Dear Reader Who Writes,

First, the formalities, rendered necessary since I understand there may be a small handful of benighted individuals who have yet to encounter my work. To you, new readers who write, allow me to bestow upon you the honour of making my acquaintance. I am Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, much feted and acclaimed author of the soon-to-be classic science fantasy novel, ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’, which has been withdrawn from sale to allow other, lesser, authors a chance to gain some small measure of public acclaim.

As I was contemplating which thread I should next tease out from the weft and warp of the fine cloak woven by the daughters of Mnemosyne, to examine and explore with you, my beloved students, my gaze happened to alight upon a shelf in my writing room. This is one which is still home to some items that pre-date my conversion of the room from coal-hole to bijou literary cubby.

This item was a box which had once (and for all I know may still as I have no intention of investigating further) contained a pair of running shoes. Not mine, I of course hasten to reassure you, dear RWW. You would never see your respected pedagogue dressed up in skimpy shorts, panting and perspiring in the park. No, these were relics of an era when Mumsie still fondly craved the elusive illusion of youth before she allowed the sangria of summer to fade into an angostura bitters and advocaat autumn.

But if I close my eyes it is still impossible to banish the profoundly disturbing memory of her donning leggings and Walkman and heading off at a jog. I recall her return on most such occasions, red faced and smelling strongly. Usually gin, but sometimes whisky. And her triumphant proclamations: “All the way to the King’s Head today!’ On one occasion I asked her how she did it and her reply has haunted me down the years.

“Pace, Moons, pace. You have to know when to push it and when to give up, flop on the bar and have a drink.”

Which brings me neatly to today’s lesson.

How To Start Writing A Book – The Write Pace

Pace, dear RWW, is everything in your book. It is not about how fast you write or about how quickly your reader reads – no it is about the speed at which you unfold the glories of you world, the wonders of the people who inhabit it and the intricacy of the plot that binds them together.

As you can already see, this places pace at the very heart of your writing – you can imagine it as a pacemaker inserted within that heart to keep it beating strongly and steadily throughout your story. Strongly and steadily. Yes, that, my pupil in penmanship, is the secret. Too many authors fall into the trap of thinking that pace is something to vary. That to speed up and slow down is the epitome of good pacing. But, of course, they are flawed thinkers to so conclude.

Always remember, this is your literary endeavour, your creation, your magnum opus! It needs the powerful and stately beat of a steady drum to allow you to explore every detail in depth. BOOM! The slow unfolding of the scene where all is set. BOOM! The introduction of each character, allowing the reader the chance to know them through their intricate and individual back stories, written in rich detail. BOOM! The slow dawning of a story, but not too fast. Allow many things to happen first to show off the world and showcase your characters within it, so the reader is fully immersed in both world and characters before you profane their minds with anything of note. Let it sneak up on them unawares that there is indeed a plotline.

This is the secret of pacing, ingest it into your soul so it may spew forth in your writing.

Until next.

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.

Built upon an asteroid, these mighty habitation towers are the final stronghold of humanity in a star system ravaged by a long-ago war. Now, centuries after the apocalyptic conflict, the city thrives — a utopia for the rich who live at the top, built on the labours of the poor stuck below. Starway Pathfinders is a science fiction show that entertains the better off and brings hope to the poor…

