Q1. Beans or fries?

I’m going with fries. A) I’m American, and we’ll typically choose fries over most any other option, including world peace and college tuition money for our children. B) Really? I have to explain what beans do to you? Friends don’t let friends eat beans. So yeah…fries.

Q2. Would you rather have a statue of yourself in your hometown or have a recipe named after you?

A recipe…unless it’s one that involves beans (see above). A recipe for something fry-related would be ideal. As to why, well, everything that flies will poop all over that statue, which strikes me as being sort of like a particularly cruel and overly personal sort of review on “the big A” except even more people will see it. I suppose the ground dwellers might even throw beans at it, which would just be adding insult to injury, in my opinion. Recipe all the way.

Q3. Which word should be banned from the English language?

I’ve been wracking my brain over this one. I know there’s one word above all others that I absolutely despise and would gleefully stomp out of not only existence, but also the world’s collective memory. Unfortunately, I hate this word so much that I’ve basically shunned it from my own memory at the moment, so I’ll have to go with one that’s a rung lower on the old “Oh God please get it out of my head” scale: beverage. Just say “drink,” please. On a related note, let’s ditch “imbibe” too. I think the idea of some character saying (with a straight face no less) “I imbibed a tasty beverage” would probably make my skull implode.

Find out more about Guy Donovan and his The Dragon’s Treasure series.

Frozen Hearted

This, Carla realised, was what was meant by ‘tea and sympathy’. Only, in this case, it was coffee and sympathy – well latte to be exact – and some comfort-eating chocolate cake.
“So it’s over this time?” Her cup, broad and deep, clicked back on its saucer. “Really? Truly?”
Emmy gave a sad smile. Over the last hour and the chocolate cake, she had burdened Carla’s soul with a gory, forensic dissection of the breakdown of her relationship. Cut by painful cut, from the first misconstrued comment to the final brutal insult.
“Oh it’s over. Dead. Buried. Jake knows it, I know it.”
“You’re sure? Last time – ”
“Last time I was still half in love.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not.”
“So what about Chris?”
Emmy’s blue eyes blinked once, stating clearly that the name was not relevant in her love life and never would be. “I heard from Miranda the other day. Sienna is starting school. Isn’t that incredible? It only seems like last week the three of us were sitting in these very chairs discussing baby names.”
“Emmy – you can’t pretend forever.”
The blue eyes clouded. Emmy grabbed her coffee cup from its brightly coloured saucer and hid behind it. The words ‘I Love Cappuccino’ danced around the rim in bold, red letters.
“Chris won’t just go away,” Carla spoke to the cup.
Emmy lowered the coffee, her face tightly resentful.
“Chris is not involved with this.” Then, suddenly appealing: “Let’s not go there today, Carla hun, please.”
Not for the first time, Carla felt herself being torn between loyalties. Emmy’s baby-blue eyes, pleading, and Chris – dependable Chris – bleeding from a dozen wounds he had never known were being inflicted. Carla shook her head slowly, as the waters of the Rubicon flowed away beneath her feet.
“He’s your husband, not a meal ticket. You have to – ”
Instantly Emmy was by the door, the cup still in her hand.
“I don’t ‘have to’ anything! Don’t you understand? I don’t care!”
The coffee cup arced across the room heading for shattering impact and landed at the moment the door slammed. It bounced on the carpet, with a little spray of coffee and rolled, until it stopped on its handle by Carla’s feet, still safe and in one piece.
Carla bent to pick it up, the words facing her read: ‘I Love…’. For a moment she clutched it close, then she placed it with extra care on its own saucer, where it belonged.

E.M. Swift-Hook

From ‘Hunting Darkness’ – by Ian Bristow

The world went pitch black and in the same moment, Gael realized she couldn’t hear the gurgling water anymore. She rubbed her eyes but couldn’t feel her own hands touching her skin. Panic set in. Her brain sent out a distress signal, but her unreceptive body had no way of responding to it.

