Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

I do remember the fifth of November
When fireworks recall a plot
To blow up the whole bloomin’ lot

I do remember the fifth of November
When kids called ‘Penny for the Guy’
At the people as they walked by.

They’d make them before the fifth of November
From old clothes with newspaper crammed
Then sat in an old go-cart or pram.

But now we remember the fifth of November
As a day for fireworks planned
Displays both modest and grand.

But kids don’t make guys for the fifth of November
They no longer put up that cry
Instead ‘trick or treater’s come by…

Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
And what should we do with him? Burn him!

E.M. Swift-Hook

I am old. But I resent being parcelled as:

• A sweet little white-haired old lady
• Somebody’s grannie 
• A person who needs to be invited to Christmas Dinner in case I don’t cook. (On which point what about the rest of the year.)

I am not 

• miserable
• lonely
• prim and proper. 

I did not fight in the war and neither did my unlamented. 

So let’s unpick this. 

Old people were not put on this earth so you could patronise us.

We are here because we ain’t dead. 

And because we like life enough to hang on to it.

F**k you!

You can now have a collection of Granny’s inimitable insights of your very own in Granny Knows Best.

Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

At the inn, Bearson was glad just to roll into bed, as was Yore, but Homes waved away their concerns.
“I shall smoke a pipe with our genial host before I make my way between the sheets,” he declared.
It felt like only minutes later, when Bearson was shaken from his sleep by an impatient trotter.
“Up. Old chap. Up. And be quiet about it. There’s evil afoot on the muir, and it’s up to us to stop it.”
Bearson groaned and looked at his watch. It was four in the morning. He groaned again, but knowing the futility of arguing with a determined Homes, he dressed quickly and crept out onto the landing. Homes waited impatiently.
“Bring the bag of breakfast,” he instructed, before going back into the room where Yore still snored.
Bearson fetched the linen bag and was back on the landing in time to hear a muffled scream from Yore’s chamber.
“I warned you,” Homes was adamantine. “Now get up and stop being a bigger fool than you can help.”
Bearson sincerely hoped Homes hadn’t actually bitten the inspector, although the probabilities leaned that way.
However he had been persuaded, Yore followed Homes onto the landing, and the great detective led the way downstairs. At the back of the inn, there was a small stable where a sleepy lad was busy harnessing a grumpy looking donkey to a small cart. Homes flicked the lad a shilling and Yore led the donkey out into the morning darkness. Once out of the stable, the donkey seemed to become angry and it put a good deal of force and determination into trapping Yore against the stones of the stable wall. The inspector pulled the animal’s ear down to his mouth and whispered something.
The donkey stepped back, and Yore smiled toothily – his good humour having been wholly restored by the exchange.
“Horseman’s Word,” he said and jumped onto the driving seat. “Where too Mister Homes?”
Homes and Bearson climbed aboard.
“We need to be where we stopped last night.”
Yore nodded. “I took note of the place.” He shook the reins and they were off.
If it had been strange to drive across the muir in moonlight, this ride in a creaking little cart, with Yore profanely deciding their route, was surreal. The weird light of false dawn lit a pearlescent mist and the donkey’s unshod hooves made very little sound as it plodded along.
Bearson would have been hard put to say where he was, but both Homes and Yore seemed satisfied when the cart drew to a halt. Yore set the brake, before hobbling the donkey and providing it with a nose bag of sweet-smelling hay.
In the half light Bearson saw Homes bare his sharp, yellow teeth in a feral grin.
“Break out the breakfast, old man, we’ve naught to do for a while but wait.”
Nothing loath, Bearson passed around thick ham sandwiches, slices of crumbly cheese and hunks of richly spiced fruit cake. They had all but finished their repast when Yore’s large ears twitched.
“Company coming,” he growled.
“I hope so.” Homes was at his most demurely irritating.