“Captain’s Log update. Further to the recent encounter with the last human colony in the Calamarti Sector, The Golden Strand is currently moving into uncharted space. We are following up on reports of the existence of a mythical and demonic alien race. The Kyruku.”
Captain Gervain’s elegant and poised outline could be seen silhouetted in profile against the receding planet as she finished recording her log.
“Do you believe the colonists, Captain?”
The youthful-looking science officer lacked expression in both her voice and her face. Despite the question, she displayed zero curiosity. It was as if the captain’s response, whatever it might be, was of no more than academic interest to her.
“I don’t know,” Gervain admitted after a moment of reflection. “Sub-Commander Stude seems to think the colonists have some genuine grounds to believe they do exist. He says the landing team he led met too many who had stories to tell about them for it to be a complete myth. But all I really heard from him was wild stories of the curse they are supposed to carry.”
“It is completely irrational to believe such accounts,” Science Officer Chay agreed, her tone clipped. “To accord any credence to the entire concept of a curse requires an irrational and superstitious mindset.”
The captain lifted one eyebrow and leaned closer to her colleague, lowering her voice so the rest of the crew wouldn’t hear. “Between you and me, I think you have Arlan Stude pinned, Xexe. You don’t get much more irrational and superstitious than he is.” She smiled knowingly at her science officer, who blinked and tilted her head.
“I am not sure I can agree with you, Captain. In my experience, Sub-Commander Stude makes highly rational decisions.”
The captain drew a sharp breath, but whatever she had been going to say next was silenced on her tongue. The lights on the flight deck suddenly flickered and a siren began blaring the “High Alert” warning. Both women turned and looked towards the huge viewing screen, just as a brick-shaped vessel shimmered into view against the backdrop of stars. It looked ugly, with the rusted colour of its hull and the alien technology appearing to human eyes like protruding pincers, needles and claw shapes.
“Will you look at that?”
The expression on Captain Gervain’s face was a well-crafted blend of wonder and horror. Beside her, the deadpan of the science officer was a brilliant counterpoint. High emotion set against pure mentation.
“I see it, Captain. It is there. The Kyruku. Do. Exist.”
Two such different female faces, one shot. Perfect.

Joah Meer glanced from the monitor view back to the studio where the two women stood in an empty room staring, rapt, at a blank wall. They really were very good. She had them hold their pose for a few seconds longer than was strictly needed, stopped the recording and smiled.
“Nice work. Take five and then we’ll be setting up to get the fight scene recorded.”
Heila, whose role as captain of The Golden Strand had lasted three seasons so far, stretched slowly as if she had been cramped, and glared at Joah.
“I’m not doing that hurling myself around on the floor thing again, so don’t ask.”
“Never, darling,” Joah said, soothingly. “You might get another bruise, and you have a full-exposure publicity shoot tomorrow.”
Beside her, no longer stone-faced, Zarshay snorted and broke into a grin. Heila scowled at her.
“So funny?”
“Full exposure? Oh my, the life of a leading lady.”
Which was enough to send Heila stalking out in high dudgeon. Zarshay was still grinning as she navigated through the two tech-droids and their human keeper, Wilf, to reach Joah’s console. Joah opened her arms and hugged her tight, lifting her off her feet as they kissed.
“Seriously? You have booked Heila for a skin shoot?”
Joah shook her head.
“Of course not, it’s just a usual media thing, but she has been getting so precious recently, I’ve been tempted. It’s like she thinks we should change Starways Pathfinders to The Heila Camarthy Show.”
Zarshay made a rude noise and laughed.
But something of the tension was still there when they were adding the space-battle scenes.

Star Dust by E.M. Swift-Hook, originally appeared in The Last City, a shared-universe anthology. This version is the ‘Author’s Cut’ and differs, very slightly, from that original. Next week – Episode 0010.

