Two Women and Some Books
The old man dribbles
Where his teeth don’t fit
His daughter wipes his chin
And smoothes his hair
A biscuit he nibbles
While his eyes beg her to sit
And smiling she gives in
Beside his cushioned chair
Thank you he tells her
With a lopsided smile
And taking her hand holds it fast
As he rests his cheek on her head
It’s almost as if his old nose smells her
I’m happy when you sit with me a while
Says the old one as he breathes his last
I love you, Dad, was the last thing she ever said
An extract from How To Start Writing A Book brought to you courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.
If you tuned in expecting advice from Moons, you are out of luck this week. Instead, you’ve got me again, Jacintha Farquhar, hag of this parish.
All right you load of miserable excuses for human beings who fancy yourself the next Stephen King, pin back your lugholes and be prepared to learn. You are all very keen on writing epic battles and knights in shining armour and all that crap, but I’m willing to bet there isn’t a one of you has ever actually even seen a fight leave alone dirtied your precious pinkies by being involved in that most working class of pastimes that is a bloody good bundle.
Life Lessons for Writers – Two: Fisticuffs
Okay then. Here’s the deal. This week’s lesson is entitled fisticuffs and is intended to give you at least the vestige of an idea about what happens when adult human beings set out to beat the crap out of each other.
First things first. If you want to really understand your knights in shining and their trusty steeds, join a re-enactment society. Get your feet stomped on by something that feels like Mummy’s best le Creuset Marmite, crawl around in mud and snot and tears for a while, watch as the bloke on the horse breaks every bone in his body when he hits the ground from a height of seventeen hands. Then go rewrite your crappy medieval fight. Similarly, should you be romanticising the English Civil War, go join the Sealed Knot and enjoy the delights of a pre-dawn melee on a frozen moor. I’m sure those of you living in the colonies have something similar recreating your own local battles. Want an idea of modern or futuristic combat? Try laser-tag or go paintballing.
The more mundane sort of present-day scuffling is a little more problematic to become personally involved in. For two reasons.
One: there is the potential to get hurt quite badly (and should some middle-class twat turn up and randomly start throwing punches, everybody will forget their grievances with each other and unite to beat the living crap out of him or her).
Two: the real possibility of getting arrested exists.
For the above reasons I have chosen not to suggest you seek personal involvement. Instead, I’ll let you learn from my experience and debunk some of the popular and misguided myths that pepper the writing of the fight virgin.
So, there we have it Jacintha’s guide to the grim realities of physical combat. Read, learn, inwardly digest and get your fucking act together. Now you have no excuse to get it wrong so go and rewrite that last fight scene and leave me to my prosecco.
Jacintha Farquar, unfortunate mother of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV
The phosphorescent sea was so beautiful, even by day, that it defied description, but, when twilight fell, the oceanic sheen also stained the darkening sky with fingers of pulsating light. It was such a sight as to bring even strong men to tears.
Every day the sea performed her magic, and the extent of her glory grew a little with each dawn.
People began to swim in the liquid light, coming out of the waves with the wide eyes of children and a glow that looked as if it came from within.
Nobody remembers when the first swimmer grew gills…
“All hail Emperor Sulieman and his Empress Leonore.”
People ran from their homes and businesses to line the streets and stare at their dark emperor in his dented armour and drink in the beauty of the velvet-clad empress.
At the palace, they rode through the wide open gates, and if the empress saw the heads that decorated the walls above the gatehouse she gave no sign. The first sign of any interest came as they progressed through the dragon’s garden.
“Husband,” she said in a wooden little voice, “why is that Drake so chained?”
“He always has been.”
“Always?”
“For a hundred and half a hundred years.”
She frowned. “Then it is past time to strike off his chains.”
“And let him fly away?”
“Whether he flies or does not fly is immaterial. He should not be thus imprisoned.”
Sulieman shrugged. “Very well. I will give the order.”
“And I will stay to see it done.”
She slipped from her horse and went to stand at the dragon’s head. Those who gathered in the garden were later to swear that it was as if the Ivory Empress and the green/gold dragon were communicating on some subliminal level too deep for mere humans to comprehend. But that was much later. Truth to tell nobody saw anything to remark save the straight tall figure of the Empress with one hand on the dragon’s neck as the smiths struck off the chains that held him captive. Once he was free the firedrake inclined his head to the Emperor, almost as equal to equal, before curling himself into the soft grass and closing his eyes.
