Offworld items were rarities, rarities, the few imports that arrived on the continent, having been shipped across the Lesser Ocean from the spaceport in Keran were always valuable – even the commonplace ones. His own fine knife blade, stronger than anything that could be made on Temsevar, had cost Caer most of his first season’s bonus to purchase. So if there was anything salvageable left on the mithan, it would truly be as if the skies had opened up and rained money on them. For a moment that thought drove out every other and he had the exhilarating image of himself leading Alexa the Fair’s caravan into the city of Alfor, wagons overflowing with wealthy cargo.
But only for a moment.
The many long days of travel that remained before they could reach Alfor rose up and cut through that image like a row of jagged teeth. This was a small caravan and painfully undermanned with too few Zoukai. For all his own strength and skill, if word got out that they carried any great wealth – if anyone saw them take it or even noticed they had left the road – then they would be lucky to arrive in Alfor alive let alone with their cargo intact. But if – if he could keep it safe, then the end-of-run bonus it could earn him would be enough to make almost all his wildest dreams grow flesh and walk.
Caer became aware that Alexa was still watching him with an almost hungry expression on her beautiful face. Her eyes were glittering with the same visceral excitement he was feeling. It was as if, for that one moment, they were equals.
“Well, Captain?” she asked at last. “Have you nothing to say about it?”
“You will be wealthy, Honoured One, truly wealthy – if we can reach Alfor safely.”
“If,” she agreed and smiled as if pleased that he had grasped the key issue without her having to spell it out. Then the smile was gone and Alexa was the business-like caravansi once more.
“There is still time for you to ride up the mithan before sunset, Captain. I want you to take a few of your best Zoukai and see what is there, then we can make arrangements to bring it down tomorrow.”
It was getting a little late in the day and the wise Caer said he should protest and insist that they leave it for the next day. It was not sensible to take a dangerous path up the side of a mithan on tired ponies and risk having to make the descent in the dark. But the wild impetuous Caer, the Caer that had turned his back on the security of the craftsman’s life his father had planned out for him for the adventure of being Zoukai, the Caer who had defied all Zoukai convention to grasp the chance to be a captain years before he was supposed to – that Caer told him challenging the order would only make him seem a coward.
“Your will, Honoured One.”
Alexa’s hand lifted in dismissal and Caer pressed his forehead to the rug at the foot of her couch. Then he got to his feet in a single movement and was at the entrance of the pavilion before Alexa’s voice stopped him.
“Captain.”
He held the flap of heavy cloth and looked back towards her.
“Captain, if we can get this treasure trove to the Alfor Fair, I promise you that we shall all be rich – you and your Zoukai too.”
“Your will, Caravansi,” Caer responded automatically. It was only as he walked away from the pavilion, it occurred to him to wonder if she spoke from concern in case of an attack on the caravan or fear of his own betrayal – fear that he and the other Zoukai would steal her precious gift from the sky.
He mounted his pony and rubbed its ugly head between the ears. It was true, the thought of so much wealth could certainly turn your mind. But then it could also be that he and the Caravansi were making fine cakes from nothing more than mud and sand. Caer had seen the size of the explosion and he was very aware he might find little on the plateau beyond a few useless scraps of overheated metal and a large crater. He turned his mount and went in search of the men he wanted.

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

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

November sunshine’s more of steel than gold
Pellucid light that drips through cloud
And slides as subtle gleams
Transmuting green below and blue above to grey
Enwrapping all in chastest shades
Drawing more of shadow into each day
And close about the naked trees
Discarded twigs and leaves
Acorns, chestnuts, all next seasons seeds
And smoke that lingers in the clinging mist.

