A gathered hush
Like a silent breath
Condensed in freezing air
The night sky
Ruled by a blazing star
That they say was never there.

A stable scene
With shepherds standing
All around the manger.
A newborn child
Whose wise mother knows
And whose father sees the danger.

A thousand legends
Born and fade, some carved
In stone, some blown away like sand
Each page written
In blood or ink – or tears that cleave
As history turns the leaves.

And yet again
Another child born
A hostage to fortune.
Princess or pauper
God or humble clay
Mortality awaits each in their day.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Dear Reader Who Writes,

It is that time of year again when tinsel and fake snow are seen liberally strewn over windows and every house in the neighbourhood is illuminated by thousands of watts worth of multicoloured flashing bulbs. Giant inflatable Santas bend at the waist as they slowly prolapse onto the lawn and herds of plastic reindeer can be found grazing on every municipal greensward.

Ah yes, Christmas!

The time every writer remembers the magic as a child of seeing the Christmas tree lit up after hearing swearing coming from the front room for an hour. Or the apparently endless amounts of food on a groaning board, whilst relatives are sitting, groaning, bored and picking fights for the sake of it. Or the sound of carols through the shopping-mall loudspeakers being interrupted by non-sequitur advertisements and announcements. Or the excitement of unwrapping presents so quickly replaced by the despair as another Christmas jumper hand knitted by Great Aunt Tracey is revealed beneath the gaudy paper or a pair of thermal, odour-reducing socks in vibrant tartan from Mumsie.

This, dear RWW, is the very magic you need to ensure you capture on the tip of your quill and then spread in decorative loops and swirls of language to fill the pages of that essential for every aspiring author – the Seasonal Short.

To be honest, a wise beginner will start with the lesser festivals of the writing calendar. Maybe a little romantic flash fiction for Valentine’s, working through to a Halloween Horror so that by the time you reach the height of over-played, sentimentalism that is Christmas literature, you will have the technique somewhat practised.

But fear not, mes petites, even if you have not been preparing, even if you have never set pen to paper or finger to keyboard in a literary endeavour afore this moment, follow my three golden rules and you will be in with as much of a chance as the most famous author.

Rule One: Make it Maudlin.

Do not stop at soppy and sentimental, instead toboggan through the more flaccid emotions and pitch straight into the point where Merry marries Melancholy and keeps up an affair on the side with Nostalgia.

Rule Two: Make it Short.

This is Christmas. Your reader will be well sozzled, exhausted from family rows and trying to avoid the Queen’s speech. Their attention span will not be long. A novella is too long.

Rule Three: Make it Shiny.

Use lots of words like ‘sparkle’, ‘glitter’, ‘glow,’ ‘luminescence’, ‘coruscation’, ‘shimmer’, ‘gleam’ and ‘twinkle’.

So there, in a Nutcracker Suite, dear Reader Who Writes, is my Christmas gift to you. Use it wisely and every future festive season will bring you joyous prosperity from your literary endeavours.

Happy Christmas.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Becca offered a silent prayer as the engine failed to catch then did. The car was too old but she couldn’t manage without it. Today, her day off, she had been temping as a receptionist. Tomorrow it was back to an early start as a home carer. But now she had to collect the kids from her mother’s. A neighbour’s daughter would babysit for her evening shift waitressing. 

On the radio, a slimy politician sucking on his silver spoon was saying that poor people should get a job.

She wondered how many jobs she needed not to be poor anymore.

E.M. Swift-Hook

It’s cold here, cold as the hiss of an angered angel. Cold as the breast of a barren woman. But we are not made to mind the cold, I and my trillion brethren. We float gently down to blanket the stable where a baby cries and a man stares uncomprehendingly as his virgin bride presents him with an unexpected son.

It’s cold and we band together to hold in what little heat the beasts generate with their breath.

My brothers are glad to be of use to him they are calling the king, but I am afraid. I have seen stars where there should be none. I have heard strange voices singing. I have watched sheepherders bring presents of food and woollen blankets. I have seen camels from the painted lands of the east bring old men bearing unsuitable gifts.

They say snowflakes are individual. That no two of us are the same. But they say a lot of things. I look around me to see million upon million of my siblings locking arms and settling. I am the only one who does not fit.

I am a sad snowflake because I know that tomorrow will bring a warm wind from the south and we will all die…

©️ Jane Jago

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

When the poor and unloved f-bombs died
I’ll admit that I lay down and sighed
For the poor orphaned f**k
That ran out of luck
I looked into my beer and I cried

© jane jago

…. or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

anythign (adjective) – of or pertaining to thighs

bluche (verb) – to walk as if constipated

celebreate (noun) – a celibate who has weekends off

dup of tes (noun geographic) – a group of islands in the south seas notable for bad dentistry and useless morality tales

effiencent (adjective) – of beer, bubbly but clouded and very yeasty

eriting (verb) – the peculiar practice of placing a peanut up one nostril and whistling Dixie

graet (verb) of authors to proclaim one’s own small talent a lot louder than it deserves

nekkis (adjective) – wearing oddly mismatched clothing at least two sizes too small

nlog (noun) – particularly hard fecal matter of an unfeasibly large circumference

overwhenling (adverb) – of locomotion unbearably slow and accompanied by rusty creaks

pricry (verb) – to sob uncontrollably when you can not afford something

siempunk (noun ) – tramp with good hair

usignt eh (noun) – a genus of small mammals famous for their short memories and large ears

wetaher (noun) – lachrymose woman

wodner (noun) one who is perpetually half sexually aroused. Hence the phrase ‘to walk like a wodner’

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

It was his grandmother’s final wish, formalised in her will:

And to Mungo, I bequeath the contents of my safety deposit box, provided he keeps his word to me and marries within the year.

