Two Women and Some Books
Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…
You are old. Let me give you a tip
Your body’s too saggy to strip
It shouldn’t be you
Showing off your tattoo
At the head of a mass skinny dip
Symphony Under Siege by Stephen Hall, is a rollicking, fast-paced sci-fi novel.
Five centuries from now, ex-navy officer Diana Singh commands the monumental luxury spaceliner the Symphony of the Stars. None of her crew knows that their ship is smuggling a treasure worth millions.
None of them knows which one of them is the serial killer.
As Captain Singh pilots the mighty cruise ship back to base, she races to unmask the murderer in their midst before they can kill again.
So, not the most convenient time to be attacked by pirates…
According to the ship’s manual, the Symphony of the Stars is equipped with 20 lifeboats:
LIFEBOATS
The Symphony of the Stars is equipped with 20 lifeboats
See?
Each of which has a capacity of up to 150 persons. There are 10 lifeboats amidships on the upper deck: 5 to starboard and 5 to port. Another 10 lifeboats are in the stern: 5 to starboard and 5 to port. A designated safety officer has been assigned to each lifeboat. Once passengers and crew members are safely aboard, the lifeboats may be jettisoned remotely (from inside the ship), or manually (via the controls of the lifeboat itself). Once jettisoned, the lifeboat’s emergency distress beacon will engage, as it starts its scan for the nearest ship, station or outpost.
If none are found, it will begin a sweep for the nearest habitable planet or moon, and lay in a course.
Each lifeboat is equipped with SPR, and so has a theoretically infinite range. The lifeboat’s AI features scaled-down versions of the Symphony’s navigation, communication and entertainment systems, with additional survival information.
Each lifeboat has 10 water synthesizers and four lavatories. Seven days of A-rations are supplied for each person aboard, available once the 10 replicators have been depleted.
Other equipment includes one C-level SLS spacesuit per person aboard, fire extinguishers, first aid kits, blankets, multipurpose tool kits and additional distress beacons, and of course, towels.
For further information, see Chapter 16 of this manual: ‘Relax, You’re Not Going To Die; It’ll Probably All Be Fine’.
Devereux and Mr Abara sat on the stateroom’s gigantic couch, watching the infinite starscape slowly gliding by. Their shoeless feet rested on Gotmund’s back, as it gently rose and fell.
“War is hell,” Devereux declared, draining her second glass.
“Hear, hear,” agreed Mr Abara. “Bloody awful. More champagne?”
She held out her empty glass. “Oh, just to the top thanks, darl.”
“You’re funny.”
Devereux smiled. She couldn’t remember the last time someone paid her that compliment.
She stretched comfortably and took a sip.
Mr Abara wanted to tell her how he felt. He needed to tell her how he felt. He took a swig of champagne and put his glass down.
“Devereux, there’s something – ”
He was interrupted by the door opening and five maitbots scurrying into the room.
“Oh great, the maitbots are here,” he said flatly.
They hurriedly lifted their feet off Gotmund, as the maitbots maneuvered into place around him.
The little droids deftly raised the sleeping pirate from the floor, took a moment to steady themselves beneath his enormous bulk, and started slowly marching towards the door, on their mission to deliver him to the Shifting Sands.
Devereux stood up, clapped her hands and said decisively, “Right! Now that he’s on his way, we can get back to what we were doing!”
She put her boots back on. “Oh, and thanks for the drink,” she added.
“You’re welcome,” Mr Abara responded quietly.
How much of you is in your characters? Maybe the dashing hero is you. Or the devious villain. Or the quiet one who watches and winces a bit.
There’s bits of me in all of them, but I tend to write various characters as exaggerated embodiments of my own traits.
My optimism = Ms Pepper.
My brute male abstruseness = Gotmund.
My respect for the dignity of sticking to the rules = Captain Singh.
My mischievousness and (would-be) dashing wit = Salazar.
My gooey-hearted romanticism = Mr Abara.
My joy in telling old jokes = Marie.
I love having all these vehicles to express various aspects of myself.