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will conclude their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago

Bonjour mes braves,

It is one, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV. The teacher beloved of your hearts and minds. The author of the remarkable and much remarked upon science fantasy ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. The pedagogue on whose delicate prose depends your understanding of the literary arts. That happy man who breaks from the few moments of ecstasy this life will allow him to present you with the fruits of his mind and the essences of his labours.

Lesson 34: The Write Denouement

Thus far one has been leading you gently by the hand through the rose garden of the literary arts, providing you with the petals of perennial wisdom and alerting you to the sharp, tearing thorns that await the unwary novice as you struggle with your first stumbling steps into the wonders of writing.

Today though, one shall thrust into the meat of the matter, penetrate boldly into the underbrush with decisively strong and muscular intent. For this is the climactic moment of your novel and it needs to leave your reader breathless and fulfilled.

Ah yes, the denouement.

That moment when all becomes clear. That place to which one has been leading, through passages and parlance, the unveiling of understanding where one’s magnum opus finally brings the reader.

It is the climax if you will.

The crescendo when the conductor brings his baton crashing down and the horns blow, and the drums crash, and the strings wail. It is that place where you offer some reason for all that those who travelled stumble-footed through your works endured. That place where you choose whether to bring your reader laughter or tears, happiness or despair, completion or destruction.

It is your big moment. Treasure it. And write it from the bottom of your soul. Use words that drip with drama and exude emotion. Drench it delicious descriptors – all those admirable adjectives and adverbs you have been practising so assiduously. Pump up your prose, that your words are wrought with wonder. Spare not the syllables, for this is the place to prove your true literary worth!

If it is sad, make of it a tragedy. Ensure that it wrenches tears and painful sobs from your reader’s very soul. If it is happy, make it joyous and life-affirming, let it fizz through the bloodstream like champagne and uplift the spirit into ecstatic rapture.

I offer for you one humble exemplar:

When the doorway brought the golden one to his eyes, he felt tears of pain and anticipation sting at the back of his own orbs. Would he be sufficient that such magnificence even deign to notice him? Would he be able to speak around the thorny lump in his throat? Would the dampness of his palms give him away? And what was that hot and heavy sensation in his hitherto unfulfilled loins? He dropped his eyes in real fear, and did not see his destiny approaching him. It was not until a voice like unto nothing he had ever heard before bespoke him that he dared to raise his eyes. He found himself transfixed by a warmly golden gaze and his lips turned up into a smile as the golden one cupped his chin in long fingers and traced the contours of his mouth with the forefinger of the other hand.
“Why do you tremble, pretty one? I won’t hurt you. Much.”

And whether this ending is happy or sad I neither know nor care…

Study well my children.

Next time. Erotica.

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.

