The first time he had seen it, from above, Stin thought the far-spreading sprawl of low rise, square, flat-roofed buildings looked like someone upturned a truckload of children’s play blocks. Or not. The shapes were too uneven. Maybe more like a skip full of builders’ rubble, emptied out in the middle of nowhere.
The buildings were all shades of ochre, the newer ones more brown or orange, the older ones yellowed and greying. Some close pressed along narrow streets. Others, more segregated in their own patch of land with courtyards and walls. The double dome of the tiny spaceport bubbled up, incongruous, in the midst of it all and anywhere else in the galaxy there would be ninety million health and safety regulators screaming that the residential buildings were too close. Here, though, there was no one with sufficient authority to object – even if anyone had actually cared. From the domes, a street ran to the main square and then continued pretty much straight on until it came to the only other building of real substance. Dominating the mud-brick built housing and offering a kind of low-tech counterpart to the spaceport domes, the stone-built citadel stood as a testament to local architecture, with its odd half-cylinder tower and its own microcosm of courtyards and housing gathered around the curtain wall.
This was the city of Keran. The planetary capital of Temsevar which was surely the most grimly benighted world in known space. It stood – or more sort of slumped – in a vast plain which stretched, dizzyingly, as far as his eyes could see in every direction, bleak and empty with nothing taller than knee-high bushes and an odd grey-green grass which grew all over.
Someone told Stin that before the spaceport, the settlement had just been a trading post centred on the citadel. Back then, it had only a scant handful of permanent residents and a high turnover of the weird tattoo covered nomads, whose tribes ranged the plains around, moving all the time to avoid their livestock over-grazing the sparse foliage. In some ways, he reflected, nothing much had changed – only the city had grown and now the nomads came from beyond the sky and were much fewer in number.
During the short summer the locals told him Keran was a dust bowl and throughout the long winter, it was a frozen hell. For Stin, it was all alien. A place of exile. First impressions always count and he had been left here in the winter. Adjectives that sprang to mind when he thought how he would describe it to people when – if – he got home again were: bleak, desolate, barren and bitter – like finding himself stranded in a gigantic cold-storage compartment. The memory of standing in the vacant dock looking at the empty space that had been occupied by the ship he arrived in earlier that same day, was still vivid. And that of the voice behind him full of friendly sympathy.
“She left without you? Well, no worries, it happens here. You’re not the first and I’m sure you won’t be the last. You’ll get off in a year or two, just might have to earn yourself a bit to pay the passage.”
He turned to see the speaker, a short man with a round face and a balding fuzz of dark hair.
“I don’t know why she – “
The round face broke up into a gnomish smile.
“You’d not be standing here if you did, would you? Anyway, I’m Agernilio Tavi, but everyone calls me Gernie. I’m the one-man band who keeps the port here running.”
“Stin. Stinian Sabas. I’m the dumb fool who just got dumped by his girlfriend. Now I guess I’m stranded.”
“You and me both, only I’ve stuck it out here the last two and a half decades. Oh man, your face. Don’t look so worried – I chose to stay.”
Gernie, he discovered, was the unofficial deity of the spaceport. He ran the place as his own private business venture and that made him the most important person in the whole of Keran. He was the gatekeeper. The one who controlled access to the rest of the galaxy, the one who could arrange for cargos to be shipped in or out.

From Haruspex III: A Walking Shadow part of the Fortune’s Fools series by E.M. Swift-Hook.

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

Barbecues

Why? Has nobody got a functioning kitchen any more?

I have lost count of the sorrowful events I have attended where the man of the house proudly serves up chicken/sausage/beefburger which is burnt on the outside and raw in the middle.

Even Gyp won’t eat it.

In order to barbecue properly it is necessary to have lit the charcoal a week ago last Wednesday and marinated the meat in vast quantities of olive oil and spices for days.

And still…

Honestly? Do. Not. Let. Him. Cook.

He only wants to ponce about. And he won’t do the dishes.

Time Bomb is the third book in R.M. Olson’s science fiction space opera series The Ungovernable. With a crazy, close-knit crew, plenty of humour, and loads of action, Firefly meets Ocean’s Eleven in this fast-paced, kick-ass, wickedly fun series.