Sulieman was curious. “Why does he not fly away?”
“On wings unused for more than a hundred years? It will take time before he can fly. If indeed he ever can.”
A shadow passed over Sulieman’s face and he tugged his intricately plaited beard. “I shall be sorry if that is true. Bad enough to be tricked and held prisoner, without being maimed.” He turned his handsome head towards the dragon. “Good firedrake,” he said with extreme formality, “if it should so be that the actions of my father’s father’s father have maimed thee. I would apologise and make such reparation as I can.”
For the first time since his capture the dragon spoke. His voice was like the crackle of flames around the Yuletide fire and it made one think of woodsmoke and autumn. “I think myself unhurt, Magister, it is just to think of whether I wish to go or stay a while and observe.”
Then he shut his mouth and closed his eyes.
Sulieman looked at his Empress. “He can speak, habiiba, why has he never spoken before?”
The Empress sighed. “For the same reason you did not beg your captors for water.”
Sulieman bowed his head. “That is hard hearing, and I feel shame that I had not thought that a firedrake may have his pride too. I should have freed him long since.”
For the first time in their too brief acquaintance, Leonore reached out a hand to her husband. It was a massive step forward and Sulieman smiled.
From ‘The Chained Dragon’ one of the stories and poems in Pulling The Rug III by Jane Jago
Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…
Remotes
Everything today has a remote and I for one am delighted by that. From the comfort of my arm chair I can control the world, and that’s without having to put up with what I call a sycophantic smartarse – and my technologically enthused great-niece refers to as ‘Alexa’.
But remotes are a bloody pain at times because…
They. All. Look. The. Same.
How often have I reached for the device to control the TV and found I was changing the temperature in the room instead?
I suggest standardised colour coding to avoid all possible confusion.
Black and white for the telly (obviously), red for the thermostat (self-explanatory), blue for the radio (get it?) and so on.
In the meantime, until the designers catch up to the needs of their customers, stick something on it yourself so you don’t wind up answering a call on your land-line by talking into your Amazon Fire Stick…
The sirens split the air, as the lights rent the sky asunder. People ran and dodged. Women screamed and children cried. One man stood watching the unforgiving bombs fall and the tears ran down his soot-streaked cheeks. His home was one of the blackened skeletons and his wife and his children were among the thousands who died in the fires that crisped the city.
He raised his hands and did the one thing he had sworn never to do in this life. He spoke a single word of power and the earth shook beneath his feet, before a chasm opened in the river and the waters boiled around it. A flaming hand was raised into the murky sky and it grasped the flying bombers one by one, dashing them to the ground to where they lay as charred and broken as the city they were menacing.
When the last bomber was dispatched to hellgates the chasm closed. But not before the head and shoulders of the river master reared up and the creature stared at the wizard with cold antipathy.
“There is,” it grated, “a price to be paid”.
The wizard nodded his head, just once.
“Paid willingly,” he whispered, before clutching his throat and dropping to the ground as dead as his wife and children.
Art by Ian Bristow
Gabriel Newsome walked the streets with no fear. He was big, strong and vicious enough to subdue anyone who stood in his way physically, and his perfect face ensured that the government cameras lay him pass unmolested.
He could walk right past a posse of android cops, and their ‘eyes’ would see only perfection – even if he was covered in the blood of a murdered victim.
Gabriel had the world at his feet and he knew it, until the day a discarded lover threw acid into his perfect face and he learned to know what it was to be hunted.
It was like walking around with a bomb in your head.
That wasn’t such an unfamiliar feeling for someone like Jazatar Baldrik who had served time in the Special Legion. There they plumbed a direct link into your brain and set it so that you had to keep connected to the data network lattice or it would fry out and kill you. Even if you made it through the five years of hell so you could qualify for release from the convict unit, as very few ever did, the device had a bad effect on the brain tissue it was implanted in and would kill you eventually anyway. Jaz had personal experience of that too. He had recently lost a friend that way. A man he had once considered as close as a brother.