Having created a fictional world for your novels, is there any moment in the process where you actually find your brain inhabiting that place?
Absolutely. When I’m writing, I find paintings or illustrations online that suggest the bizarre, exotic locations I’m playing with, and have those images open in the background as I work. Later, I find myself drifting off into these worlds, dreaming up new adventures and scrapes for the characters to get into. I’m not trying to go there – these imaginary places pull me towards them. It’s a powerful, wonderful thing.
Do you think your political beliefs inform your writing in any way?
Definitely. I think our political beliefs inform everything we do. The story in Symphony Under Siege takes place 512 years in the future.
On a Thursday morning.
I’ve deliberately made that world a more positive place, where, by and large, humanity’s better instincts have prevailed. It’s not perfect, of course (where would be the fun in that?)… but it’s a slightly more Utopian place than Earth in 2021. I think escapist adventure stories are always best served with a dash of optimism!
If you could meet one person (alive or dead) who would you choose? And what would you talk about?
The mighty Leonardo Da Vinci. I’d ask him about his beliefs, his methods…
I’d ask him how he sees the world, how he sees himself, and how he manages to be such an incredible polymath.
Not sure I’d understand all his answers, though.
I don’t speak Italian.
Stephen Hall is an Australian writer, actor, and quiz show enthusiast. When he turned 50, he decided he’d finally write that sci-fi novel he’d been daydreaming about for years. He lives in Melbourne with his wife, his daughter and a Staffordshire terrier called Gracie. You can find him on Twitter.
At number twenty-three he was called Soot, at number thirty-eight they named him Shadow and at the big house on Lobelia Drive he was called Jeremy. But the black cat that slipped from house to house bestowing his affection with equal abandon on the Wilsons, the McDonalds and the Fothringtons had no real care for what they called him.
There was fish on friday at twenty-three, milk every morning at thirty-eight and hand cooked chopped chicken at the big house most evenings.
What’s in a name when you are the owner of three human families and three comfortable cat baskets?
The adventures of Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson
The cab skittered and rattled over the uneven streets canting at crazy angles as it cornered with injudicious speed. Bearson grasped the cissy strap and hung on for dear life, while the smaller, lighter Homes was thrown about the vehicle like thistledown in the wind.
Arriving at the station with time to spare, Homes paid off the cabbie while Bearson dashed to the ticket office. By the time the somewhat corpulent bear arrived puffing at the platform, Homes awaited with his pocket watch in one trotter and a large bag emblazoned with the logo of Mrs Miggs’ excellent meat pie emporium in the other. Mrs Miggs’ pies are undoubtedly the best in the city – even if it is unwise in the extreme to enquire what ‘meat’ precisely one is ingesting.
Espying the hurrying Bearson, Homes strode forward.
“How fared you old chap?”
“Excellent well Homes. I have procured for us a first class compartment until Dumpshire City, where we have to change to a small local line for the last ten miles. On that train I could only procure tickets for a first class carriage.”
Homes clapped Bearson on the shoulder. “Excellent fellow. And now, if my ears do not deceive me, our train approaches….”
Of course his ears did not deceive him and the Pride of the Westcountry huffed into view with her smoke stack belching out a black miasma as her iron wheels clattered on the track. She braked to the beginnings of an ungainly halt and gave vent to an ear-splitting whistle.
Bearson watched the carriage numbers as the train slowed to a screeching, rumbling stop.
“We are coach C. Compartment 26. I wonder how far we shall have to walk.”
“Not far Bearson, old chap.” Homes was reassuring – for a reason as it turned out, as the final resting place of the smoke-belching monster put the door to compartment C26 right beside them.
Bearson smiled a wry and reluctant smile. “How do you do that, Homes? Even without knowing what carriage we are to board, you always manage to be standing in precisely the correct place on the platform.”
Homes climbed onto the step and used the weight of his small body to swing open the carriage door. As he disappeared into the compartment he threw a comment over his shoulder.
“Elementary my dear Bearson.”
Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…
With proud banner daffodils in the wind a-blowing
March marches in
It’s after the winter as the world starts a-growing
When March marches in
First of the spring flowers start brightly a-budding
‘Cos March marches in
Hard rain and spring showers send rivers a-flooding
As March marches in
Bluster days and sunshine, as the nights become shorter
when March marches in
Then comes the equinox at the year’s quarter
For March marches on…
To celebrate the upcoming launch of A Necessary End, the final book in Fortunes Fools, Dues of Blood is free to download until 8 March
The tattooed face broke into an ugly snarl, as the spearhead nearly grazed one shoulder of its owner’s powerful frame. He lunged forward, the double-headed axe swinging and the crowd yelled as he claimed his kill, severing the arm of the spear-wielding warrior at the shoulder in a fountain of scarlet and removing his head with a backswing, as effortlessly as a chef might slice through a soft cheese.
It was a very popular kill. This animal, who had the fighting-name ‘Therloon’, had been the new darling of the Alfor crowds since he had arrived in the arena a couple of moons after the Fair. He was of the nomadic folk from the Eastern Continent and had their renowned tenacity and powerful build combined with a flair for the theatrical and a spectacular viciousness that was all his own. Playing to the crowd like the professional he was, Therloon swung his axe around his head and roared, his face contoured into a hideous grin which must have been visible even to those who stood furthest from the edge of the arena. The crowd responded to his signature salute and roared his name.
The powerful Easterner turned to where one opponent remained facing him. The smaller man held his sturdy frame prepared, the curving sword he gripped in one hand looked as frail as a blade of grass against the life-harvesting scythe of Therloon’s whirling axe. But the crowd expected good sport before they had their final glut of blood. For this was no ordinary combat unfolding before them and the money that rode on the outcome of this single bout would have paid the wages of half the troops Qabal Vyazin had been mustering on the outskirts of Tabruth. This was the kind of match that men waited years to see and could only be provided by this, the most prestigious Arena in Temsevar – that of the city of Alfor.
It occurred to Torwyn, watching this display as he ran a hand through his short terracotta-coloured hair, that there were many places better to be than standing less than ten paces away from the axe-wielding maniac and on the wrong side of the high barricades which protected the crowd from the fighting-slaves within.
Facing Therloon, now alone, stood the one they called the Sabre, whom the crowd had just seen defeat his own previous opponent with a classic display of athletic grace and skill. Now, invisible to all except those in the audience closest to where he stood, he shifted his weight very slightly, as if knowing what to expect. The charge, when it came, made him move quickly aside and turn to duck under the axe whilst bringing his own, lighter, blade across to cut at the bigger man’s back. It was not sufficient to do any real damage to his opponent, but enough to gain an appreciative call or two from the crowd and Torwyn could tell it had angered the Easterner.
“Sabre! Sabre!” He evidently had supporters out in strength, probably as many as were there to cheer for Therloon, but then few fighting-slaves were as well-known as the Sabre because few survived six years in the Arena as he had. Few overcame for that long the ever more creative and dangerous demands made on a crowd-pleasing favourite which turned life and death combat into gore-fest theatre or blood-drenched farce.
If it had not been for the coming war this fight would never have been allowed so soon. To end deliberately, the career and crowd-pulling earning power of a top fighting-slave was not a decision made lightly by the lanista of an Arena. More especially when the lanista was well renowned for being a tight-fisted miser, who kept his fighting-slaves in the minimum conditions and invested all his money in crowd-pleasing exhibitions and expensive exotics.
The dance of death continued on the blood-stained sand of the stadium between the unwieldy axe, made agile and serpentine in the hands of the powerful Easterner, and the insubstantial blade of the sword weaving the will of the man who held it. From the first, it had been apparent that the sword was no real match for the heavier weapon with its much longer reach. It was only because the man who held it seemed to possess almost precognitive reactions and a creatively robust athleticism, that the inevitable end was being delayed so long. The tension became palpable and the focus of the two men was absolute. For them, the world had shrunk to the circle of sand and the sweep of feet, hands and weapons.
