It had got dark and by the time Dai had picked up Bryn it was well past time for the evening meal.
“Don’t worry, Bard, we’ll grab some chips and garum when we’ve done this,” Bryn said cheerfully. “So this woman is a real patrician and she was married to one of the sleaziest of sleazebag bad-boy Romans you could ever come across? You have to wonder how that could happen. I thought them families had all kinds of laws that said unless the entire gens agreed, three augurs all peed purple piss on the kalends and the lares farted ‘Salve Oh Divine Augustus’ in harmony, the marriage wasn’t valid?”
Dai grinned. After the day he had just been through it was good to have Bryn’s caustic humour.
“Something like that,” he agreed. “But maybe our friend Rufus just bribed, conned or blackmailed them all.”
“Poor bloody bitch, if so. Would mean she’d been sold off to a wrong ‘un, a real bad boy.”
This apartment block was almost the twin of the one Dai had visited with Julia earlier that day. The same placid exterior, the same mosaic floors with the same designs. It was like having a bad repeating dream. Except this time there was no corpse to welcome them at the door.  Instead, there was a slightly sleepy looking, extremely beautiful girl. She had light brown hair piled up in a very fashionable style, and the most exquisite blue eyes which were set off by the lapis jewellery she was wearing. Dai regretted that so far they could only see her face on the screen by the door.
“Vigiles?” She barely glanced at the ID Dai offered and did not even ask their names. Dai had the feeling this was something of a routine event in her life. “What’s Roo-Roo done now?”
“Can we come in please, domina?” Dai asked politely. “This is something we need to talk about in person.”
“Well, you could,” she said smiling and then put a ripe strawberry in her mouth and licked the juice off her fingers.
“Uh, thank you,” Dai said, a little uncertain when the door remained closed. The face on the small screen smiled at him.
“You could,” she repeated, “but Roo-Roo would kill me if I had any men in the house when he was away.” She looked very serious.
“This is a very important matter concerning Roo-Roo – concerning your husband, domina. Please let me in, or if you insist I can send for a female vigiles to speak with you?”
Her expression changed and she screwed up her nose as if the very idea disgusted her. It seemed an extreme reaction.
“I’d better hope Roo-Roo doesn’t come home whilst you are here then.”
The apartment was less opulent on the inside than it appeared from outside. There was fine furniture and a couple of pieces of wall art, but it all had a worn look about it. Only the small niche where the lares sat gleamed with what looked to be several gold items, and one penate holding a cornucopia with jewels pouring from it. Dai wondered if he had interrupted her private devotions; as there was a small offering bowl visible and the slight smell of incense.
Octavia must have seen the direction of his gaze, because she walked quickly over to the niche and closed the doors, pulling the beautifully embroidered hanging over them. Then she turned to face the men, standing with her hands clasped behind her, almost looking defiant, as if engaging in the worship of her own household gods in her own house was something less than acceptable.
“I know you’ll think it all silly superstition,” she said, lowering her gaze demurely, “but I find it very comforting.”
Dai felt Bryn stir behind him and give a soft cough of embarrassment.
“Not at all, domina,” Dai told her, wondering how such a naive innocent could have wound up with a cunnus like Urbanus Hostilius Rufus. “Perhaps you would sit down and we can talk, there is something we need to tell you about your husband.”
She smiled and moved to one of the couches, arranging her stola with an easy grace and reclining on it completely, cradling her head on one arm as she looked at them with sky blue eyes.
“He’s in trouble again?”
“I am afraid it is a bit more serious than that. Do you have any friends or family near by? Anyone you could ask to stay with you for a few days?”
Octavia’s eyes glanced involuntarily at one of the inner doors and then looked back to Dai. She had coloured very slightly.
Deo Damnatus, Dai thought and exchanged a brief look with Bryn, she has a lover in the bedroom.
“He’s been arrested?” she sounded surprised.
“No,” Dai said, his tone flat. “I’m afraid he’s been murdered.”
Her mouth opened and she uttered a low cry came which picked up in pitch and intensity until it was a full-blown scream.
Dai found himself beside her, unsure whether he should slap her or hold her. She made the decision for him, sitting up and pulling him close, her hands gripping into his tunic as she almost stifled his face in her bosom.
“My Roo-Roo! My poor Roo-Roo!” she wailed.
With some difficulty, Dai disentangled himself and managed to hand her off to Bryn, who was not at all averse to having a beautiful young woman pressing herself against him as she sobbed.
“I’ll find you some tissues,” Dai said vaguely and moved to the door that Octavia had glanced at before. He was about to open it when she squealed.
“No! Not in there.”
Trusting Bryn to keep her from getting in the way, Dai opened the door to what he fully expected to be a lavish bedroom and a naked young man. Instead it was an undecorated room, with a simple double bed and cardboard boxes stacked up with clothes visible neatly folded in them. On the bed sat an elegantly dressed woman, who got to her feet as soon as she saw Dai. Her designer stola was draped in soft folds of silk about her. It took him a moment to place her, to think where he had seen her before. Then he realised he hadn’t, but he had seen pictures of her and the odd moment on TV when the news was covering some swish event. She had been on the arm of Tribune Decimus Lucius Didero.
Instinctively he bowed his head.
“Domina.”

From Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook 

How can you ask where the years have fled
Have you not felt their wings
Touching like feathers the hair on your head
Have you not heard the music they sing
Do you not remember each sorrow and joy
The textures of pleasure and pain
The leap of the heart when a girl loves a boy
The feeling of winter and rain
Right now you stand in your old person’s skin
A tortoise too far from its shell
Whose mind rattles round like a pea in a tin
And whose voice is as cracked as a bell
I wonder my friend if you ever did find
One hour when you truly did feel
As if you were strong, not the servant of time
That you may have stepped off of the wheel
But no, you were busy, you never looked out
At springtime and wanted to run
You never grasped pain to defiantly shout
Nor stole just a moment for fun
I look at you, old person, alone and bemused
And I’m sad that you wasted your years
That you never had time to be cross, or amused
Or for hope, or for laughter or fears
I will tell you right now where the years have fled
Though you’ll hate me for what I must say
You forgot about life, and the clock in your head
And you just let your time slip away

©️jj 2022

Take a peek into The Lizard Lords of Jupiter the latest masterpiece from the pen of the self-proclaimed queen of exotic sci-fi, Venus N. Uranus.

It seemed that they were only just in time as the doors opened fully. The round-faced woman entered and bowed all but double.
“The Mushir Szzrt.”
Cyrus bowed and Clea curtseyed.
Kerenza kept her eyes on the floor.
“Look at me,” the voice was oddly sibilant, but commanding.
She lifted her eyes and had her first sight of a lizard soldier. Her mouth went dry with fear. He was about seven feet tall with blue scaly skin and a thick muscular neck supporting a narrow reptilian head. He was dressed from neck to ankles in black silk bound with gold, and twin sword hilts were visible over the massive width of his shoulders. The eyes that regarded her with cold antipathy were so light as to be almost white, with vertical pupils and nictating membranes that constantly moved across their surface. He stared at her in silence and she felt a blush rise from her neck to her forehead. After what seemed a very long time the mushir turned his attention to Cyrus.
“Have the high lord’s instructions been obeyed?”
“To the letter, Mushir.”
“And what are your observations, flesh trader?”
“She is a ripe little thing. It would be an honour and a pleasure to break that one to harness.”
“Ssskrrt,” the lizard made a strange noise in his throat. “Indeed.” The sibilant voice was dry. “Is it intact?”
“Yes lord.”
“Display it. I am ordered to ascertain its condition.”
Cyrus snapped his fingers…

A Bite Of… Venus N. Uranus 

We had three questions only to learn a little more of this enigmatic lady.

Question one: How much of yourself is in the heroines of your so-loved books?

Very little. But had you asked how much of my villains lives in my own breast the answer might have been more illuminating.

Question two: What is your favourite indulgence?

Ah. Champagne, I guess. Or possibly silken underwear.

Question three: Chips or doughnuts?

Neither child. One has an aversion to calorific snacks. The figure is above all importances.

