People always put us down
Just because we’re st-still around
The things we did don’t get extolled
Hope I die when I’m v-very old

They want us to just f-f-fade away
Young folk blame us every day
We tried to make this world a b-better place
But we’re told we’re a disgrace

My generation, my generation’s still here today.

Why don’t you all f-f-face the truth?
We did our best with all the proof
Where we fucked up, so would’ve you
Now stop the blame game, you know it’s true.

We tried to make the world a b-better place
But now we’re told we’re a d-disgrace
The things we did don’t get extolled
Hope I die when I’m very old…

E.M. Swift-Hook

It wasn’t going to be enough. He had spent all his life creating the drugs that fought the superbugs, and had always told himself that he would win. Only now it seemed he was to be the victim of his own hubris.

He lay on the narrow hospital bed – determined not to toss and turn as his body waged a losing battle against the invasive bacterium that had already cost him his right arm.

The nurses watched him in pity.

Who would have thought that a paper cut could prove the undoing of the most famous scientist of his generation?

©jane jago

Welcome to the Hotseat of Truth a device in which your protagonist is trapped and the only way to escape is to answer six searching questions completely honestly or the Hotseat will consume them to ashes!

Ling Sa is a Taoist priest, living alone in a remote temple in Ancient China. He’s also been dead for hundreds of years. So why is Sam dreaming about him night after night? Is it because there’s something familiar about the hotel she’s staying at in Beijing? In Promise of the Opal by Lyra Shanti, we take a journey through time with Sam as she discovers the truth about her identity and the forbidden love she once promised never to forget.

Question 1: What is the most important principle you adhere to in life?

Ling Sa: Truth, or the pursuit of it, is the most valuable treasure there is. Without truth, both inner and outer, we are but lost souls in the ocean of despair.

Question 2:  Have you ever concealed a truth from a loved one? If so, what truth?

Ling Sa: Unfortunately, some truths are nearly impossible to share with those who do not want the burden of knowledge. For example, I was born different from others: my hair is white as snow, my eyes are uniquely green, and I have… gifts of the mind, which frighten many who do not understand. As a child, I was thrown out of my own village, forced to live in exile at the White Dragon temple. Luckily, I found a master to teach me in the ways of balance, which has helped me to keep my abilities a secret to the stray villagers who come to the temple to pray. But is keeping a secret the same as telling a lie? I am unsure.

Question 3: What decision do you most regret?

Ling Sa: I have many regrets. But my biggest regret is hurting the people I love, even if I didn’t intend to do so.

Question 4: If you could change one thing about your story would it be?

Ling Sa: I would hold onto the opal ring and never let it go. It is my responsibility to contain its power.

Question 5:  Who do you most need to apologise to for your actions?

Ling Sa: All those who were innocent when I… No, I cannot talk about that just yet. I suppose I should apologise to Li Gan, who simply wanted healing. Instead, I gave him my long suppressed desire. It was perhaps too much for him to bear.

Question 6: How does it feel to know your love story reverberates through the ages?

Ling Sa: I am quite surprised, to be honest. I thought I would remain a ghost – a forgotten priest whose philosophies never quite made it into the history books. I never suspected that my life, or my relationship with Gan, would be remembered at all, let alone reverberate with anyone. I can only hope that our story is a lesson about what it means to unconditionally love someone with all your heart.

The midnight bus across town. Nobody’s idea of fun. But beggars can’t be choosers and without her job Louise would have been a literal beggar as well as a metaphorical one. Accordingly, five nights a week found her crouched in a corner of the upper deck making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible.
Fridays were the worst. At the end of the week it was all an exhausted Louise could do to endure the scent of vomit and the sting of routine abuse from drunks and tired whores.
This particular Friday, the bus was full to groaning and she was squashed in next to a huge woman with pendulous breasts and galloping halitosis. Five youths in hoodies erupted up the stairs brandishing knives. Louise’s companion screamed before throwing herself to the ground and rolling around as if in a fit. The would-be steamers stared
“Woss wrong wiv ‘er?”
One stepped in for a closer look and the jerking woman set her teeth in his calf, gnawing on him as if he were a chicken drumstick. He screamed and dropped his knife, too shocked to even kick out at her. His mates stared round-eyed.
“I’d watch that if I was you,” Louise ventured. “She probably has rabies.”
They turned and ran, falling over each other in their haste to be elsewhere.
The fat woman sat up and winked at Louise.
“Well done, love. I usually has to bite at least two…”

© jane Jago 2017

The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…

When Sunday inspires you not
When you can be arsed not a lot
If your brain’s feeling queer
Just sip on a beer
And flick the computer with snot

© jane jago

The world woke up one Monday morning to find its orbiting sentinels had all died: no GPS, no satellite television, no spy in the sky.

