Telling an entire story in just one hundred words…

Mo Ryan whacked the ball back over the net and then raised his arms high in victory as his opponent failed to return it. On the next court in the women’s championship finals, Emily Payne made an identical gesture as she won her match point.

The pictures went viral, but the comments were very different.

‘Tennis hunk Ryan celebrates victory’

‘Disgusting Payne shows up unshaved.’

Later, in their hotel bedroom, Mo shook his head in disbelief.

“So why is my pit hair sexy and yours disgusting?”

Emily shrugged.

“Dual standards.”

“We’ll see.”

In his next match, Mo wore a skirt.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Jacintha Farquhar, maternal parent of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV offers important life lessons to those who like to think they’ve got what it takes to write a damn book…

If you tuned in expecting advice from Moons, you are out of luck this week. Instead, you’ve got me again, Jacintha Farquhar, hag of this parish.

All right you load of miserable excuses for human beings who fancy yourself the next Stephen King, pin back your lugholes and be prepared to learn. You are all very keen on writing epic battles and knights in shining armour and all that crap, but I’m willing to bet there isn’t a one of you has ever actually even seen a fight leave alone dirtied your precious pinkies by being involved in that most working class of pastimes that is a bloody good bundle.

Writing about Fisticuffs

Okay then. Here’s the deal. This week’s lesson is entitled fisticuffs and is intended to give you at least the vestige of an idea about what happens when adult human beings set out to beat the crap out of each other.

First things first. If you want to really understand your knights in shining and their trusty steeds, join a re-enactment society. Get your feet stomped on by something that feels like Mummy’s best le Creuset Marmite, crawl around in mud and snot and tears for a while, watch as the bloke on the horse breaks every bone in his body when he hits the ground from a height of seventeen hands. Then go rewrite your crappy medieval fight. Similarly, should you be romanticising the English Civil War, go join the Sealed Knot and enjoy the delights of a pre-dawn melee on a frozen moor. I’m sure those of you living in the colonies have something similar recreating your own local battles. Want an idea of modern or futuristic combat? Try laser-tag or go paintballing.

The more mundane sort of present-day scuffling is a little more problematic to become personally involved in. For two reasons.

One: there is the potential to get hurt quite badly (and should some middle-class twat turn up and randomly start throwing punches, everybody will forget their grievances with each other and unite to beat the living crap out of him or her).

Two: the real possibility of getting arrested exists.

For the above reasons I have chosen not to suggest you seek personal involvement. Instead, I’ll let you learn from my experience and debunk some of the popular and misguided myths that pepper the writing of the fight virgin.

1. It is extremely difficult to knock somebody out with one punch. And should you manage to do so the chances of having inflicted serious and life-threatening injury are very high.
2. It is almost impossible to punch someone and cause sufficient pain so that your opponent will admit defeat. This is because most people in fights are seriously impaired by drink or drugs and have had their pain threshold raised to somewhere in the stratosphere
3. If you knock somebody down, don’t be thinking that makes them not dangerous. Nine times out of ten they will get up. Fucking furious. If you should ever manage to put an opponent on the floor the only sensible action is to leg it.
4. Please do not ever think that any sense of chivalry can be found in a Saturday Night Special. When they are in the moment, men will hit, men, women, OAPs, cats, dogs, toddlers, their own mothers. You have been warned.
5. Nobody. But nobody walks out of a mass punch-up with their hair/make-up immaculate and their clothes in apple pie order. It. Does. Not. Happen. Participants (even those accounted victorious) will be dirty, bruised, smeared with blood and mucus, and, in the case of the female of the species, inevitably missing one shoe (almost always the left).

So, there we have it Jacintha’s guide to the grim realities of physical combat. Read, learn, inwardly digest and get your fucking act together. Now you have no excuse to get it wrong so go and rewrite that last fight scene and leave me to my prosecco.

Next week: Moons will be back so you can get more of his drivel on how to write a book.

Jacintha Farquar, unfortunate mother of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV.