At which point we had to retreat to the door as she began throwing shoes at us – shoes with sharpened six-inch stiletto heels…

Other works by Venus:

Animal Passions on the Ark
As the Ark flees a dying earth Captain Twerk and his crew are sucked into a dark sensual vortex from which only the prayers of a thousand virgins can rescue them. As far as we know they are still there… 

Boinking for Freedom
Captain Tumescent Schlong and his Martian sidekick Wan Ka Dribblefloop save the universe with nothing more than KY Jelly and a swivelling hip action

Candles for Callisto 
Two nuns and a redundant space cowboy carry the Candles of Callisto from their hiding place on earth to the Venusian temple where their ignition begins a multiverse-wide orgy that lasts a thousand years

Dominant Destroyer 
Captain Selfie the Daandehoopian Dom and his faithful retainer Whippin’ Winnie beat the universe into submission with the aid of a bullwhip and a large silicone appliance

Katie the Qlingon Kleptomaniac 
Aboard the prison cruiser Thrust, the only way Katie can avoid the attentions of Big Brenda and her blue banana is if she can become the prey of Captain Rutt Bigthong and his dog Sniffa

Marianna and the Testicles of Mars
How a silicone-enhanced glamour model saved the known universe using only the power of her ‘mind’ and a secondhand toothbrush

Neptune’s Nymphos
When the good ship Sphincta lands on Neptune, the male crew members quickly find themselves sold as sex slaves. Heaven? Or Hell? You decide…

Pulling Poseidon 
The starship Donkey Parts is pulled into the orbit of a dark planet. Only the pulchritudinous Petunia Petals and her Venusian nose flute can save the day

Saturnalia on Saturn
Space explorer Thea Throbscuttle may have bitten off more than she can chew when she crash lands her flitter in the middle of a very rowdy midsummer party. Only the satyr Longtongue can save her, but what can she offer him to secure his aid?

The Virgins of Venus
Deep underground in the Caverns of Hi’Men live a thousand young women who have never seen a male in their lives. When the tunnelling machine breaks through the wall of their prison even the prodigious Throb Loverage is forced to flee for his life

Venus is a retired pole dancer and rectal explorer who now earns a living by writing, and knitting decorative merkins for ladies who are bored of their Brazilian. You won’t find her on social media because she is too busy penning her next exotic sci-fi bestseller or participating in the SETI program…

((WTB Ed. Note – We think the underling who put this piece together might have made a repeated typo in their use of  ‘exotic’))

It was getting towards spring and the gnomes watched with mild interest as the biggers came out of the brick place and started their annual frantic scrabble in the soil.
“Why’d they do that stuff?” Camille was watching a female bigger on her hands and knees in a puddle poking what looked like flower bulbs into holes is the cold sodden earth.
“Do what?”
“Kill flowers. I mean, surely they know Mother is still cold and dormant. And that female is planting them bulbs downside up.”
Bertha looked over her spectacles. “It’s a bigger Camille, they truly don’t know nothing.”

Jane Jago

Because life happens…

It isn’t as if we can tell
When life isn’t going to go well
So being prepared
Means you need not be scared
Cos you’ll still find your heaven in hell

E.M. Swift-Hook

…for a moment the silence was blissful. Then the screaming started…
Writing team Leo and Mike Johnson have their day disturbed when a body turns up near their house.

The policewoman turned her attention to Mike and Leo.
‘Look. You don’t have to let the girls stay here. We can take them to the station. We just weren’t about to let them go with that lot.’ Leo looked down into Mike’s face. She shrugged and grinned.
‘You all can stay here if you want. Do you got stuff in the minibus?’
‘We have.’ The younger, and less chunky, WPC sprinted, returning with a grinning Constable and a dozen rucksacks.
‘That woman don’t half swear for a vicar.’ The oldest girl spoke up quite sadly. ‘She isn’t a proper vicar. They just give themselves titles so they seem legit.’
‘Bastards’ the Constable effaced himself.
Mike looked at the dozen wan faces. ‘It is’ she said brightly ‘a good job we have plenty of rooms. How would a proper hot shower and a rest in a decent bed grab you lot? But you’ll have to do three to bed.’
The girls nodded eagerly and Ro took them upstairs. She returned to the kitchen some twenty minutes later.
‘All showered and tucked up. I’m off to see Mum now. You want I should come back in later?’
‘If you can.’
She nodded and gave a half salute before ambling out of the back door.
‘She’s a big girl’ the chunky WPC grinned. ‘At first I thought she was a fatty like me. But she ain’t. She’s just solid muscle.’
‘She is’ Mike grinned. ‘My dad used to call her the bull terrier.’ Then she got up and left the room.
‘Oops. Something I said?’
‘No. It’s talking about her Dad. He has dementia. For the last twelve months he hasn’t really known who he is, or who she is, or much of anything much. But physically he’s as strong as a horse. Could go on years.’
‘Shit’ the younger policewoman said with some feeling. ‘My Gran’s got Alzheimers, but we were never close. I’m guessing Mrs Johnson and her father were.’
‘Oh yeah. To the extent that I sometimes felt excluded. But don’t you be telling Mike that little gem.’
He followed his wife, but wasn’t long. He came back with a rueful grin. ‘I’ve been told off for abandoning you. Rude it was. So. Having disposed the kids to rest, what do you two want to do?’
‘I suspect Chrissie has her kindle in the car. And I’d just like to sit in your garden in the shade.’
It was getting on for four hours later when the first set of flustered parents arrived. Leo showed them to his study, where a large, calm policeman waited to talk to them, and rooted out their daughter. They were behind closed doors for almost an hour, and before they left both parents sought out Leo and Mike to thank them for their kindness. Mike smiled her weary smile and Leo spread bonhomie. After that, parents arrived in very quick succession, and there was even a bit of a queue to see the police.

When the last parental car had pulled out of the drive and the police had also gone, Mike leaned on Leo.
‘So. What the fuck do we make of that?’
‘Honestly? There’s a lot not to like. On a lot of levels.’
‘Isn’t there just. Only upside is the teenagers gave me a whole Bogg and Scrat column. One we can use whenever.’
He hugged her briefly. ‘You OK now?’
‘Yeah. I think all the sound and fury helped.’
He peered down into her face. ‘You look better. Was yesterday particularly bad?’
‘Was. He was on a crying jag.’
‘And I didn’t even ask. I am a selfish bastard.
‘You are. But I knew that when I married you.’ Then she grinned. ‘Maybe you wanna cook me a steak in reparation? There’s a couple pieces of fillet in the fridge.’

From Shall we gather at the river? a hard hitting murder mystery thriller by Jane Jago which is available for 0.99.

… or ‘How To Speak Typo’ by Jane Jago

ahde (noun) – marsupial with a very short memory

blubbly (noun) – the colour of belly button fluff

borwn (verb) – to drone on endlessly about one’s prostate, or the bowls club, or any of the other preoccupations of men of a certain age

cahmring (noun) – cock ring for mechanical beloved

desret (noun) – what’s left on the sweet trolley by the time it gets to your table 

dulcking (noun) – monarch with little personal charm 

fukle (verb) – to play folk music on a home-constructed instrument 

grmmra (noun) – ancient language akin to Ogham with very strict linguistic rules

liek (noun) – floppy vegetable, used a lot in BDSM

mayrt (noun) – type of country dance heavily reliant on pink sweaty farmers wearing big boots and very little else

muthaflic (exclamation) – word from bowdlerised swearing thesaurus beloved of yummy mummies

nomral (adjective) – small, pink and plasticy 

omifok (exclamation) – see muthaflic

practive (adverb) of motion crabwise but very fast

qwen (noun) – specialist stick with beer tops nailed to it, used only in the performance of the infamous stick and sharpened clogs dance

syutable (noun) – surface on which fortune teller lays out tarot cards

talkign (verb) – moving mouth but making meaningless noises

tochis (noun) – stuff found between unwashed toes

uncommen (noun/adjective combo) – uncouth males

vrgni (noun) – goat of indeterminate years and such evil temper that no human has ever been able to get close enough to even attempt a guess at gender

winnim (group noun) – the ladies of the WI after ‘bring in your homemade hooch’ night

znorin’ – (verb) what the winnim are likely to be doing well into the morning after BYHMH night 

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

A second of shocked quiet followed the destruction of Big Bigger’s greenhouse. Then the biggers ran from the house with wide eyes and open mouths, and three chastened nomes crawled out of the burning wreckage.
By the time they reached cover, Brenda was waiting for them.
She had discarded her knobkerrie, but her fists were sufficiently solid to hand out a painful and lasting lesson.
“When I said nobody makes no po-cheen, I meant you three eejits too. Capiche?”
“Yes ma’am,” the terrible trio chorused.
It is a matter of record that Oisin never played his fiddly-diddly again.

