You can also listen to this on YouTube.

‘Starship Troopers’ was not a book that one had any intention to read.

Ever.

The blurb made it abundantly clear it was about boot camp and killing insectoid aliens in great quantities and the antithesis of everything that represents fine literature. To one, such as oneself, raised upon more the most sophisticated themes and rarified tomes by She Whose Name One Is Unfit To Mention, it seemed like being asked to enter into a rugby scrum only after ensuring two weeks of torrential rain have softened the pitch.

So why would I do such a thing? One hears the single nonplused warble resonating from my myriad readers. You can be sure, gentle people, it was through no choice of oneself.

This is a cautionary tale that tells how karma always finds a way.

Last month I was prevailed upon to join the local literati gathering – or ‘Ben’s Book Club’ as it is is listed on the Community Centre noticeboard. Mumsie had declared that it would be of great value to my own written words were I to take more time to peruse those of others. She also threatened to evict me from my writing sanctuary and turn it into a hell-hole brewery for her own vile alcoholic distillations if I refused.

So, perforce, enforced by force majeur, I went. The torrid event occupies an entire afternoon each week, filled with in-depth and avid discussion and dissection. Then, once the local gossip is dealt with, the group spends a few minutes at the end considering whatever book Ben has chosen for the week and being assigned one to read for the next.  The first week I went it was Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.

The Review

A young man goes to boot camp and learns how to fight insectoid aliens so he can vote. The rest of the book describes the fighting. Spoiler: he doesn’t vote at the end of the book.

Stars: Four – for allowing me to learn sufficient juicy gossip from Ben’s Book Club members to blackmail Mumsie into letting me keep my writing sanctuary.

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.

Classic songs for the festive season, cheerfully and irreverently reimagined for you by the Working Title Blog…

(To be sung with warmth and joy to the tune of ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem‘)

Oh little town of Botheringham
How dark thy winter streets
Above thy head the lights are dead
Beware unwary feet
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
One everlasting light
There’s friendship here, and warmth and beer
The pub’s the place tonight

Oh drinking friends together
Proclaim your manly love
And praises sing to beer the king
A blessing from above
For where there’s beer there’s harmony
And peace to all shines bright
Come closing time if mother moon still shines
We’ll have a fraternal fight

You can listen to this being read on YouTube.

It isn’t given to everybody to be able to identify the precise moment when they fall for the love of their life…
It was Saturday night and the drifter drove his beat-up truck into just one more trail-end town. Truth to tell he would have preferred somewhere livelier as he had money in his pocket, but he was tired and hungry. He parked the Dodge outside a tiny diner only to see the closed sign go up on the door as he swung to the ground. An old timer and his equally ancient dog stopped and looked at him.
“Food at Belle’s Bar over the street’s better than the slop they serve here. Can even get decent coffee if’n you don’t want beer with your meal.”
The drifter tipped his hat in a grateful salute and made his way to Belle’s.
The old timer hadn’t lied about the food or the coffee. By the time the stranger had got outside of a huge plate of savoury stew, a generous helping of peach pie, and three large mugs of steaming hot coffee he was feeling almost human. He decided he might as well stay for a beer while he chewed over his options.
His usual Saturday night agenda involved picking up some lonely woman in a bar and getting invited back to her place for the night. He got bed and breakfast and his lady hostess got what he reckoned to be some pretty hot sex. Something for everybody, and no offence taken if his advances were spurned. However, he had worked for the better part of two months helping a group of dirt farmers plough and weed and build fences, so he was bone weary and he had money enough to get his own room. He’d have that beer and think. He bellied up to the bar and the woman tender stopped polishing glasses.
“I get you, bro?”
“Bro?” the drifter was amused and that made him look closer at the woman. She was maybe thirty years old, and plain of face, but with an infectious grin and the light of intelligence in a pair of strange bi-coloured eyes. She chuckled.
“Yup. Bro. Saves me trying to learn the names of all the damned fools that come in here looking for beer and sympathy.”
He found himself laughing too, and for some reason that felt good.
“I’ll take a beer please, and one for yourself.”
Somehow or other, he was still by the bar when it was closing time. He watched the bartender take off her apron and hang it on the beer pumps before he spoke.
“Anywhere I can get a room in these parts?”
She looked at him for a long moment then seemed to come to a decision.
“I got a bed too big for one woman.”
The drifter felt his smile flow across his cheeks. This one, he thought, would be a real pleasure. He held out a hand and the woman came around the bar and put her own hand in his.
“Hi, pretty lady,” he said, “my name’s…”
She put the fingers of her free hand across his mouth.
“Let’s just keep it to bro, shall we? This time tomorrow you’ll be gone and your name’ll be no manner of good to me.”
He nodded his understanding and they walked out of the bar shoulder to shoulder.
It wasn’t early when she slid from his embrace and padded out to the kitchen. He watched her go, marvelling at how comfortable she was in her own nakedness and how much he had enjoyed that nakedness. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He was still deep in thought when a voice floated in from the next room.
“I’m sorta making breakfast. What do you want on your toast?”
“A couple eggs would be good,” he responded without thinking.
Almost instantaneously a laughing face appeared in the doorway.
“Eggs bro? Sheesh. The sex wasn’t that good.”
And he knew at that moment that his fate lay in a one-horse trail-end town with this woman by his side.

