The man who entered would have stood out even in a crowd. Here in the Hope, where the main colour was drab and the mood most often dour to sullen, he did not so much attract attention as cause it. One thing Jaz had learned in his time under the domes on Hell’s Breath, was how to judge people by their dress and manner. He could spot at a glance now, the kind of tourist who you could double charge on the viewing run and the kind you would refuse to allow a tab in the bar.
Jaz’s first thought was this must be one of the weirder ones. One of those who came here and talked about the mystical power of the flares or liked to make artworks in the micro-g viewing pod on Vel’s cousin’s ship. Too much money to spend, looking for something different, some new experience, to spend it on. But even as his thoughts were going over what he needed to say to Vel’s cousin over dinner – what he wanted to say to her – something kept him watching and not dismissing the new arrival as he would under normal circumstances.
There was nothing too outlandish about this man’s style of dress, although it hinted at the kind of wealth level you didn’t often see around Hell’s Breath. The fabric and cut looked sophisticated and expensive and the visible jewellery suggested he was trying for taste rather than bling. But if elegance was the effect he wanted to achieve, he failed. His hair – an untidy tangle of tawny-gold curls – ruined it, that and the addition of a very cheap looking opaque remote-link visor over his eyes.
“Ma says that funny man just came in on the hopper that took the oldies out.” Vel’s cousin’s daughter wriggled into the seat beside Jaz and started helping herself to the fruit on his plate without asking. “She said Auntie Vel said to tell you to check his luggage. She thinks he’s carrying something. Uncle Dom said the sensors were going ‘whip-woah’ when he went through them.” She licked her fingers and reached back to the plate. He gently grabbed the small hand before it could remove the last slice of fruit and then pushed the child firmly away.
“Tell your ma thanks – and stay out of here the pair of you.” The little girl treated him to one of her more scary pulled faces, then slipped out the back of the bar and through the door Jaz knew led passed the kitchens and out to the tiny demountable cabin beyond that she, her mother and Jaz called home. He watched her go in his peripheral vision, feeling a marked relief when the door slid closed behind her. But his focus remained fixed on the new arrival as it had throughout as he finished the last piece of fruit.
The newcomer seemed polite enough and Vel’s nephew’s boyfriend managed to check him in to one of the two remaining suites which were still habitable. The blond man made as if to move away from the counter to go to his suite. But then he turned back, his movement sudden, as if just remembering something.
“Oh yes, whilst I think of it, you don’t happen to know if there is a man by the name of Jazatar Baldrik staying here?”
Jaz felt a cold stillness within and flexed the muscles of one arm to feel the reassuring presence of an energy snub, linked thanks to his time in the Specials, on his inner arm. He pushed back from the table and stood up, the movement drew the attention of the new arrival who turned to look, eyes invisible beneath the visor but a wide smile now growing below it. Jaz did not watch the distracting smile, he watched the hands and the stance, but they were relaxed, nothing signalled intent to attack.
Jaz crossed the room towards the blond man, closing down the distance between them in a few quick steps, to get to hand-to-hand range, so he could be surer of control and, if needed, a kill.
The blond man let him do it, still smiling and relaxed.
“Jazatar Baldrik I assume?” The voice was light and sounded much too happy.
“Who  are you and what do you want?” To his own ears, Jaz’s question sounded more like a snarl. The smile beneath the visor grew even wider and the blond man reached up to remove the obscuring remote-link, revealing a pair of disturbing, intent, orange eyes.
“My name is Durban Chola and I need you to help me save the soul of Avilon Revid.”
Jaz made a decision and let the energy snub slip smoothly into his palm. Members of the Coalition’s security forces did not talk like this man and they were never going to afford his wardrobe. They were also going to be a lot better trained than to make such a spectacle of themselves in a place like the Hope.

From Haruspex I:Trust A Few a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

The Brazilian 

Who in their right mind goes to a ‘salon’ and gets their pubic hair wrenched out by the roots?