Terrified, she struggled, her need to breathe the only thing that told her she was alive. She slowly became aware that she could taste the air around her—a bitter blend of dirt, mold and moss coated her tongue, assuring her that she was still in the forest. No sooner than this realization struck her, she could smell the scents belonging to the flavors she was tasting. Other scents began filtering through her nostrils: remnants of the rain that had fallen that afternoon; different ages and types of wood; various woodland creatures.

A sense of depth and imagery began forming in her mind,  as if the two human senses she was currently experiencing were in such a heightened state that they compensated for the ones she was lacking.  Joy and awe began to gather inside her, driving out the panic and terror. Lost in growing wonderment she gave in to the alien experience, exploring the tendrils of taste and scent in a way she could never have imagined was possible.

Something brushed the skin on her face. The sensation was so unexpected she flinched away from it.

It happened again.

And again.

She became aware it was water; each individual drop felt like the prick of a cold needle.

The hair on her arms and neck stood on end as a chilly autumn breeze swept past her. She pictured the wind tracing an image of her surroundings as it wandered through the trees and bushes. The image grew in clarity and an unexpected giggle escaped her. Now the vision in her mind was clearer than any she’d ever experienced through her eyes. Every variation of color; every pattern of tree bark; every vein in every leaf—vivid and real.

Were these images a lucid replica of reality? Or were they nothing more than a hallucination conjured from the depths of her subconscious? Aware of her body once more,  she moved toward a low-hanging branch, reached out to touch it and felt a knobby stretch of wood against the palm of her hand.

“Very good.”

Aiden’s voice echoed in her ears, mingling with the faint sound of trickling water and rustling leaves. The vibrations were clear as crystal. Sharp as obsidian. Not only could she hear them, she could feel them cascading over her body. She shivered involuntarily as nature’s beautiful melodies filled her being.

Aiden spoke again. “What do you see?”

“Everything,” she replied. “I see everything.”

The artwork with this extract is ‘Aiden and Gael’ by Ian Bristow himself and you can find out more about his writing, his art and his music on his website or purchase his books from Amazon.

Q1: Would you prefer to live in a city, a small town or deep in the countryside?

While each have their merits, I would prefer to live in a small town. The city is bursting with culture and activity, but the easy access to resources creates an overpopulated mess. Life deep in the countryside would offer the exact opposite scenario, and while I do enjoy my personal space and time spent in nature, I need contact with other humans to stay sane.

 Q2: If you could have one magical ability what would it be?

Wow, this is a hard one to answer. One magical ability. . . I’d like the ability to have extra-terrestrial out of body experiences wherein I can tour the cosmos. The reason I would want that ability is because I would gain inspiration unlike any I have ever known, and that would be invaluable.

Q3: Which would you put first honor or friendship?

This is another tough question. Is there ever honor in an abandonment of friendship, which is the only scenario I can currently think of wherein one must make a choice between the two? It might be easy to say “no” at first thought. But friendship can be deceiving and unhealthy if the mutual give and take is out of balance. Some people give more, some take more, and that is okay, so long as the balance is intact for those two individuals. However, it is when one seeks to gain more than they offer within the give/take dynamics of any particular friendship that a friend can become a toxic part of one’s life, thus no longer worthy of any abandonment of honor to appease.

Alternatively, honor can be a misguided attempt to do what is “right.” What is “right,” however, is not a mutually agreed upon concept across the wide scope of society, and is therefore, not a one-size-fits-all concept. “White man’s burden” comes to mind when I think of people doing something unforgivingly misguided for the sake of doing the “honorable” thing. I clearly don’t really know how to answer this question in a “one or the other” sort of fashion, but for the sake of not being so on the fence, I will say that honor is more important, for one reason: If one strives to honor humanity, they can hope to discover the tools to see people as free-thinking individuals who have hopes and dreams and fears and uncertainties, just like they do.

You can catch up with Ian Bristow and more of his opinions on his website.

Chinese Whispers

The rapturous applause ringing in her ears, Zhang Xiu Ying stepped off the podium and returned to her seat. Although it was wonderful to have the sense of support and approval for her unpublished and un-peer-reviewed paper at this symposium, her thoughts were already on the submissions process to the few scientific journals respected in her field.

