“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.

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

If you’re old then I say this to you
You should think about all that you do
You simply can’t get
With a man you’ve just met
On a pack pony to Timbuctoo!

E.M. Swift-Hook

In In a Quarter of a Second and the Glowing Rings by Anita Kirk, a group of teenagers who already had a time-travelling adventure to save people in the future, find themselves travelling through time again. They need to find a key that may or may not save the world, using many magical items such as a 3D map to help them find their way, rainbow buttons that may help them, jars with useful items inside, silver petals to transport them, pen wigs that help keep them safe, oil ball coins full of useful fluid, they also travel inside of a bubble under the water to a secret place, and they use reflectorglass eyes goggles to turn into who they like, there is also love in the air, they enter through crisp bags, and much more to save the world from the Windowirs.
Will the world be saved twice, and how will they manage to tackle all of the obstacles and major problems that are stopping them from achieving their goals?

The bowlers got more claps and wows than the opposition team.

The bowlers looked at Alf, uneasy whispering to each other, what a waste of time the game was to just win a pen each.

All the items that they had drawn on the paper started to come alive out of the paper appearing in front of them.

The bowlers stepped back like they were frightened , with their jaws dropping at what they were seeing, talking about how shocked they were, among themselves, how could this happen.

Alf asked both teams to enter inside their drawing, to pick an item or a piece out of their drawing for Alf and the audience to decide which team should win.

A Bite of… Anita Kirk                            

Do you see writing as an escape from the sorrows of existence, an exercise in futility, or an excuse to tell lies and get paid for it? Or is there another option…

I enjoy writing because it is my passion away from the real world.                                             

Have you ever written somebody you know into a book? A lover? A friend? An enemy?

I wrote my book thinking about my mum, she has written two children’s books and she inspired me to have a go at writing, and I found out that I love it, and up to know I have not written anybody that I know in my books.

If you could meet one person (alive or dead) who would you choose? And what would you talk about? And what do you bring d a gift?                                                        

I would love to speak with my grandparents again and ask them about what they went through in the war and write about their experiences, but it is too late because they are in heaven.

Anita Kirk lives in the United Kingdom. She loves line dancing, swimming, writing, television programs, films, gardening, holidays, socialising, walking and reading. Her other books up to now are Christmas Sparkles and Sexy Shenanigans. She has got many more books to come that will be available soon.
Anita works full time and enjoys writing in her spare time. She loves reading any new reviews showing that people are enjoying reading her books, it gives me so much pleasure. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.        

The biggers were arguing about caravans. It was four to one for a hugely expensive silver bullet.
In the end Big gave in.
“Okay, okay. Have your style statement. But it means I have to change the car for something with enough bollocks to tow it.”
Mother was sceptical. “Are you sure?”
He put a hairy forefinger on a line of print in the brochure.
“Yep. Says so there.”
The gnomes listened avidly. Was Big actually going to win a point?
Mother sighed. “Okay. But no Range Rover.”
“As if I would.”
Brenda winced. “He’s up to summat. You’ll see…”

©️jj 2021

Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

Milla had given up trying to understand all the Visitors said and focused on what really mattered.
“Yes, but String…”
“Is a healer.”
String nodded enthusiastically. “I’m a canting chanter. Mostly HoTs, some wards. Can wear chain and use two-handers.” He reached to his back and drew a huge double handed sword from nowhere. It pulsed with runes and had a blue flame that danced up and down the full length of the weapon from the skull-shaped pommel. “Yep. See it and weep Pew. I gave this toon a legendary blade.”
“I thought they were an OP pet class?”
String grinned and made a gesture into the air. A black boar with steel tipped tusks and wearing some kind of harness, armoured with plates of obsidian and onyx, popped into existence beside him, then stood there snarling at no one in particular. “Yup. Total OP class.” String’s expression was close to ecstatic “Tank pet. Two-handed melee. Uber-heals. What’s not to love?”
“Do we have to take him?” Milla asked, wondering if it were possible for a ryeshor to puff his chest out quite so far and still breathe.
“Much as I hate to say so, we could really do with heals and a tank pet would be useful too. Trying to root and nuke a boss could be tricky, they tend to be immune, and can’t really kite mobs in enclosed spaces.”
Milla still wavered. Yes, she was new to venturing and these Visitors had much more experience that she had, but the thought of having to put up with the two of them talking gibberish was almost more than she could bear. Then she thought of Ruffkin. If he was hurt he might need healing.
“Alright. You can come then.” She gave String her two-eyed One Eye glare. “But no more spitting.”
“Deal!” String executed a sharp salute and his spikey crest shot up vertically. “Canter Chanter Stringvestheals at your service fair Lady Milla.”
Pew rolled his eyes and turned to stomp off towards the unguarded gate. Milla extended her stride to catch up.
“Is he your friend?” she asked.
“Not really.” Pew sighed. “Well sort of. We’ve been guildies since vanilla.”
“Vanilla?” It was one of Milla’s favourite flavours.
“Yeah. Before the devs had their first massive egostorm and fragged it all up.”
His tone made Milla wonder what kind of cataclysm that had been.
“Was that a long time ago?”
Pew snorted as they went through the gate. “You could say that. Anyway, after that he stalked me. Mention any MMORPG and we’ve probably been there.”
“What’s an Ememoharpeegee?”
Pew stopped by the imposing door to the pyramid, tracing the serpentine decoration on it with the end of his staff. In the centre of the design was an odd shaped keyhole. Pew frowned, clearly distracted by that as he answered her.
“They are like this. Only different. Different worlds. Different magic systems, combat systems. Different lore.”
Milla’s thoughts went back to what One Eye had said about Visitors coming from a different universe. Perhaps he had been right.
“You’ll need this,” String said helpfully, holding up a large golden key. “Body drop from the gate guard.”
Pew’s arm holding his staff froze in place and he turned his head to stare at String.
“You soloed the gate guards?”
String puffed his chest again and preened “What can I say? OP class.”
Milla took the key from his outstretched hand and examined it. “This is the same as the inlays on the polearms they left those by the gate. You removed it from one of those.”
String looked completely unembarrassed. “Did I say I got it any other way? Not my fault if Pew leaps to the wrong conclusion.”

We will return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue: A GameLit Anthology.

Sonnets on sunsets, and quatrains delightful
Odes to beloveds and limericks frightful
Poetic thinking that dances and sings
These are a few of my favourite things

Perfectly pitched prose and vocabulary
Fiendish acrostics to trap the unwary
Tender love stories whose heroines cling
These are a few of my favourite things

When the plot stinks and the words ming
When the Internet’s down
I simply remember my favourite things
And then I forget to frown…

©jj 2021

A sign hung down, still half attached to the top of the pay-booth, its broken back clapping against the heavy door set in the side of the small brick cabin. The words were barely visible:

…COME TO ….HELL…

Somewhere an owl shrieked and, despite herself, Jess drew a sharp breath. She took a step towards the broken, flapping sign and played the torch beam over it from end to end:

WELCOME TO SHELLEY’S FUNPARK

The owl screeched again and Jess smiled. You had to love it when the atmospherics played up to the occasion. It would only take a sea mist rolling in to turn this place into something out of an old-school Hammer Horror production. The really chilling thing was not any kind of supernatural danger here, it was the realisation that this was indeed an abandoned and empty place, with no one around who might have a phone she could use to call the roadside recovery and this place was a very long walk from anywhere. Only a year ago that would have meant very little. She might even have enjoyed the bracing breeze and the countryside at night. But not now. Now she would not make it more than a mile before she was crippled with pain.
The laughter carried on the night air, coming from behind the low roofed building immediately in front of her. At a guess it had once been some kind of cafe, but now it was heavily boarded up, metal shutters pulled over the windows, like a creature retreated into its shell.
Shelley’s Funpark? Why did that sound so familiar? Jess would have given it some more thought but the laughter came again, masculine, plural and loud. It was not from someone with any thought of trying to avoid attention. Still gripping the magnalight, its beam dimmed, Jessica made her way past the cafe-building and into the open area beyond.
The shadowy figures moving vaguely on the far side, close by the enclosing wall, sprang suddenly into stark relief and were revealed, as as an orange glow flared behind them. Jess froze, hearing drunken cheers as the fire took hold and watched as, like the ritual of some strange coven of witches, the group of youths all started throwing things into the flames.
She sensed this was indeed a ritual, though not one of any religious kind. Things were passing hand to hand, bottles of water and white cider. It was a scene she had witnessed a few too many times in her career. In her previous career, she mentally corrected and felt the small inner lurch of loss that always left in its wake.
Then someone moved right behind her and a pair of hands gripped her shoulders.
“Hey bros, look what I just found.”
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 
No. It doesn’t. 
It really doesn’t.
Not when it breaks you inside.
That was all Jess could think, standing, paralysed by her past. There was not even a conscious sense of fear, though she could feel her heart rate slam up and the floor drop away. It was as if her conscious mind had shot out of her body and hung suspended, mid-air, above it. There was nothing she could do. It was going to happen again.
The yelp seemed to come from a great distance away not from right behind, but the moment the grip was gone from her shoulders, it was as if she were restored. Restored to a body in panic. She would have run blindly, but there was a gentle touch on her arm and a girl’s face, looking at her. They ran together.
Jess had no idea where they were going, past half demolished buildings, and broken metal structures that reared like scaffold dinosaurs, against the moon-lit sky. The ‘bros’ were either more worried about what had happened to their companion or already too out of it to be able to give chase, because after a few shouts and some sounds of running feet, the night closed behind the two of them into quiet.
They went past the barrier with an old height restriction sign on it and cartoon-like pictures of stick men standing up in cars on a roller coaster, or leaning out, circled in red with a bar through the image.Then they were clambering over a heap of twisted metal beyond. It was not a hard scramble the way her guide was going, or a long one, which was as well because the shooting pains had started up in her legs as they reached what looked a bit like a metal box, buried in the middle of the debris. 
The girl touched her hand again, then opened the door making some kind of sounds, as if reassuring an animal. Then a small glow of light came from inside and Jess went in. 
She was not really sure what she had expected. But not this. It was almost obsessively neat and very clean. For a moment, Jess was thinking of paisley furniture and over-polished wooden floors, then chastised herself for assuming that the homeless could not also be house proud. For that was clearly what this was, a homeless person’s private shelter. There was a counter top along two sides and a closed fire on the third wall opposite a comfortable bed. It was more of a sleeping platform really, covered in an odd variety of multicoloured fleece picnic blankets. Two very large cats were curled in the middle and watched her with wary feline eyes.
Jess took it in then looked at her rescuer. The girl looked to be in her mid-teens, a runaway maybe. That realisation pushed Jess out of her bubble of self-concern and she mustered a smile.
“Thank you, I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there,” she said. The girl said nothing, just glancing briefly to the cats and then back to Jess. So she tried again:
“My name is Jessica Monday, what’s yours?”
The girl kept looking at her, but the silence went on.

From ‘Maybe’ by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

There’s magic in the water,
Just look you’ll see it’s there
It glistens like a sapphire
and gleams with a blue flare.

There’s magic in the water
As the stars begin to shine
Sprinkling stardust shimmers
Upon the ocean’s brine.

There’s magic in the water
You ought to come and see
As transformation ‘neath the moon
Casts magic on the sea.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Sensationalised ‘documentaries’

‘Taking the lid off’ stuff we mostly couldn’t give a toss about anyway.

Every couple of months a dubious news item spawns a shitload of opinion/bullshit/dodgy recollection/psychic predictions/WHY branded as fact. And an absolute avalanche of supposedly revealing documentaries.

Don’t know what I’m batting on about?
Consider this….
The butler telling all.
Some woman who made a wedding dress pontificating on the bride’s state of mind.
A ‘love rat’ exposing the goings on in failing marriage.
Some body language expert deducing from a photograph that X is unfaithful to his wife.

I think you may be getting my drift by now.

This stuff is formulaic in the extreme. Choose a celebrity – or better still a family with some notoriety – and forensically examine the person or persons you have selected as much to their detriment/canonisation as possible. Season the pot with copious amounts of ‘expert opinion’, statements from as many ‘friends’, ex-servants, and people who once saw them in Walmart, as possible, and, if it still feels bland, add a few carefully calculated half truths.

Market it ruthlessly and with little or no regard for the feelings/reputation/mental health of the victims, and you have a licence to print money.

And whose fault is it? The fault of every bored person who watches it, every airhead who quotes it, and everyone who comments on social media. Me? I can’t see why the ever-f*g heck anybody dignifies this sort of bottom wax by watching it or talking about it.
Bloody well stop it.
And that includes me.

So I shall hie me to a strip club and feast my eyes on swinging buttocks – which are far less offensive than shite telly…

It doesn’t matter what you think – this is Granny’s opinion and it’s not up for discussion!

After the biggers had gone indoors Numpty Nome crept out onto the grass and pulled a small pile of papers into his favourite hidey hole. He smoothed them tenderly and smiled at the pretty pictures.
Brenda laid a huge but gentle hand on his head.
“What you got, Numpt?”
“Pretties, Mrs Brenda.”
She bent her head and found herself looking at pictures of caravans in all sorts of fantastical situations.
“Oh, caravans.”
“With horses?” That was Wee Willie.
“Nay lad. This sort needs bloody great Chelsea Tractors to pull them.”
“Wassa Chelsea Tractor?”
Brenda laughed. “You’ll see one soon enough.”

©️jj 2021