One. It fucking hurts.

Two. It’s creepy walking around with a child’s pudenda

Three. It fucking hurts 

So. Before paying out your hard-earned cash ask yourself this. 

Why the fuck?

If you are doing it for a laugh then carry on – although I might question your idea of a ‘laugh’.

However, if you are doing it because your significant other finds your pubic hair in some way unpleasant that’s a whole new ballgame. 

Unless you really do have creepy pubes…

Paradise Found: Tales from the Library is an anthology of stories about the Library of Alexandria. It was rescued from Terra long ago by its founder, Ptolemy I and brought to Paradise City.
The City itself houses every god known to man and more than a few others, and exists in any time. It’s also a place where a person can become everything they ever wanted, or lose all they’ve ever known. The only constant is the Library.
All the proceeds from this anthology will be donated to help defray the medical expenses for Scott Pond as he comes back from cancer.

“Crumpled backwards over the edge of the marble fountain, his arms flung wide to either side, a body leaked blood into the water, turning it a pale salmon pink. Or perhaps the rose petlas that were strewn around were to blame. I couldn’t tell. I just knew he hadn’t been there that morning when Castor had come in.”

~ Requiem for an Unknown, Val Griswold-Ford.

Tania blinked away the green after-image as she tramped into the bar-café. It was quiet, cool; only the whirring of ceiling fans broke the silence. The bartender was absent. As were all the staff. She frowned and blinked some more till her eyes adjusted to the gloom.
In the centre of the main room were another nine people seated around a group of round tables. Some of them had their legs crossed, others were tapping away on their phones while the rest were playing ‘which finger can I wring off first’.
From the back of the bar-café floated the smell of bacon and sausages. And freshly-brewed coffee. Strong black tea coasted in on the aroma of peanut butter spread melting on hot toast. The bar pushed a tendril of an alcohol cordial into the fragrances. Not nauseating, but the additional fragrance killed any appetite Tania may have had. Of course, that didn’t count the knots, flips, and butterfly dances her stomach was doing.
It had been a long time since anyone had invited her to an interview. And certainly none in an eatery.”

~ Downward Mobility, Lai Zhao.

A Bite of… Lai Zhao

Would you rather be a hero or a villain?

The villain. Even after all these years, I prefer to be the villain, only because the role is so much fun! You get to do outrageous acts (if it suits the story) and get away with so much for so long, maybe forever. In my stories, the hero doesn’t always win, and the villain doesn’t always lose. Sometimes, it’s a tie. And sometimes, there’s an even greater villain or antagonist that disrupts the conflict.

Chocolate cake or coffee cake?

Has to be chocolate cake. Don’t get me wrong, I love coffee cake, but my absolute favourite is chocolate cake, and that has to be dark chocolate, too! Why? Well, ‘cos the flavour is calming, heavenly, and dark. It also helps that I have an endless supply of baking dark chocolate and other cake ingredients.
Dark chocolate lava mini-cakes, anyone? Or you’d prefer a Black Forest Gateau? I can make both.

You can have four guests at a dinner party. Name the four people living, dead or fictional you would Most/Least like to entertain.

The late Sir Terry Pratchett springs immediately to mind. I would love to talk to him, not specifically about writing, but about philosophy and his view of the world. There is a documentary about Sir Pratchett, but that’s through someone else’s eyes. Questions might include where he would take the world if he were able to command it, and what might he have done in a parallel world.
Zhuge Liang is the second guest I would most like to entertain. He was a Chinese politician, military strategist, writer, engineer, and inventor. He lived around 181 – 234 AD, during the Three Kingdoms period of China.
I would want to know Mr. Zhuge’s view on current events and what he would suggest. I’d also like to know what made him tick.
My Dad. He’s so reticent, and non-expressive of anything. It’d just be nice to get him to talk about himself.
My Mum. It’d be interesting to see her when she’s not being a mum.