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

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

Maria scuttled off, returning a few minutes later to find the skylights open and the aquarium filled with calm, clear, fresh air. Tia Benita and Magnus Thorssen, who had returned to his thin severe self, stood in quiet conversation. Maria breathed in the vague scent of ozone and grinned at her aunt.
“Thanks, Tia Benita. You sorted that thing good.”
“Not without help, chile. Not without help. You done proper. I been proud of you.”
Maria felt the blush start at her neck. Magnus laughed, but it was a kindly sound.
“It has been an odd sort of an afternoon,” he spoke in his normal precise tones, with nothing about him seeming to connect to the giant berserker he had become when face to face with the dark creature.
Maria was a little saddened by the return of the dry, cold scientist, and more than a little surprised when he took her hand and raised it to his lips. Startled, she looked up into his eyes to see them as blue as the sea and warm with approval. When he let go of her hand, he sighed.
“I am just discovering ,” he said carefully, “that we are not always precisely what we seem. Not even myself.”
“Least of all yourself, Doctor Thorssen.”
“I think we have seen too much this day for Doctor Thorssen to be appropriate. My name is Magnus.”
Maria chewed that one over in her mind for a moment, then thought ‘what the hell’.
She dropped him half an ironic curtsey. “Pleased to meet you Magnus.”
Tia Benita laughed, richly amused by a joke neither Maria nor Magnus could see. She waved one large hand at her train of trainees who dispersed at a gallop, before shaking hands with Magnus and kissing Maria on both cheeks. She looked at the tall Swede in some disapproval.
“You need to get some meat on them there bones.”
Then she was gone, leaving nothing behind her but the smell of the sea.
Magnus smiled down at Maria and offered a hand. She put her own hand in his and they left the building together. Neither spoke until they were walking down the dusty little road that led to the beach. Magnus opened and shut his mouth a bit and it came to Maria that he was actually shy. That made her feel braver.
“I could use a big drink and a bowl of gumbo.”
“I also. But the places I have found to eat are not very…”
“You just come with me.”
She felt a little like a bustling tugboat with a tall ship in tow, but he followed obediently.
Benny’s Bar was hidden from the eyes of the day trippers and holidaymakers, and it had obviously passed Magnus by too. He looked a bit out of place among the compact little island men and their broad-beamed women, but he sat where Maria pointed and when she put a bowl of steaming gumbo and a can of Red Stripe in front of him he grinned like a schoolboy and set to.
Maria felt somehow comforted by his enthusiasm for the homely things she could offer. Just maybe he wasn’t such a stuffed shirt after all – even when he wasn’t waving a war axe and talking old Norse.
A lot of food and a good dollop of rum later they were walking along a deserted stretch of beach with a pink moon hanging in the navy blue sky above them.
“I think we must talk about today,” Magnus said abruptly. “About what I became in my anger.”
Maria understood that he was deeply disturbed by the thought that a Viking berserker hid inside his dryly intellectual exterior. She looked at the hard lines of his face in the moonlight.
“You ain’t the only one surprised yourself. I never made no muppet before. And I shouldn’t know how. I guess we both done what was needful.” He still looked doubtful and she sought to reassure him. “I rather liked your Viking.”
“You did. You were not disgusted?”
“No. Though I do wonder what you are doing here with me.”
Magnus didn’t answer and Maria thought she’d blown it, so she stared down at their two sets of feet in the white sand. His were long and bony and almost as pale as the sand while her own were square and brown and plumply fleshed. He followed the direction of her gaze.
“We do not match well. And yet we walk together in harmony.”
“Only because you shorten your stride to let me keep up.”
He touched her face and she found herself all but drowned in the icy blueness of his eyes. She flinched, suddenly afraid of the attraction she felt to one so far above her in status and wealth. He felt her involuntary movement, but put it down to another reason altogether.
“I know I am pale and soberly unexciting. Even with the berserker lurking under the skin. I know this and I think myself to be a poor mate for you. But I would try if you will have me.”
Maria didn’t know what to say, but she knew this was her only chance if she wanted this man in her life so she pulled on his hand and brought him to a halt.
“Oh man,” she whispered, “I ain’t never wanted nothing like I want you.”
And, as it turned out, that was enough. The laughing devils were back in his eyes and he tumbled her to the soft sand kissing her for the first time – while his hands…
A long time later he put a palm on either side of her face “ek elska þik (I love you)”, he said.
Not so far away a plump mambo woman showed her gold teeth in a happy grin.
“And done,” she said.
In the very centre of the aquarium a huge orange cephalopod smiled an octopus smile before settling in his seaweedy bed.