Normally, the element of drama would have featured far more in any performance by either man. The Easterner was famed for his love of blood and to watch him fight was to watch a butcher at work in a slaughterhouse – but a butcher with a malicious streak of sadism – and the crowd, never sated, loved that. By comparison, the Sabre was known for the humour and finesse he brought to his savagery, playing with his opponents in burlesque ways which would have the crowd fired up with laughter and then stunning them into silence by the breath-taking skill of his acrobatic agility.
Even now, apparently pressed to his limits, Sabre found time to dance a brief step or two with a flower in his teeth, thrown by one of the crowd. It proved to be an expensive crowd-pleaser as the Easterner seized the moment to strike and Sabre, ducking under the blow, raised his own weapon ineffectively to deflect the lethal weight of the axe. It barely turned the heavy slicing blade but at the price of being smashed away from its owner’s grip.
Disarmed, the Sabre dived into a desperate, ground-covering roll that brought him distance from the certain death of Therloon’s backswing, and a few more precious moments of life. But his move was accompanied by the groans and boos of the watching throng. Those who had placed their money on the Sabre were most vocal in their disappointment. The fight was lost and many who had bet on the old favourite knew they would go home the poorer. But the let-down was soon overlaid by a fresh building of anticipation. There remained the catharsis of the kill itself, and Therloon was a master of spectacular, messy killing. That was something to look forward to. The Sabre’s last show would be an essay in violent, agonising death and those he had just robbed of their winnings would enjoy that revenge.
Torwyn watched the Easterner as he advanced across the floor of the arena. Therloon was fully aware that this was his moment and the exaggerated grin that split the tattooed face was as much leer of derision as smile of victory. Only those nearest the edge of the arena heard the tattooed man’s words as he approached his unarmed foe.
“You want to take back what you said before?”
The Sabre backed off step by step as the other man advanced, his arms spread wide in a gesture of pacification or surrender and the roar of contempt from the crowd at this sign of cowardice swelled close to riot.
“Take it back? Why should I?” he said as if puzzled by the question.
“Because on that depends how fast you die.”
“I don’t see why.” The Sabre’s tone was soft. “No matter how quickly or slowly you kill me it is all still true, Gant. You are an imbecile, a laughably dumb brute. You have less intelligence than the beast they named you for.”
An animal growl in his throat, the Easterner shot forward, the long axe held lightly in his hands. Sabre stepped back in a nervous retreat and in doing so missed his footing and tripped, sprawling backwards over the body of Therloon’s previous victim. He fell on his back, arms wide, body spread open and helpless.
The Easterner charged the last few paces, his face congested by anger and hate and Torwyn knew he was going to make this kill one his audience would long remember. Then the fallen man moved. His body rolled suddenly backwards, looking for all the world like a street tumbler, legs disappearing over his head and he finished the movement smoothly on one knee, the spear he had rescued in the process of completing the roll, held in his hands and braced solidly against his foot.
Therloon could no more have shifted his course at that point than taken flight and his eyes barely had time to widen in horrified comprehension, before his stomach was impaled upon the spear.
Sabre was on his feet as the impact was carried through, driving the point home deeply, twisting it to bite into the spine as the Easterner went down. Standing above his fallen foe, the sturdy fighting-slave looked down, without compassion at the tattooed face which was broken now by a rictus of agony.
“How fast do you die?” he asked savagely, for once allowing the fury and disgust to boil up through his veins. But the Easterner was beyond words, lungs pierced by the ripping barbs on the side of the spear’s head and breathing only in wheezing grunts.
The adoring ululation of the crowd ran like a hurricane around the arena and a monsoon of flowers and ribbons rained down onto the blood-drenched sand.
“Sabre! Sabre! Sabre!”
Torwyn straightened up and looked around as if seeing the scene for the first time. Then, strangely impatient and with no more than the most perfunctory of gestures to acknowledge the adulation, he ran his hand through his short rust-coloured hair and strode back through the now open gates, into the dark tunnel beyond.
