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

If one more person tells me to ‘fly away home’, I won’t be responsible for the consequences.

I’d like nothing better than to fly home, except that home went up into the belly of some human’s leaf sucker so I’m rootless.

Which would be okay if it wasn’t for halfwitted folk quoting meaningless doggerel at me.

My house is not on fire, and I’m a childless spinster. 

I’m currently shacking up with a renegade hornet and I’m seriously considering having him sting something. Anyway it’s nearly cold time, and we plan to sleep together.

Come spring we might even awake…

©Jane Jago

Imagine waking up one day unable to recall who you are or where you came from – only to find you are serving a sentence as a convict conscript for crimes you have no memory of ever committing…

“I will make it a priority to produce my formal recommendation as soon as possible,” he said, keeping his tone brisk but conciliatory. “I appreciate how important it is to your department, Var Tyran, to have a speedy resolution one way or the other, but I will not be able to give you the recommendation you seek. This man is a very high risk individual – even within my Legion he is regarded as being dangerous. You heard the Sergeant and I can assure you he will be speaking from a depth of experience of this soldier no neurocologist ever could possess. I will need more than the usual amount of convincing to let this one loose.”
The woman shrugged on a light jacket as she came back towards him.
“I quite understand Commodore, true integrity is a rare and valuable trait in an officer serving the Coalition. Rare enough so I did not expect to find it here. My mistake, judging the Special’s high command by their troops’ reputation.”
Vane’s goodwill evaporated a little.
“I think, Var Tyran, you should be more careful about making such assumptions. There is no corruption in the military. But perhaps your colleagues in the security forces have more flexible moralities.”
“Well, of course we do, Commodore, we have to – it’s part of the job description.” She smiled, her teeth pressing slightly into the softness of her lower lip. “But then morality is something that is not clear cut in this particular case.”
“There is so much that is ‘not clear cut’ about this case,” Vane said, giving voice to the doubts that had gnawed at him from the moment the interview began. “How can we even be sure the man has truly lost all his memories? He speaks as if highly educated and shows no remorse for his deeds. Sergeant Hynas offered a very good analysis, I feel.”
Var Tyran held out her hand to him, with its beautifully manicured nails. For a moment Vane thought she was attempting some kind of farewell gesture. Then he realised she wanted to show him the device linked on the inside of her wrist.
“Yes, your Sergeant was right in one thing Commodore, that man has been wired to the Lattice for over five years. He can’t have a thought or emotion without us being able to tell something of the nature of it. I can promise you he did not lie once in your presence, I would have known if he had.” The woman took a tiny step closer as she spoke and looked up, directly into his eyes as if willing him to understand the importance of what she said. Her own eyes were arresting – many shifting, subtle, shades of blue. “Apart from kinaesthetic skills, the language centres were the only memory related areas unaffected by the trauma. Believe me, my people wish it was not so. He could have given us so very much. When we first brought Revid in we took him to pieces neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. So we know there is nothing there. We also know there is no evidence of any brain damage. It is as if something just wiped entire swathes of his memory clean – like resetting a data store.”
“I’m not sure how something like that could happen,” Vane said, frowning.
“You are not alone, Commodore. We still don’t know what caused it, only how little it left behind.”
“So what do we know?” he asked. The woman looked away, consulting a screen perhaps or just thinking, it was hard to be certain. She gave a sigh, her breasts lifting as she did so.
“Alright. What we know. Revid has a marked curiosity about what life is like outside the Special Legion. He accepts he is responsible for the crimes he committed but is confused around it. It is not real to him that he once had a wife and daughter, that he killed them or that he went around blowing up innocent people. His only experience of life has been in the Legion, and his only taste of something approaching a normal human relationship is through one friendship which he values above all else. Apart from that, he sees the Coalition as being the only thing that matters. When he speaks of wishing to serve, I can promise you he is not using a platitude.” She looked up into Vane’s eyes again and he could read her sincerity. “That is the man you saw standing before you – and that man is many things, but he is not the ruthless murderer we used to see in the news reports. In his own experience he has never been that ruthless murderer.”
Vane took a few moments to think. He would like to be able to find some common ground, some way he could bring this through that worked for them both. But he struggled hard to see how.