A city of agoraphobia and claustrophobia is home to one Lai Zhao, writer of dark (sometimes urban) fantasy and non-fiction.
By day, Lai reviews the works of others and produces work-related articles. At night, though, she ponders the mysteries of parallel and fictional universes, populated by characters of the imagination. Some are tangible, some are corporeal. But they all exist in some form or another. It just so happens that these beings’ preferred existence is the written word. And maybe a plushie or two. You can catch Lai Zhao on Facebook.

Other books to which Lia Zho has contributed:

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY, VOL. 2: THE OPUS MAGUS (1st Edition)

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY, VOLUME 3: THE AUTHOR’S GRIMOIRE (1st Edition)

“That’s where it happened,” Lissiane pointed to the smooth moonlit waters. Karvon was seven and always asking about his father. Lissiane knew how much his father’s absence hurt him so she’d brought him here.

“I was swimming in the lake one summer evening when your father found me. He was the most handsome man I’d ever met. We fell in love but we couldn’t stay together. There were too many difficulties. So we vowed our love and parted. You were born the following spring.”

As they walked away Lissiane thought she saw the glint of moonlight on a merman’s tail.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Does it matter who you love
As if you got to choose
The tenor of attraction
To walk in a set of shoes
Does it matter who you are
We all know it should not
But in this gender fixing world
It means a bloody lot

©️Jane Jago 2020

‘Much Dithering in Little Botheringham’ is an everyday tale of village life and vampires, from Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

Ginny woke to the sound of bird song and wondered why the ceiling was a pristine white instead of the warm magnolia-cream she had chosen for her bedroom in the cottage. Then she realised the answer and sat up swiftly. She remembered shouting at the vicar and then having the oddest impression that he was a giant rabbit, before she fell. Then she must have hit her head on the stone floor. 
The poor bats. If she was unconscious he might have-
But then maybe not. Presumably some kind person had helped her and perhaps they had been in time to save the bats from the crazy vicar too. Feeling the back of her head there was no trace of the kind of bump she might have expected. Perhaps that was why she was in someone’s guest room and not in hospital. Though it was very odd they hadn’t taken her straight to Bedchester General A&E.
Ginny sat up, and realised someone had removed her outer clothes and put her into a voluminous one-size-fits-elephants nightie in a rather ghastly fabric that looked like it had been inspired by an Edwardian tea set. She looked around, but couldn’t see her clothes anywhere obvious.
The room was spare and sparsely furnished, with a wooden floor, white walls, and shutters in lieu of curtains. There were no pictures or ornaments to give away anything about whose house she might be in, but the bed was superbly comfortable and the bed linens seemed to be of the most expensive quality. Even if they were as white and plain as everything else about the room.
Through the window she could see the church and the little stand of trees from which she had made her mad attempt to protect the bats from the vicar’s malice.
She had barely had a chance to do more than take in her surroundings when after a brief knock, which seemed to be more by way of a warning than a request, the door opened and a woman came in carrying a pile of clothes.
Ginny was pretty sure this was a stranger, as she knew she would have remembered – with rueful jealousy – anyone this effortlessly chic. Never mind that the woman was neither young nor particularly slender, she had style to burn. It wasn’t that she was wearing designer jeans and a cashmere jumper Ginny mentally priced at several hundred pounds, it was the way she carried herself and the sharpness of the cheekbones that all but sliced through the skin in an obviously aristocratic face. Whoever this was, Ginny suddenly had the thought that she might like to become this person when she grew up.
“Oh good! You’re awake. I apologise for the dreadful night wear, Agnes has very strange ideas of such things, but at least it avoids any possible embarrassment when your hostess walks in on you unexpectedly.”
Ginny rather thought that if any apology was due it was not for the nightdress, more for walking in without asking, but she decided not to say so.
The woman put the clothes down on the end of the bed.
“I’m Emmeline Vanderbilt. We spoke on the phone last week as I recall. Call me Em.”
“Ginny. Ginny Cropper. But you probably knew that.”
“Yes. I did.” She held up a hand as Ginny opened her mouth to ask the most pressing of the many questions that rushed to her lips. “Breakfast – well more brunch – is served downstairs. We can talk when you’ve had something to eat and a nice cup of tea. En suite through that door and I brought a selection of things you might wear. Hopefully I’m a better judge of what might fit you and your style than Agnes. See you in a few minutes.”
Strangely, Em seemed to have gone, and closed the door behind her, before Ginny could say a word. Feeling a little put out, but very happy at the thought of something to eat – she’d had this odd gnawing hunger since she woke up – Ginny inspected the clothes on offer. 
Somehow she was not surprised to find that almost all of the items had designer labels – the discreet kind rather than the ones that were blazoned like a badge. She had a quick shower then chose an earth colour blend blouson top  and found a pair of slightly flared jeans that fitted well enough to go with it. 
Scrutinising herself in the mirror, Ginny decided the effect was not at all bad. She had feared she might find she looked ‘mutton dressed as lamb’, but far from it. She might not match Em Vanderbilt for chic, but she still looked pretty good. Her skin seemed to be glowing more than it had in months, her hair, though still thin on top, had a gleam about it and she was aware of feeling more confident than she recalled being since her heyday.
She gave herself a small nod of satisfaction in the mirror and then headed downstairs, feeling ready to take on the world.

