Two Women and Some Books
Because life happens…
Exploring the mysteries of life through the versatile medium of limerick poetry.
If life has one lesson to give
Then it’s simply to live and let live.
You’ll not need forgiveness
If you mind your own business
As there’ll not be a thing to forgive.
Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…
Dear Reader Who Writes,
Before one does anything else one feels it imperative to apologise profusely to one’s faithful readership for last week’s entry under this illustrious imprint.
I. Cannot. Believe. What. My. Parent. Wrote. Last. Week.
One can only assume the woman was under the influence of her favourite cocktail – a tasteful mixture of advocaat, ruby port and rubbing alcohol, which she refers to as a ‘Dog’s Bollock’.
As I lay on my sickbed, near to death, the dreadful female managed to insult all I hold dear, ridicule my literary genius, and reduce these profound seminars to objects of derision. Were it not for the fact she is bigger than one, and packs a mean left hook….
But enough of my sorrows. To our work.
At the risk of pushing against an open door, I shall take a little moment to remind my beloved students of my credentials, and my reasons for preparing this series of little tutorials. I am, of course, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV and acclaimed author of the millionth bestseller science fiction and fantasy novel, ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’, and my writing these little posts to my adoring students is solely motivated by the desire to assist your writing endeavours.
And now to business.
The romantic novel is the graveyard of so much literary endeavour, being a crowded marketplace in which the average flounders and sinks itself beneath contempt and only the superlative can possibly hope to achieve success. Of course the paramount example of this pulchritudinous delight is the queen of pinkness and prettiness at whose slippered feet we are unworthy to worship. We cannot hope to even approach her superlative talent but we may use her incandescently shimmering writings as a blueprint for our own feeble scribbles.
The Rules
And that mes estudas are the wrules of the write way to write a wromance.
Ecrit Bon.
Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV
You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.
The month of May, the month of May
Time to see the lambs at play
Time to see the the buds bursting
As nature launches into spring
The month of May, the month of May
Time to go outside and stay
Time to watch the birds take wing
As nests they build new life to bring
The month of May, the month of May
Time to welcome each new day
Time the windows wide to fling
So the freshness can flood in.
The month of May, the month of May
Time to set aside the grey
Time to smile, dance and sing
For summer is icummen in.
Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends. Life seems to be going well when…
My friend from the lunch table leaned down and picked his captive up by the neck.
“Talk.”
For about ten seconds I thought mister stupid was going to add stubborn to his list of misdeeds, but he saw something in his captor’s eyes that frightened the swagger right out of him. I saw the second he caved in, and watched his Adam’s Apple bobbing up an down in his throat as he fought to keep up his tough facade.
“We was paid a grand to come along and bust up this cafe.”
He pronounced it as if it rhymed with safe and Morgan sighed.
“I’d quite like to know who paid you.”
He stared at her, shocked, I think, by the idea a mere female dared question him. A slap across the back of the head from a big hard hand brought him back to a sense of his own peril and he swallowed noisily.
“I don’t know the geezer’s name, but he used to work for Amos Proudly. Reckons he represents the family’s new boss.”
That earned him another cuff round the head.
“They haven’t got a new boss you thick bastard. You were about to get yourselves right in the middle of a nasty little power struggle.”
“So why was we sent here?”
“Because old Proudly’s granddaughter is bidding for his empty throne.”
“Still why?”
Morgan explained.
“Because the silly cow got in a slanging match with my boss on the internet. She lost so now she has to have revenge to prove what a hard woman she is.”
“So why didn’t she come herself?”
“Because there’s people here, me included, who’d like nothing more than to clean her clock for her.”
He made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.
“Cowardly cow.” He looked at his muscular opponent. “If we promise to bugger off and put the word out that it ain’t safe to come here and do some silly cow’s dirty work, will you let us go?”
I wasn’t even remotely surprised to see the young giant who held him in a pitiless grasp look to Morgan for a decision. She put her hands in her pockets and subjected the squirming captive to a cold stare.
“Let ‘em go. But do remind them that it will be extremely unhealthy if they show their faces round here again.”
“You heard the lady.”
“Why’d I have to lissen to some girl?”
“Because I day so. And because her dad says so.”
“Why’d I have to lissen to some girl’s old man?”
“You ever hear of Brown Brothers? Mark Brown is her dad.”
He looked puzzled, but one of the other would-be hard boys lifted his head.
“Would you let me up a minute? I’ll lay back down again after I’ve ripped that eejit a new asshole.”
“Let him up.” Morgan said.