From Transgressor: Dues of Blood a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook which is free to download until 8 March. You can listen to this on YouTube.
The cover is designed by Ian Bristow, you can find his work at Bristow Design.
I miss my old bookshelf, he sighed
It reminds me that time passes by
That the books that I read
Now exist in my head
Though no more in front of my eyes
Yes, it is me. Jacintha. Struggling to be sober enough to write something sufficiently significant to be worthy of putting out in public, which is more than many of you lot try to do.
I have been making a point of reading you ‘indie’ authors a bit over the last few weeks and I have to say there are some really stunning books out there that you people have written. Wonderful, captivating and more than worth my Kindle Unlimited sub five times over. Well, maybe not that good, but pretty damn good.
I must also say there is also some really dreadful drek which some of you seem to feel you have a right to inflict on the rest of us. The sort of writing that, were I the author, I would be embarrassed to put my name to it.
So maybe I can address some of the problems from the drek pile.
Oh. My. Effing. God.
I have no idea what it is with you writers, but get behind the wheel of a story and the first thing you want to do is tell it from five thousand different perspectives. Either by hopping from head to head like a libidinous frog, which I surely have no need to tell you is a terrible idea, or by having a character change break every other page.
No.
Don’t do it.
In my extremely humble opinion as a mere reader of your wonderful creative ramblings, I can spot a newbie a mile off by the fact it is page thirty and I have already run through five or six different characters’ heads like a bad dose of Montezuma’s revenge.
There seems to be this conviction that every last detail of the story has to be fed to the reader in a scene through a character – and sometimes the same scene from more than one character as there was this tiny nuance the reader might miss. I blame those so-called creative writing classes who ram ‘show don’t tell’ so far up the jacksie of every would be writer that they are incapable of writing a sentence that says ‘It was snowing’ but have to write ‘The soft bosomy whiteness settled from the skies upon the reluctant face of mother earth.’ So they then think they have to ‘show’ every last effing nuance of the whole damn plot!
No.
No.
And again …NO!
If Shakespeare managed to have action take place ‘offstage’ and still keep his audiences at fever pitch, you can too – unless you are a truly crap writer in which case go back to reading until you’ve learned how to do it better and stop inflicting your vile ‘brain babies’ on a long suffering world.
Gods I need a drink now, where did I put the tequila and pernod?
So, let me try and explain this again for those of you at the back who were busy on your smartphones.
(1) Before you write your book choose no more than four characters (and that is pushing the limits) through whom you can tell your story and accept that now and then you will have to find some other way than character presence to explain to the reader something that has happened. And yes, there can be one ‘guest’ POV in the book as well, but no more. You. Can. Do. It.
(2) Do not think you have to give your reader insight into every last damn thought of every last damn character. You don’t. Those that really matter can be conveyed to the reader through your POV character. That is what good writers do. Yes. Really.
If you don’t learn these lessons, you’ll be dug deep and drowning in the drek pile for life and good luck to you.
Now bugger off the lot of you, I want to watch the reruns of Bridgerton in peace.
Slyvester never had an ego problem.
Those around him did.
The only child of a wealthy magnate, his every whim indulged from the moment he pooped his first nappy, it never occurred to him anything he wanted was not his by right.
So when he saw Bianca he did what he always did, sending five hundred bouquets to her house – all at the same time – and hiring a famous rock band to serenade her on his behalf.
Then he sent the gold edged invitation to dinner.
He had no idea how to cope when she sent it back saying no.
To celebrate the upcoming launch of A Necessary End, the final book in Fortunes Fools, Times of Change is free to download until 6 March.
Jaelya Roussal, Regent of Harkera, woke up to almost total blackness and silence, her heart hammering hard and a shimmer of perspiration coating her body beneath the light coverlet. She woke as one awakes from a bad dream, with the vague and yet urgent sense of danger that the rational mind, still blurred from sleep, takes time to dispel. There was no possible danger, she told herself, two men stood guard outside her door and the grounds of the Summer Palace were well patrolled by night and day. No one would harm her in her own bed-chamber.