You can find more of my son’s ramblings in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago, but please don’t because if you do he’ll be gloating for weeks!!

After the equinox, before Halloween
October falls in that strange place between
And has become a time that means much to me
After the equinox, before Halloween.

The last month of long days before the clocks change
The last month for sunshine afore colder ways
The high month of autumn and her golden sheen
After the equinox, before Halloween.

But for me October holds some special glow
For of all the people I have come to know
October is when the birthdays seem to be
Of those friends I most cherish, who mean most to me.

So I think there’s a magic in October’s span
Something quite precious that makes me a fan
Of that enchanted time that falls in between
After the equinox, before Halloween.

Eleanor Swift-Hook

Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in an alternative modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules.

IV

Julia was rapidly getting annoyed. There was something big and bad going on, she knew it in her gut but she couldn’t pin it down. As she had feared, talking to the lion keeper’s wife had proved a waste of time although it wrung her loins with pity. Somebody somewhere had to know something. But whom? She kicked the wall of the office she had been allotted and swore sulphurously. Edbert looked up from the dagger he was polishing the nicks out of.
“Why don’t you go have a word with the lovely Lydia?” he rumbled. “I heard a rumour that she’s thick with the wives of both the dead Romans and with the Arena boss.”
Julia gave him a grim look, knowing full well that asking him about the source of his rumour would get her nowhere. Praetorian barrack-room gossip was her guess. Stamping her feet into her boots and striding out of the room, she crossed the courtyard and was admitted to the Tribune’s lodgings without comment. A moment later she was at the door of Lady Lydia’s rooms. She tapped and a homely female face appeared.
“You after her ladyship?”
Julia nodded.
“She ain’t here.”
Julia was nonplussed and the woman sighed.
“If you was to ask me, she don’t intend coming back.”
Julia stiffened.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I just found out that she took her jewel box.”
“Come with me,” Julia snapped.
She stomped off along the corridor, not bothering to check whether or not the woman followed her. Hurrying as fast as she dared without causing too much remark, she was soon knocking on the door of the Tribune’s suite of offices. The secretarius came to the door.
“I need to see the Tribune,” Julia demanded.
The man frowned, but she heard Decimus speak sharply.
“Who is it, man?”
“Domina Julia,” the man mumbled.
“Let her in then, and bugger off.”
The secretarius glared at Julia, but he opened the door wide and shuffled through it and passed her.
“Come in, girl. Come in.” Decimus bellowed.
Julia went into the room followed by Lady Lydia’s servant. The Tribune stood in front of an open window with his big hands clasped grasped behind his neck. She stopped quietly and waited for him to speak.
“I hate all the admin and paperwork that goes with this job and I hate that little pederast of a keyboard-fiddler. Hate him and his computer equally.” He did not trouble to modulate his volume and the secretarius would still have been in earshot. Then he dropped his voice and turned to her with a smile. “I was about to contact you with some new information anyway. But what brings you here, little sister?”
Julia shuffled her feet and he stopped smiling.
“So. It’s not a social call?”
“No. It’s about the Lady Lydia.”
“What about her?” He sounded long-suffering rather than surprised.
“I went to talk to her and she seems to have gone missing.”
That summoned a frown to his face.
“Missing? What do you mean missing? And why did you want to speak to her?”
“Missing as in not in the house, and her woman here says she has taken her jewellery box. And I wanted to talk to her because one of her close friends is dead, and two have been recently widowed.”
Decimus glowered at her from beneath his thick, black brows then hit a bell on his desk with one hard fist. A guard came scuttling in.
“Will you please find out if Domina Lydia is in the house?”
“Sir.”
The guard left at a gallop, and the Tribune turned his fulminating gaze on the serving woman who shook her head and returned it stoically.
“You might have known she was up to something,” the woman said, her tone inappropriately accusing. “She has been too quiet. Except for that Titillicus and he was in the nature of a diversion.”
Decimus showed his teeth.
“Shut up Boudicca. If you can’t be anything but right you can just shut up.”
The woman actually smiled at him. There’s a story here, Julia thought, but she was too exercised with the puzzle in hand to add another set of questions to her list. However, Decimus obviously felt the need to explain.
“Boudicca here is a Briton by birth, but she was sold to Lydia’s futatrix of a mother when she was a little girl, just before enslaving anyone was outlawed. Of course every decent person promptly freed their existing slaves, if they had not already done so, but as it was not a legal requirement, the old cunnus didn’t. So Boudicca came with my lady wife as a body slave. I freed her. Annoyed the merda out of Lydia, but you know how I feel about slavery and those who keep trying to get it reinstated.”
“I do.”
It was not the whole story, Julia thought, she got the impression she was being told the details as much to distract as to inform. But right then there seemed no more to say on the topic and she was not about to enquire, so the three people in the room stood in silence for a moment.