Caer sat on his pony looking at the dead body on the ground and wondering if he should send more scouts back towards the road, almost a day’s trek behind the caravan. This man had been alone, half-mad and no threat to the caravan, but others might even now be following the same path that they had taken from the road and for the same reason they had taken it: others who were scouts for brigands, bandits or bigger caravans than his own.
He spat in the dirt and narrowed his eyes as he looked past the file of wagons, ponies and people. It was late afternoon and his breath misted slightly in the air. The long cold winter was over, but in the barren Wastelands, spring was always slow to come. The air still carried a biting chill, even in the heat of the day and the distant peaks kept their mantle of snow and ice, tinged with crimson by the light of the huge red sun. Spring was having to claw its way free of winter’s greedy clutches so that Temsevar could bask in an all too brief season of warmth and growth.
The Wastelands were vast and magnificent. Here and there, standing proud and alone in the plain, like the lost sentinels of a forgotten age, were towering flat-topped mountains of rock, some so massive they were too big to cross in a day on foot. It was as though at some point in the distant past the ground had simply dropped away, leaving the high plateaux stranded above, like giant stepping stones, creating a two-tier terrain. If in the winter, these high grounds were the coldest and most exposed, in the spring they seemed always flushed with new vegetation before any managed to creep out of the more parched stones below.
Caer made his decision. With the work to be done, the four men he already had out scouting their back trail were all he could spare for the moment. He called to one of the mounted men who was riding with the caravan.
“Shevek, we are camping here.”
The man he spoke to wheeled his pony away and rode at a brisk pace towards the front of the train of wagons and animals, issuing sharp orders to make the night’s camp around the rocky debris beneath the steep cliff face of one of the high monoliths. Caer felt a familiar sense of satisfaction as those orders turned the straggling ranks of moving people, ponies and wagons into a brief flurry of chaos, before brightly coloured awnings, tents and pavilions sprung up from the chaos, like strange blossoms. Caer and his men rode through the quickly forming encampment, shouting instructions, solving problems, helping secure ropes and encouraging any who were slow to respond with the whips they carried curled in their belts.
In a remarkably short time, the caravan resembled a miniature town with streets and open spaces, stables, and pens. Fires were being kindled, children tending the animals as women kneaded dough and cut the vegetables for the evening meal. Toddlers screamed and got underfoot or rolled like puppies amongst the big, sharp-toothed dogs, which ignored them and begged for scraps with soulful eyes and then turned on each other snapping and snarling when an unsavoury morsel was cast their way.
Once the familiar routine was well established, Caer’s men guided their mounts towards the middle of the camp. The ponies’ short stubby ears, thick coats, wall-eyed glares and powerful necks, made them far from beautiful to look upon, but their split hooves could splay to grip surefooted even on snow and ice or could run fast on firmer ground. It was their broad backs which carried the burden of human traffic in both trade and war with a sturdy strength and agility which, for Caer, had a beauty all of its own.
The men who rode were as tough as their ponies. The older ones amongst them wore their hair long, stained red and tied back into a heavy braid, the greater length of the braid telling of ever greater age and experience. The youngest men had their hair shaved so close to the scalp as to seem bald. They were not even allowed to begin to grow a braid until they had served a year of apprenticeship with the caravans. All the men wore coats made from a brightly coloured heavy-felt cloth, over shirts with billowing sleeves, patterned skirted jerkins made from fleeced hides and plain felt britches which gathered loosely into calf-high boots. All were armed: every man wore a bandolier of wooden cartridge boxes over one shoulder and carried a crude pistol; one or two had a long-barrelled musket or rifled carbine, on their backs and each wore a long-bladed knife with an ornately carved hilt and whips hung looped at their belts.
These men were of the Zoukai, a brotherhood of warrior guardians, hiring themselves to protect the caravans which carried the trade of Temsevar. Named after the swift and ruthless, red-plumed predatory birds which hunted from the skies in these very wastes, they were bound by a strict code of honour which placed loyalty to their captain and their caravan above all else.

From The Fated Sky the first part of Transgressor Trilogy, and the first book in Fortunes Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook.