E.M. Swift-Hook

It was a beautiful May morning, but my life was currently being rendered hideous by my five-year-old twins throwing simultaneous epic tantrums. I wasn’t even sure what the screaming was about. I had been feeding the dogs when Ali started to whine, and I turned around just in time to see Roz slap her sister quite hard. Then they both began to scream. The dogs looked at me with deeply reproachful eyes, so I put their food out on the back patio. They went in evident relief, which only left me with two red-faced and hysterical children to deal with. I looked at them for a moment then came to a decision.
I filled a large jug with icy cold water. I was just lifting it out of the sink, when a masculine hand came over my shoulder.
“Allow me.”
My beloved, and normally wholly even-tempered, husband walked quietly over to where two of the loves of his life were screaming like demented banshees. He poured the water over their blonde heads. Miraculously the screaming stopped. Ben waited a beat then spoke very quietly.
“People who behave as badly as that the moment their Daddy’s back is turned should be very grateful he isn’t a spanking sort of a man.”
Then he turned on his heel and left.
The twins sat as if turned to stone and I let the enormity of what had just happened sink in.
It was Ali who found her voice first.
“Is Daddy very cross?” she breathed.
“Sounds like it to me,” I said briskly. “Now is somebody going to tell me what all that was about?”
But of course they couldn’t. It had come over them and they could no more explain than they could fly. They just shook their heads and looked at me with round eyes. Roz even went so far as to stick her thumb in her mouth, even thought she hadn’t sucked it for months. I tried to keep my own expression sober as I looked at their woebegone faces, but I wasn’t proof against the pleading in those big eyes. I held out my arms and scooped the two wet little girls into a hug.
“We’re sorry Mummy.”
“Never mind sweethearts. Let’s get you dry and calm.”
Half an hour later, we were at the breakfast table and the twins were eating porridge. The dogs were in their baskets and peace and quiet reigned. Ben walked back into the room on soft feet and two spoons stopped moving in two bowls. He crouched down between them.
“You two all better now?”
They nodded and he put an arm around each.
“You still cross, Daddy?” Roz quavered.
Ben smiled and kissed each rosy cheek.
“No I’m not cross. Don’t worry my loves. I know you didn’t mean to be naughty.”
Ali clutched his tee shirt in one small hand.
“We didn’t. We wasn’t meaning to be bad, but once we started we couldn’t stop.”
“I don’t expect you could. But there’s a lesson for you both. Don’t be silly. Because it is very hard to stop once you start.”
The twins studied his face carefully and he winked at them. They hurled themselves on his chest and he stood up with one little girl on each arm.
“Have you said sorry to Mummy.”
“We have.”
“Then let’s forget all about it. You two finish your breakfasts.”
He put them back in their chairs and they picked up their spoons. At a quirk of his eyebrows I got up and walked into his embrace. As I leaned in he bent and whispered in my ear.
“Fancy a day off? We can keep the brats out of school and take them for a good walk in the forest.”
“Yeah. I was going to suggest keeping them home anyway. There’s something not right about them. Even before the screaming fit I was concerned. They are unusually clingy, and when I went to wake them this morning Roz was in Ali’s bed.”
“I thought it was just me being fussy Daddy.” He watched the two blonde heads with a worried frown.
I looked out of the open door and across the garden to the flat that was occupied by our chef and good friend, Neil, his wife Stella and their two daughters Ellen and Sian. If I ever needed Stella’s input on parenting it was now.  As I opened my mouth to say who knew what my phone demanded my attention by screaming ‘bugger me boy’ in the voice of a parrot. The twins cracked up, covering their laughing mouths with their hands. I could feel the tension oozing out of them so I forbore to comment on my latest ring tone, merely picking up the call. It was Stella.
“Joss,” she said without preamble, “there’s something going on at school you need to deal with. Sian has been obviously worried, if tight-lipped, for a few days. I thought she had been naughty at school but it ain’t the case. I just wormed the problem out of her. You know that your girls have a new teacher, but what I’m sure you don’t know is that she has taken them in dislike. Sian says she punishes them all the time. Now, it seems, they aren’t even allowed to sit together in the dining room. Sian says it’s a crock of shit, and I reckon she is right enough so that I haven’t even said anything about her language.”
“Thanks Star. Tell Sian not to worry. Me and Benny are on the case. The twins can have a few days off while we get it sorted.”
“Good thinking. I’m keeping Sian home today, too, she’s right out of sorts.”
She ended the call and I looked at the phone with some dislike.
“Girls, can you eat your breakfasts quietly while I have a little chat with Daddy?”
“We’ve finished our porridge, Mummy, and isn’t it time for the school bus?”
I found myself floundering, but Ben rescued me smoothly. “You could go on the bus, or you could have a sneaky day off with Mummy and me.”
The twins beamed at him. “Shall we go and take our uniforms off while Mummy talks to you?”
“You do that. Jeans and sweatshirts for a walk in the forest.”
They shot off and Ben looked at me sombrely.
“What is the big worry? You are as pale as a ghost.”
I told him, and then watched as he found and dealt with the white hot rage he felt at the thought his daughters were being victimised.
“What do we do, Joss? What the hell do we do?”
“First we need to find out more about what has been going on. Then we take steps. If it means home schooling Roz and Ali for a year then that’s what we’ll do. First job, though, is a chat with Sian. Can you manage that without letting her see the berserker flare?”
“Have to don’t I?”
“It would be best if you could, because you are much closer to her than am I.”
“Okay. But walk first. Let’s let everyone settle. Meaning me primarily.”

From Who Pulled Her Out?  by Jane Jago 

Just a thought…

Once upon a time, people told stories – and then they wrote them down. Sometimes they made up new stories and wrote those down too. People enjoyed the stories and would look forward to the next one.

Then some people began to wonder what made stories what they were, so those people took the stories to pieces and looked for patterns. They then declared that the patterns they found were what stories had to have.

Now people started thinking that every story had to have the patterns that had been found and they began to mutilate everything they wrote so it would fit those patterns.

Fortunately, a few people carried on writing stories as they always had – not caring about the patterns just telling a thundering good story whether it fitted any of the patterns or not…

Moral of the story: You can’t learn to write by studying literary criticism – you learn to write by reading fabulous books.

I don’t feel myself qualified to comment on Thanksgiving. It’s a noble sentiment – eat until you almost explode to give thanks for staying alive for another year – and one I applaud.

Is it like British Bank Holidays? Slightly outmoded by the number of days people get off work now? Or does it retain real meaning?

I don’t pretend to know. And neither can I pretend to like pumpkin pie.

In the spirit of friendship, I’ll see your Thanksgiving and raise you British Boxing Day, wherein one lays about groaning and recovering from the Xmas excess.

Happy Thanksgiving and may your turkey be succulent….

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

An extract from  How To Start Writing A Book brought to you courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Here we go again.

Yes, it’s me Jacintha Farquhar. I had hoped that I’d not have to come up with another one of these. I was kicking back with a Pernod and Pimms spritzer enjoying the blazing sun in the back garden and admiring the abs on my new next-door neighbour as he was up a ladder fixing something on his roof, topless. But then the peace was broken by a call from that pompous prat I have the misfortune to have to claim as my son. He is back to being his obnoxious self as if nothing had happened to dent his massive ego.
The good news is I am spared his presence for another week, as he has decided to take a short ‘cultural cruise’ of some other Greek islands with someone called Stavros. The bad news is that it means I have to get out my iPad and come up with something vaguely intelligent to say to you lot.
I hope you bloody appreciate it!

Life Lessons for Writers – Three: People

And by ‘people’ I also mean aliens if you write that science fiction stuff Moons is so fond of. They are people too. And so are those elves and dwarves – and vampires. In fact, any character you ever write, even a talking computer, is going to be people. So you might as well listen up as too many of you wannabes don’t have the first idea about any kind of people except those who are exactly like you.
Oh yes, you might write about some poor orphaned starveling who is abused by the world, but does she think and act like someone who’s been through that kind of experience? Or just your weak and idealised imagination of what it might be like? I mean, how many genuinely damaged people do you count in your close circle? If the answer is ‘Well, Olivia’s parents divorced and she had to give up her horse riding lessons which left her traumatised for life’ or something similar, then you need to rethink writing that starveling. You. Have. No. Idea. And if you don’t, then no amount of effing imagination is going to fill in the gaps.
And, no I’m not saying you can only write about your own level of privileged life, I’m saying get out there and meet the kind of people you want to write about. Go to that dive bar, visit that job centre, help out at that homeless shelter, and find out what the people you want to write into your stories are really like. And the same the other way around. You want to know how the better off think, go along to the local posh golf club and listen in on their banter, hear what they really talk about. A useful tip here is go volunteer to visit an old people’s homes – chat with them. You’ll get the full monty on life across the spectrum, I promise you.
Don’t be like my naive and self-righteous prig of a son who firmly believes that he understands all people because he is one.
Oh, if you can’t bring yourself to actually go to those places and interact with real people, then you can at least read about them. That’s what the more precious twonks amongst those who call themselves writers (yes Moons, I’m looking at you) that I know seem to do. Most are too bloody afraid of real people to go out and actually talk to them.

Right. I’m done. If my sodding son is not back by next week I’ll be posting cocktail recipes with naked pictures of me drinking them. You have been warned.

Now bugger off!

Jacintha Farquar, unfortunate mother of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IVLife Lessons for Writers – Two

“You know why we have come here, Captain,” she said. It was a statement and not a question.
Caer shrugged lightly.
Of course he knew.
He knew exactly why the caravan had left the relative security of the road that morning on Alexa’s orders and made its way overland to the foot of this particular mithan. But in his mind was a Zoukai saying which had been drummed into him from the first day he had shaved his head and joined the brotherhood. It explained that the caravansi was the brain, the caravan the torso and the Zoukai the limbs, there to do the will of the brain. As a hand did not question the mind that moved it, so a Zoukai should not question the orders of his caravansi.
“It is your will, Honoured One,” he replied carefully. “It is what you commanded.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed.
“And that is truly all you think about it? I pay you to protect my caravan and you don’t even question why I would order it to leave the safety of the road in the heart of the Wastelands?” The woman sounded disbelieving. “Have I wasted my money and employed a fool?”
Caer felt himself flush and bit back hard on the humiliation and anger. The anger was at himself for not being able to say the right thing in the presence of his caravansi. He took refuge in simple honesty.
“I heard the thunder in the skies and saw the explosion on the mithan plateau last night, just before dawn,” he said. “So yes, I know why you ordered me to bring the caravan here, Honoured One.”
“And what did you believe it was Captain?” she asked. “Did you believe that the gods battled in the Wastelands? Or perhaps that it was an evil omen of doom?”
Her sarcastic tone pricked at his pride. He had heard – and silenced – the same stories last night from the ignorant fools in the caravan.
“I did not believe anything, I knew.” Realising that his tone was much too abrupt, he corrected himself quickly. “It was a space vessel, Honoured One. It landed on the plateau and then exploded.”
Alexa smiled suddenly, leaning forward to reveal more of her silken skin as she did so, her violet eyes burning with an intense excitement.
“Yes. And just think what that means, Captain,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Weapons, power-cells – who knows what kind of a valuable cargo in the hold. But even if all it carried was destroyed by the explosion, surely there will be some of the rare metal we can salvage from its hulk.” She paused as if to let the possibilities form in both their minds, then said, simply: “I shall be rich.”
Rich was the truth of it.

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

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

When it’s still the dread November
Summer gone and winter embers
When the cold makes you remember
That there’s worse to come. December
Lift your face and watch the moon
Only seven months till June

Jane Jago