Jez pulled out her modded heat pistol, heart pounding, and crossed the muddy street, holding the gun inconspicuously behind her leg. The muffled sound of her boots on the wet wooden boardwalk were loud in her ears, even over the faint morning sounds of the kabak next door. She put her back against the dirty, splintery siding of the building next to her, and crept cautiously towards the closed doorway.
From here, she could hear the voices more clearly.
“I told you. I have no idea who you’re talking about.” Lev’s voice was strained, but his tone was as calm as ever, if slightly irritated. Someone else spoke, but she couldn’t make out the words. Then the voice raised slightly. It was unfamiliar, but she recognized the meaning in his tone instantly.
“—better damn well hope this will refresh your memory.”
She kicked the door hard, swinging up her heat pistol as it slammed open, and glanced quickly around the bare room.
Three unfamiliar figures, all dressed in the nondescript flight clothes she recognized instantly as smuggler gear. All three had weapons. And in the back of the room—Lev, tied to a chair. He was frowning, and blood trickled from the corner of his lip, and a woman stood beside him, heat pistol raised as if to hit him a second time.
Suddenly, Jez was very, very angry.
“Back the hell off, you bastards,” she ground out through her teeth, holding her pistol level. “That’s my damn copilot.”
All three of them turned to face her. The man who appeared to be the leader gave her a long, speculative look.
They were standing too close to Lev for a shot with this thing—beam wasn’t narrow enough.
“You Jez Solokov?” the leader grunted. She gave him a dangerous grin.
“Don’t see how that’s your business. But that scholar-boy you have tied up over there, he is my damn business. So unless you feel like a heat-blast in the face, you might want to let him go.” She shrugged. “‘Course, someone as ugly as you, heat blast in the face might not make that much of a difference.”
“It’s her,” the man said to his companions. “Must be. They said she had a mouth on her.” He turned back to Jez with an unpleasant smile. “Looks to me like you lost the last fight you were in.”
“Guess I need practice,” she said. “Don’t usually fight with people as plaguing stupid as you, but hell, this time I’ll make an exception.”
Lev shot her an exasperated look. She winked at him, then pointed the modded heat gun at the floor in front of the three smugglers and squeezed the trigger. The boards erupted in an explosion of air-blistering heat and light, and then sizzled into ash, small flames licking at the edges of the hole she’d just blasted in the formerly-wooden floor. She grinned.
Ysbel was a damn marvel with guns.
“Now, you dirty plaguers,” she said in a friendly tone. “You feel more like talking?”
“Jez, they have a—” Lev began in a strangled tone. The woman standing next to his chair cuffed him hard alongside the head, yanking out a small cylindrical tube with her other hand. Jez’s brain recognized it at the same time as she pulled the trigger a second time.
It clicked uselessly
Damn.
“EMP blocker,” Lev finished unnecessarily.

A Bite of… R.M. Olson 

How much of you is in your hero? 

Basically, Jez is me–although I’m not a pilot, and don’t have quite her level of physical dexterity. I am also ADHD and bi, and I think that’s why I love writing her so much. It’s so cathartic to write someone like me, and not have her change who she is in order to fit in or do what she needs to do. Her crazy quirks are what make her an effective member of the crew, even though they do get her into trouble at least as often as they get her out of it. I have ADHD children as well, and I love the idea that they’ll read my books one day and realize that as far as I’m concerned, being the way they are is a good thing. 

Would you rather live in this world or the one you create in your books? 

I love this world, to be honest–I’m a hiker, and I spend as much time as I can outside, and every single time I do I feel like I’m going to die it’s so beautiful. And, I live in Canada, where I have the right to vote and legal protections against government overreach. The world I write is a sort of 80s USSR in space vibe, and while it’s a lot of fun, and while I must admit I’d love to be able to planet-hop, I don’t think I’d be able to handle the depressingly toxic mix of mafia and politics, peppered through with corruption and state control as there is in the world of The Ungovernable. 

Is it important to include all shades of belief and sexual orientation in a book? 

I think it’s super important. I believe stories teach us what it is to be human, and reading is a way to empathize with someone whose experience you will never live. When we only read about people exactly like us, or worse, people who are exactly like the status quo (white, straight, and Christian), it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that is the default human. But when we read writing that reflects all of humanity, in its messy, glorious perfection–we realize that to be human is a lot bigger than just us and our personal experience. And if you’re not a member of the status quo–I’ll tell you, it’s so lovely to read a book about someone who looks or sounds or loves like you do, and is treated as just as fully human as anyone else. 

R.M. Olson is the author of The Ungovernable series (Zero Day Threat, Jailbreak and Time Bomb. She has ridden the Trans Siberian railway, jumped off the highest bungee jump in the world, gone cage-diving with great white sharks, faced down a charging buffalo bull, and knows how to milk a goat. Currently, she resides in Alberta, Canada with her four children, three cats, and a dog the size of a small bear. She goes hiking and skiing more often than she probably has time for, and eats more chocolate than is probably good for her, and reads more books than is probably prudent. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

She called them Her helpers, with their buzzing wings and tiny stings, they were Her eyes and ears across the kingdom. And She loved them.

