Nanny was having a quiet think (okay she was occupied in the closet) when there came a ferocious banging on the door. She adjusted her clothing and made her way to where some person was assaulting her paintwork.
“Whatever is the matter?”
Gladys the Griffin clutched an eggshell to her breast.
“He killed my baby.”
Nanny sighed.
“Who killed your baby?”
“Scoggins the Sadist.”
Nanny removed the shell from Gladys’ front claw.
“Right miss. Why do think this here egg is yourn?”
Gladys shuffled her rear feet and the lion claws dug into the lawn. Nanny winced but pressed on.
“I’m waiting Gladys.”
“It was the gore crow brung it to me and tells me Scoggins has my baby running down his chin.”
“Right Gladys, listen. You doesn’t lay eggs. You got a lion bumhole not an eagle one. And if you did, this here’s a ostrich eggshell.”
Which might even have worked had not the vicar his own self appeared at the corner with egg decorating his chin.
Gladys lunged and he barely got off the ground in time.
He was much too fat to fly well and Nanny idly wondered what would happen when Gladys caught him, but she was too busy tending the scrapes in her lawn to really care.

©janejago

A monster glimpsed at the edge of a TV screen; a pandemic causing an outbreak of mutual incomprehension; planets being destroyed by peacekeeping missions; a sentient space craft. Ranging from portraits of a relationship in a time of space travel to tales of vengeful aliens, from dystopian visions to poignant evocations of loss, this collection of short stories and poems takes the reader on a journey to other times and distant lands.
Other Times, Distant Lands by Lee Garratt is collection of scifi short stories and poems, published by Dimensionfold in 2020.

Bitter Weeds 

Zarg looked at the moon above and spat. Generations beyond count, he and his people had lived on this planet and their hatred of it had only grown more fierce, more strong with each passing year. Lived here. Hah that was a joke. Survived here barely. Hid in caves away from the burning sun. Buried themselves deep into the earth to escape the freezing cold of the nights. Scrabbled at the red soil for miserable amounts of water which, no matter how much they filtered, still tasted like old metal. Ranged for miles and miles to hunt and kill the elusive garbs, beasts that ran without exhaustion, fought and kicked like devils when finally cornered, and tasted like hell itself when roasted.
Their numbers were few now. Fewer even, it was said, than when they initially arrived all those years ago, survivors of a brutal inter stellar war that saw their people exterminated and their planet destroyed. Somehow these few escaped and, their rockets, finally failing on them, landed on this planet. Their joy at being able to breathe this thin air soon turning to despair when repeated expeditions failed to find anything else other than the awful terrain they had landed on. No forests, no glades, no marshes. Nothing. Just endless scrubland and rocks stretching away to infinity. Some brackish saline lakes. A near dead sea. Thorn bushes, snakes, a few reptiles and the bastard garbs.
No, it wasn’t a nice planet. And their numbers had slowly dwindled despite their best efforts. Their advanced medicine had dealt with infection and injury but could do little about their terrible diet. The sun, so close, burned fierce and raw, caused cancers to bloom and spread (the only things that ever grew on this planet went the joke) and, it was thought, had affected their fertility. The cold too killed many every year. Those youngsters out exploring just too long. The old, those past 40, unable to keep it out no matter how many furs they wore. Not to mention the garbs too of course who exacted their annual toll of the too slow or foolhardy (their advanced weaponry having failed many hundreds of years ago they had long since mostly reverted to the spear and the chase).
Their culture too had suffered. For years beyond count, their brightest and best had strived in this alien landscape to retain memories of their home planet, its achievements and its glories. The magnificent prose sagas of Zing’s epic journey across the landscapes; Turg’s incredible landscapes on an almost one to one scale (the picture of a mountain the size of a mountain, imagine!); Jing’s music of the spheres so sublime, so affecting, that it transported the listener so fully and completely to other times and places (so witnesses had stated) that audience members had to be physically shaken to get their attention, even if there was a fire in the building, so deep was its hypnotic hold.
All this though, was but mere memory now. Each new generation, not being able to see any great paintings, hear any soaring chords, slowly started to turn away from these scraps of story from home, sullen, as if from a lie. Turn away and gaze out of their dismal caves, out to boulders and scrub, the ferocious glare that cast everything in such hideous clarity.

A Bite of… Lee Garratt 

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…

Hmm good question. I’d say for the most part it is an ‘exercise in futillity’. Let’s face it, when a reader is faced with a choice of reading ‘Dune’, ‘The Martian Chronicles’ or my latest opus, I am facing an uphill task. That said, as every writer knows having something out there, in print, is probably the closest I will ever come to a (very meagre) form of immortality. So, I’ll take it!

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

A lot of the characters in my stories are named after my son ‘Alfred’, so I often have him in mind. Other than that I suppose the answer is rather boring ‘no’. They are all just amalgams of myself and people I have met.

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

Ernest Hemingway. I’d like to meet him in a bar in Spain, get drunk with him. If he was in a generous patient mood, I’d like to get out my copy of his collected works and go through it very painstakingly, story by story. This could probably take months so i think he will have hit me long before i have finished. I think i would bring him some interesting craft beers and a book from his future that he hadn’t read. How about – ‘The rum diaries’ by Hunter S Thompson. I think he’d like that. Or something by Cormac Mccarthy. I think he would be interested in him. 

Lee has been a kibbutznik, a Metropolitan police officer, has taken people up the Mekong River and hiking in the Polish mountains and is currently a middle-aged teacher living in the English midlands. Brought up on a diet of Tolkien, Hemingway and Le Guin, he writes a variety of poetry and prose. Lee Garratt’s work can be found in a wide variety of publications: these include ‘Starline’, the official journal for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and ‘Mancunian Ways’, a recent anthology of Manchester based poems released last year by Fly on the Wall Press. He has had two collections of his short stories and poetry published by Dimensionfold Publishing: New Worlds and ‘Other Lands, Distant Times and, most recently, a fantasy YA novella, Remains. You can find out more about him from his publishers page and follow him on Twitter.

“You should prosecute,” her friends advised.

But it was not so easy as all that.

How could you prove that the man you had been dating for the last three years had raped you?

They had gone out to dinner and then back to his place for coffee, as always. But she had been tired and needed to be up for work early so had said she would just like to sleep.

But he had not listened.

He had insisted. 

Even when she said ‘no’ again and again, and struggled.

But how could she prove that.

How could she prosecute?

E.M. Swift-Hook

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

Milla found herself feeling like a fish in a rockpool after the tide had pulled back. One single sentence overheard staying with her, trapping her mind.
“One Eye, what’s an expac?”
“Ah.” He stopped arranging the fish on his stall and scratched at his head between the ridges of his crest. “An Expansion. The last one was before your time, so you’d not be knowing. It’s a lot of change. When the whole world shifts and nothing is ever quite the same after. New lands appear and new things. New people.”
Milla wrinkled her snout.
“You mean more Visitors?”
“No. I mean new people in the new lands.” He went back to sorting the fish, sliding them into place by size and colour. “Before the last Expansion I had my stall in a big city on the other side of the Silent Sea. It was my home. The only place I remembered. Then after the Expansion I found myself here and realised this was the place I’d come from. Wrathburnt Sands and the lands beyond are home to the ryeshor. So I belong here. So do you.”
His words reminded her of the really strange thing she had heard said.
“One Visitor said that when the world expands the ryeshor will become a playable race. What did they mean? Will the Visitors start to hunt us like they hunt the sandylions?”
For a moment she thought One Eye wasn’t going to answer her. He seemed to be avoiding her gaze with his good eye. Then he straightened up and sighed.
“I don’t know for sure. But before the last Expansion, the Visitors said the same of the kitta and wolfen folk.”
That didn’t sound too worrying. Milla had never heard of the Visitor’s hunting them. Indeed some Visitors were kitta and wolfen folk.
“Sooo…?”
“So, before the last Expansion, when I lived in that city, no Visitors were ever kittafolk or wolfenfolk. After the Expansion…”
Milla thought some more.
“So after this Expansion we might become Visitors? We might travel the world and do ventures?” She found it hard to keep the excitement out of her voice.
“Maybe.” But One Eye didn’t sound too convinced.
There was one more thing Milla had to ask.
“Is it very frightening when it happens?”
“What?”
“The Expansion. You said it changes things. Is it frightening?”
That made One Eye grin.
“Not in the least, young’un. You’ll sleep right through it. I promise.”

In that as in most things she ever asked him, One Eye Rye proved right.
Milla woke up one morning to find her little hut on the foreshore was now a very comfortable house. She was very glad One Eye had told her about the Expansion and how it changed the world in odd ways or she might have been frightened to find her home so different. But it was as if the force behind the Expansion knew exactly how she would like her house to be and had made it so.
There was a cozy hearth for the cooler evenings and to cook, a sleeping platform with a window that had a view over the sea where she and Ruffkin could settle comfortably on a mattress stuffed with dried seaweed.
“This is amazing!” she said, looking around for the little hound. He had gone to sleep curled beside her so she was surprised he was not right there when she woke up. Scrambling down the ladder-stairs she found there were new cushions and chests, a table and chairs and a cupboard full of food. But no sign of Ruffkin.
Sometimes he would get up and take a walk on his own, have a scamper along the beach and wait for her to join him. So she snatched her collecting bag and hurried out side.
Whoa! Things had really changed.
The village had grown and now looked a bit more like a small town. The houses were built of the same creamy stone her new home was made of, with dried palm leaves trimmed to make the roofs. The tavern had a big sign outside, and behind it, where the rubble of the ancient ruins had been, there was now a towering pyramid, twice the height of the highest house and with the sun glinting off the golden eye on its capstone.
Milla stood there in surprise, her mouth open and her frill-spines spread, for the length of several breaths. It was simply beautiful. But then she remembered and made herself turn away and head for the steps that led down to the beach.
The dock had grown and now more and bigger ships could harbour there. The land around the dock had a shambles of small lean-tos and pokey alleyways that looked oddly inviting, but also held a sense of danger that made her shiver. Even in the bright sunlight, they looked preternaturally dark.

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.

Puppy dog, puppy dog
Where have you been?
I’ve been in the garden
To keep the house clean.

Puppy dog, puppy dog,
What did you there?
I pooped under the rose bush
Then peed up the chair

Puppy dog, puppy dog
Why did you do that?
I couldn’t quite make it
When chasing the cat.

Puppy dog, puppy dog
That is so bad!
I know I’ve been naughty
But please don’t be mad.

Puppy dog, puppy dog,
You know it’s forbidden
I know and I’m sorry,
So am I forgiven?

Puppy dog, puppy dog
Oh what can I do?
Just cuddle and love me
And I’ll love you too.

E.M. Swift-Hook

The ride to the convent of Shal was not a long one but Hepsie set herself to use the time to restore her man from his bad mood and she was sure she had the ways and means.
“It is strange to think of Raya getting religion,” she said, trying hard to make it sound innocent.
“Oh aye. It is that.”
There was that sudden distant look and the ghost of a smile.
“You and she were…”
He looked at her sidelong, as if to say he knew what she was about. But if he did he played along just the same.
“Was a long time ago – and no – and in case you forgot, I chose you, love.”
That was not the way of it at all. Hepsy could remember clear as day how it had been.
“Pfft! T’was I did the choosing Pollogilt Whinsty, and don’t you forget it. I could have gone off with Galythin, he asked me to, but I said no and I chose you.”
“Really? I couldn’t see you living in a treehouse. All those ladders and steps? You’d never make it”
It was an old topic between them as familiar and comfortable as their chairs by the hearth and carried them along through the afternoon. By the time they reached their destination Poll was no longer under the cloud that seeing the state of Stref had pulled him into.
The convent itself was a fortified manor, not quite a castle but more than just a dwelling. Although it had been a long time since the last army of hobs had reached so far, Hepsy could see that the nuns still kept the watch beacon ready on the corner tower and the walls had been well maintained. Even now she could see a priestess in her workaday robes sitting in a sling seat lowered from a gantry on the tower, repairing the stone. Hepsy was not surprised. Those who had lived through that last attack would never have forgotten, nor would they allow others to forget.
Two young novices greeted them and asked their business. They had never heard of an avowed named Raya, but then they all took new names with their final vows, so perhaps the Registrar who kept the records could help. But, no man was allowed into the convent so the gentleman would need to wait in the guest room.
“Looks like it’s your turn, love. I’m sure you’ll be safe enough with these nuns,” Poll said, dropping a kiss on her cheek as one of the novices let their ponies away.
“Oh I’ll be just fine,” she assured him. “It’s you I’m worried about. No flirting and no asking them poor women endless questions about what they believe and why they believe it. I know what you’re like.”
He chuckled and gently pushed her towards the doors. “Go find Raya, I’ll be good.”
The novice rang the bell on the doors and they were only let in once the gatekeeper had looked through a small sliding spyhole to be sure who was seeking admittance. Then Hepsie followed the novice acoss a quadrangle, along a corridor, around a cloister and was about to head up a small set of stairs when a familiar voice stopped her.
“Hepsie Bellmaine?”
There she was, large as life and looking as elegant as ever. Her face was lined and her hair the same silver as the blade of Poll’s sword, but her eyes were vivid amethyst and her hands as she took Hepsies into them, were warm and gripped firmly.
“Linis. What in the name of…” Hepsie remembered where she was at the last moment and changed her words. “I mean, what are you doing here? Stref said…”
“Stref, as you well know, always said a lot of things. I’m here for the same reason you are, I suppose. To see Raya before… well, before.”
Hepsie felt a small frost claw close around her heart.
“I didn’t know,” she said quickly. “We came, Poll and me came, ‘cos there’s a dragon back on High Top.”
Linis had always been the clever one and Hepsie could have counted out less than the fingers of one hand before she spoke.
“I see. I’ll come. But Raya…”
Raya sat in a high backed chair in her cell, a codex open with it’s illuminated writing glowing in the thin sunlight that fought through the grilled window. She looked as frail as thistledown and as substantial as the mist in the mountains. Her voice though, as the two of them were shown in, was level and determined.
“I knew you would be coming today. Well, I knew someone would. I’ve been dreaming omens and I cast a Foresee.”
That was typical Raya. No moment of greeting, no warmth of welcome. Straight to the point, like a hammer hitting a nail.
“Your message said you had very little time, I took that to mean you wanted me to come and see you. Not sure you needed that Foresee spell.” Linis could be pretty blunt too when she chose. But for all the reaction she got she might not have spoken.
“You will all need to be careful. Last time it was the action of evil that summoned the dragon, this time it is a misplaced good.”
“A misplaced…?” Linis snorted. “What are you on about Raya, you’re sounding like some old oracle. All enigma and obfuscation. If you know something about what’s going on, just tell us. You know how frustrated you got with the Hag in the Hollow when she spoke like that.”
Raya gave a small sigh and tapped one finger on the margin of the page she had been reading.
“It isn’t quite as simple as you seem to think. Things sometimes work out quite other than the way we intended in life. I intended to marry and raise a family. That died with Col. Then I came to this place to escape my past and renounce my magic – and yet here I am giving you advice drawn from magic – and a gift.” She held out her empty hands, one to each of them.
Hepsie knew she must look as puzzled as Linis. “A gift?”
“I need to be with you, but I’m not going to make the journey all that way, I’m too weak. When you need me, join hands and call me. Now, take my hands.”
Without really thinking and still confused by the words that made little sense she gripped one of Raya’s hands.
“No. You mustn’t.” Linis looked horrified and pulled her hand away but Raya snatched at it with surprising speed.
Then, before Hepsie’s very gaze, Raya began to glow, the golden light a halo around her. To Hepsie’s horror the glow seemed to spread over her own hand and it felt like a thousand tiny spiders crawled over her skin. A moment later the glow was gone and so was Raya. Her hands slipped back to her lap, her head against the chair and her eyes open and vacant.
Hepsie recalled nothing of how she left the room and was shown out of the convent. Her next awareness was of being in Poll’s embrace, his face looking down at her with a worried frown.
“You alright now, love?”
Hepsie wondered if she was, but nodded anyhow.
“It was just Raya…”
“I know, love. Linis told me.” His voice caught and she could tell it was an effort for him to go on. He really had cared about Raya. But then they all had. “You seemed a bit out of it. I was worried.”
They were waiting in the stableyard, Linis had already claimed her mount, a fine looking chestnut mare. When the hill ponies were led out they looked small and shabby by comparison. She did not protest as Poll helped her on her pony, though normally she’d have batted him away for fussing.

From a fantasy tale by E.M. Swift-Hook

I hate
Autocorrect
Want to
Grab it by the neck
Want to
Stamp upon its toes
Beat it
On its pointy nose
Smack it
Up aside its ear
Autocorrect
Is a bad idea

©️jj 2021

Why (some) authors get right on my tits

We all like to read. I’m up for cracking a book or slapping a finger on the kindle at almost any time of almost any day.
I mean. What could be finer than a thundering good book, a glass of something fortifying and a bag of fudge/chocolate/butterscotch/cubed cheese/or whatever you fancy?
Having established my credentials as a reader of some appetite, you may wonder why I have such a serious dislike of ‘authors’…
It’s not all authors by any means and I’m not having a pop at people who are genuinely trying to use fame to benefit mankind.
No. It’s the bloody attention seekers I have in the crosshairs.
This particular form of swamp life seems to fall into more than one camp.

Camp One
The novelist with a thirst for personal notoriety to go with the book fame. I have a few words of advice for those eejits. The fact that you have written a work of fiction does NOT make you an expert on real life. The world may have quite enjoyed your novel(s) but that doesn’t mean it needs to see your face, and hear your bloody half-baked opinions, all over everywhere.
Please do not:
Post pictures of your ‘celebrity lifestyle’ on Instagram
Pontificate on politics/philosophy/gender identification/immigration/vaccination/child rearing/W.H.Y.
Do the rounds of the low-budget chat shows bigging up your sad back story
Accept the fact that nobody cares, go back to your writing cave and attempt to be entertaining in the only way you can.

Camp Two
The lifestyle gherkin (sorry guru)
The world does not need: another crackpot diet, any more ways to self medicate, an even weirder exercise regimen, a cookbook for the sweepings from the granary floor, hints for the prolongation of sex (mostly we’d like it over so we can get back to the book), a candle that smells like any part of anybody’s anatomy… Need I say more!
We, ordinary women who have real life to contend with, are mostly just offended by some flighty bit who probably has people to do the orgasms for her….

Camp Three
The fey merchants of Celtic Twilight are sometimes amusing, but mostly make one want to throw baked beans at the telly.
If you think the characters you write talk to you, tell you their stories, or refuse to do what you say. Well. That’s your take on life. But it’s kinda squirmy when you say it out loud….

Camp Four
The writers of ‘literary (unsuccessful) fiction’ who spend their lives being snotty about anyone who writes anything that sells.
This shower, and the telly pundits with bad hair who encourage them, need a swift reality check.
Or a kick up the ass…

In a nutshell.
Authors need to write and make their points with the pen – because TBH most of them are shite at communicating like a normal human beings.

I am now so distressed that I need a pint of Drambuie, a pound of whole nut chocolate, and a good book

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

A big wedding was important to Laura. Ever since she had been a flower-girl for her cousin Amelia’s wedding when she was five, she had been obsessed with the idea. She filled pages with plans and designs for dresses, cakes, flower arrangements.

So it was probably nor surprising when she grew up she decided she wanted to be a wedding planner.

Tim was a gardener for one of the big estates where she had a job. It was love at first sight. 

They married in a drive-through in Los Angeles and Laura thought it the best wedding in the world.

E.M. Swift-Hook

True mating is for life: and beyond

The golden queen dragon stretched her talons and moved sensuously against the green scales of the male who had just pleasured her.
“In certain cultures I would eat you now,” she murmured.
He winced and blew a small gout of flame out of his left nostril. She laughed.
“Trick flaming?”
“No. A nervous tic. It’s the thought of being eaten.”
“Oh you are safe enough. It would be a waste to eat you.”
“A waste?”
“Yes. You are far too pleasurable to kill. But leave me now before I get hungry.”
The male scuttled away leaving the queen somnolent and amused.
She slept, and in her sleep she dreamed.
She was making her first mating flight and the dragon who caught her was an entity she had never encountered outside her dreams, his scales were as golden as her own and his eyes as green as the emeralds in the master dragon’s sword hilt. He was magnificent, and her soul yearned towards him. Even as they mated high in the sky, with the lack of oxygen making their eyesight grow dim, she knew this was about more than fertilising eggs, this dragon was the other side of herself but her fear was that she might never meet him in this life.
As always, she awoke with tears running down her aristocratic snout and she sniffed indelicately.
A quiet tap in the door of her chamber brought her back to herself.
“Who knocks?”
“N’a’mma and mine new friend.”
“Come in my darling,” the golden queen’s love for her only female child was evident in the cadences of her voice.
The door opened to admit the still childlike dragonet who was dragging another hatchling along in her wake.
“Mamma, this is S’a’rthyr and he is my friend.”
The queen made welcoming noises whilst studying the young male.
His scales were a peculiar yellowish colour, but this was balanced by a strong symmetrical body and iridescent green-gold wings. He looked up at her, and she was immediately pulled into the sorrowful depths of his grass green eyes. Those eyes had already seen too much of bullying and belittlement, the queen thought, and the hurt that lurked in their limpid greenness made her want to clasp him to her breast and croon a soothing song.
“See,” N’a’mma crowed. “Mamma don’t think you are wrong because your scales is yellow.”
S’a’rthyr bowed his head.
N’a’mma opened her mouth to say somewhat else, but her mother shushed her gently.
“Quietly now, you must let S’a’rthyr speak for himself.”
The young male found his voice.
“I am of the clan of Queen A’u’nti. Sent with the young males for breeding. Sent as a servant. Because of my colour. The Lady N’a’mma seeks me out, but I will understand if you deem me not suitable as a friend for a young queen.”
“Not unsuitable at all, my son. Not at all.”
She nodded to N’a’mma who raised a chubby claw.
“N’a’mma gives her oath to S’a’rthyr. Friends while there is still blood in my body.”
For a moment the youngling was too stunned to move, but he gathered himself together and placed his own taloned extremity against N’a’mma’s upraised claw.
“S’a’rthyr gives his oath to N’a’mma. Friends while there is still blood in my body.”
The queen placed her huge front paw atop both of theirs.
“Oaths witnessed.’
For a moment, the air itself seemed to be still then a single silver note chimed.
The queen smiled at the two hatchlings who stood before her.
“You need to sleep off your emotions,” she said kindly.
N’a’mma led her oathsworn friend to a sleeping platform at the back of the room and they curled around each other before dropping into a deep slumber.
Their mother watched with a single tear running down her snout. She had recognised S’a’rthyr as soon as she looked into his eyes. Her dream lover. Now sworn to her daughter. Why was life never easy?
But she straightened her spine and swiped that tear away with an impatient claw. Her dream of a true mating of mind and heart and soul wasn’t to be for her.
But for her darling N’a’mma there was hope…

A short story from The Dragonheart Stories: Fairytales for Grownups by Jane Jago. You can listen to this on YouTube.