© jane jago

Classic songs for the festive season, cheerfully and irreverently reimagined for you by the Working Title Blog…

(To be sung with upbeat enthusiasm to the tune of ‘We Three Kings‘)

We three men from Amazon are
One in a white van, one in a car
One on an escooter with a computer
Bearing packages afar

Oh box the items, box them right
Extra packing, wedged in tight,
Shove the lot in, all that shopping
Get it there before tonight

Books for aunties, perfume for mum
Lots of treats to stuff in your tum
Piles of hoodies, all kinds of goodies
Even a bottle of rum.

Oh box the items, box them right
Extra packing, wedged in tight,
Shove the lot in, all that shopping
Get it there before tonight

Once we went to shop in the rain
Christmas shopping was such a pain
Now you click and then double quick
Amazon comes again!

Oh box the items, box them right
Extra packing, wedged in tight,
Shove the lot in, all that shopping
Get it there before tonight

A flash fiction by E.M. Swift-Hook. You can listen to this on YouTube.

She let the slave girl brush out her hair so it lay like a shimmering black veil down her back and blinked as the over-strong perfumed oils caught in her nostrils. The king was ageing and his sense of smell fading. Alas, little else of his senses did so.
She took the walk from her cloistered seraglio to his bedchamber with the same heavy sense of foreboding that she carried with her every night. She did not need the sly, pitying looks from the other women – each waiting her turn for the same honour. But as long as she still lived, they were safe.
She reached the doors of the bedchamber and the two armoured men who guarded them stepped aside and pushed them open so she could go in – alone. The sound of the huge doors as they closed behind her was soft compared to the thumping of her heart. She must please her lord and master.
As always she began with a dance. Her accompaniment, the tiny finger cymbals she wore. She moved her body in the swaying motions of the dance and wove her way to finish standing beside the canopied bed, it’s cloth of gold coverlet cast casually aside.
By day the king at least looked regal, clad in fine robes and with a jewelled crown lightly set on his greying hair. But naked he looked simply ugly and she shuddered at the thought of his hands touching her. He hated women as much as he desired them.
Now he looked at her with hungry, expectant eyes and she made herself climb onto the bed to lie beside him, fighting the revulsion and fear, forcing a smile on to her face. Tonight would be worse than usual because she had not managed to prepare herself fully.
“Where did we get to?” he asked, his voice low with anticipation.
She drew a quick breath.
“My Lord I – “
“No excuses – you know what I want.” This time there was a bite of anger and the dark brooding look the courtiers knew so well to fear.
She swallowed and made herself begin.
“Well, the djinn was about to kill the fisherman when…”
With half her mind she told the tale, the other half rapidly inventing another for when this one was finished, her life depending on it. But how long she could keep inventing these cliffhanger stories to please a madman, Scheherazade did not know.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Classic songs for the festive season, cheerfully and irreverently reimagined for you by the Working Title Blog…

(To be sung wistfully and reflectively to the tune of ‘In The Bleak Midwinter‘)

In the cold of Wednesday
Sod all in the bank
Queuing at the garage
Just to fill the tank
Horns are honking, Honky honk, Ho-o-onky honk
In the cold of Wednesday when the world’s on wonk

What can I buy here
Hungry as I am?
I could get a sandwich
Filled with fatty ham
If I buy the sandwich fat will hurt my heart
But if I get chocolate that will make me fart

From The Fated Sky, part one of Transgressor Trilogy, a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook. You can listen to this on YouTube.