Mungo, the eldest son of a duke and in his thirties, hadn’t shown interest in marriage, although often seen with various celebrity women but now speculation mounted.

A year after his grandmother’s funeral, at a private ceremony, Mungo married his secret commoner lover of many years. The ring, his grandmother’s, had been in the lockbox.

Mungo proudly introduced his new husband to the family soon after.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Midwinter Miracle by E.M. Swift-Hook is a Fortune’s Fools short story.

The frost had frozen the blood onto the surface of the snow almost as soon as it landed, stark red against the white. In the cold illumination of the flashlight, it seemed crystalline and jewelled.
“She’ll have lost too much,” the bearded man muttered grimly. Gernie nodded. He was no expert but even he could see what this trail meant. They followed it out past the courtyard wall and on towards the edge of the settlement.
“If we had been a bit faster or you’d just hit that – “
“We had no bloody choice,” the other man cut across him. “It’s how things are here, lad, you can’t bloody change it.”
“The bastard shot her,” Gernie protested.
“And in his full legal right to do so. She is his property – or was, most likely. She ran away and that means she knew she was in for death if she got caught.”
“So you and Micha have to make nice to him? Man, that’s -” Gernie realised for the first time just how alien this world really was.
“We had to play it that way. That’s the way it bloody is around here, Tavi. Maybe if you work on it you can make a difference one day, but you can’t go shooting down local notables – nor even beating them up. Not if you are planning to stay here and I take it you are?”
For a moment, Gernie wanted to say no. Wanted to say he was not going to stay anywhere a teenage girl could be murdered, legally, in front of an entire tavern full of people. But even as he opened his mouth to say as much, he found his mind filled with the memory of an oval face with golden skin, framed by dark-copper ringlets and wearing an expression of appalled compassion. Something inside him moved.
“I’m taking the job,” he said, “if that’s what you are asking. It’s why I came here after all. The pay is crap, this place is like a nightmare. But someone has to run the spaceport so crazy people like you can come and trade here. I’ll stick it a year or two then head back to civilisation.”
The bearded man grinned briefly.
“I think Micha will be pleased.”
Gernie said nothing to that, it was still too new, too startling. He shone the flashlight back on the snow and followed the trail.
The blood seemed to vanish near the small block building that backed onto the first of the spaceport domes. As if the ground had opened and swallowed the girl.

A Midwinter Miracle is available on Audible,  as an ebook and paperback and can be purchased from Amazon, Kobo, iTunes and Googleplay. This special edition has typographic art and cover design by Zora Marie.

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

On Mondays it’s good, as a rule
Not to take too much crap from old fools
To be kindly but firm
And just watch them squirm
While you’ve treated them gently but cruel

© jane jago

Sam Nero PI is the creation of Jane Jago and a denizen of The Last City. A place where the past and the future come face to face as a prohibition-style private eye walks the mean streets of a dying world 

Welcome to his life…

When a dame whose everyday walk is as smooth and studiedly sexy as a big jungle cat, and whose make-up is as immaculate as a well-pressed designer suit, arrives in your office at a shambling run with her face all over tears and snot it’s a safe bet that something pretty bad is wrong.
I was lost in thought, with my feet propped on my desk and my hat tipped way down over my eyes, when my office door was thrown open in a dramatic fashion. I barely had long enough to wonder why in the hell my holographic door was now making an eldritch shriek, when Katie Scarlett O’Halleran and her exceptional bosom landed almost in my lap. She was crying, and her face was a mess.
She grabbed me by the lapels and tried to shake me.
“Sam. Sam. You have to come. Somebody has taken Daddy.”
I sat bolt upright and squared my shoulders. Anybody brave enough to mess with Mister Aitch was certainly a big fish, and I guessed I was about to go shark fishing. I grasped the sobbing girl by her slender shoulders.
“Calm down Katie Scarlett, and tell me what happened.”
“I already told you,” she all but screamed, “somebody has taken Daddy.”
“Details Katie, details.”
I gently compelled her to sit down, and held onto her until her chest stopped heaving and she took two steadying breaths. Then I got the bottle out of my drawer and poured her a stiff one. Her teeth chattered against the side of the glass, but the act of drinking calmed her almost as much as the bourbon.
“Daddy’s personal alarm sounded about an hour back. Me and the twins ran, but his office door was locked. When we broke the door down he was gone, and there was blood all over.”
“Okay,” I said, although I didn’t think anything was okay. “Where are the twins now?”
“Flirting with your holographic floozie. We set droids to watch on the office and came straight here.”

A bite of… Jane Jago

Question one: How did a classic American private eye come to find himself sharing an asteroid with the last remnants of mankind?

Well it’s not simple. Sam is no more precisely what he seems to be than are any of the other occupants of The Last City. The human race is hurtling towards extinction and those who know that choose to live lives of hectic pleasure seeking. Those with less options are a different matter.

Question two: Given the dystopian nature of this situation how come the stories are so upbeat?

It’s my contention that humans will always wring whatever pleasure they can from even the most distressing of situations.

Question three: Every story has a heart. What is the heart of Sam Nero’s story?

Ah. Yes. The heart. The heart of Sam’s story is love. Love which can never be consummated. Sam and his lady love can never physically touch….

Jane Jago lives in the beautiful west country with her big, silly dog and her big sensible husband. She spent the first half of her working life cooking and the second half editing other people’s manuscripts. Now she has the time to write down the stories that have been disturbing her sleep for as long as she can remember.

You can follow her on Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter.