She must have been about three years old when Father bought her Bear. 

The brown furry toy became her one constant, as divorce, and Mother’s restless, games kept her rootless throughout her childhood.

When she was sixteen Mother was killed and the father she hadn’t been permitted to see reappeared in her life like a burly whirlwind. He whisked her away before her maternal grandparents could object.

She was a little afraid, but he spoke gently. 

“Do you remember Bear?”

She nodded and pulled the shabby toy out of her bag. Father opened his arms and she ran to him.

©️jj 2019

If you enjoyed Sam Nero and the Case of the Disappearing Daddy here is a chance for you to meet Sam Nero in an interview.

Excerpt from the notebooks of Anastasia Throbb, ace reporter, and presenter of the prime-time magazine show The Throbbing City.

Sam Nero didn’t want to meet with me. It took six months of poking and prodding, and outright bribery before I found a man who was both willing and able to lean on this most archetypal of private investigators and make him talk to me. In the end, a friend of a friend introduced me to a man who goes by the name of O’Halleran, who promised me an hour of Sam’s time. Rather to my surprise, it even seemed as if he was going to deliver.

He sent two huge mutes to my office and they escorted me to a back-street diner where a sullen-faced waitress stuck me in a booth and stopped chewing gum for long enough to mouth “sit”. I sat and waited, concealing my growing impatience as best as possible. I was just about to make as dignified an exit as I could when a shadow fell across the table.
“Miss Throbb, I presume.” The voice was lazily amused.
I turned and got my first look at Sam Nero in the flesh. He was about six three, maybe six four, wide at the shoulder and narrow at the hip, and his face looked as if it had been designed to meet the expectations of every pre-pubescent female in the city. It was hard, and sculpted, and sported what I could only assume was a permanent five o’clock shadow. I turned my attention to his companion, a lush-bodied bottle blonde who looked at me as if she could discern my innermost secrets. I think I hated her on sight.

They slipped into the booth opposite me, and something about the pair of them set the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. For a moment I was floundering, then I realised what had spooked me. There were two of them, but only one shadow. While my flesh was still crawling, the waitress appeared with a pot of coffee and two tall mugs. She put a mug in front of Nero and one in front of me before favouring me with a sneer and sloping off.
“Doesn’t your lady friend get coffee?”
The voice that responded was feminine and breathy and sounded to me as if it had been honed over a lot of years of practice.
“I never touch the stuff. Ruins the complexion.”
Then Nero laughed. It was a deep sound that sent little shivers running around all sorts of inappropriate parts of my anatomy.
“Be nice.”
“I was being nice, Sam. You should know that.”
She laid a red-nailed and possessive paw on his forearm and he smiled.
“Sure you were being nice, Sugar. I’d just like to keep it that way.”
“Sugar?” I think my voice went up an octave, I mean what sort of a prehistoric monster calls his woman sugar?
“It’s my name. Sugar Kane. That’s Miss Kane to you.”
Mentally cursing my luck I turned my most winsome smile on Mister Nero.
“Sam,” I said. “May I call you Sam?”
He raised a lazy eyebrow and looked me up and down for a moment before laughing that damnably sexy laugh again.
“I guess so. It’s what Ma Nero named her little boy.”
“Is it really? I mean I can find no record of a family called Nero, let alone a male child called. Samuel?”
“Nah. Just Sam. And where I was born nobody keeps records.”
“And Miss Kane. Where and when was your sidekick born?”
“That ain’t the sort of question a gentleman asks a lady. Not if he wants to keep wearing his face. You can ask if you are that stupid.”
I looked into his companion’s icy eyes and quickly framed another question.
“The first record I can find of a Sam Nero is about four decades ago when a licence to operate as a private detective was granted. Would that be you?”
“Maybe.”
“The age of the applicant is stated as being forty-two.”
“Sounds a responsible sort of age to me. What say you Sugar?”
They exchanged a look of such naked trust that for a second even I felt de trop. But I pressed on.
“But that can’t be you, Mister Nero. If it was you would be in your eighties by now. And you don’t look like an eighty-year-old man to me.”
“Neither he does.” The blonde seemed to be laughing at me, and I didn’t like the sensation one little bit.
I made my voice hard and assertive.

“In my book, Mister Nero, that makes you an impostor. I’m sure the authorities would love to look at my findings and throw you into jail for a good long time.” I leaned forward and slapped the palms of my hands on the table hard enough to sting.
Nero laughed.
“Think again, sweetheart. The authorities as you so sweetly call them know precisely who I am. Next question.”
He took a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up.
I coughed.
“I do not care for tobacco smoke,” I said icily.
Nero sneered at me.
“Door’s over there. Make sure it doesn’t hit your ass on the way out.”
I was incensed, but some vestige of intelligence stopped me leaving. This was my only chance to persuade an icon of old-school cops and robbers violence onto my show so I swallowed my bile and tried for a forgiving smile. The obnoxious Sugar shrugged her shoulders and her rather overblown assets jiggled.
“I think the lady has decided to forgive you.”
He grinned lazily, and twitched a mobile eyebrow, sending my hormone count soaring yet again. This man was hot, hot and dangerous. I needed him to boost my flagging ratings, and maybe for the odd other job or two.