Her subjects feared them and her children loathed them, but none dared touch so much as a wingtip for fear of Her wrath.

Until the day She had the child of the wrong man killed. It took him fifty years to build Revenge. The day it took flight he sang his own death song.

Mortality landed on Her delicate finger and as She kissed its jewelled wings its sting closed her throat and She died.

©️jj 2020

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

Em was out of sorts in her skin and she couldn’t seem to settle to anything, there was, she was sure, something she was missing. And she had the feeling it was going to be a costly oversight.
Erasmus landed on her shoulder.
“A pint of blood for them.” The voice in her head was mildly amused.
“I’m missing something, boyo. But I don’t know what it is.”
“If you knew what it was you wouldn’t be missing it.” The cold logicality of his small, bat brain was somehow comforting. “Let’s break it down.”
“Okay. Theoretically the bats are now safe from the machinations of the reverend. But I don’t feel as if they are. And then there’s the man himself. Or rather not-man. He’s an unregistered supernatural being. But I don’t know what.”
“He’s a were Emmeline. You only had to ask.”
Em felt as if martial music was being played in her head. “A werewolf on my patch. I don’t think so.”
“Em. He’s not a wolf. Nor a dog. Nor a cat. Nor anything that flies. I said he was a were. I didn’t say what sort of a were.”
“Well. Spit it out. What in the name of Azriel and all his dark angels is he?”
“I don’t know. Seems like nobody knows. The bell tower bats say he’s a rodent of some sort. But even that doesn’t feel right to me.”
“So. Doug Turner is a were. But we don’t know of what sort.”
“That’s about the size of it. Added to which I think he will make another move against the bat colony soon.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I do. He’s obsessed.”
Em frowned, but couldn’t argue with her friend’s logic. 
“It’s a good job he’s being watched then. But. Do I tell the bishop or hang on until we know more?”
Erasmus dug his claws into her skin. “Tell him. Stop being pigheaded.” 
Once Em nodded her assent, Erasmus dropped from her shoulder and with two strong beats of his wings he was back hanging from his beam.
“Get on with it, woman,” he said irritably before composing himself to wait.
Em sighed, but had to admit he was right. As usual. She stomped over to the phone with a heavy feeling in her stomach. She pretended to look for the number in the pink leather book Agnes had presented her with one Christmas, but in the end Erasmus’ eyes boring into her back galvanised her into action.
“Okay. Okay. I’m doing it. Right now.”
She dialled the digits she knew perfectly well – rather hoping nobody would answer. But the receiver was picked up on the second ring. Immediately Em knew it was the bishop himself and cursed inwardly.
“Emmeline.” His voice was as mellifluous as ever, but Em detected a thread of strain under the bonhomie. “Do you have some news for me?”
“I do. Though you are probably not going to like it.”
“Try me.”
“Doug Turner is a were.”
“Are you sure?”
“Erasmus is. But before you ask we don’t know what his animal is.”
“So you could have an unregistered werewolf in your village.”
“Seemingly not. I’m told he isn’t a wolf, a dog, a cat, nor anything that flies. Otherwise? Your guess is as good as mine.”
The bishop actually groaned. “I had a bad reaction to that young man when he was brought to my notice. But I put it down to not liking smooth operators. Now I am told that my instinct was right and I should not have ignored it. How irritating…” He went quiet for a moment, and Em could all but hear the cogs whirring in his brain. “We can do nothing today. But I will book a call with the archbishop for as early as possible in the morning. And when I have spoken to him I will come along and deal with your vicar personally. In the meantime, please keep away from him.” 
“I’m having him watched, as you know. From a discreet distance. But we could have an immediate problem. I can’t guarantee we’ll keep away if he goes after the bats.”
“Surely he can’t be that monumentally stupid.”
“Erasmus thinks he can.”
“In that case deal as you see fit. You will have the backing of the diocese.”
He ended the call and Em sat down hard on the nearest chair. 
“The bishop will be here tomorrow. Which should be a relief. Except…”
Erasmus regarded her through one beady eye. “Except that we both know something is going to happen tonight.” 
“I was rather hoping you wouldn’t say that.”
He didn’t bother to answer her.
While she was wondering what to do, the phone rang. It was Agnes. 
“We may have a problem here.”

