomorrow
But today is a day when the jam has gone away
A day to scrimp and borrow.

We had peace yesterday
Maybe peace comes tomorrow
But today is a day when the warmongers make play
A day of strife and sorrow.

We had love yesterday
We’ll still have love tomorrow
Because love is here to stay, come whatever come what may,
And will last through every morrow.

E.M. Swift-Hook