Once the boot was removed from his back he stood up and moved to where his confederate squirmed in an iron grip.
“Scuse me sir. Would you mind lending me mister stupid for a couple seconds.”
The big lad nodded and dropped his prey. At which, stupid’s erstwhile buddy ploughed a bony fist into the soft tissue under his sternum. Stupid dropped to the ground retching and crying.
“You’re a fucking moron. Come and smash a bit of furniture you said. It’s worth a couple of centuries you said. What you never said was we’d be putting a fucking great target on our backs.” He turned to Morgan. “If we take him away and beat him up some, and we put the word out that the Proudly clan is annoying your pop, will you let us go?”
Morgan looked to me and I dropped her a swift wink.
“Okay. Take him away. But don’t let me down.”
He actually pulled his forelock. “We won’t.”
Three Brown lads assisted their egress, while the big lad grinned down at Morgan.
“You’re nearly as scary as your mum.”
“And you’re nearly as big an asshole as your uncle.”
“His uncle? Is he Mark’s nephew?” I had to ask.
“Yup. This is Simeon. He’s the runt of Uncle James’ litter of gargantuan eejits.”
I couldn’t help laughing, but then I put a little whip in my voice as I addressed Simeon.
“Family here incognito? Keeping an eye on me and Ben?”
He grinned, not a whit abashed. “Nope. Just me. Keeping an eye on my not-cousin.”
He looked down at her smooth, brown head and what I saw in his eyes explained a lot. He met my gaze and I smiled him a nice smile, after reciprocating he turned away.
He was just about out of the door when Morgan spoke up.
“You want an ice cream, Simeon?”
He turned to face her and she unleashed her dimples. “It won’t get busy here for a while, so I reckon you and me could get outside a knickerbocker glory while we wait.”
He was in front of her in four gigantic strides. “I’d like that.”
“And I’d like your company.”
Ben and I beat a strategic exit, to find the other three big lads waiting outside in the sunshine.
“Is Sim coming out?”
Ben shook his head.
“Does that mean he’s finally got Morgan to notice him?”
“Possibly.”
The three lads all grinned widely.
“He’s been after her for months, but she couldn’t seem to see beyond the idea of cousinship.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Even though they aren’t cousins at all?”
The lads shuffled their feet a bit and the spokesman, who I thought was John, nodded.
“Judging by her use of the dimples god gave her, I think she’s noticing now,” Ben said.
There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.
‘Balance’ by Cindy Tomamichel is one of the stories in It Takes A Village, an optimistic anthology speculating about the meaning of care.
The domes glowed pearly white and pristine in the distance. From the wasteland outside the domes they looked like paradise. Inside people lived clean, ate clean. For a price. I could hear my Grandpa saying. He had a lot to say about the domes and the people who lived in them. More than I wanted to hear. I squinted through the brown haze. It looked like they were building an extension. Swarms of bots roved the surface, placing globs of the solar energy plastic roof in a mosaic that set hard and protective.
I grubbed up another twisted carrot and checked on my little sister. She had rickets, so we let her be in the sun as long as we could, between the cyborg surveys, but the air brought on her asthma. I’d had a few years when we still had respirators, but the tech had broken down. I hacked and spat, noticing more blood this time.
“Come on, sweetheart.” Ruthie raised her arms to be picked up, and I swung her onto my back. It was nearly noon and would take till dinnertime to get home. We walked through the sparse forest, the trees sick and dying. But there were still a few butterflies, so I made up a silly song to make her laugh. The path twisted in amongst the trees, in under a few wire arrangements that my grandfather thought protected us from surveillance. I didn’t have the heart to tell him they probably knew where we were, they just didn’t care.
I had been a baby when the internet started. It’s hard to think about how much people used it. I grew up with a smart phone in my hand, always online, chatting with friends. Playing games… Lord that seems a long time ago. I shifted Ruthie on my shoulders and gave her the carrot to gnaw on. Games. I’d heard someone say the phones had more computing power than the computers they used to send a rocket to the moon. We played games when we could have travelled the stars.
It was getting dark by the time I reached the shack, and Ruthie drooped on my shoulders. I put her down near the stream, and she squeaked when I put her dirty feet into the cold water. Not for drinking, but washing was probably ok still. I glanced up the hill. The shack blended into the hillside, the timbers built into the stone wall rotting with the damp.
“Watcha thinking about, Moses?” Ruthie asked.
“The before time, when I was your age.”
“Bet it was better. I could have had a calculator instead of doing my sums with a stick in the dirt.” She coughed and wiped a drop of blood off her lips.
I bent down, grabbing her hand. “You been bleeding when you cough?”
“Yeah. But maths keeps my mind off it.” She gazed at me, her light blue eyes bright in a scrawny face. “I worked out the circumference of the earth today.”
“Don’t tell Dad.”
“I know.” She sighed a very grownup sigh for such a little girl, and I had to hide a smile. “But even Galileo knew the Earth was round.”
A chat with Cindy Tomamichel
(1) What do you feel is the key message of your story and why is that an important thing to consider?
The key message in my story ‘Balance’ is that the things you fear may not be what they seem. Is a fear of AI realistic? Yes. Is it therefore a true fear? You won’t know until you put aside your fear and find out. Doing so may risk everything you care about – your family, even your life. But it may also be the best thing you’ve ever done.
The world is full of conspiracy theories, fear mongering and online hatred. I wanted to investigate one such fear – that of AI. It also thinks about what it is to be human- in all our failures and triumphs.
So that was the idea, but it also has a strong theme of family. Moses, the teenage boy main character, cares and works hard for his family and will do anything to protect them – even face his fears.
(2) Why did you want to contribute to this anthology in particular?
The theme is a great one and reverses a lot of what has been the common perception of who does the caretaking for a family. The unacknowledged burden of housework and family does not have to remain a burden based on gender. That care and compassion can wear many faces.
I had been struggling to write for a while, and I found inspiration for this anthology, developing a story that took some unexpected turns. It started from a prompt about AI from my local writing group, so it is fitting that a story about caring is a result of brainstorming with friends.
(3) What role do you see fiction serving in changing attitudes in society?
I have heard of a book described as a way to see that you share the same thoughts with the author, even if the author is far distant in time and space. That sense of connection can work in many ways. It can help someone not feel so alone, or it might change an opinion by living another’s experiences. Humans are at heart storytellers. To share experiences is to realise that not everyone is the same, and that can be a powerful thing.
About the author:
Cindy Tomamichel is a multi-genre writer. Escape the everyday with the time travel action adventure series Druid’s Portal, science fiction / fantasy and romance short story collections. Discover worlds where the heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way. You can find her on her website and sign up for her newsletter.
Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…
Brenda slapped Oisin’s little green hat. “What the frag is poteen?”
His smile was even more foolish than usual. “Tis bathtub whiskey ma’am.”
“Bathtub whiskey?”
“Home distilled. So it is.”
He grabbed another deep slurp before anyone else got chance. Staring at the sky though half-closed eyes he began to sing.
“Oh, Danny boy, the pipes…
What happened next had even Big Brenda clapping her hands over her eyes. The sight of a naked leprechaun, capering around the sundial and playing a loud tune on his fiddly-diddly, isn’t something you easily forget.
No matter how hard you try.
A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…
affrection (noun) – the fondness a male feels for his partner while his penis is turgid
chocoalte (noun) – high caused by the overconsumption of Cadbury Flake
defract (verb) – not to reflect
ehter (noun) – one who believes a kebab is the cure for all evils and later loses same kebab in the gutter someplace
friedns (noun) – crispy bits of chip and batter from the bottom of a deep frier
frisustrate (verb) – to cook bacon until it resembles roof slates
gassropper (noun) – smaller relative of the praying mantis that lives on the smell of farts
lifst (adverb) – of walking, to lift the feet very high and put them down gently as if creeping upstairs drunk
meman (noun) – northern expression indicating the speaker’s husband
osmat (noun) – prayer mat for antipodean use
pruitan (adjective) – of dress, spectacularly slutty
recongise (verb) – to throw dog toy again
reserach (noun) – little-known dialect spoken among the nomadic peoples who roam the western borders of Germany
sxe (verb) – to establish the gender of baby rats
topato (noun) – vegetable, not one of five a day, always served fried
wehat (noun) – small headgear
zbeu (adjective) – having the texture of elderly porridge
Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.
Because life happens…
Exploring the mysteries of life through the versatile medium of limerick poetry.
Some say that life’s but a show
And you should take a bow ere you go
But it really is fine
To have your final line
In your will, so then they will all know!
Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…
Dear People Who Read This,
This is Jacintha Farquhar and I’m the unfortunate mother of Moons – that’s the twonk who usually writes this blog thing for you and always signs himself Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV. He wrote a truly dreadful book once called “Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ and peed himself with excitement (and I am not being metaphorical) when it rose to one million on the Amazon ‘in store’ sales listing. He’d just bought a copy I think.