But this was different.
Different because this bomb wasn’t going to go off and kill himself. When it went off, it was going to kill one of the very few people he actually cared about. Getting that news had been the most unexpected event of the day. But still only one in series of unexpected events. and that in a place where the unexpected was so rare it never happened.
For the past two cycles Jaz had been effectively imprisoned. Initially against his will and now with a kind of grudging acceptance, he was held in a secure clinic run by the terrorist organisation known as The Legacy. It was the kind of place where today was the same as yesterday and tomorrow wouldn’t be too much changed from that. Running to its own quiet, pre-planned patterns, nothing was allowed to penetrate which might risk breaking the steady rhythm of daily life. It was the sort of protected and predictable environment Jaz had never known any time in his forty-two years of life. He had even begun to feel safe.
Which was a mistake.
When they told him he had a visitor, he’d been a bit puzzled, but mostly just curious. It wasn’t like anyone he knew had any idea he was even here. So he didn’t expect it to be the kind of visitor most of the other inmates of this place got now and then.
It wasn’t going to be some family member who would look all concerned. Or even an awkward work colleague, checking up on how he was doing because someone had to and they had drawn the short straw at the office. Jaz had seen those kinds of people in the reception area sometimes, waiting to be taken through to see one of the inmates – or guests as the staff smilingly called them. There was even an elderly couple standing there now, the look of worried parents clear on their faces. Obviously distracted, they didn’t even notice him. He walked right in front of them and into one of the therapy rooms.
It took him a moment to realise who his visitor was and when he did, his first reaction was to turn himself around and walk right out again. He had to use some real willpower to make himself stand still and not do that.
Car Torbalen.
The man ultimately responsible for Jaz being put in this place and being taken very much out of circulation. Even thinking that was enough to make Jaz tense up all over. But, in a place where yesterday and tomorrow were both so much the same, he was curious enough about this sudden shift to see what it might be about.
Torbalen greeted him with a slight smile, holding out his hand like some formal event.
“Jaz. I was delighted to get your message that you wanted to see me today. Let’s go for that walk you suggested, eh?”
Something was wrong.
Jaz was more than sure he’d sent no such message. Even if he had the faintest idea on how he might have set about trying to get in touch with Torbalen, he would never have been inviting him over for a cosy one-to-one, walking in the grounds.
This man had effectively betrayed him. But the fact was Torbalen was standing there and knew that. He must also know he wasn’t going to make it on to Jaz’s link list in any conceivable future. Which made Jaz wonder enough that he didn’t deny or challenge what Torbalen had said.
There was nothing to read in the pleasant smile, because Torbalen was an operator with a lot of skill, but there had to be something important behind this. For him to step away from his so-busy life drawing in ever more fanatics for The Legacy, there had to be something pretty big on his mind. So Jaz took the offered hand briefly in a firm grip and said nothing. Then he went through the door which Torbalen had opened and walked out into the secure grounds around the clinic.
The opening of Iconoclast: Not To Be the eighth Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook.
Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…
Coyly euphemistic advertisement speak
What the heck is, ‘Itching Down There’?
Is it scratchy anus time?
Does it indicate something stirring in the lady garden (okay itchyfanny)?
If the advertiser of the cream known only by number means itchyfanny why don’t they bloody say so, not make me think the whole of Australia has impetigo.
And while I have your attention. What the fuck is ‘feminine leakage’?
Is it menstrual fluid, or maybe urine? But it can be neither as it’s blue. (Hint: if you are leaking something blue seek medical aid. Now!)
And finally.
Stop sending me Viagra adverts. I. Don’t. Need. It.
In Contact (Instinct Theory #1) by Ian Bristow, when the world is running out of options man looks further afield for survival…
“Mensi, we’ve captured strange trespassers.”
A low, gritty voice reached Madelyn’s ears. She was sat, bound at the hands and feet and her head was throbbing. Thankful that her captors hadn’t removed her helmet, which housed the built-in translator, she opened her eyes and tried to locate the speaker without making any unnecessary movements. But a full sweep of her visual range without turning her head revealed nothing but the blank expanses of a canvas wall across the dirt floor she was sitting on, leading her to assume she was in some sort of tent-like enclosure. The voice spoke again.