I set myself to charm him, sipping my coffee and running my tongue along my lower lip. He watched with what I can only describe as detached amusement, and I felt my anger begin to rise up once more.

“What’s with you Nero?” I snapped. “You come here sneering, and looking down your nose at me…”
He leaned back and crossed his long long legs.
“Wasn’t me asked for this meet. Suck it up.”
I drew in a breath and tried for calm.
“Fair point Mister Nero. I asked to meet you.”
The blonde bombshell laughed huskily.
“I think the lady is after your body, Sam.”
“Why’d that be Sugar?”
“As if you didn’t know, big boy.”
“And as if you didn’t know old Sam’s heart is yours alone.”

It seemed to me as if they had completely forgotten my existence and I rapped my nails against the crazed china of my mug.
“I’m still here,” I grated.
“Why so you are.” Nero looked me up and down a bit more, and the silent insult in his stare had the blood rushing to my face and I blushed for possibly the first time in two decades.
“Why are you being like this? You have been chauvinistic, unpleasant and downright rude. Why? What have I ever done to you?”
He got up from his seat and looked down at me with a most peculiar expression on his face.
“It’s not always about you. I am what I am. How I was made…”
Then he was gone, and the woman went with him. Two entities with one shadow…

©️jj 2018

Read Sam Nero and the Case of the Disappearing Daddy or check out the book to see Sam Nero in action and meet the other strange and dangerous denizens of The Last City.

The pop-up stall in the market sold the most realistic garden gnomes anyone had ever seen. By lunchtime the stall had sold out and the sellers left town.

All was well until the next full moon.

When…

Gardens were full of little men carousing, and fornicating, and using vile language. Not a cat in the district was safe from missiles and abuse and woe betide any dog who had pissed on a garden ornament.

By sunrise the gnomes had gone, leaving carnage in their wake. And one abusive daub on the wall of the vicarage.

‘Fuc yu’, it read

©️jj 2019

Dear Reader Who Writes,

I will admit to having sipped on a small soupcon of eggnog over the festivities and today I was less than delighted to find Mumsie glaring at me over the breakfast table with something between pity and incredulity. “Gods Moons! How can you get to be so old and not know how to deal with a hangover?” She pushed her glass over to me. its interesting aroma of bath salts and battery-acid curling the hairs on the inside of my nasal cavities. Mummy was without mercy. “Stop pulling a face and drink it. Hair of the dog.”

The flavour was indeed not unakin to canine fur, if it had been marinaded in fecal matter and turpentine. However, maternal wisdom won through and having consumed her panacea I am now sitting sprightly in my writing cave and able to share with you the hard-won fruits of my years as a writer-in-waiting. But now, dear RWW, it is you who are the bridesmaid and I the gushing bridegroom of the Muses.

So, to business. The new year is upon us and it behoves us all to pay heed to the ancient traditions of this especial time. No, I do not mean carrying a black cat over your shoulder backwards across the threshold of your house, or hailing your neighbour with gibberish at midnight, or singing Scottish songs about those acquaintances from the past you most certainly do want to forget. No. I mean the important tradition of making a New Year’s Resolution for your literary year ahead.

It needs to be something that encapsulates in a single intention all your writing aspirations and plans for the forthcoming twelve months. When deciding what is fitting, be not modest or parsimonious about your talent. Set yourself the greatest goal you can imagine, scale the heights of ambition, unleash the inner yearning to follow your dreams and commit yourself to that and that alone.

I will keep to myself my own resolution for the coming year as it might undermine the determination you bring to your own or even lead you astray from your petty path in some vain attempt to mimic mine. But here are a few I consider might be fitting for you, my students.

• Resolve to study all of The Thinking Quill lessons.
• Begin writing a novella.
• Complete a haiku.
• Peruse A-G in a thesaurus.
• Purchase and read “Fatswhistle and Buchtooth” by Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV.
• Buy some pens with glittery pastel-coloured ink so your writing looks like unicorn faeces. This will add magic to those moments when you look in blank incomprehension at the notes you wrote in the depths of the night.
• Start each morning with a free dance expressing the joy of being alive.
• Take up yoga or pilates – whichever you did not plan to do last year but never started.

Choose well and be sure to keep it, disciple, that way lies the path to true authorship.

Happy New Year!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy's profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book, the worst ever 'how to write' book. Read IVy's advice with editorial comments on each blog piece by his mother, Jacintha. All courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Write a short story about a disabled person that is set in a futuristic or fantasy setting!

Too often those who are disabled or different become sidelined in speculative fiction or their issues are masked or ‘magic-ed away’ by technology or – well – magic. It is very rare for a story set in a sci-fi or fantasy universe to be truly inclusive.

This anthology is challenging that – big time!

If you write short stories and want to explore the importance of inclusion in your idea of the future, this is the anthology for you. It’s a charity anthology (this means there is no payment being offered for any submission) with all profits from sales benefiting the Special Olympics .

Theme: The main character must be disabled and succeed through their own efforts and without normalizing (i.e. undoing their disabilities). This book is about celebrating the people who exist today and making them represented in the future and in other worlds.

Every MC must be disabled and yet resolve the crisis they are thrust into. The key element is to show a physically or mentally disabled/different character has no bar to being a great protagonist.

Age level: should be no racier than PG 13

For more information, to support the venture or if you need help with your submission, please ask to join our Facebook Group.

The woman was in a pitiable state. Somebody had tied her wrists behind her and dragged her through the mud behind a horse. The magistrate looked severely at the guard captain.

The man shrugged.

“Witchfinder’s orders.”

“Is she accused of witchcraft?”

“No. Lewd behaviour.”

The magistrate sighed.

“Well untie her, man.”

The guard hustled to do his bidding, then he spoke.

“Case dismissed.” 

The woman’s face came alive, and he threw her a purse of small coin. 

“Money to feed your children.”

She clutched the purse and ran.

The magistrate mentally castigated the coldhearted witchfinder before getting back to business.

©️jj 2019

The Old Year sits, and knits her shroud
It will be done tomorrow 
Although it’s white and soft as cloud
It’s weighted down with sorrow

And every tear the year has shed
Has put a knot in snowy thread
And where her wrinkled hands have bled 
Brown stains mourn for children dead 

The Old Year sits, and knits and waits
And only half remembers
January’s child who grew, to
Wrinkle-faced December

When Father Time his anvil strikes
The Old Year’s thread is spun
While Young Year’s thread is gold and bright 
With hope for everyone 

©️Jane Jago 2018

Hard as it may be to believe, 2018 was only our second year here and our very first full calendar year running the blog!

By the chimes that end this year, we will have welcomed over 4,350 visitors over the last twelve months, to read the 674 posts we have made in that time! Our most popular post of the year was, a little surprisingly perhaps, Jane Jago’s review of ‘A Song for Arbonne’ by Guy Gavriel Kay back in June. Our most popular day for people to visit was Sunday.

Most folk found their way here through Facebook and Twitter or from other WordPress places, but at least one brave soul arrived here following the search term ‘brent a harris hunt dinosaurs’…

Most of our visitors came from the USA, but we had a lot from the UK too, with Australia, Canada, India, Ireland and Germany not too far behind. We’ve even had visitors from China, Egypt, Georgia, Somalia, Chile, Myanmar – Oh and The Bahamas… In all, people from 73 different countries around the world have dropped by for a read this year.

Thank you, each and every one of you, wherever you checked in from.

We hope you have enjoyed the reading here in 2018 and that maybe you have discovered some new authors too. We look forward to welcoming you back for even more great reads – poetry and prose, fiction and interviews, parody and reviews – in the New Year, starting tomorrow!

Eleanor and Jane

She sat up in bed with pillows banked behind her frail shoulders. Sleep being a rare commodity, she turned nightly to literature to divert her mind from the pointlessness of being nearly a century old.  

As the clock began to toll the end of yet another interminable year, her eyes tired so she closed them, and for a moment was young again. She thought herself standing at the foot of a bright staircase with nothing to do but lightly climb to where her lover waited.

As the twelfth note of the tocsin sounded she dropped lightly into her last sleep…

©️jj 2018

The name’s Nero, Sam Nero. Private eye and augmented android. Me and my holographic sidekick, Sugar, operate out of an office on the fifty-fifth level of The Last City. We do okay. But some days are a bit bumpier than others…

If you missed the first instalments you can catch up here.

It was the work of but a few moments for the father and son to be ready to depart, and the five of us walked to the nearest glide station. I noticed how the O’Hallerans placed themselves in the centre of our phalanx, and mentally applauded their bravery. At the glide station there was something of a crowd of hoodies, all pushing and shoving and generally making themselves an annoyance to anyone wanting to use the glides. We ignored them, and mostly they got the message. But of course there was one. A thin, twitchy youth, with the jittery eyes of the junkie, put a hand on O’Halleran senior’s arm. He went for whatever he was packing, but Zig grabbed his wrist. I picked the junkie up by his scraggy neck and shook him gently.
“Naughty, naughty,” I admonished.
He showed me his teeth, but, aside from noting a distressing lack of dental hygiene I remained unmoved. I gave him another little shake, and one of his buddies grabbed him by the arm.
“Leave it Sisco. That’s Sam Nero. He’ll eat you for breakfast.”
The junkie blinked blearily and a couple of his group dropped him and sat on his chest.

We climbed onto the glide and Zig left hold of Seamus’ wrist.
“Your goon had hold of me,” O’Halleran complained.
“So he did,” I agreed blandly. “ I think he was trying to stop you starting a war we might not have won.”
“But he touched me…”
I turned and gave the complaining man my flattest stare.
“And?”
His son laid a hand on his arm.
“Mister Nero has a point. We were badly outnumbered.”
Seamus subsided and the rest of our journey was completed in silence.

At Hood’s Bar, Vinny the doorman waved us in although he showed me the whites of his eyes. When the visitors had pushed their arrogant way inside I favoured Vinny with a small wink. He grinned wolfishly. I moved smoothly ahead of the O’Hallerans and led the way to the private office. I tapped respectfully on the door panels.
“Come.”
I opened the door and ushered the two men inside.

I went to stand at Katie Scarlett’s shoulder, and Myk and Zig ranged themselves either side of the door. Katie Scarlett held up a finger and carried on totting up a column of figures. Seamus all but ground his teeth, and his son placed an admonitory hand on his forearm.

Katie looked up and gave them her most ingenuous smile.
“I’m sorry to be so rude. There’s just so much happening.”
Seamus visibly pulled himself together and surged forwards to clasp her outstretched hand.
“How can we help you my dear?”
She manufactured a blush from who knows where and cast down her eyes.
“Well,” she said softly, “with Daddy out of the picture…”
“Out of the picture?” Seamus could barely keep the glee out of his voice.
“Yes,” Katie bit the word off. “Currently.”
“What has happened?” Seamus junior asked with spurious concern.
Katie Scarlett looked him right between the eyes.
“I was rather hoping you would tell me.”
He tried to stare her down, but she wasn’t to be intimidated.
Seamus senior went for his shoulder harness, but found his arms clamped in Myk’s huge hands. Not to be outdone, Zig grasped Junior just as firmly.
“I think the lady asked you a question,” I said mildly.
“I didn’t,” Katie corrected me. “But I will now. Uncle Seamus, will you please tell me what you know about androids with my face?”
Seamus swallowed audibly but said nothing.
“Myk, will you please remind my uncle about the penalties involved in stubbornness.”
Myk must have squeezed, because Seamus made a strange whinnying noise and his face changed colour. Seamus junior looked at his father with deep contempt.
“Zig,” Katie Scarlett spoke softly, and the second twin started applying pressure on the man he had a hold on.

Father and son held out for a couple minutes, and it was the son who broke first.
“What have you been up to father? Cough, or I swear I will kill you.”
“You wanted the girl, and the club. I was just smoothing your way.”
“And how were you proposing to do that?”
Daddy O’Halleran spoke from behind them, and they both jumped as if they had been shot.

I patted Katie Scarlett on the shoulder and left the room. They didn’t need me and I had a fancy for a large shot of bourbon over ice.

I was on my second drink when Katie sashayed up to me wearing a big grin. I signalled to the bar droid and ordered her a large martini. When we were settled with our drinks she regarded me smilingly.
“What do we owe you, Sam?”
“I’ll take a bottle of the good stuff, and we can call it quits.”
She looked at me over the rim of her glass.
“Is there nothing I can do for you?” she purred.
“Behave yourself, Katie Scarlett. You don’t know what you are offering.”
“Don’t I?”
A voice spoke behind me.
“No. You don’t.”
O’Halleran heaved his considerable bulk onto a stool and the bar droid brought him a pint of the black beer he favoured. He drained half the glass in one draught before looking at me with something akin to friendliness.
“She ain’t gonna give up, Sam.”
“I don’t expect her to, but it’ll still get her nowhere.”
Katie looked from one of us to the other, aware that there was an undertone she was missing. She frowned.
“Okay, you two. What is nobody telling me?”
Neither of us spoke.
“Daddy?”
“Not mine to tell.”
“Sam?”
“I’m on my honour not to tell you.”
She pouted, and her father looked at me. “You can tell. If you want. But there’s no obligation.”

I downed my drink and leaned forward to kiss Katie’s porcelain cheek.
“Sorry, babe. But it’s not something I want to talk about.”
Myk and Zig materialised at my back.
“The boys will walk you home,” O’Halleran said, and proffered a hand. We slapped palms and I walked away from pretty Katie Scarlett.

After all, I had Sugar waiting at home and one dame is enough for any man.

The End

©️Jane Jago 2018

You can find the first Sam Nero story in Dust Publishing's anthology The Last City together with other stories about his fellow Citizens...