From Trust A Few – book one in Haruspex, the second Fortune’s Fools trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook – which is only 0.99 to buy for a limited period.

Finally, the breakthrough she had dreamed of – sometimes literally.
Two decades Geraldine had worked, yet the last piece of the equation never came into focus.
It happened late at night. She’d been going over the figures one more time and suddenly some stood out as if highlighted. A frantic hour later, she was done.
She was about to phone the team when she looked again at the projected outcome.
A cold horror slipped through her veins.
Dawn broke as Geraldine scrabbled desperately to cover up what she had found so no one else in the team would ever discover it.

E.M. Swift-Hook

A Rose by Any Other Name is newly released contemporary romance from Alana Lorens

Up-and-coming mommyblogger and single mom Marisol Herrera Slade returns to her old hometown in western Pennsylvania for her 20th high school reunion in 2005, reluctant and yet compelled to see her high school sweetheart, Russell Asher, who dumped her for the homecoming queen.
Russell’s marriage to the golden girl, however, ended in a nasty divorce, and he has been systematically excluded from his sons’ lives. In his Internet wanderings, he’s found feminist blogger named Jerrika Jones, who glorifies single motherhood, essentially putting a stamp of approval on what’s happened to him. His group of single dad advocates have vowed to take this woman down.
What Russell doesn’t know, when he thinks to rekindle what he had with Marisol, is that Marisol and Jerrika are one and the same. When his group discovers the truth, will their drive for revenge derail any chance the couple have to reunite? Or will they find they have more in common than they ever expected?

Analisa took her into the cheery kitchen with its yellow gingham curtains and tablecloth. She let go, finally, to fill two tall glasses on the counter with tea from a crystal pitcher. Marisol glanced around. The appliances were all upscale, all with extras she longed for but couldn’t afford just yet. Everything in Analisa’s kitchen matched. The realization provoked a little sigh of envy.
“So tell me what you’ve been up to down in Florida. Sun and fun, right? It must be true, with that bikini body.” Analisa shared her own envious sigh, and Marisol felt somewhat better.
“Just work. And Mark. That takes all my time.” She sipped the tea, the bite of spice and sweet tang of citrus refreshing her, if not sparking her tongue to chat. Analisa, always the talkative one, hardly let Marisol get a word in, and that worked just fine. Her forte was the written word; even back home, she remained shy and soft-spoken.
What I need is a little Jerrika Jones in these face-to-face conversations.
The thought reminded her of her resolve to reveal herself this weekend as the popular blogger. Analisa was asking her where she worked. Time to try out the truth. The words tripped over her lips, though, when she attempted to speak. “I… Well, you know, bloggers. I mean… Do you use the Internet?” She flushed red. “Stupid question. Of course you use the Internet. Who doesn’t?”
Analisa stared at her blankly. “Mira, I’ll show you.” Marisol pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it on the table. “Do you have wireless?”
Analisa cracked up. “Wait, wait, wait. Little Marisol Herrera, who sewed her own finger on the machine in Mrs. Martin’s home ec’ class? The girl who couldn’t figure out which end of a plug to put in the wall? You’re a computer whiz?”
Marisol rolled her eyes. “Please, querida. Just hook me up, and I’ll show you.” A few minutes later, she pulled up Jerrika’s bold page. Mothering Without a Man splashed in strong white letters across a dark red banner at the top of the screen. In the corner above the sidebar, posed the cartoonish drawing of Jerrika—a tall, thin, sharply-dressed woman with features reflecting Marisol’s own ethnic heritage. A friend of hers created the toon, drawing the image chic and sassy. Definitely all Jerrika Jones. She turned the small computer screen to Analisa.
Her friend’s eyes narrowed as she scanned the page. “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about her. She was on the radio with Katy Blaine last summer. We were all listening on the floor in the nurses’ lounge. She was funny as heck, that Jerrika. Giving men in general what-for, ragging on deadbeat dads. She…”
Analisa trailed off as Marisol looked her steadily in the eye. “She… Dios mio, Mari. Are you telling me you’re…her?”

A Bite Of…  Alana Lorens

1. Do you believe in character autonomy, or are you very strict with your creations? 

As I’ve matured as a writer, I’m trusting my instincts and characters more and more. I used to be much more “we must stick to the outline!” The last several books I’ve written, I didn’t even have a plan where I wanted to go with the story. I created the characters and gave them instructions, kind of like the improvs where Drew Carey throws a situation out on Whose Line is It Anyway? Then I followed them along their adventure.