Part XV will be here next week. If you can’t wait to find what happens next you can snag the full novella here.

Things that make us go poop…

Granny and the ‘ladies’ darts team of The Dog and Trumpet alphabetically collate their collective contempt for the inhabitants of the twenty-first century.

A is for: self-described Alpha Males

Specifically those who pontificate endlessly about how to be a ‘real man’.

Let’s unpick this particular idiocy.

Firstly. Is there such an animal as a human alpha male? We beg leave to doubt this as an unproven theory. It is a possibility that certain animal societies subscribe to hierarchical maleness, but they are a little less evolved sociologically than all/most/some humans. Where creatures who have to kill to survive may prize size and aggression. Humans should have reached a point where intelligence trumps proddy behaviour, and quiet competence is prized above loud mouthed shoutiness.
However. If we really are looking for male leaders, we certainly won’t be scraping the bottom of the pond in order to dredge up misogynistic idiots who seek to camouflage their own lack of intellectual rigour by calling any man who doesn’t look up to them ‘gay’.
On which point we note that there are various overpriced ‘workshops’ where the sad and the stupid seek to become ‘alphas’ by means of enduring humiliation at the hands of a set of con artists who possibly even believe their own con trick.
Note: if allowing some guy in army surplus fatigues to urinate on your head is what it takes to become alpha. What does that make it worth?

Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…

Big bigger got someone to come and make a mess of the orchard. There was sandpits and holes with plastic cups inside.
He spent hours there hitting a ball with a stick.
The gnomes were fascinated, but the moles were incensed. It seems them cups echoed something rotten and woke up baby mole.
They stood it for a week.
Early one morning Big stuck his hand into a cup to get the ball he had just knocked in there.
His screamed and ran with blood pouring from his hand.
Mole looked out of the cup and showed his sharp teeth…

Jane Jago

Writing inspired by the art of Ian Bristow

The bright lights promise welcome warmth. The stomach remembers satisfying food while other parts recall the innkeeper’s buxom daughter. Two cloaked men slide into the smoky taproom.
Unasked, the girl brings them ale while her father places wooden bowls of aromatic dumpling-rich stew on their table.
It takes a while, but when their stomachs are sated they beckon the plump girl. She comes, seeming willing enough, and perches on the big man’s iron thighs. His fatuous smile falters as his head drops on the table.
“In your dreams,” the girl laughs and returns to her station behind the bar.

 Jane Jago

Ian is an awesome artist and cover designer, you can find his work at Bristow Design or watch him in action creating this picture on ART with IAN.

The Fugitive’s Sword is the first book in a historical adventure series, Lord’s Learning, tracking the lives of two young people through a tumultuous time in history.

In the autumn of 1624, Europe is deeply embroiled in what will become the Thirty Years’ War.

A young boy of 15, Philip Lord, once favoured at King James’ court, has vanished without a trace, under the shadow of treason.

Outside the besieged city of Breda, Captain Matthew Rider faces the brutal reality of wintering his cavalry in the siege lines, until he crosses paths with Filippo Schiavono, a young man whose courage and skill could change everything.

Kate, Lady Catherine de Bouqulement, arrives in London prepared to navigate the dangerous politics of King James’ court to ensure troops are sent to her mistress, the exiled Queen of Bohemia.