©jj 2022

What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted…

The other four people in the briefing room could have had ‘Specialist Data Nerd’ stamped on their faces and it would not have made that fact any more obvious than it already was. These were the elite of the Coalition Security Force – masters of the virtual universe – no doubt self-labelling as crime-fighting heroes to a man and woman. But then they knew they were the most effective fighters of crime in the service, with clear-up rates that made the rest of the CSF look like slouches and shirkers. Armed with their forensic accounting suites, specialist link-predictive policing packages, and anti-hacking inoculation protocols, they could identify, isolate and neutralise almost any link-based fraudster or financial criminal. Usually, they had their perpetrator fingered within moments of the crime, sometimes even before the crime was committed, but if not they could always fearlessly hunt the evildoers down in the information jungles of the Coalition link networks, then analyse them into submission.
Very. Scary. People.
Not.
In his experience, they were never happy when asked to dirty their hands to provide reports on the sort of research their more reality-oriented colleagues might require: things about the messy side of life with real blood, real violence, real emotions. It was only when someone very senior was holding a briefing these people were ever in evidence. Had Jecks not been running this, there would have been a single junior techie, remote linking poor quality information packages someone had knocked together on their lunch break. But with the head of the CSF involved, every department manager had made it a point to turn up in person just to be seen.
Even so, they were all looking put upon and focused more on their own screens than on what was happening in the room, glancing up now and then as if worried they might have missed the start of the briefing, then ploughing their attention back into their virtual worlds. Clearly, as far as they were concerned, there were much better uses for their valuable time. And they were probably right. No doubt they should be off tagging some new virus or breaching a criminal firewall in the depths of the underlink networks. But, instead, because this was Jecks’ personal show, they were having to be here in the flesh, parading themselves so they could give whatever briefing this was some skeleton of fact. Presumably, Jecks himself was bringing the flesh to hang on it, but if so the only people here to be briefed so far were himself and…
He looked at the woman sitting beside him again, a mix of dread and certainty spawning in his guts. He closed his eyes for a moment, consciously banishing the notion as far from his thoughts as he could send it, then opened them again to find it had not gone away, any more than she had. He had been wrong about such things before. He would have to hope he was wrong this time too.
She must have felt his eyes on her because she looked up accusingly, just as though he had invaded her personal space.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
He deadpanned.
“Halkom Dugsdall.”
“You a ‘Hal’ or a ‘Kom’?”
“I have no investment in either. Co-workers can call me what they like.”
She frowned at that.
“And your friends call you?”
His friends called him Grim — had done since he was in education, something to do with his natural facial expression, even his sisters called him that nowadays. It was so ingrained that it was how he self-identified, much more so than with his birth name. But, as he was not liking the idea of adding this woman to his link list, he said: “Maybe one day you’ll find out.”
She didn’t seem fazed by his response, just looked as if she had filed something in an internal folder somewhere for future reference.
“Cista Tyran.”
She said it like he should know the name. He didn’t, so he just nodded and said nothing. She looked away after a few moments and was back in her screens again.
Grim was beginning to feel like he was the only person sitting there with no virtual place to go.
Even Jecks was linked out to something. He kept frowning at the door and then scowling back into his screens with impatience — waiting for someone else to arrive and becoming increasingly irritated by the delay. But that wasn’t so surprising. Grim doubted anyone ever kept Jecks waiting. Even the fleshpots at the peaks of politico-corporate power in Central must get a chill down the spine when they had any dealings with him. After all, this was the man who could dethrone any of them. Everyone had some dirty laundry, and Jecks was the man who could find it and throw it into the public washer.

From Iconoclast: Mistrust and Treason a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Because life happens…

Growing older is not such a curse
The alternative’s certainly worse
So do all you might
To take some delight
Afore you get to ride in a hearse

E.M. Swift-Hook