2. Who are your literary heroes? How much do you think their writing has impacted on your own efforts?

I’ve always been a genre reader as well as writer. As a teen I read gothic romance and suspense from Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels and the like. Those books taught me about how to make sure there is an interesting plot in addition to the romance, and also how NOT to make them all develop exactly the same, so your story would be predictable.
Then I found Dean Koontz and Stephen King, who instilled a deep love of exploring the unknown and unbelievable.
Science fiction and fantasy also were instructive, learning about how to catch a reader’s sympathy for an underdog who rises to success, like the characters in Anne McCaffrey’s dragon tales, and the way Tolkien separated his characters so that chapters would alternate among them, drawing out a whole well-rounded story.
I think we can learn from all of them.

 3. In the box of chocolates that is life, what flavour will nobody in your house eat?

We’ve had a lot of flavors in our life, when we had three kids on the autism spectrum—some are sensitive to sound, others are unable to control themselves, some learned to speak super early and others not until they were four or five. In the last few years, my last daughter and I have been quite hermit-like, so I’m going to extrapolate that we are avoiding the flavor of people. Ha! Even without COVID, we were already cultivating a quiet, quiet life with little disturbance. And face it, people can be bloody annoying. 😊

Alana Lorens has been a published writer for more than forty years, after working as a pizza maker, a floral designer, a journalist and a family law attorney. Currently a resident of Asheville, North Carolina, the aging hippie loves her time in the smoky blue mountains. She writes romance and suspense as Alana Lorens, and sci-fi, fantasy and paranormal mystery as Lyndi Alexander. One of her novellas, THAT GIRL’S THE ONE I LOVE, is set in the city of Asheville during the old Bele Chere festival. She lives with her daughter on the autism spectrum, who is the youngest of her seven children, and she is ruled by three crotchety old cats, and six kittens of various ages. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Bookbub and her own website.

Sometimes it felt as if the world had eaten her heart and soul, and left her as empty as a discarded tin can.

She tried to make herself believe that everything was right. Only it wasn’t. Even when she crawled into bed the void echoed until she temporarily filled it with tears.

She left the empty, house thinking only to seek some peace beneath the plane trees in the park.

But the music called her, high and sweet. A young girl singing for pennies. Standing beside the child she opened her own mouth and her song returned – in simple harmony.

©Jane Jago

A brutal fantasy tale of piracy, friendship, romance and revenge on the high seas…

It had begun before dawn when a rough-looking type tapped on the door of the only smart house in town. When the door opened a crack he spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“Word has it there’s folk in here as would pay well for news on the whereabouts of Tall Jack Stainless.”
The door opened further and he was hustled inside. Within ten minutes he was speaking to an unshaven hidalgo who wore only his nightshirt.
“Do you tell me you know where I may find Stainless?”
“I do.”
“So why have you not brought me his head?”
“Two reasons. One. I’d need a ship, and I don’t have one. I’m only a ship’s carpenter. Two. I’d like to keep me own head attached. Bad enough selling his whereabouts if anyone finds out what I’ve done.”
Don Esteban eyed him with contempt. But he still unrolled a map and weighted its corners with bags of gold. “Show me.”
“Money first. I been cheated before.”
A bag of gold having changed hands, the informant put a stained finger on the pristine parchment. “Yesterday he was here. By my reckoning he will be about here by now. And if you leaves on the tide, you should meet up with Midnight Runner about here.”
Don Esteban scoffed. “Do you think me a fool man? He could be anywhere by now.”
He made to snatch back his gold only to find himself looking down the barrel of a duelling pistol.
“One thing I never mentioned. His ship is floundering like an old bathtub. He has a broken rudder.”
“Oh. I see. How inconvenient for him.”
Even as the arrogant hidalgo started shouting orders his informant slipped away into the misty early morning never to be seen again.
The three black ships from San Sebastián were anchored out in the bay and crewed by a mixture of professional sailors and mercenary soldiers. It wasn’t a good fit this mix, and by the time Don Esteban got wind of his quarry there had been sufficient desertions to mean that there were only enough men left to properly crew two ships. The argument about whether to leave a ship behind or not raged for so long that they almost missed the tide. In the end, even the hidalgo was brought to understand that he couldn’t sail out after a notorious pirate without fully crewed ships. As the two galleons finally slipped their anchors and turned towards the open sea, Don Esteban stood at the bow of the Santa Hosefina vowing to make examples of all the deserters as soon as he had dealt with the bastard who killed his brother.
The Santa Anna followed the lead ship at a respectful distance, with its captain more than a little displeased by the unflattering things the arrogant hidalgo had called him during the argument in the harbour. He wasn’t at all happy about being called a spineless poltroon, or a cowardly moron, so he fumed inwardly and stared at the blue horizon with unseeing eyes. His thoughts only returned to the job in hand when he heard the unmistakable sound of canon fire and his ship lurched to port. A cry from between decks had him rushing to the companionway.
“Dios ayudanos, capitán. We are hit and taking on water.”
“How much water, cretino?”
“Very much.”
It was indeed ‘very much’ and even a fool, which nobody aboard was, could see that the ship was damaged beyond repair and sinking rapidly. A hail from the starboard side alerted the crew to an approaching square-rigger. For a moment they thought themselves saved, then they realised she flew the Jolly Roger, and had the mouths of a dozen canon pointing at their ship. They abandoned all hope. To their surprise the ship came alongside and held station with the stricken galleon. When nobody dared approach, a villainous looking gent in a frock coat peered shortsightedly across at them.
“We can’t hang on forever, chaps. Not when your boat is sinking fast. Just hop over here and we’ll ferry you back to San Christo. You’ll be fine as we’re being paid to see you safe.”
Whether it was the pirate’s words or the gurgle and sickening lurch from the sinking ship, but the crew of the Santa Anna suddenly found their courage and leapt aboard their saviour.
The Blood Boar dipped her oars and pulled strongly away from the sinking galleon, only just in time to avoid the vicious undertow as the once proud ship sank.
“Right chaps. I have a word of advice.” The pirate captain barely raised his voice, but every Spaniard hung on his words as if their life depended on paying attention. And by the time he finished speaking every man jack of them realised it did. It was their captain who found his voice first.
“If I have this right, señor, once you get us back to land we have two hours to persuade our colleagues on the Santa Francesca to victual up and be ready to leave on tonight’s tide.”
“That’s about the size of it. You would appear to have worn out your welcome.”
“And what happens if we cannot persuade them?”
The pirate ran a single finger across his own throat. “Zzzzzzzzittt,” he said.
“I think we can promise to be ready for the tide.”
The pirate smiled. “I knew you’d see it my way.”

Jane Jago

There will be more from Bony Mary and her crew next week…

Reposing hands
Rest on the word
Sleep at last
Like resting birds
And wisdom comes
As quiet begins
The truth of ages
Wrote on skin

©Jane Jago

Some things are built with love. ST/1/KIL was built with hate. She was built with hate, and absolute precision, by a very old man who had been, in his time, the best goddamn mechanic in the country. She was built to an exacting specification in the back lot behind a run-down truck dealership smack in the middle of Bible Belt USA. When she was finished her creator broke her down and crated the parts, sending the crates one-by-one to various accommodation addresses across England.
When the final crate left his hands, the man took a photograph out of his wallet and kissed it.
“They gonna suffer too my boy,” he mumbled.
Then he went and sat in the last remaining truck where he put the muzzle of his Colt 45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. It was six months before anybody even thought to look for him.

In the meantime, an even older man drove a vintage Volkswagen campervan the length and breadth of England collecting crated parts. It took him the best part of a year to amass them all, but he was in no hurry. Better to potter along looking aimless and harmless than to attract the notice of the authorities. If you are planning a murder, it’s a very bad idea to draw attention to yourself.
When he had collected the final piece of the jigsaw it was time to contact the assembler. A carefully nondescript message was sent to an address in Spain and when the recipient flew into London, there was a hire car and a map awaiting him. The assembler drove carefully through the green countryside, stopping punctiliously at checkpoints and presenting his travel documents for examination. He arrived at his destination crumpled and travel worn and his host fed him and showed him a comfortable bed.

The next morning the Spaniard began opening packing cases. It took him three months to open all the crates and reassemble the American’s master work. When he was done, he kissed his fingertips.
That was the last thing he did in this life, as his host slid a knife through his ribs into his heart.
“Loose ends, amigo. Loose ends…”
When he had tumbled the body into a pre-dug grave and filled it in, the killer made a very short phone call.

In the dead of the night a helicopter landed in a broad meadow a mile or so from the house. It took just seconds to upload one item of cargo and the ‘copter was gone long before anyone even realised it had landed. Once the aircraft was safely in the sky, the old man took himself back to his comfortable home where he sat beside the fire and poured himself a special drink. He raised his glass in an ironic toast.
“You are avenged my darling daughter. Wait for me at the pearly gates, I’m on my way.”
He tossed off the drink in one gulp.
The next morning when his housekeeper arrived she found him in his favourite fireside chair, with a faint smile on his face, quite dead.

In London, the precious cargo was delivered to a specialist dealer in Soho. The man examined the goods then smiled unpleasantly.
“She really is a work of art. Now we just wait for the client.”

It was actually more than half a year before the American ambassador walked into the premises. After the normal courtesies, the dealer led the way to a back room, where three androids stood. Deactivated. The ambassador smiled thinly. He pointed to one.
“Not that. Activate the other two.”
One droid was rolled out on its trolley and the trader activated the other two. One was a lush-bodied six-foot blonde with a slightly trailer trash look, the other was smaller and slighter and somehow a pale reflection of its larger sister.
The ambassador spoke to the smaller doll first.
“Name?”
“Annabelle sir.”
She cast down her eyes with proper modesty.
“Strip!” he ordered and the doll slowly disrobed. She was perfectly formed and pink skinned and the ambassador nodded just once.
“Deactivate.”
The doll stood stock still.
The American turned his eyes on the taller doll.
“Name?” he barked.
“Bella, sir.” The voice was husky, throaty, sexy, and distinctively southern, sounding for all the world as if Scarlett O’Hara had stepped down from the silver screen to tempt a man to his fate. There was no modest casting down of the eyes here. The doll looked at the burly ambassador and dropped him the ghost of a wink.
He felt himself reacting, even though he knew ‘she’ was no more than some circuitry and a great many plastic components.
“Strip,” he snapped and Bella obliged him. She drew her clothes off slowly and with every evidence of a sensuality there was no way she could actually possess. When she was naked under his gaze she pulled back her shoulders making her large breasts stand out even further from her narrow ribcage. As he watched, her nipples hardened and extended. He exhaled swiftly and opened his fly with shaking hands.
“Mouth!” he ordered harshly.
The doll moved towards him with undulating grace, before dropping to her knees in front of him and doing precisely as he ordered. He fisted his hands in her hair as he ground his crotch into her face. When he achieved his orgasm he pushed her away roughly.
Reassembling his clothing, he turned to the trader.
“Stocks. Whip,” he grated.
When Bella was fixed firmly in the wooden whipping frame, the ambassador smiled and laid the whip across her firm rounded buttocks with a will. He was grimly pleased to see the red welts form on what looked like unblemished skin. After six strokes, the dealer grasped his wrist.
“Enough, I think. You have tested the merchandise past what would have been allowed for anyone else.”
It took the red-faced American some several minutes to collect his scattered wits. When his breathing had evened out enough for him to speak collectedly he spoke in a gravelly whisper.
“Battery life?”
“Fifty years. Minimum.”
The ambassador snorted. “Yeah right. And I suppose she eats and drinks too…”
“Doesn’t eat. That will come in the next model. But she does drink. Needs liquid for lubrication. In various areas. No alcohol though.”
The red-faced man cleared his threat. “Okay. How much?”
“Five million.”
The American swallowed. “Dollars?”
“Pounds.”
For a moment the two men glared at each other, then the dealer motioned his men to cut the doll down and disassemble the whipping frame. The crew worked in silence, and the owner of the shop examined his expensively manicured fingernails. The American broke first.
“I don’t have the authority to spend that much.”
“Then you’d better get authorisation. That’s the price. Including your boss’ discount as a valued customer.”
“Okay. I hafta make some calls. How long do I have?”
“I can give you twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll be in touch.”

© jane jago