The hooves of his ponies clattered lightly past the plaza as they trotted up towards the Castle Hill. Alfor on the morning after the Fair, was like a party when all the guests had gone home. Durban found it slightly depressing and he was glad to be leaving himself.
A voice hailed him from the steps of the Temple of the Gods and he was not at all surprised. He stopped his pony and waited whilst a stooped figure came slowly down the steps and crossed towards him. It was an elderly woman, her face half hidden beneath the hood of her cowl, her body bent and shapeless in its robes. She laid one hand on his bridle and looked up at him with clear blue eyes that held no trace of the ravages of age. For once Durban felt no desire to smile. He sat quite still, whilst the pack ponies shifted restlessly behind him.
“I suppose you have come to tell me not to do it.” His voice sounded even to his own ears like that of a petulant child and the old woman smiled gently.
“Should I tell the wind not to blow, or the sun not to rise? Your nature is to act as you should do.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To offer you a gift.” Durban felt uncomfortable beneath the calm blue gaze, exposed and vulnerable as if his very thoughts were open to being read.
“I have all I need,” he said sulkily.
“I am sure you do. But a man who tries to yoke and drive wild stallions needs more than a good whip and a steady hand.”
She could read his thoughts, curse her. He shifted his gaze to stare deliberately at the slowly brightening skyline.
“You should be pleased,” he said, his voice stiff with resentment. “It’s what you want after all.”
He heard a strange sound and realised that she was laughing at him.
“My dear child, whatever gave you the idea you could act otherwise?”
“Just say your piece and let me go. I’m expected at the castle.”
“Very well, I do not seek to delay you. But my gift is of knowledge – so perhaps you would prefer to pay for it? Shall we settle on a favour in the future?”
His eyes were drawn back to hers by her tone and he read a far from gentle mockery in the vivid blue depth and felt a slight sick sense of claustrophobia.
“Please –” he began, but the words choked in his throat and he felt himself incapable of movement of any kind.
Be warned, the voice seemed to come from within him. You think your fiery steeds an even match, but one is stronger than you know – strong enough to break the traces and trample you beneath its cutting hooves and what then, my brave charioteer?
“What should I do?” he heard his own voice although he had not willed it, but could not tell if he had spoken the question in words or thoughts.
Use the reins lightly and spare the whip. If it is racing its team-mate, it will not notice the direction it runs, nor mark the distance covered. And when the race is done you will bring him to me.
The voice stopped and Durban became aware of the first sounds of the city stirring to meet the new day. He blinked and found himself frowning at the woman.
“Why do you do these things to me?” he asked, to his own ears sounding half plaintive child and half frightened man.
The old lady smiled with the serenity of youth.
“Because you are my gift to Temsevar and it never hurts you to remember now and again that whilst you make the puppets dance, your own strings are tied to my fingers.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

Classic songs for the festive season, cheerfully and irreverently reimagined for you by the Working Title Blog…

(To be sung softly and temperately to the tune of ‘Away in a Manger‘)

When I left the nightclub
I had a thick head
I stumbled down the pavement
In search of a bed

The lights in the puddles
Looked sparkling and gay
So I found a quiet corner
And down I did lay

The policeman poked me
So that I came awake
‘Get up and go home now
Hurry up, for fuck’s sake’

But I feeling bleary
Had nothing to lose
So I opened my lips
And threw up on his shoes

He was not a happy
Nor a tolerant man
So I found myself
In the back of a van

When I left the nightclub
I was so far from well
That intemperance cost me
A night in the cells

Classic songs for the festive season, cheerfully and irreverently reimagined for you by the Working Title Blog…

(To be sung in a nostalgic vein to the tune of ‘White Christmas‘)

I’m hoping for a not-shite Christmas
Not like the one we had last year
Where there’s no frustration, no aggravation
And everyone has enough beer

I’m hoping for a not-shite Christmas
With every email that I write
May you still be friends on Christmas night
And may all the dinners turn out right

Ah. Christmas the time of cheery carollers, sleigh bells, and happy families. Or, looking at it less romantically, the time of burnt dinners, family fights, and divorce.

That first Christmas together. That’s the one that sets the pattern for all the others. Do not go to his mother’s. Or yours. Ideally, see no one and do a lot of sex.

Given that that isn’t happening, here are a few ground rules.

1. Do not be cozened into buying them tins of mixed sweeties. There will be at least two thirds that nobody likes. You will be reduced to feeding them to the dog in August.

2. Booze. Do not buy eggy stuff. It looks like snot and it tastes like snot, and nobody will drink it. If granny likes a Snowball. Buy a couple of ready made ones in pouches. She will only go to sleep with her face in the sprouts if you give her proper booze.

3. The Turkey. You do not need something the size of a Shetland Pony to feed you, your husband, and granny. Small is beautiful. After all nobody really likes turkey anyway.

4. Cooking. There’s a lot of rot talked about Christmas dinner. Do plenty of roast potatoes and a ton of them little sausages wrapped in bacon, because that’s all anybody eats.

5 Most importantly. The Punch. It should be very strong. And to begin with it should taste nice. After The Queen’s Speech it pretty much stops mattering. By that time people will drink meths.

And that is the secret of Christmas in a nutshell (NB do not buy nuts. Somebody – usually your new husband’s cousin from Reading – will inevitably display the symptoms of anaphylactic shock if you do).

Granny’s Punch

1 litre brandy
1 litre vodka
1 bottle ginger wine
1 litre pineapple juice
1 litre ginger ale
1 net of baby oranges
1 large tin pineapple chunks
Loads of glacé cherries
Punch bowl/clean plastic bucket/WHY
Ice

Cut the oranges in halves, then throw everything in the punch bowl. Drink much of it yourself.