Jane Jago

Kerenza straightened the pillows behind great gran, thinking as she did so how frail was the old lady’s body but how alive were her twinkling blue eyes.
Once the bed was comfortable, Kerenza sat in the bedside chair and smiled.
The old lady patted her hand. ‘It’s nice to see your dimples again, child. Wouldn’t be because your father is off up to London on parliamentary business would it?’
Kerenza blushed. ‘Please Great Gran, don’t make me be thinking undutiful thoughts.’
‘I don’t think it’s my fault that your father is a humourless dullard. Or maybe it is.’
‘He’s not so bad. And mother knows how to manage him.’
‘She does at that.’
The quiet that fell in the room was companionable and, as always when she had leisure, Kerenza looked with great pleasure at the painting that shone like a jewel on the wall above the applewood fire that warmed the room and scented the air.
‘You love my picture, don’t you?’
‘I do Great Gran, and I have often wondered…’ Kerenza let her voice tail off aware that she may have overstepped the mark.
But Great Gran just laughed. ‘That’s a picture of the good ship Nightjar, she was a privateer engaged in ‘free trading’ along this very coast. Your great grandfather had the picture painted for me on our tenth wedding anniversary. Only that doesn’t explain why I love it so much does it? Would you like to hear the story?’
Kerenza nodded mutely and took the old lady’s wrinkled hand in hers.
‘I couldn’t have been much older than you when I first came to these parts. My grandmother was thought to be dying, and my father counted me the least essential part of his household so he sent me to Chegwidden to bear her company in her last days. And, of course, to ensure that nobody was poaching on his inheritance. Granny was frail, but kindly, and I think I knew the first happiness in my life behind the granite walls of her house.’
She stopped speaking and her jaw worked in such a way that Kerenza thought she might be about to cry. When Great Gran got herself together, she squeezed Kerenza’s fingers and smiled a misty smile.
‘I hadn’t been here but a week when I came to know the two men around whom my life was to revolve. I was walking the dogs when I all but fell into the hands of Ludovic StMartin, who was the captain of the Nightjar.’ She smiled reminiscently and her eyes danced as if at some deliciously naughty memory. ‘He was a handsome devil, and didn’t he know it. Thought to steal a kiss, and maybe bring me to heel with his charm. I smacked his face and kicked his shins for him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or spank me. While he was making his mind up I ran away. Which piqued his interest enough so that he invited himself to dinner the next night – brought Granny some lace from Valenciennes, a pipe of brandy, and a bolt of midnight blue velvet. I ignored him. And then the chase was on. All summer he hunted me like a deerhound after a hart. But I didn’t want to know.’
Kerenza was fascinated enough to still her normally busy tongue. Instead of her usual babble of chatter she sat mouse-still and listened.
‘In the meantime I met your great grandfather. He was a little older than me and was quietly mourning the death of his young wife in childbirth. We became fast friends and his was the ear into which I poured my innermost thoughts. He became my dearest friend I all the world. As for Ludovic I think I might just have carried in disliking him had he not had the misfortune to catch a bullet in his right shoulder. The dogs and I found him faint from loss of blood and in very real danger of being caught by the revenue. To this day I don’t know why I decided to save him. But I did. Somehow I got him across the saddle of my mare and brought him to the relative safety of Granny’s house, where I nursed him back to health. And fell in love with him. I think he loved me too – or at least he said he did. Granny knew he was in my room but we never spoke of it until the night he was well enough to leave. ‘Be careful, child,’ she said, ‘the world is unlikely to give you a happy ending if you choose to follow Ludovic’. I remember thinking that he and I would make our own happy ending but I was wrong.’
A slow tear ran down the old lady’s papery cheek and Kerenza began to feel guilty for wanting to know the story of the beloved picture.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she whispered.
‘I think I do. And there’s little more really to tell. The Nightjar slipped up the river to meet a rowing boat bringing her captain back to his quarterdeck. As she rode the tide out to sea, a revenue cutter caught up with her in the roads and blew her out of the water. I have heard it said that the explosion was heard from as far away as Plymouth. I thought my life was over too. Although fate had other ideas.
‘It was a sunset as bright as the one in the picture when your great grandfather came to find me where I sat on the cliff top. He proposed to me a marriage of friendship and I accepted. By the time my own father arrived, brought down from London by the rumour his daughter was consorting with a smuggler, our betrothal was a matter of fact – and the daughter Papa was going to discipline with a horsewhip was about to marry the richest man in Cornwall.’
Great Gran settled back amongst her pillows and it seemed to Kerenza that she was a long way from her bedchamber and a lot of years away from the ninety-three years she owned to now. But just when Great Gran appeared to be drifting into sleep she squeezed Karenza’s hand.
‘I often think,’ she said quietly, ‘that I can see Ludovic on the deck of his ship and I fancy that one day he will call my name and I’ll go with him to wherever he may be.’
Kerenza gently patted the thin hand that rested in hers and she was rewarded by the genteel sound of snoring as the old lady drifted off to sleep.
It was to be Great Gran’s last sleep. In the morning they found her peacefully departed with her hands tenderly clasped together and a soft smile on her lips.
It wasn’t until she had finished helping her mother to gently prepare Great Gran for her final resting place that Kerenza looked over to the picture. It still showed a sunset but the Nightjar was gone…