Part 12 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

Some words seem much neglected
Such as galumphing and hirsute
And pedagogue and ortanique
(That is a sort of fruit).
And then there’s words like eldritch
And others of such feral fame
Preternatural, numinous
Are just two that I could name

And in the world of nature
So many words have wilted now
Like bosky, glebe and moiley
(That is a sort of cow).
Yet if I should then apricate
And rain falls from the welkin blue
I might get wet, yet still enjoy
The petrichor with you.

Mayhap tis serendipity
That English can record
Words like nithing and guerdon
(That’s a sort of reward).
But I am otiose today
And so will close this posy
And take my scapegrace self to reave
A potation we call rosy.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The dog pack was slowing its pace. They all entered a long straight street lined with little houses, each with a tiny front garden. With the faultless instincts of all city dwellers, the residents had evaporated leaving only a tall stooped man, dressed all in black leather, walking purposefully away from the end of the street where the chasing pack was gathered.
Willet heard a dragonish voice in his mind. “Is this he?” 
Badger nodded and three dragons materialised at the other end of the street. For a moment, Willet thought that they would scare the dragon hunter into doing something desperate, but they were cleverer than that. The drake was there, looking as if he was being escorted by concerned females.
“Come away,” one was saying while the other seemed to be trying to shepherd the bulky male with her slender body. 
The black-clad man, if indeed man he was, stood a little straighter and Willet could see his throat vibrating as he made a strange humming sound. The drake lifted his head and pointed like a hound on the scent.
The sound of the dragon hunter’s laughter scraped over Willet’s nerves like fingernails down a blackboard. 
T’i’asharath spoke in his mind.
“We need to keep the creature occupied for now while we incapacitate his dwarves and liberate his victims.”
Willet thought he had rarely heard such sorrow in any creature’s mind voice, but he switched his attention to the scene in front of him. The two female dragons were attempting, with a careful lack of success, to head the drake away from the humming hunter. Willet looked carefully at the dark figure and made a discovery. The dragon hunter wasn’t human. He was a lycanthrope. But what was his true form? Whatever he was, he was shielding closely so this wasn’t something easy to find out, but then Willet got a stroke of luck. The hunter was so intent on calling the drake into his murderous clutches that he let his shield drop for a nanosecond. And that was enough. Willet saw; and what he saw was like a punch to the stomach from a mailed fist. 
The creature in front of him was a black unicorn. This was bad trouble. As such it was immune to almost all magics, and its twisted obsidian horn was the most poisonous thing in a city full of poisoners. He bespoke T’i’asharath.
“My lady. We have trouble here. The dragon hunter is a black unicorn.”
“I come. There is only one way to deal with the likes of that.”
The sense of the dragon mistress moved from a distant voice to right overhead. 
“I cannot see it. Its shield is too good. Unless I can discern its true form I cannot do that which must be done.”
“Then I must put a crack in that shield.” 
Willet flowed into his true form, finding Badger immediately at his side. 
“What? Why?”
“T’i’asharath is here. But she needs that thing to drop its shield. Unless she can see its true form she cannot deal.”
“OK. I think. Let’s do it then.”
They moved towards the dragon hunter with Willet’s steel-shod hooves ringing on the cobbles. Badger unfurled his wings and flew at his partner’s shoulder.
Willet raised his voice. “Ho one horn. What business has the likes of you in my domain?” 
His voice held the martial tones of a sounding bugle and the unicorn could not resist a call to battle from another stallion. But still he kept his shields in place. Willet laughed derisively.
“Look at it,” he sneered. “Afraid of who it is. Hiding in the form of the two-legs who gelded it when it was a foal. Look at the poisonous little thing. Singing to dragons. And all because it can never get a mate if it’s own.”
The lycanthrope showed long yellow teeth.
“Go away bird-boy. Lest I put my horn to your chest and stop your breath.”
“Would that be the horn you are so ashamed of that you hide it from the world?” 
“What business is my horn of you?”
Willet bulked his impressive chest and carefully rippled his drum-tight stomach. “My city. My business.”
The dragon hunter made noise that was very close to a growl and fully turned to face Willet. 
“Go away. Lest I kill you.”
“And who will help you to do that eunuch?”
This was enough to enrage the black unicorn who leapt forward, dropping his human simulacrum. As soon as the unicorn was clearly discernible there came a sound beyond sound and the elegant form of T’i’asharath arrowed down from the sky at killing speed. Willet heard the sound of crushed bones as she bit, and the scream of mortal agony from the lycanthrope. He contrived to close his ears to the dragon hunter’s pain and bespoke T’i’asharath.
“Have you rescued his captives my lady?”
“Those that could live. Some have had to be relieved of their agony.”
“I am sorry.”
T’i’asharath inclined her head before roaring to the sky. Four muscular guard dragons dropped to where the unicorn writhed on the ground. They hoisted it between them and winked out of being.
“The hunter faces my mate at Dragonheart.”
Willet and Badger bowed.
“Will you come and witness that justice is done?”
“If it is the wish of Dragonheart that we so do.”
It was possible to feel the queen dragon communicating with her mate even though what they said was outside the comprehension of others.
“It is not required, friend of Dragonheart. Yet we would ask a boon of you and your mate.”
“What would you ask of us?” It was Wenda’s voice coming from behind him and all he could do not to jump or allow his head to snap around to where she stood. Instead, he extended his hand and felt her cool, slim fingers mesh with his own.
“There is one of your own kind. A foal. She has neither sire nor dam. Wilt thou take her? She needs kindness and care.”
Wenda squeezed his hand and he turned to look at her. “It is on your shoulders that the care will fall my dear love.”
Her smile was blindingly bright although her voice was carefully formal. “If it pleases you. It would please me.”
“Very well, my lady bright.” Willet bowed to T’i’asharath. “We would be pleased to take a child into our home and hearts.”
The dragon communicated with some other entity, and a green female dragon winked into being with something small nestled in the space between her wings. As she landed, the baby centaur stood on unsteady legs.
“Mama?” the voice wavered on the edge of tears and Wenda was there like a flash taking the little one in her arms. At once the baby quieted and burrowed into Wenda’s embrace.
“It is well,” the dragon queen intoned, and as she spoke Willet could feel the dragon force leaving the city.
“Call it in” Badger said with a grin. “Tell them the dragon hunter has been neutralised, then you and your wife take your,” he stopped and thought for a moment, “daughter home.”

