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…

Mes Chers Readers Who Write,

I am sure I do not need to remind you of who I am at this point in our relationship, but I will acknowledge there may be a handful of benighted individuals who have yet to make my acquaintance. So for their benefit, I will again mention that my name is Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV and I am the renowned author of both the speculative fiction classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ and of this ‘The Thinking Quill’ which offers insight into the mysteries of the authorial craft.

Indeed it was only yesterday Mummy observed: ‘You spend too much time in that coal cellar. You should get out more.” But I assured her the reason I was committing so much of my life to my literary sanctum, was both to progress my own literary offerings and to selflessly share of my copious pearls of wisdom with you, oh Reader Who Writes.

So, without further hesitation or procrastination on either side, let us undress the goddess of literature and peer beneath the skirts of her most intimate places. In brief, dear RWW, let us consider the very building-blocks of her DNA – the tools with which one has wrought such wonders – words.

The Write Words

It is a truth universally acknowledged that paucity of vocabulary is the fence at which a multiplicity of putative novelists fail. Gird up your loins my children and do battle with the twin dragons of over-simplification and ugly language. Let that duo of decrepitude be downtrodden under the heels of linguistic loveliness. Let your Muse speak to you in honeyed prose. Let the thesaurus be your Bible and let not the commonplace leave your fingertips. Never say that your grass is green, rather enchant your readers with the verdant viridian verbiage. Let them inhale the aroma of the recumbent emerald as it is crushed beneath the bare toes of powerful simile.

Let your doting following bask in the sunlight of your fertile poesy. Let your words be as sunlight to the face of the damask rose. Let your adjectival imagery lift your children from the commonplace to the heights of quasi-sexual ecstasy. Let your voice be as the zephyr of a southern breeze carrying the redolence of olive groves and lemon trees and the salt tang of mare nostrum.

Lead your interlocutors along primrose paths of erudition and titillation, and do not cease in your endeavours until your mind’s ear can hear their sighs of replete completion. Only then have you begun to understand the manifest prognostications of your craft.

To encapsulate this vital educational epistle:

1. Never use a simple word where a periphrastic locution can be set.
2.  Never use a sole descriptor – a lonely adjective should be a contumely maxim! Instead, allow the perihelion swirl of elucidatory and expressive ornament to embrace each noun and verb.
3. Seek always the etymological road least travelled and endow your audience with rare gems mined from deep archaisms and seek the perfect bon mots from languages few speak. Thus you will both educate and impress.

Consider my words with care.

Until next mes enfants, adieu and may Erato and Calliope attend your dreams.

Bon Ecrit!

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.

What hands did make imposing doors
And carve the stones that circle round
Was this an act of faith, assured
Of spirits for a time earthbound
What minds and eyes did this create
As praise or reparation
A work of art that elevates
Man, from his human station

©️ jj 2024

In a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire never left, Dai and Julia solve murder mysteries, whilst still having to manage family, friendship and domestic crises…