Part 17 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

‘Spy will get caught in city. Will talk to save own skin. No deal.’ The little man with brown teeth spoke stubbornly, before he spat a stream of malodorous tobacco juice onto the sand between the feet of the person he had come to meet.
 ‘You are being stupid on a lot of levels Hakim. Not the least of which is spitting so close to my favourite boots.’
Hakim squirmed under an icy blue gaze.
‘Better. Now mind your own business. Our representative has all necessary identification, and will not know your name anyway. All we require from you is a train ticket.’
‘If you got papers and identity, why you need me to get train ticket?’ 
‘You don’t want to know. If you knew I’d have to cut out your tongue to ensure your silence.’
Hakim eyed him narrowly. ‘Isn’t so smart to threaten me.’
‘Oh’ the man said mildly. ‘I ain’t threatening.’ 
A heavily veiled woman, who occupied a curtained litter surrounded by the eunuchs who would carry the ornate conveyance, beckoned to her negotiator with one long, gloved finger. He went to her side, and she whispered something in his ear. 
‘My lady loses patience. Do we have a deal?’ 
Hakim scratched his unlovely armpit. 
‘Ticket from Tashkent to the city. Just one?’ 
‘In a manner of speaking. A ticket for a private first-class compartment.’ 
Hakim looked impressed. ‘Will be expensive.’ 
‘So noted. Do we have a deal?’ 
‘We do. Names?’ ‘No. We’ll fill the names in ourselves. You just get the ticket. For the first day of Maj. You have a week. Meet me here with the ticket.’ 
The negotiator turned away, but not before he had seen the crafty gleam in Hakim’s eyes. ‘Don’t double-cross me’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘It takes a long time to die on a cross.’ He had the satisfaction of hearing Hakim swallow audibly.  
The party from the west mounted their horses, and the bearers picked up the lady’s litter. Hakim watched them with equal amounts of loathing and fascination before climbing out of the wadi to where his own men awaited him. He sat on the ground beside his resting camel and folded another wad of tobacco into his left cheek. Nobody spoke. It was many minutes before a couple of men appeared as if from nowhere. 
‘Well?’ Hakim asked. 
‘Forty men. Dozen veiled women. Went back towards oasis at Binti Hammam. Black ninjas with them. Lot of black ninjas.’ The man shuddered. 
‘Makes easy then. We take their money, do their business, and keep our mouths shut.’ 
‘Tightly shut.’
Hakim nodded briskly. ‘Anybody has ideas about making some moneys. Don’t. I promise slow painful death to anyone betraying our honoured clients. And that means all; includes Hanif, and his witch of a mother.’ 
The man so addressed met his boss’ eyes for a moment. He must have seen something there that gave him pause because he paled under his tan, before nodding his assent. ‘Understood my Father. I’ll behave. So will Mother, or I’ll cut out her tongue.’ 
The party prodded its grumpy, sleepy camels onto their feet and mounted up. When they had all disappeared over the horizon, a figure unfolded itself from the middle of a stand of prickly pear and other cactus. It swore briefly, before whistling on two notes. Another man and two horses came quietly over the edge of the wadi. The original man grunted and mounted up. ‘Fucking job. Fucking thorns. Fucking desert. Fucking Hakim. Let’s go get a fucking big drink.’ 
His friend grunted out a laugh and they turned their horses towards the west.