Anyway, Moons isn’t writing his thing this week because he’s in bed with man flu. Which, now I come to think of it, is probably the manliest thing the miserable little squit has ever laidclaim to in his life. Be that as it may, I even offered to lend him my tablet so he didn’t have to go into that pokey stinking coal-hole he normally writes in and could do so in bed. But he turned me down saying his creative muse was mocking him or some such delirious crap. Honestly, there are days I wonder if they made a mistake at the hospital and I’ve had to bring up some other poor cow’s freak of an offspring. More likely it was that terrible school his sperm-donor insisted he went to. It was all cold showers, canings and stiff upper lips – and stiff other parts too, from what I could tell.
Sec. Bear with. Need a refill.
That’s better. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I’m supposed to be doing something about how to write. Moons gave me his notes, but I used them as a coaster and the ink’s gone smudgy with the advocaat. So, you lot will just have to put up with my thoughts instead. I mean, you read his shite week after week so you can’t be very discriminating. Fact is most of you won’t even notice it’s not Moons.
So you really want to know how to write a book?
S’easy. Pick up your frikking metaphorical pen and write the sucker. I remember that some poncey author or another was once asked how he wrote and the big festering gobshite replied ‘one word at a time’. Ha bloody ha ha! Who’s a clever asshole then?
But there is a grain of truth in. You can read enormous amounts of pretentious shite about courting muses, and engaging with your characters, and story arcs, and much other meaningless birdcrap. But as far as I can see that is about as likely to result in a bestseller as any of the puerile stratagems employed by my sad excuse for a son.
Basically, find a rattling good story and tell it. Sprinkle it with the most perverse sex you can imagine. Add a goodly dollop of blood and gore. And don’t forget the happy ever after.
Job done.
Consider this. The horrendous old bat Moons moons over (in a literary way) managed to churn out over 700 of her sickly tales in between interfering in the lives of anybody who would listen to her. By my reckoning, that means anybody should be able to knock out two or three a week. You will be wealthy by Christmas.
Or maybe not.
Who knows? Who cares?
Coffee time now so you’re on your own. If you get really unlucky, Moons will be back next week.
Go on, piss off then. I’ve said all I’m going to say.
Jacintha Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV
You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.
‘The Quiet Revolution’ by Jane Jago, is one of the stories in It Takes A Village, an optimistic anthology speculating about the meaning of care.
The story came to be because I was considering the idea that heroes don’t necessarily wear shiny armour, or ride dragons into battle. Sometimes it is the poorest and most humble of folk whose quiet courage reaches into the hearts and minds of others and shows them a better way.
I bring you, then, a situation where gender is the defining factor in every avenue of life, with neither men nor women having any use for their opposite numbers except as breeding tools. What can possibly change such entrenched ideologies? What has the power to right such an imbalance. And how can hatred be overcome? You’ll have to read the whole thing to find out. Here’s a small taster to whet your appetite…
When human beings came here to start a brand-new home, they called the place Utopia. Which was taking hubris to a whole new level, even if the intention was pure.
Things went smoothly enough when the first settlers set themselves to build Utopian cities or to cultivate the virgin land. Working from dawn to dusk on a newly terraformed planet doesn’t leave too much time for factionalism and everyone was deemed to be of equal value. Maybe the spirit of sharing would even have lasted had not the final shipment of stevedores and manual labourers been drawn from Terran prison colonies where brutality was the norm. Sometime on their intergalactic journey, the convict labourers killed their jailers and when the transport landed their sole intention was to take the new planet for their own.
The beauty of Utopia was despoiled by greed and the lust for power, while running battles befouled the streets. Those who sought power fell into two camps: misogynistic men who called themselves ‘alpha males’ and considered women as no more than the vessels for their lusts; and misandristic women who saw no future unless men were subjugated and reduced to sperm providers or castrated as pets. Each camp boasted heavily armed militiamen and women whose sole function was to enforce the will of their leaders by whatever means they saw fit.
By the turn of the century, the two gender-based ideologies, who had more or less carved the planet up between them, became more and more entrenched in their beliefs and less and less likely to put aside their enmity for anything less than world domination.
It’s not surprising, then, that those people who lived outside the militia-controlled cities started hiding their children away. Sure, some hid them to drive up the profit when they ripened, but most just wanted to keep their little ones safe from the marauding militias.
While men and women fought each other for every blade of grass and every drop of water the Utopian beauty around them was going to hell in a handcart—until the quiet revolution happened and changed us all forever.
Jane Jago is an eccentric genre-hopping pensioner, who writes for the sheer enjoyment of the craft and gets in terrible trouble because of her attitude.
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