© jane jago

In the time I’ve lived on this earth it seems to me that shopping has come full circle. 

When I was a girl my sainted mother (a woman of humour, kindness and a very hard hand when applied to the back of the leg) ordered her groceries and had them delivered – by a man who wrote next week’s order (with a stub of pencil and painful slowness) in a dog-eared book.

These days, of course, the man who scarfed ginger snaps like there was no tomorrow has been replaced by a robotic female but the principle is the same.

Almost.

The difference?

The grocer with his brilliantined hair and nicotine stained fingers generally brought precisely what Mum ordered. And if there was a slight deviation the replacement item was very close to the original that had been ordered and was usually reduced in price by a penny or two in compensation.

So what happened in the intervening fifty years?

We all got conditioned to the hell of the supermarket and the joys of the trolley whose only mission in life was to career sideways across the car park like a drunken juggernaut. Thus it was that we mostly looked with some relief towards online orders.

And how we were disappointed. How we tried to order our modest needs – only to be thwarted by sudden death of websites, ridiculous delivery slots, and the replacement for goods that had become unavailable between the order and the fulfilment of same with random crap from the returns cupboard.

We are sorry we have run out of Cornish butter, we have replaced your order of that product with a jar of nappy rash cream. Or. We are sorry we have run out of bananas, we have replaced your order of that product with a pair of flip flops (size 3). Or…

I could go on…

So we drifted back to the weekly trolley dash and the amusement of choosing our own bruised apples.

But then.

Horror of horrors. The supermarket was declared a place of lurking plague, and we deserted in our thousands once again. 

Online we went. Whether through the offices of a creepy talking box or the efforts of our fingers. Only to find. No delivery slots available until 2023. Limits on what we could buy. 

The screams could be heard as far as the empty beer garden outside the Dog and Scrotum where the landlord sat alone drinking Old Stumpblaster and wishing he had sold up last summer.

But I digress.

Shopping online? I don’t fu**ing think so.

Me and Gyp fire up the Micra and make our stately way to the emporium. 

Gyp minds the car.

I shop.

Bottoms up!

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

One greets the assembled disciples.

Should it be that you are a lost soul, who has recently slipped into the back of the class in the hope of improving your limited literary endeavours, allow me to introduce myself. I am Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, fondly referred to as IVy by my chums. The acclaimed author of that prodigiously enchanting science fantasy work ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ which has been removed from the shelves on a temporary basis so it can return and be lauded as it truly deserves.

The end of summer is upon us and as harvests are gathered in I am once more returned to my writing room to reap the rich harvest of a summer gleaning inspiration from the very lap of the Muses in their homeland. Thus I was less than delighted to be disturbed whilst revisiting the profound passages of my previous literary highlights and admiring the lavish style, the graceful similes, the elegant turns of phrase and the superlative use of descriptive ornamentation.

It was, of course, my maternal parent who was well into her second admixture of Benedictine and Calvados. I knew that because the sickly smell of honeyed apples hung on her breath as she stuck her face into mine, muttering: “Why did I do it? What was I doing? How did I ever do something to deserve this?” Then, fuelled by alcohol and the disappointment she feels in her own sad little existence, she trailed off into a long-winded monologue in which I was unflatteringly compared to a chocolate teapot, a leadless pencil and other random objects.

Once I was again mercifully alone, the door bolted to avoid any further distractions, I realised Mumsie had unwittingly pointed out an area of English grammar that I have been remiss in bringing to the attention of my pupils. The ‘doing’ words.

How to Write Right  –  The Write Verb

Right class! Today we shall explore one of the backbones of any sentence. Indeed, that without which it is not a sentence at all.

Verbs are words which inform us of action. You all knew that of course, so I shall skip over asking for a show of hands and cut to the chase: how to choose the right verb for your sentence.

The important message I need you to take from today’s lesson is that any sentence can be instantly improved if you consider varying the verb. Truly. It can. Allow me to demonstrate briefly:

The stars shone.

Nothing wrong with that at all. It tells the reader the simple fact and they will absorb it and move on. But oh what a wasted opportunity! Instead of having the reader merely register the idea of the stars being there, doing what we all know stars do, you could have informed their imaginations with your creative genius (however small that might be) and awed them by your command of the depth of beauty in the language. Thus, thusly:

The stars blazed.
The stars lustred.
The stars scintillated.
The stars effervesced.
The stars coruscated.
You, by now, begin to assimilate the idea.

Thusly, my innocents, do not ‘walk’ but ‘promenade’. Never merely ‘jump’ when you can ‘frolic’. And remember, dear disciple mine, any noun can be enverbed to add to your treasure trove of possibilities:

The handsome young man entabled his firm buttocks, peachifying my day by his very beauty. (Voila mes crudités, deux pour le prix d’un)

And thus have we indeed ‘done’ the doing words.

Now go and try some out.

Until we next…

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.

Sometimes we walk the very edges of reality…

“Well, you know what they say, don’t you pet? What don’t kill you, will make you stronger.”
Jessica felt her teeth dig into her tongue with the effort of not snapping back. It was one of those glib sayings people trotted out every time they realised there was harm done they couldn’t heal. She wanted to snarl that what didn’t kill you could just as easily leave you broken and bloody, weakened and vulnerable and much less strong than you were before. It could also leave you changed as well as damaged, struggling to know who this stranger was that you had become—the one who jumped at shadows and whose heart started racing when a car engine started up.
It was not a good look for a woman who had once been decorated for valour.
She forced a smile and did not cringe at the hand pat that went with the words of wisdom, delivered from the place of someone whose worst nightmares were about being caught on Scarborough seafront without her make-up on.
“Your aunt means well, Jess.”
The voice came from the door of the lounge, which was being pushed open. There was a smell of fresh coffee as Uncle David carried in a tray with a samovar and tiny cups.
“Oh don’t be so daft, Dave. She knows I mean well, don’t you pet?”
Jessica nodded and managed a half-smile, then busied herself moving the newspaper, and a couple of magazines about horoscopes and tarot cards, from the table in front of the paisley-patterned settee. Her uncle set the tray down with care then served the coffee as he always did—strong, black and sweet.
His eyes were not patronising when he looked at her. But then he had fought at Goose Green and brought home his own ghosts to roost in the rafters of the perfect life his wife devised for them both. No children of their own, but then they had Jess.
“So are you off to Whitby again to see that young man?” Aunt Susan peered over both the top of her cup and her bifocals.
For a moment, just hearing someone naming the place sent a shiver through Jessica’s spine, and her imagination bridged the miles to place her on top of the cliffs, screaming gulls wheeling overhead, the wind that never slept and Roald, the image of a modern-day Viking, hair blowing over his face, shoulders half-hunched in a fleece, face animated, telling her the history of the ruined abbey as if he had been there at the time.
“It was all started by a woman—Hild. She was an amazing woman and not one you would want to cross. A princess of sorts. And for all she was an abbess eventually, she didn’t decide to become a nun until she was in her thirties and she’d done one heck of a lot of living by then.’ He paused and made a really broad gesture with one arm as if including the ruins and all the headland where they stood. “She loved this place. Would stand up on the cliffs, by the beacon that was here then and look out over the sea, and upbraid her hair so the wind could play with it. And, you know, when she established that first abbey it was nothing like you would think of a monastery today. It was more like a community—both men and women.”
It was easy to picture Hilda in her Saxon dress, facing out over the waves. Jessica thought of that actress she’d seen playing Rowena in ‘Ivanhoe’.
“No,” Roald sounded almost angry, “Hild was of Anglic blood—not Saxon. The ones Pope Gregory famously spoke about when he saw some being sold as slaves: ‘Non Angli, sed angeli‘.
Jessica looked at him, her mouth very slightly agape. He did that a lot. It was very unsettling.
“Non angerlee—what?”
Roald grinned and gave an exaggerated mock wince, as if her pronunciation caused him pain.
“Non Angli, sed angeli—’These are not Angles, they are angels.’ “
She had still been on crutches then and he had helped her back to the car park soon after then they had found a small pub in Robin Hood Bay, where they could look out of the window over the tumble of cottages and tourist shops. Picture postcard stuff, except the sky had been an obstinate slate-grey all afternoon.
“So what has this to do with anything?” she asked at last, when the small talk dried up over their beer.
“Your dream,” he said, “the one you keep having about a glowing necklace of strange pearls.”
Jess nodded, she had told him of it when he asked her if she ever remembered her dreams.
“I’m not sure they were pearls, just the kind of odd light they gave off made them seem like it. They were pearls shaped in ridged spirals.”
In the dream she had seen something glowing under her uniform blouse, shining and everyone staring until she had run away and been standing on a cliff edge, then ripping open her blouse to see the strange necklace lying there on her naked breasts. The image came into her mind clear as a photograph and she heard Roald draw a small, sharp breath, which brought her back to the pub.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, his expression slipping into an odd smile, “that’s the one.”
For some reason, she felt uncomfortable and looked out of the window to escape the moment.
“It’s only been since the—the accident,” I’ve never had that kind of dream before.”
Standing naked on the cliff-edge, her hair so long it ran the full length of her back and blew out around her, sparking with energy, and feeling so whole, so complete—so powerful.
“I know.”
The way he said it, made her blush. She started pulling herself to her feet, leaning on the crutches.
“I need to get back—I promised I’d take my aunt to the talk on astrology. She loves all that kind of stuff.’
Roald rose too.
“And you don’t?”
“I never used to,” she admitted, as he helped her ease back into her coat.
“And now?”
She tried to shrug, but it was not so easy with the crutches.
“Maybe, believing in fate helps make this all seem less meaningless. Maybe it helps make sense of the senseless. Even if all I’m doing is seeing patterns in the stars by joining the dots with random lines.”