At Binti Hammam, the veiled ‘woman’ jumped lightly down from the litter and hurried into a big skin tent. Once inside, and with the robe and veil cast away it could be seen that she was certainly no lady, being a leanly-built brown-skinned man with untidily cropped whitish hair and a poorly stitched scar bisecting his left cheek.  
‘Do we trust Hakim?’ he asked the very big plain-faced, sandy-haired man who had been officiating as negotiator. The man shrugged. 
‘No as far as I could throw one of his camels. But when his spies see black ninjas he will at least think carefully before betraying us. Anyway. If I have this right in my head it won’t matter if he do.’
‘True. But that don’t mean I won’t hunt him down and slit his weasand if the little shit plays us false.’ 
‘Goes without saying. I’ll help. It would be a pleasant diversion.’ 
The blonde man laughed. ‘You, my friend are even worse than me!’
‘Can’t be. I’m only wanted in two countries.’ 
‘Yeah. But that’s more by luck than judgement.’ 
‘Possibly. My old mother used to say it was better to be born lucky than rich.’ 
‘This being the same old mother who said never leave dead enemies behind you?’ 
‘The very woman. But now I’m hungry. And thirsty. I’ll go see what I can rustle up.’ 
‘You do that’ the blonde man grinned at his departing back before moving through the tent to an inner ‘door’ where he poked his head around the leather flap. 
‘You awake princess?’
‘Course I am’ came a crisp voice. ‘Come in.’ 
He bent his head and entered the next ‘room’. He bowed floridly to an elegant figure lounging in a hanging seat. 
‘Mission accomplished ma’am.’ 
She laughed out loud. ‘Good. Come and sit down. Did it go as we expected?’ 
He eased himself to the ground in front of her. ‘Yes. Boris had a nice time intimidating Hakim and I sat in my litter like a perfect lady.’ 
She laughed delightedly ‘Oh, I wish I could have seen that, Gren. I’m sure you make a lovely lady.’ Then she sobered abruptly. ‘Will this work?’ 
‘Honestly? I don’t know. And I don’t like it a bit. But the little princess may be the only chance we have to locate the prince.’ 
‘Aye. She might. And I like it even less than you. She is only sixteen. But if we don’t find the prince, Alba will cease to be.’
‘It will. So we carry on.’ 
‘We do, but I just wish I liked him a bit more than I do.’
‘Whyn’t you like him?’ 
‘I don’t know precisely. No. That’s a cop out, I do know. He’s a golden boy. Handsome and born to rule. Very aware of his own importance. And absolutely sure he’s right in any given situation.’ 
‘Oh. I see. But he’s a symbol so we hafta find him even if he is a tit.’

The opening scenes of Billion Dollar Mountain by Jane Jago.

Like children’s brightly painted blocks 
Words build the world we see
They can alter our perceptions 
Tell us how things are meant to be.
The way we understand our words
Defines just who we are
Because we mould ourselves to meet
Their definition’s bar. 