The biggest inconvenience?  Satnav.

Older drivers got out their maps. 

But the young.

In one hour the world lost sight of 100 bicycle couriers, a thousand Uber drivers, and more fast food delivery operatives than you could count.

Within a week governments started printing up to date atlases.

Within a month the world had mostly learned to cope.

Within a year nobody cared. 

Except the mothers of the pizza delivery boys who never came home…

©jane jago

The very worst thing about Tabruth was the smell.
The city was nothing more than a squalid collection of unsanitary slums, huddled together in tightly packed rows and crushed around by restraining walls, which were more effective at keeping the garbage and disease in than any enemy out – and smelt worse than a fresh batch of organically produced fertiliser. Even in the allegedly luxurious rooms which he had been assigned in Tabruth’s castle – it’s most superior dwelling – Elias Bazath found the sewer stench of the place was insidious and inescapable. From a distance, Tabruth might look like a picturesque, historical reconstruction in a theme park, but close to it stank like a rotting corpse.
If the stench was the worst aspect of the place so far, there was a lot more besides that which conspired to turn Bazath’s visit into a trial of endurance. In terms of providing physical necessities and fundamental comforts, Temsevar did not even score on the baseline. If one wished to be clean – a state to which it seemed to him that few of the natives seriously aspired – it was necessary to parade naked through the castle’s very public bathhouse. The clothing was ridiculously impractical, seldom laundered and usually infested with parasites. The food was served so highly spiced as to be almost unpalatable to disguise the fact that much of what was served up was already half rotten. Fresh water was drawn from a well, swimming with so many impurities such that all who could afford to do so chose to drink the wine in preference. Bazath, careful of his health, simply refused to drink anything he had not treated first.
Temsevar, he decided, was an uncivilised cesspit which had managed to maintain itself somehow by planting one foot firmly and with grim determination in pre-history and the other, more precariously in a barbaric slave economy and feudal system. The people he had met so far had done little to improve his opinion of the place. The soldiers, craftsmen and above all slaves, which seemed to form the vast majority of the population in the castle, were complete non-entities and seemed even to regard themselves as such. The Castellan was obsequious and weak, cowering behind a thin charade of haughty pride. The Warlord’s man, Commander Caer, was a surly, ill-mannered lout, and unintelligent enough to make no attempt to hide his hatred for Bazath. The Castellan’s nephew, Keshalgis, had the most to recommend him – he was almost intelligent and something of a diplomat, but even he seemed not to realise the importance and urgency of Bazath’s visit and displayed an infuriating lack of concern about the slow progress of negotiations.
He stood there now, wearing a supercilious, almost patronising, expression as he explained, through the interpreter, for the third time that the Castellan could not possibly fit in another audience with the Honoured Lord from the Stars until the following afternoon at the earliest. And would not the Honoured One prefer to spend the day hunting with himself and the Castellan’s charming lady wife instead?
It was at moments like these that Bazath realised, to his great chagrin, that he had far more in common with the filthy terrorist in the dungeons than with any of these posturing morons who considered themselves the nobility of Temsevar. He despised their immense ignorance, barbarism and over-inflated self-importance. Put any one of them on a half-way civilised planet and they would be lucky to find work as a refuse processor. But here they gave themselves grand titles and lorded it over their peers, behaving as if they were the equal of a delegate in the Coalition’s Legislature.

From Transgressor Trilogy: Times of Change by E.M. Swift-Hook

The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…

When a gal from the WI
Was asked why the glint in her eye
She replied with a grin
That it isn’t a sin
To put plenty of gin in your pies

© jane jago

Promise of the Opal is the latest book from Lyra Shanti.

When Sam arrives in Beijing for an impromptu getaway, she begins dreaming about a priest and a warrior from ancient China. Strangely enough, Jon is having the same recurring dreams. Will remembering their past make them fulfil a promise made long ago?