©️ Jane Jago

Meh
What a word
Meaning obscure
Pronunciation absurd
Meh
What an emotion
Can be cured by the application
Of alcoholic lotion

©️jj 2020

Somebody who should have known better once said that a day would come when everyone was famous for twenty minutes. And now it’s here how much do we hate it?

That, my dears, seems entirely dependent on your age.
Mostly people over fifty (with a few frightening exceptions) find it all a bit distasteful and struggle to see what the cult of fame has to offer the world – except inanities and conspicuous consumption.

So why do people engage? 
Because they want to be famous, did I hear you say?

And why is that pray?
The desire for fame seems to me to be both vapid and grasping, and to speak loudly of a life with fuck all in it. 
And you need not look at me like that neither…
I’m not famous: ‘Granny’ might be, but she’s not precisely me. And I ain’t precisely her. So.

But back to the rant you so rudely interrupted.
When I was a younger person you had to do something pretty big to get famous: 

• Climb a shagging great mountain in your flip-flops. 
• Discover a cure for stupidity. 
• Write a post-modern novel post mortem.
• Stop a war.
• Start a war.
• Run faster than whoever was chasing you. 
  And so on.

Now?

• You can be famous for being somebody’s mother.
• You can be famous for who you marry.
• You can be famous for who you sleep with (polite euphemism for shag).
• You can be famous for spending immoderate amounts of money
• You can be famous for making videos of yourself in your bedroom behaving inanely.
• You can even be famous for having a big fat ass.

Tell you what. I. Give. Up.

What would happen if we just ignored the ‘influencers’ and their overblown egos?
Maybe corporate eejits would stop paying them inordinate sums of money to promote products on their websites/blogs/vlogs/whatever. Maybe teenage girls would stop drawing their eyebrows with magic markers and trying to be both thin and fat at the same time.
Maybe we’d go back to famous people being ones who did something positive with their lives.

Maybe.
And maybe not.
Maybe our collective psyche is so fucked up that we need useless celebrity to enable us to get through life.

And that is such a frightening thought that me and Gyp are off to the pub. You lot can do whatever it is you have done to deserve a woman famous for her backside. I need a pint and a game of darts to cleanse my palate.

Urien considered the creatures dispassionately. They were, he thought, neither clever nor important, and where they had once been amusing they were now just an irritant.

He sighed, and his wife Calliope blew in his ear. 

“Why the long face lord of my heart?”

“One wonders why the creator…”

“She was having an off day methinks”

He frowned at such presumption but Calliope continued.

“We are neither darkness nor emptiness, but what have they dubbed us?”

Urien nodded wisely.

“Fools.”

“Fools we could do without”

He farted and a minor star was extinguished.

“Done…” he said.

His beloved Calliope smiled.

©️jj 2020