Some words are true derivatives
Taken from other words
Our values they take with them
In repeating what we’ve heard.
Words can be abbreviations as in
‘Car’ and ‘hippo’ and ‘mam’
Or they might even be acronyms like
‘Scuba’, ‘laser’ and ‘spam’.

The power of a word can raise us up
Or bring us down
Can free us or enslave us
Be our shackles or our crown.
How we define their meanings
Changes how ourselves we see
We can play and pick our own
Give words new history.

So let’s grow words from other words
Their meanings modified 
Let us have ‘pullovers’ made from ‘love’
And ‘unbridled’ formed from ‘bride’.
And let us carve new meaning from
Words with a greater span 
So ‘unavowed’ could give us ‘wed’
And ‘womanliness’ bring forth ‘man’.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Surprising though you may find this, the elderly do not live on cups of tea and Bourbon biscuits. Our diets are a little richer and more fulfilling than that. And one day I may even entertain you to my opinions of sushi and sashimi. But not today.

Today we are taking a stumble through the confusing and mind-destroying maze of the soft drink.

By which I mean fizzy stuff. Squash and fruit juices have their own horrors and hieroglyphs, of which I am quite aware.

However, we will concentrate our minds on the job in hand. Fizzy drinks.

Lemonade. Dandelion and burdock. Tonic. Bitter lemon. Ginger ale. Ginger beer. Cola (may whoever invented it be eternally damned). And Irn Bru (whatever the fuck that is). Of course there are more sorts out there. Many more. The above are just what reside in my under stairs cupboard. Obviously I’m an adult so I don’t drink the cola, or the dandelion crap, or the volcanic orange Caledonian stuff, but I do drink the others.

I have made quite a study of them. Particularly the ones you mix with booze.

And I have sad news to impart to you all. With the introduction of the ‘sugar tax’ to ‘curb obesity’ many soft drink manufacturers decided to cut their products with artificial sweeteners.

*pauses to evacuate bit of sick at back of throat*

The results are spectacularly vile.

The great grandchildren inform me that one of the reasons they love me so extravagantly is that I have not succumbed to the ‘reduced calorie’ craze. The little sods come to mine and we have a bloody good walk and then Gyp kicks their asses at football. After which I think chips and full-fat fizzies are perfectly in order.

Which deals with kiddy drinks and leaves us with what the trade so coyly calls ‘mixers’. 

The tonic in your gin and tonic. The ginger ale in your Horse’s Neck. The lemonade in your mojito. And so on…

As the fizzy bit can be anything from a quarter to three-quarters of the drink, if it tastes like shite the whole drinky will be ruined.

Take my word for it.

My advice when making a purchase is as follows:-

Walk right past the own brand, and even eschew the one we always used to buy. No. Sadly the only one worth drinking these days is the hideously expensive one that has No Artificial Sweeteners and no strange plant-based crap neither. It’s delicious. And it won’t fuck up your evening snifter.

Bite the bullet peeps.

Unless you want to spend all evening burping up bitterness and having your mouth go dry because of whatever cactus leaf has been added to fool your head into thinking ‘sweet’.

In the end, sugar still has no rivals. Cut the quantity. But go for something whose taste doesn’t make you want to run screaming from the room…

And finally.

When the world turns and we can get back into the pub. Before you order a large G&T ask the barman who the fuck makes their tonic. You really don’t want to be spending better than a fiver on a drink that tastes like shite.

To celebrate our third birthday at the beginning of July, the Working Title Blog held a drabble writing competition.

As it is our third birthday completion we have three runners up! This one is from Ian Bristow.

“Cake or pie.”

Elise looked up at her mum’s attempt at a stern face and pulled a far superior expression of disappointment.

“But … but you said we could have both.” She turned away, as not to betray herself with a sly grin she could no more resist than the desire to indulge in her favorite treats on her birthday. After all, birthdays only came once a year. 

“I said we might be able to have both if you behaved this week.”

Pout reestablished, Elise turned back to face her mum. “And I have behaved!”

Cake and pie it was.