In the audience, Krish Anand thought the Chinese girl who had been speaking looked cute and he posted a picture of her to his social media. As an afterthought, since he did not want anyone assuming he was sexist, he added a few words about what she had been saying.

Her news blog needed livening up, so Florencia Quezada put the picture of the pretty Chinese academic on her page, read the words Krish had put with it and – as she didn’t really understand it – added some thoughts and ideas of her own to make it into something a bit more substantial.

It was a quiet day on RadioNews247 and Bjorn Olafsson had been searching the internet desperately for something to feed the ravenous maw of twenty-four-hour news coverage. There had been no terrorist attacks – or at least none in any place the 247 audience would have ever heard of or cared about; the politicians’ tweets had been banal to dull and lacking in controversy and he was at his wit’s end. Then he saw it. Grinning with triumph he wrote a few lines to go in the next ‘On The Hour’ bulletin and started phoning a couple of people he knew would be free and willing to comment on air.

Zac Wade had the radio on. He didn’t like TV as that meant you might get noticed somewhere by someone. No cell phone for the same reason and no computer neither. Life off grid was safest. You could keep out the government and defend your own land. The news bulletin made him put his foot to the floor of his battered old Dodge cab-over pickup. Them aliens was invading – said so on the news.

Waiting to board her plane home, Zhang Xiu Ying glanced at her newsfeed ‘Chinese Scientist Proves Aliens Are Invading’. There was a picture of a narrow, hairless face with black olive-shaped eyes. Clickbait crap. She scrolled on without really thinking more about it. She was just happy her article speculating on tiny anomalous ferric inclusions in a layer of pleistocene clay as being extra-terrestrial from a meteor shower was being considered for a quality geological journal.

E.M. Swift-Hook

I saw a flight of dragons once
Across the sunset sky
And as they rode the thermals
I wished that I could fly
The dying sun turned skins to gold
And wings to every hue
I thought that I knew beauty
But I learned that wasn’t true
I saw a flight of dragons once
They’re printed on my brain
I think I’d give my sight away
To see that flight again

© jane jago 2017

FANTASY

First he made her his secretary, then he made her his plaything, then he sent her to an exclusive clinic in Switzerland where they would make her his fantasy.

Today he was going to see that fantasy for the first time. He brushed past his bodyguards and put his palm to the plate on the playroom door. The door hissed open and he entered alone. At first he could see nobody, just the barren gameplay landscape where he lived out the early twentieth century sci-fi films that fuelled his imagination.

He heard a noise to his left, and turned his head to see her dressed from neck to ankle in skintight black leather and armed to the teeth. He could barely speak for excitement.
“Oh baby, you are even more than I imagined.”
She smiled.
“Now it’s time to make you into my fantasy man.”
He frowned. This wasn’t in the game play he had designed so carefully. But he was sure she had nothing but delight in store for him, so he made his voice excited.
“What’s your fantasy?”
She laughed a short, unamused bark.
“My fantasy? A helpless cripple.”

Then she shot him in the kneecaps.

© jane jago 2017

5-Star Review for Dying to be Roman

Imagine if the Roman Empire had never fallen. Here you will find a comprehensive peek into what might have been. England is still Britannia and the Roman games, though not as lethal as they once were, are still a huge part of culture. When a few of the athletes turn up dead, Dai—a Britannia native—is tasked with solving the crimes. But the caliber of the case takes a turn when one of the Roman elite is murdered; a senator’s son no less.

No longer rated to handle the case alone, Dai must work under the command of Julia—a Roman investigator. Accustom to being treated like second-class scum by Romans, who don’t even classify Britannia natives as citizens, he braces himself for a miserable partnership. But with more ghosts in her past than Dai could have fathomed, Julia is unlike his assumed stereotype of how all Romans behave.

While Dai and Julia dig deep into their investigation, authors Swift-Hook and Jago are busy examining fundamental issues of class and segregation relevant to our own reality, proving that “human” is our only true title, and none are eligible to abuse it.

As a longtime fan of murder mystery, this novella was right up my alley. The alternate history aspect added layers of interest to the plot and gave the book a truly unique distinction. I highly recommend this to all fans of mystery and alternate history.

Ian Bristow