It was pleasant bowling through the winter countryside with the thin sunshine turning the dead bracken orange. and a pale blue sky overhead. Julia revelled in a moment to just sit.
“You don’t get a lot of down time do you, domina?” Bryn observed.
“No. And I sometimes wonder if it was wise of me to take this job alongside motherhood and the rest of it. But I have good people around me. And I think I might go mad if domesticity was the whole of my life.”
“That’s what Gwen says about you. Reckons your mind is too busy to be satisfied by just running a house. She’s much the same, but she has her healing and the Druid stuff.”
“I know Gwen understands. But Dai’s mam can’t. I think that’s why she pokes and prods about how I’m bringing up Aelwen and Rhodri.”
“That’s also what Gwen says. She’s been tempted to interfere, she and Olwen being good friends, but she thinks you have it in hand.”
“ I do. I just ignore it. But it hurts Dai. Though it may be going to stop because Gallus has promised to have a word.”
“I reckon that’ll turn the trick. Olwen is not an easy woman in a lot of ways, but he manages to love her and live with her.”
Julia laughed. “Yes, well, what she refers to in her son as ‘Llewellyn angst’ could just as easily have come from her.” Bryn grunted. “Very probably. But, domina. We seem to have acquired a tail.”
Julia looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a shiny muscle truck barrelling along behind them, and,  judging by the black smoke from its exhaust, it was being driven as fast as it would go. She showed her teeth.
“So we do. That was quick.”
“It was. Maybe too quick for it to be a decision from on high. I mean, all a car chase is going to do is bring whoever into even clearer focus. And that’s stupid.”
“Yes. As you say. Stupid and knee jerk.”
Bryn made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “If I had time, I’d go back and bounce my pacifier off his thick head.”
Julia laughed. “I reckon it’s an inept attempt at intimidation. They mean to put the frighteners on us. Run us into a ditch and clear off. No real harm done. Just frighten the little woman so she backs off.”
“Yeah. Somebody doesn’t know you very well, do they? What do you want to do? I’ve no great fancy to be chasing up and down the Mawddach with some idiot trying to run me off the road.”
“Me neither. Are you game for a bit of rule bending?”
“Always.”
Julia slid a hand under her armpit and brought out her trusty pistol.
“Submagistratus Llewellyn, you aren’t carrying a concealed weapon are you?”
“I am and as I’m both a citizen and technically a Vigiles, it’s fully legal. It’s what I propose to do with it that’s a bit irregular.”
“Tell me more.”
“Even chummy’s favourite muscle truck is going nowhere on shredded tyres.”
Bryn’s grin was every bit as appreciative as she had hoped it would be. “What’s the drill?”
“Next longish straight bit of track you speed up. Then slow right back. We see how our tail reacts. If we think he really is following us, I shoot out a couple of his tyres.”
Bryn chuckled. “On it, domina.”
As he spoke the track widened, flattened, and became arrow-straight following the line of one of the roads built by Julia’s ancestors. Bryn increased speed and Julia turned in her seat.
“The stupid irrumator is only trying to catch us.”
She knelt up. “Slow down now Bryn, but reduce speed gently.”
As Bryn eased up on the speed their pursuer kept on coming. Julia raised her pistol and put two rounds in his left front tyre. The vehicle lurched violently to the left, and as the driver fought his bucking bronco of a vehicle she gave the right front a similar treatment. That rather put paid to any further pursuit.

From the The Dai and Julia Mysteries, Dying for a Present, a novella by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Because life can be interesting when you are a non-player character in an online video game…

As String dressed himself in a new and even shinier set of chain-mail with glowing runes around it, Pew looked at the open doors. Of course, one led out but the other three all led away into the dark and seemed to be ramps going down.
“Which way do we go?” Milla asked.
Pew shook his head and then held up his staff, casting the same spell she had seen when they first met, but the spray of sparkles seemed a bit less intense. He nodded towards the door to the left of the entrance.
“That way. Your little dog is down there. Somewhere.”
As if on cue there came a bark from somewhere below them. Milla’s heart moved in her chest and before she was even aware of what she was doing she had started running down the dark passage Pew had said was the one they needed to take, calling Ruffkin’s name.
“Milla wait!”
She heard Pew’s urgency and stopped her headlong dash just before the ramp doubled back on itself and turned into stairs. Which was just as well. An armoured ryeshor skeleton was walking down the steps towards the door below, where two more stood guard and Milla had nearly barrelled right into it. She still had Pew’s dagger in her hand and instinctively held it up. The runes on it were glowing dark red.
“That’s got awesome bonus stats against undead,” Pew said as he send a blast of flame down the stairs and the skeleton crumbled.
The boar pushed between the two of them and bounded down the steps to attack the two skeletons by the door. Milla noticed the armour plates on his harness were no longer black but now glittered with a silvery glow.
“See that?” String said, cleaving his sword into the skeletons as he spoke. “That last boss dropped an upgrade spell for my pet too.”
“Neat,” Pew said, as his staff send a string of fireballs into one skeleton blasting it apart. The other collapsed moments later in a heap of bones under the combined assault of Pigsy’s tusks and String’s sword.
There was a sudden deafening silence as the bones vanished, then an urgent bark from somewhere behind the door the skeletons had been guarding. Milla would have been down the last of the stairs and through it instantly but Pew caught her arm.
“We don’t know what’s in there. If you go charging in you could be killed.” The sobering words and the intense look he gave her were enough to make her pause. Something in his gaze distracted her and with a slight shock she realised he was concerned for her, he actually cared about what might happen to her. She blinked and nodded, her frill-spines spreading. Pew gave her quick grin then headed down the steps in the wake of String and Pigsy.
The chamber behind the door had a high domed ceiling. The walls were lined with white tiles and decorated with gorgeous images of local plants, birds and animals in shades of green, turquoise and blue. In the middle of the room was a circular, stepped dias. Placed on it, was a huge throne formed from blackened bones and adorned with bleached skulls on the back posts and arm rests. Beneath the throne, in a cage of bone, Milla could see a shivering Ruffkin. Sitting on the throne and dominating the room, was a hooded robed figure, twice the height of any ryeshor. It wore a crown of flickering lights that looked like a skeletal hand grasping a nebulous ball of magical power. Beneath the enveloping hood no face could be seen, just two glowing red eyes.
“Oh frag – it’s a lich lord.” Pew sounded worried.
“Then it’ll have a magic mitigation shield, an AOE frontal with massive damage and a fear effect.”
“HOW DARE YOU ENTER MY DOMAIN! YOU PUNY BEINGS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. I WILL CRUSH YOU LIKE INSECTS.” The thing on the throne seemed to exude the words rather than speak them and Milla’s whole being shivered with an icy chill.
“So you put your armour buff on Pigsy,” String went on his tone as unurgent as if he was discussing the weather. “Pets are immune to the fear. But we’ll have to watch for the frontal.”
“You got your parser running?”
“Course. I’ll use it to spot when the ratstab is due to cast. Just be ready to joust.”
“MY MINIONS MAY NOT HAVE STOPPED YOU PENETRATING MY LAIR OF DARKNESS AND DESPAIR BUT I SHALL DEAL WITH YOU MYSELF.”
“Think there might be adds during the fight?”
“Likely. If we get any you keep focused on the boss – it’ll be leashed to the throne anyway – I’ll handle them with Pigsy.”
“OK.” Pew made a gesture with his staff towards Pigsy and the boar glowed briefly with swirling runes. “There you go. Ready when you are.”
“Pre-warding and sending in the pig!”

Log on to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook for the 10th Quest next week.

‘Wrathburnt Sands’ and ‘Return to Wrathburnt Sands’ were first published in Rise and Rescue: A GameLit Anthology and in Rise and Rescue Volume 2: Protect and Recover.

With a lifetime of hard earned experience behind her, Granny generously shares the wisdom she has gleaned over eight decades. So pin back your ears and bloody well listen!

This is more in the nature of an ill-tempered moan than an actual hint. What is the matter with the media – and seemingly anybody under the age of sixty?

Yes, there is one extra day in this year.

What the f*** is the big deal? Every four years we get a leap year. It’s like the Olympics and the World Cup. Get over it…

It doesn’t matter. 

You don’t get an extra day tacked on to your life in a leap year (and, if you are paid monthly, you don’t even get any extra pay).

I am even seeing happy leap year cards advertised. Do. Not. Buy. Them. The only people who need a card are the ones born on February 29 – and they have no need if they have seen more than ten actual birthdays.

So. Today’s hint is absolutely simple. February 29 is just another day. Anybody that tells you different is an asshole and probably wants your bank details so they can deposit the million pounds you won in the national lottery of some obscure banana republic. Take Granny’s word for it… it’s NBFD.

And finally, to every sad spinster out there who thinks it will be a good idea to propose to the asshole who has been conning bed and board out of her since just after the last leap year:

For. The. Love. Of. Little. Fairies. Don’t.

One: If he hasn’t mentioned the M word after more than three years, there’s a reason.

Two: The bas***d will very probably run a mile.

Three: Your proposal will be trending on social media within ten minutes so when he refuses your humiliation will go viral.

Just don’t.

If you are lonely buy a dog and have him neutered.