Within Breda’s walls, a foundling named Jorrit unwittingly stumbles into a lethal conspiracy when Schiavono hires him, supposedly to help sell smuggled tobacco. But Schiavono’s plans go awry and they are compelled to flee the city, only to be captured at sea.

If Schiavono is unable to prove his loyalty and ruthlessness to a savage Dunkirker privateer captain, both he and Jorrit will face certain death.

Meanwhile, in London, Kate is forced to fight her own battle against those seeking to coerce her into their schemes and finds herself trapped in a terrifying and deadly power struggle. Driven by violence, treachery, and the sea’s merciless tides, their fates collide.

The Fugitive’s Sword is now out on Kindle.

Eleanor Swift-Hook fell in love with the early Stuart era at university. She is also the author of the Lord’s Legacy series. She lives in County Durham. You can find loads of information about this book and the others she has written on her Website, together with background information about the history of the times and the characters, or follow her on Twitter/X.

Cover design and original artwork is by Ian Bristow.

Jacintha Farquhar, maternal parent of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV offers important life lessons to those who like to think they’ve got what it takes to write a damn book…

To whoever is deluded enough to read this crap.

This is Jacintha Farquhar, woman of a certain age, and distaff parent of the delusional and currently incapacitated Moons. I never thought I’d feel sorry for the poor self-centred little twat. But I do. I actually hurt for him. He’s so bruised and battered that I have sent him away to lick his wounds in the fleshpots of Mykonos. I packed him off with a bag of clothes, a few smutty novels, and an introduction to a couple of gay friends who run a very popular bar there. As to what precisely happened to the sad little bugger, that’s his business. I’m not about to discuss it with a bunch of prurient wannabes. If he wants to tell you when he gets back into the saddle that’s his affair. But for now, mind your own…

If it was up to me, I’d stop this crap too. However, it means a lot to my battered son, so I have promised to keep it going until he returns from his sabbatical.

I have decided to write about life lessons, because if you lot really want to write anything decent you’ve got to live it first.

Writing about Alcohol.

In almost every piece of adult literature you will find booze, and as a general rule boozing falls into one of half a dozen categories:

Polite drinking.

Social drinking.

Party drinking.

Getting pissed drinking.

Drowning the sorrows drinking.

Alcoholism.

So then, where are you on the scale? A sherry on the third Thursday of every month? Prosecco hangovers on Sunday mornings? A bottle of vodka in every cupboard in the house?

Whatever your own consumption, consider that as the strongest use of alcohol you should ever write about. Of course, many of you will be timid shits like my poor little bastard of a son, and will consider a glass of Fernet Branca on a sunny afternoon to be the height of decadence. But on the other side of your shiny little threepenny bit you will be wanting to write about drinking and roistering. Well. You bloody can’t….

If you want to write about a drunken orgy, bloody well find one (effing Google it) and go and get completely off your face.

In the same vein, if you really want to write about the miseries of a hangover, or the utter awfulness of drinking so much you vomit what feels like your toenails into the gutter, then at least have the frigging courage to try it out and see what it really feels like. My recipe for the first: a bottle of good red wine with your dinner, followed by at least a dozen cocktails, and four large brandies. To achieve the second, take recipe one and add a kebab and half a bottle of Bucky at the end.

When you’ve done that. And taken a week to recover. Then you can write something that will be at least recognisable as real.

Now piss off and get on with it, because, to be brutally honest, you lot are getting on my tits right now and I’ve a hot date with a half-bottle of calvados.

Jacintha Farquar, unfortunate mother of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV.

You can find more of my son’s ramblings in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago, but I wouldn’t bloody bother even though I did my best with it and added a load of comments on his drivel!

The music that we called our song
Plays on repeat in my head
But the notes now feel twisted and wrong
And my heart, like our romance, is dead
The music plays on without heed
Uncaring of how I might feel
As the record revolves still I bleed
Perhaps if it stopped I might heal

©️jane jago 2024