It was Halloween, and the toys had built a bonfire next to Eeyore’s tent. They had ginger beer and marshmallows to share, and they took it in turns to tell spooky stories and scare each other spitless.
They were having so much fun that the only person who went home to bed was Kanga, because she thought that if baby Roo ate any more he was going to be sick in her marsupium.
It was past eight o’clock before everyone conked out, and Piglet was lulled into sleep by the comforting sounds of Eeyore’s snores and Pooh’s tummy rumbling like a passing goods train.
Who knew how much longer it was when he awoke. The fire had died down to a pile of reddish embers and there was a breeze whispering in the tops of the aspen trees.
“Piglet, Piglet,” it called, “come and play.”
Piglet knuckled his eyes, and when he looked up there was a big, pink lady pig sitting on a log regarding him soulfully.
“Aren’t you coming to play? I’m so lonely.”
A tear lingered on her pale, bristly eyelashes and Piglet felt pity so he stood up and dusted down his onesie.
“Where shall we play?” He asked politely.
The lady pig beamed. “We shall play everywhere.”
Before Piglet had a chance to think that one through, she grasped his trotter in hers and he felt himself rising into the sky.
Not being the bravest and most stoical of toys, Piglet screamed loud and shrill but his friends around the dying fire slept on undisturbed.
“They can’t hear you. This is your adventure.”
Piglet looked down on his sleeping friends and wondered if he would ever see them again. But he was of a sanguine nature and this was, as the lady pig said, quite an adventure. He ventured a look at his companion thinking her a fine figure of a sow and wondering if that would be an appropriate thing to say.
She must have caught his glance because she frowned.
“Is there something wrong with my face, small pig?”
Piglet essayed his most charming smile. “No demoiselle. Piglet was just thinking how be-you-ti-full you is.”
The she-pig blushed and simpered. “That is very kind of you small pig. What is your name?”
“I is Piglet.”
“Yes, I know you are a piglet, but what is your name?”
“I doesn’t has a name. I is just Piglet.”
The she-pig shrugged her shoulders and Piglet was shaken to the roots of his teeth.
“Ouch!”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
But it came to Piglet that she didn’t sound a bit sorry. He was about to say so, but something warned him and his mind’s eye saw Tigger with a paw to his lips.
“Where is your mummy, little pig?”
“Piglet doesn’t know.”
“Your daddy?”
“Piglet doesn’t know.”
“There appears to be a lot you don’t know, small and ignorant pig.”
Piglet rather resented being called ignorant, but didn’t see what he could profitably say so he kept his mouth shut.
She-pig gave him a sideways glance. “Nearly there,” she said and her voice was as cold as the sky they were flying through.
“Where is there?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Piglet felt her trotter tighten about his own small foot and he understood that she wasn’t going to let him go.
They were quickly losing altitude and before Piglet had time to formulate a thought about where they might be they landed in a clearing beside a cottage that seemed to be constructed of cake. The door flew open and a bent old woman leapt out.
“What have you brought me?”
“Bacon mother.”
The she-pig let go of Piglet and he started to run, only to be stopped by a bony hand. He turned his head and sunk his sharp little teeth into the thumb that was pressing into his arm.
The old woman screamed, and dropped his arm. Her scream of pain was just as piercing as Piglet’s scream of fear and he ran as fast as he could. He thought he had made good his escape, but the old beldame muttered a word of power and his feet could no longer move.
The moon came out from behind a cloud and his captor saw what she had got. She turned on the she-pig in fury.
“This isn’t bacon,” she accused, “this is wool and felt and stuffing and boot button eyes.”
She leapt towards the she-pig with her hands hooked like claws and they fell to the forest floor biting and scratching and squealing.
A soft voice behind Piglet bade him come away, and he felt himself being drawn gently back to the campfire where his chums snored.
He dropped back into his body and for a second he thought he felt loving arms surrounding him. A prickly snout brushed his forehead.
“Bacon? Not my piglet.”
Then the presence was gone and he tumbled into a dreamless sleep.

Jane Jago

It’s Halloween and I am feared
To walk the woods tonight
The creatures who avoid the sun
Have by the flight of hags been cheered
And they my sorrows slight
And though the night has just begun
Wind whistles in the forest beard
While eldritch flickering light
Pursues me as they have their fun
Their voices sibilant and weird
Echo strangely, and the fright
Dictates I lift my heels and run

Jane Jago

You can grab some fabulous bargain books for just 0.99 and even some free ones this weekend. Such as this spooky short about an abandoned fairground, with vampires and shades of Lovecraft, perfect for Halloween – Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook .

CHAPTER ONE: JESSICA

           “Well, you know what they say, don’t you pet? What don’t kill you, will make you stronger.”
            Jessica felt her teeth dig into her tongue with the effort of not snapping back. It was one of those glib sayings people trotted out every time they realised there was harm done they couldn’t heal. She wanted to snarl that what didn’t kill you could just as easily leave you broken and bloody, weakened and vulnerable and much less strong than you were before. It could also leave you changed as well as damaged, struggling to know who this stranger was that you had become – the one who jumped at shadows and whose heart started racing when a car engine started up. 
            It was not a good look for a woman who had once been decorated for valour.
            She forced a smile and did not cringe at the hand pat that went with the words of wisdom, delivered from the place of someone whose worst nightmares were about being caught on Scarborough seafront without her make-up on.
            “Your aunt means well, Jess.”
            The voice came from the door of the lounge, which was being pushed open. There was a smell of fresh coffee as Uncle David carried in a tray with a samovar and tiny cups.
            “Oh don’t be so daft, Dave. She knows I mean well, don’t you pet?”
            Jessica nodded and managed a half-smile, then busied herself moving the newspaper, and a couple of magazines about horoscopes and tarot cards, from the table in front of the paisley-patterned settee. Her uncle set the tray down with care then served the coffee as he always did – strong, black and sweet.
            His eyes were not patronising when he looked at her. But then he had fought at Goose Green and brought home his own ghosts to roost in the rafters of the perfect life his wife devised for them both. No children of their own, but then they had Jess.
            “So are you off to Whitby again to see that young man?” Aunt Susan peered over both the top of her cup and her bifocals.
            For a moment, just hearing someone naming the place sent a shiver through Jessica’s spine, and her imagination bridged the miles to place her on top of the cliffs, screaming gulls wheeling overhead, the wind that never slept and Roald, the image of a modern-day viking, hair blowing over his face, shoulders half-hunched in a fleece, face animated, telling her the history of the ruined abbey as if he had been there at the time.

            “It was all started by a woman – Hild. She was an amazing woman and not one you would want to cross. A princess of sorts. And for all she was an abbess eventually, she didn’t decide to become a nun until she was  in her thirties and she’d done one heck of a lot of living by then.” He paused and made a really broad gesture with one arm as if including the ruins and all the headland where they stood. “She loved this place. Would stand up on the cliffs, by the beacon that was here then and look out over the sea, and unbraid her hair so the wind could play with it. And, you know, when she established that first abbey it was nothing like you would think of a monastery today. It was more like a community – both men and women.”
            It was easy to picture Hilda in her Saxon dress, facing out over the waves. Jessica thought of that actress she’d seen playing Rowena in ‘Ivanhoe’.
            “No,” Roald sounded almost angry, “Hild was of Anglic blood – not Saxon. The ones Pope Gregory famously spoke about when he saw some being sold as slaves: ‘Non Angli, sed angeli’.
            Jessica looked at him her mouth very slightly agape. He did that a lot. It was very unsettling.
            “Non angerlee – what?”
            Roald grinned and gave an exaggerated mock wince, as if her pronunciation caused him pain.
            “Non Angli, sed angeli – ‘These are not Angles, they are angels.’ “

To keep reading this story for free, snag your copy of Maybe right now. For more great reading either for free or just 0.99 this weekend, check out The Not So Spooky Halloween Book Sale and grab yourself some brilliant books for your autumn reading.

Holmgang is the latest book from Jane Jago. A sci-fi tour de force with love, revenge and space combat!

Even though the slave market was busy, underneath the hustle and bustle one could smell the stench of fear overlaid with the sharp-edged excitement of those looking to turn a profit. The flesh emporium was always a place of commerce and contrasts, but today it was positively frenetic. Only this morning, a ship had arrived at the market asteroid’s spaceport from one of the client worlds bringing nearly a thousand head of fresh meat to market. These unfortunates had already been sorted on the journey and were displayed for sale according to their physical attributes and their monetary value. 

The lowest in status were herded into iron cages from which they were dragged at the behest of hard-eyed buyers in search of bargain basement labourers. Most of those slaves would be lucky, or unlucky if you looked at it from their point of view, to last more than a season in off-planet mines and manufacturing facilities. 