There it is my precious little snowflakes. Pull up your frilly panties and bloody well get on with it or Granny is going to fetch you such a clip across the lughole

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

almsot (noun) – drunkard reliant on charitable donations to survive

bocan (noun) – pork-based sandwich filling

kund (noun) – well intentioned goat

mascarpine (noun) – soft cheese flavoured with disinfectant 

masocpic (noun) – a selfie taken whilst trying to pluck nostril hairs

na dback (adverb) – of marching, being persistently out of step 

parilment (noun) – collection of geezers getting fat on the sweat of others’ brows

prseit (noun) – confused clergy person with a magnificent moustache

pupit (noun) – a small mammal with sharp, yellow teeth and galloping halitosis

sopt (adjective) – of festival goers, soaked, normally with urine

stoy (noun) – text speak for dildo

tracjetory (noun) – path taken by drunk person when forcefully ejected from public house

understaoof (adjective) – of cardigans and woolly jumpers being covered in greyish beige bobbly bits irrespective of the original colour of the garment

wikkid (adjective) – of sheep having unusually aggressive attitude 

yar (noun) – mispronunciation of the word year promulgated by your TV Royal Correspondent

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.

Dinner

The secret of living is this:
You don’t need ecstasy and bliss,
You just need a good man
Who knows how to – and can
Do the dinner when you are half-pissed.

E.M. Swift-Hook

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…

Bonjour mes enfants,

It is I, the exquisitely lubricious Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV. Ivy to one’s chums and Moons to one’s deliciously outre Maman. I am, of course, the pen behind that seminal work of imagination and anal rectitude ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ and the unimaginably enormous and generous intellect behind this programme of tutorials on the art of putting one’s soul onto paper.

I know you are all in awe of the crystalline perfection of my prose, and the lyrical lusciousness of my verse, and I know deep in my artistic soul that I cannot ever hope to raise the standards of your poverty-stricken scribbling to anywhere near the opalescent splendour of my smallest mark on paper. But it is my sacred mission to teach you little minnows sufficient that you may become sharklettes in the murky ponds of your own miserable literary existences.

With which in mind we shall proceed.

The Write Conclusion

Or, as Mama might say, “Famous last words, Moons. Fucking famous last words.”

You will, of course, be racking your teeny weeny little minds for the reason why the last words in a work can have any importance at all. I shall elucidate, beginning in the world of the moving picture theatre, a podium not dissimilar to the efforts of the literary genius…

Some examples:

Should one pronounce the phrase:

‘It was beauty killed the beast’

all of you will prick up your little ears and a spark will kindle in the dullness of your crania. Upon some basic level, too elementary to be called thought, you will know that ‘King Kong’ is being evoked.

Similarly:

‘tomorrow is another day’

brings to the screen behind the dullness of your eyes the face of Scarlett O’Hara and the flavour of ‘Gone with the Wind’.

Do you begin to discern my meaning?

And so to literary conclusions.

One will admit to being less than a fan of Mister Dickens’ turgid Victorian drama but he did possess the ability to pen an ending that etches itself into the consciousness.

There is no need whatsoever to have read ‘A Tale of two Cities’ to know that it concludes thus:

‘…it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known’

Equally it is true to say that not one in a thousand of those who quote Tiny Tim’s valedictory speech at the end of ‘A Christmas Carol’ will have so much as opened the book. Notwithstanding this fact ‘God bless us. Every one.’ has become just as much a symbol of the festive season as brandy butter and Boxing Day divorce.

Boiled down to its very essence, today’s message is both excruciatingly simple and exquisitely obscure. If your last few words are as strong as Sampson, as sexy as Rod Stewart, and as breathtaking as a sussurating sunset, it matters not a jot what the rest of the endeavour is.

Oh yes, my hopeful scribblers. A memorable last line will enshrine your work in the canon of literary excellence…

Consider your options carefully and remember the final words of my own magnum opus as Fatswhistle lays his heart and his fortune at the feet of his beloved Buchtooth:

“Piss off Fats, I’m dying for a crap.”

Craft carefully mes estudas. 

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.