“Are you feeling better?” came a soft voice from the entranceway. Sa held a silver tray of tea cups, rice porridge, and a plate of sliced peaches and apples. He gave a slight smile, then entered the room.
Gan nodded. “I feel better, thank you.”
Setting down the tray on the small table in the room, Sa held up a tea cup and said, “I am certain you need more rest, but I am glad you are on the mend. The dragon god must have heard your prayer.”
Gan smirked as he accepted the tea. “Thank you.” After a moment, he added, “Do you really believe in the white dragon?”
Sa raised his left brow and said, “You are the one who nearly died, asking for his protection. Do you not believe after all?”
“I want to believe,” said Gan, carefully sipping the piping hot tea.
“What stops you?”
Gan took a moment before answering. He felt the pain of his shoulder and grimaced.
“Does it hurt again?” Sa asked, almost as if he read Ga’s mind.
Nodding, Gan put down the tea. Reaching into a small linen bag around his waist, Sa pinched a small amount of herbs into Gan’s tea cup. He then mixed it with a wooden spoon. “Drink,” he ordered, handing the cup to Gan.
Slowly sipping the tea, Gan tasted the bitterness of the herbs. He wanted to spit it out, but something about the priest’s green-eyed gaze made him drink it down.
“I want to believe… but I have lost too much to believe in gods. If they exist, why don’t they stop the evils of the world?”
Sa nodded, then sat down at the table, gracefully folding his legs. Motioning for Gan to do the same, he sipped his own tea. Gan sat down across from the priest and reached for a slice of apple.
“The gods do not work for us, my friend. Despite what humans think, they are not our servants.”
“Then what are they?” asked Gan.
Sa grinned. He took a peach slice and said, “The gods are like the rivers, the mountains, the trees… They are our forebears… Our teachers. They are not our slaves to be told what evil they must slay. To demand their favor is foolish human pride. Instead, we should ask politely for their kindness, and perhaps, if they are willing, they will abide.”
Who is this man? Ga thought with a gulp of apple. He acts as if he is above mere mortals. He even looks and moves like a god, but… I cannot be sitting with an actual god. That’s not possible. It can’t be.
Sa smiled, again seeming to know Gan’s mind. “I am not a god, my friend. I am a simple man… though I try my best to listen, and learn, and pass on the knowledge I may attain.” Sa picked up the tea pot and offered to fill Gan’s cup.
“No, thank you,” he whispered, still confused by the mysterious, almost divine, nature of his host. Every move Sa made intrigued Gan, even the way his fingers picked up the pot. There was a grace and beauty that couldn’t be described with words, and it was beginning to excite his passion.

A bite of… Lyra Shanti, aka Aryl Shanti

Q1: What do you feel is most important to remember as a writer when writing about love? And do you see any difference in writing LGBTQ as opposed to ‘straight’ romance?

The most important thing to remember when writing about love is the same as any other subject. Keep it real. Make sure that the characters feel realistic and honest with their emotions, at least to the reader. When they fall in love, it has to come across to the reader as genuine, even if it seems crazy or cliche. As long as the character truly feels it in their heart, so will the reader. 
As for writing LGBTQ+ romance, it’s no different than writing for straight characters. Other than which body parts are being used during a love scene, there’s no difference whatsoever. If I write two men or two women (or a non-binary couple) in love, they feel the same kind of intensity and confusions as a straight couple would. There may be the element of societal issues getting in the way for an LGBTQ couple, but other than that, it’s exactly the same. Love is love. 

Q2: The underlying theme of this book seems to me to be the undying nature of love, and how a love sufficiently strong transcends time. Do you think such a love is truly possible?

I know it’s possible because I have it in real life with my soul-mate and partner, Timothyne. However, familiarity and passion isn’t enough to make a relationship transcend time. It takes a ton of communication, understanding, and patience to make it last, but it can be done, if two people really want to work for it. 
When it comes to Promise of the Opal, Sam and Jon (or Sa and Gan from their past) have a relationship that is deep and passionate, but extremely complicated. Are they soul-mates? I guess you’ll have to read the book series to find out. (Book 2 is coming soon!)

Q3: Would you rather live in this world or the one you create in your books?

Oh, definitely in one of my books, probably the world of Shiva XIV. I’d love to travel the universe and hang out with Axis (a shape-shifting sphinx) and maybe go to Ohr where they have great beaches and underwater mer-type people. I’d also love to see Kri with all their ancient Roman looking statues and giant libraries. I’d probably never want to leave, which is why I’m going to eventually return to that world for an upcoming prequel series. 
It’s hard for a writer to leave the world they love to write. I guess that’s a bit like living there, at least in our minds. 😉

A transmasculine novelist, editor, poet, playwright, and songwriter who currently lives in Florida with partner and spouse, Timothyne, and their two insane cats. Author of the award-winning science fantasy series, Shiva XIV and a dreamer of worlds far away. More books include The Artist, a wild tale of love, madness, and redemption, as well as The Rainbow Serpent, a re-imagining of Adam and Eve. You can find Aryl on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and his own website.