During the civil war she had woken like this many times and occasionally with good cause, when there were sounds of fighting brought to her on the night air. But the fighting was over, Mandervik himself was dead and the war, which had only finished in the spring, seemed now to belong to another lifetime and a different Jaelya.
Waking to the dark left her with a feeling of unreality – as if the universe itself had disappeared and she was all that existed, alone, floating on an island suspended in a void. Then beyond the invisible door to the solar, she heard the sound of booted feet and a muted exchange of words as the guard was challenged formally. The footsteps receded, leaving the stillness of the night to descend again like an unbroken veil.
She was fully awake now and she cast her mind back, wondering what had disturbed her sleep. It had not been a dream – more a jolt of surprise, of the kind that set the pulse racing.
Then she knew.
Alize had been there. She did not question how,with the door bolted and guarded and the windows shuttered against the night air. She just knew that Alize had been in the room and touched her as she slept and had spoken the words which had woken her:
“My poor child – you thought the war was over, but it has only just now begun.”
“Alize?” she spoke the name hesitantly and in little more than a whisper. But there was no reply and the room was empty. Alize had somehow come and was now gone, leaving no trace of her presence.
Sighing, Jaelya turned on to her side and drew her knees up close to her body, hugging the coverlet around her as she had done when a child. She refused to dwell on the words or their meaning or even why tonight, of all possible times, Alize should come to her after so many years of silence. Such thoughts were best left for the clear light of day when the ghosts of the past walked more warily and her mind could be better focused on the demands of the present.
But, like a shy creature of the wild, sleep eluded her. Her thoughts drifted, against her will, until those time worn ghosts that hovered about her, led her gently along the paths of unwilling memory to the beginning of everything.
It was, of course, Alize who had been there then.
Her first awareness of life had been of holding Alize’s hand on that day – as if she had been flung into the world fully-formed at the age of three. Even now she could still see clearly the high beamed roof, with its painted and vaulted ceiling, arching over the huge black and white slabs of stone which paved the floor. She had stood in the doorway, as if looking into the universe from outside, one hand holding onto a small bundle of clothes and the other gripping Alize’s hand tightly – as if her life depended upon it.
She conjured the scene easily, untarnished by the passage of years. The long table, taller than herself then, the chairs which had seemed made for giants, the fireplace which looked large enough to roast a good-sized ox and the faint, musty, smell of cold ashes and old books. Seated at the table, a heavy bound book open before him and a remote screen set up to one side, sat a boy with a mop of curly hair who had looked up as they entered. To the Jaelya in the memory, he had seemed so grown up himself – but he cannot have been much more than five summers her senior.
Feeling confused, she had looked up at the figure of Alize towering beside her and the face that had looked down at her contained blue eyes that seemed to embrace the world and all the stars beyond. Jaelya had felt as though she might be swallowed up in their depths, but somehow the thought made her feel safe rather than frightened. Then Alize’s gaze had moved from herself to the boy, who had got to his feet and was standing quietly behind the table, his square face framed by unruly golden curls.
“Child, this is your sister. Her name is Jaelya and I want you to take care of her.”
The boy had been staring at her with open curiosity as if wondering what manner of creature she might be, but at Alize’s words a miracle happened and his face broke into the most gentle and wonderful smile.
“My sister,” he had breathed the words as a triumphal declaration rather than as any kind of question and then the boy had come across to her, his hands held out in welcome, his honey-coloured eyes lit up by the brilliant smile that was for her alone. “Hello Jae. I am your brother and I’m always going to keep you safe.”
And in that moment Jaelya had loved him with a fierce devotion, a devotion which all the years between and all the tests and burdens of those years had done nothing to diminish. So why was it, as she lay now in the dreamless darkness, that the thought of his returning to Harkera filled her heart with nothing but apprehension?
From Transgressor Trilogy: Times of Change by E.M. Swift-Hook, a Fortune’s Fools book which is free to download until 6 March.
The cover is designed by Ian Bristow, you can find his work at Bristow Design.
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