Click here to snag your copy and keep reading Maybe a novella of supernatural horror by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook which is available now.

Five years ago two slightly deranged women with a mutual love of books – both reading them and writing them – got together to create a blog that offered a daily short read. Maybe something thoughtful, something funny or something action-filled. We aimed to promote the work of others too and entertain any who had a moment to drop by and read.

For five years we have provided two pieces on the blog every day – one very short maybe a limerick or a drabble and the other a longer read – an extract or flash fiction or humorous piece. We were young, enthusiastic and full of grand dreams!

Two out of three of those remain (you can decide which two for yourself), and we’re hoping the blog will still be here in five years’ time so we can celebrate a 10th birthday. But we’ve decided to scale back to just one piece a day ongoing so we can put more time and attention into our writing projects. These pieces will include the same sort of things as before and maybe some different stuff – non-fiction, opinions and comments. We are very open to suggestions if anyone has something they would like to see here. Also, we plan to feature work from other authors so if you have something you’d like to contribute please feel to send it our way.

Every birthday so far we have had a competition. This year we’re doing something a bit different. We’re asking you to tell us in the comments here (or you can email or send carrier pigeons) what post or series of posts on the blog you have most enjoyed over the years. Your prize will be that we will revisit that and repost it, especially for you!

Oh – and what is a birthday without gifts?

You can pick up The First Dai and Julia Omnibus free for five days as a thank you from us to you for following the blog. And we have published our supernatural horror Maybe which is available on preorder right now for release tomorrow.

Thanks for your attention for the last five years and here’s to the next!

Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

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

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Jane Jago