“They seem to have some kind of magic, just like Calitari predicted.”
“How many were there?” The replying voice, which Madelyn guessed belonged to Mensi, carried an unmistakable note of arrogance.
“We didn’t get an exact count, but we killed the aggressive ones—at a somewhat significant loss of our own—and captured four… Three escaped.”
Madelyn’s heart skipped a beat. Three of the others had gotten away.
“Escaped? Neza, I task you with keeping threats out of our great lands and you allow three unknown magic wielders to escape? This is not your first or even second blunder in recent times. Your persistent failure is intolerable.”
“I will personally see to it they are—”
The sound of something swiping through air cut Neza’s words short, and hopeless gurgling noises replaced them, followed by the sound of dead weight crumpling to the ground.
Horrified, Madelyn realized she had just heard Neza die for allowing three of her companions to escape. Such brutality toward one of his own did not bode well for how this Mensi figure might treat her and the others.
“Lintu,” Mensi yelled.
“Yes, lord.”
“Come here. Your services are required.”
Chancing a small movement, Madelyn peered to her left and saw a Xantarian running toward the enclosure through a break in its flap-covered doorway. One of the flaps swooshed open and light poured in, stabbing at her pupils. Her head pounded in revolt and she closed her eyes.
“Three others like these four are out on our lands somewhere,” Mensi said.
These four? For the first time, Madelyn had reason to believe she was not alone in the tent. Whoever else had been captured were here as well.
“They are magic wielders, so you will need to be cautious in your hunt. Use the Manori if you need to. I want them returned here alive if at all possible. I believe they might have answers about the moving stars.”
“Your will is mine,” Lintu said.
The sound of multiple footsteps faded away, and she risked a more revealing look through the open flap. No one was standing there. Now feeling it was safe to do so, she wriggled around and found Lexi, Cameron, and Mitzu all huddled nearby, which meant Chiara, Charlene and Peter had escaped.
“Have they gone?” Lexi whispered.
“I think so,” Madelyn said, looking around again.
Her vision fell to Neza’s body a few yards away. Lifeless eyes and a deep wound across the throat spoke of the cruel fate this creature had suffered. She couldn’t be sure if it was a male or female, but its body looked similar to that of the one Hodgson had called a male during the briefing in Liverpool. That day could have been a lifetime ago now. She could still remember her growing excitement and Jonathan’s encouraging expressions as the mission started to sound more and more accessible.
Jonathan.
His smiling face materialized in her mind and tears surfaced. Her fate was now less certain than ever before in the field. If she died, all her worries and fears would come to an abrupt end, but Jonathan would be left to mourn, surely questioning if her death was his fault. Feeling like he had encouraged her to do something that ultimately resulted in her passing would destroy him.
The tears were flowing freely now.
“Maddie…”
Ian is a writer, artist, and musician. A true renaissance man. But what makes him tick?
Q 1: Why do you write?
I write for several reasons. Chiefly because I love to create. I’m drawn to the way it feels when two characters interact on a page and no longer feel two dimensional. Or when words are able to paint the image in my head (though I sometimes struggle to find the exact words to do so. But when I do manage, it feels really good).
Q 2: Have you ever written someone you dislike into a book just so you can make them suffer?
I modelled one of my antagonists on someone I dislike, but not so I could make them suffer. It was just that the person was a perfect model for the sort of antagonist I wanted to write. When I first started writing the character, I hadn’t considered modelling them after that person, but the parallels started to emerge, and once I noticed, I then made a conscious effort.
Q 3: How much of your writing is autobiographical?
None. Some of my characters have personality traits that are similar to me, but that’s only because those elements of my personality are quite common, making it easy for any believable character to have similar opinions, beliefs, etc. I’m not sure I’ve had an interesting enough life to write autobiographical-based stories… LOL!
Ian Bristow is a freelance artist and the author of Instinct Theory – Contact, Hunting Darkness and the Conner’s Odyssey trilogy. He is currently working on the second and final instalment of the Instinct Theory duology. When he isn’t writing or creating works of art, he enjoys playing music or spending time with his family and friends. You can visit him on Facebook and Twitter.