The next level were still caged but the cages were rather less crowded as they held those the slavers felt should fetch a few credits more. Those worthy of training as house servants, or shop assistants perhaps. These were less marked by the lash than their lower status brethren, and the market guard treated them less roughly.

Further in and moving towards the centre of the market hall, those thought suitable as fighters stood uncaged, but watched over by scowling guards armed with nerve whips and scourges. These had been individually bathed, and oiled by the flesh traders’ bath slaves so their muscles were accentuated for all to see, but it was noticeable that few dared touch.

Right under the copper dome of the market was the inner sanctum, screened from the eyes of the less than fabulously wealthy by high wooden walls, this was where the fancy slaves were displayed. Fancy slaves, those whom the slavers considered to be the cream of the crop, brought to this place where the elite of society came to obtain its bath slaves, and bed slaves, and the ornaments of exalted households. It was here that milky-skinned children with huge terrified eyes were shown alongside women of transcendent loveliness and the very prettiest from among the young men. It was also here that veiled women walked with their treasurers at their heels, and hard-paunched hard-eyed merchants fingered the merchandise with their hard hands.

A small group of ebony-skinned heavily armed warriors from the planet Rayisha progressed along the swept sand walkways in perfect step, with each woman alert and hair-trigger ready. Their leader was the High Lady Rayisha Zenaida and it took great effort to hide her contempt for the skin traders around her.

Holmgang is out today so click here to snag your copy and keep reading!

Join Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson as they investigate the strange affair of the Dartymuir Dog…

Once away from the smoky orange lights of the station, the beauty of a cloudless night sky could be appreciated. The moon painted the landscape blue and silver and Bearson leaned back to better enjoy the glory of the stars. It was chilly and he pulled his Ulster closer about his throat.
“It’s a fine night for stargazing,” he said.
“It is indeed, my friend. And I fancy Sirius shines brightly on our endeavours.”
Homes chuckled at his own joke and Yore interjected sourly.
“We aren’t out here to stargaze.”
Homes barely spared him a glance. “We might as well be,” he explained with barely concealed impatience, “as there is little we can profitably do until we reach the place where the old gentleman was attacked. And even then we can only test a theory.”
Your subsided into a foetid sulk, while Bearson composed himself to while away the tedium of the ride by lifting his face to the cold beauty of the heavens.
It must have been the better part of an hour later when he was recalled to his surroundings by the gig being drawn to a halt. They were in the bottom of a deep defile where the moonlight hardly reached.
Their driver was speaking in her low, rather beautiful voice. “This was the place where Lord Sleepytown was found. He was lying at the side of the road, like a pile of discarded sacks.”
Homes jumped down and was almost at once lost to view. Bearson knew he would be sniffing the ground with his trufflish snout – a proceeding the good doctor found disturbing enough to be relieved not to have to see it.
Of a sudden, Homes sneezed loudly, thrice.
“I say, Bearson, give a chap a hand will you?”
Bearson leaned out of the vehicle and hauled his small friend aboard. As the great detective’s feet touched the carriage floor, Bearson looked at his face.
“Homes,” he hissed, “your snout is all over mud.”
Homes grinned and rubbed the grubby sleeve of his greatcoat across his nose. He took something from his pocket and blew into it. Bearson was aware that some sound had been made because the hair on his fat tummy bristled briefly, though his ears registered nothing.
After a moment of two his ears just caught a peculiar ululating sound on the stiff night breeze.
Homes looked truly smug.
“Drive on, if you please, ma’am.”
Their driver shook the reins, and the horse set this considerable strength to the task of pulling the gig back up onto the ridge that carried the main road – if one was to be so charitable as to call it that – across the expanse of the muir.
On the skyline, Bearson could see lights twinkling and he prodded Homes in the belly.
“Would that be our destination, old chap?”
“Aye. It would. And we can hope for an hour or two of rest before we have to be out here again.”

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago