It was bitter winter when Father returned from the city with yet another painted whore on his arm. Bunyan and Bennifer eyed her shyly, but she was certainly not built of the ilk that notices a seven-year-old boy and even less his sister.

It was late morning when Father came into the warmth of the kitchen to find his son rolling out the dough for ginger biscuits. The man snarled, but before he had chance to do more than curl his lip Grandmother speared him with a glance.
“Do you perhaps wish to take your children and move elsewhere?” Her voice was sugar sweet but the threat was nonetheless explicit.
Father shuffled his booted feet, but he had imbibed some hot spiced wine and was feeling unusually brave. “Should he not be outside with the other boys?”
Grandmother made a clicking sound with her tongue against her teeth.
“Grow up, man. It’s beyond cold. Even the Sergeant at Arms is inside this morning.”
Father seemed to shrink into his cotte like an eel into the mud of the duckpond. Then he lifted a shoulder.
“I see I have been remiss, I shall shall have to ask after his progress with proper men’s tasks.”
“You just pop along and do that,” Grandmother sneered, “Bunyan is beyond his years in all the manly pursuits, as you would know if you stopped drinking and whoring long enough to take notice.”

For a moment Father eyed his own parent with something like dislike, then he lifted his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. To Bunyan’s great surprise, Grandmother stepped over to him and held out her arms. Father dropped his head on her bony shoulder and held on for a moment before stiffening his spine. Then he did something even more surprising, he reached out and ruffled his son’s chestnut curls.
“Never mind, boy,” he spoke with a rough kindness Bunyan had never heard before. “It’s none of your fault.”
Then he was gone, leaving a man-shaped hole in the kitchen air.

The children looked at Grandmother with their mouths agape. She smiled albeit grimly, and wiped a furtive tear.
“He was a fine man once. Before your lady mother died.” She made a visible effort to cheer up, but Bunyan felt that his father had a great deal to answer for.

Some hours later, with the baking done and the kitchen scoured. Bunyan and Bennifer sat at the table with mugs of foamy milk and gingerbread biscuits.
“Look Bun I made this one like Father,” Bennifer put one pink-tipped finger on a gingerbread man with a beard and fur-trimmed cotte iced on its brown body. Bunyan picked it up and stared, still feeling unsettled by the near row and Grandmother’s silent tear. He smiled before he snapped the head off the gingerbread man and thought, that’ll teach him.

© Jane Jago 2017

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