Sonnets on sunsets, and quatrains delightful
Odes to beloveds and limericks frightful
Poetic thinking that dances and sings
These are a few of my favourite things

Perfectly pitched prose and vocabulary
Fiendish acrostics to trap the unwary
Tender love stories whose heroines cling
These are a few of my favourite things

When the plot stinks and the words ming
When the Internet’s down
I simply remember my favourite things
And then I forget to frown…

©️jane jago

My earliest memories are of misery and darkness. In those days I had no name and no voice. I was constantly hungry, and alone save for the chained slaves around me and the hellhound puppy whose fur kept me from freezing to death at night. 
    All that changed at the moment Mother found me in that stinking prison and picked me up in her tender arms. From then on Puppy and I had love to fill our hearts and food to fill our bellies. We became members of Aascko and Aaspa’s big rambling family, and I acquired a name. I became Silver, the beloved child of a high status household, and I and my brothers and sisters were given every advantage that wealth, privilege, and, above all, love can give.
    At the time of my adoption Mother and Father already had three imps. First there was Owlet, whose mama was Owl and whose papa was unknown. After him Mother and Father adopted Tiger and Puma, whose mama was Small Cat and whose papa was Aanjo which died in prison. Not too long after me there came Tawny and Eagle, whose mama was Owl and whose papa was our Father, Aascko. Later, Mother and Father were to adopt Oak and Willow, whose papa was a cousin of our Father and whose mama poisoned her Mate to steal his money. When she was caught she was permitted to kill herself, and Oak and Willow became our nest siblings. Those were the imps of Aaspa’s family.
    Not long after I joined the household, there came a change in the family circumstances when our GreatFather Aasgo, whom we all call Papa, became the Master Hunter and we moved to the citadel. This move could have been hard on me, because I have weak legs as a result of near starvation when I was tiny and the citadel is ancient and rambling with many staircases, and corridors with worn stone floors. But my family had no intention of allowing me to suffer any inconvenience because of my disability and we lived in a pleasant set of modern ground floor rooms opening onto their own enclosed garden. 
    For the first ten winters of our life in the citadel I learned my lessons with the drone Branwen, swam daily in the warm waters of the hot springs, and played with my siblings. I don’t think any of us had any idea how important our family was and we were the happier for not knowing. 
    It is my thought that Mother and Father would have kept us in innocence longer had there not been an attempt to kidnap Puma.
    It happened on a warm spring morning when we eight, and our teacher, were taking a gentle walk in the meadows where the earliest flowers were already blooming. We had no inkling of trouble ahead, and had not Puppy sensed the reception committee and set up a tremendous barking we would have walked into a carefully laid trap. As it was, my hellhound scented trouble and she herded us away from the defile where the bad people were hidden, all the while keeping up her ferocious barking. Branwen firmed its chin and grasped Tawny and Eagle, but I thought it looked afraid, while Tiger took hold of Puma, Oak held Willow, and Owl put his arms about me with the obvious intention of protecting us from whatever had so disturbed Puppy. As the would-be kidnappers rose up out of the long grass and rushed towards us, we heard the snap of leathery wings and Mother, Father and a group of our fighters landed between us and the assorted elves, vampires and orcs who had thought to take us unawares.
    “Keep one to talk to,” Father said tautly as half the fighters formed a protective ring around us while the other half engaged the poorly disciplined rabble with savage efficiency. 
    Tiger put his hands over Puma’s eyes, and Oak did the same for Willow, but Owlet knew better than to try and protect me from the reality of our situation so I watched as our attackers were summarily dealt with. When the last but one fell to Mother’s expertly wielded blade I took a deep breath.
    “What did they want?”
    “I don’t know,” Owlet was grave. “But I suspect that Mother and Father will find out.”
    Father looked at us. “You should go home.”
    Mother placed a hand on his arm. “Too late for that, love, they need to see this through.”
    “Why?” Father sounded almost immeasurably weary. “Didn’t we work to protect them from even knowing about this sort of treachery.”
    “We did. And we have. But we can do that no longer. They are none of them babies any more. If we let them see precisely what happened and what we will do to protect them it will be better than trying to push the events of this morning to the backs of their minds where such memories could fester.”
Father pulled her into his arms and laid his cheek briefly against the glossy black curls of her crest.
    “You are only right, love,” then his voice changed. “Bring that here, Aanda.”
    The grizzled fighter dragged a surly-looking male elf over to where Mother and Father stood.
    “Talk,” Mother said softly.
    “Make me,” the elf hissed. 
    Mother laughed and tossed her curls. “You will talk renegade elf, you will even sing should I so choose.” She turned her face to Father. “Would you invite Witness Aanan to join us.”
    He grinned grimly before throwing back his head and roaring. 
    Our honorary uncle arrived swiftly and with no ceremony. He walked over to Mother who pulled his head down and whispered in his ear. He chuckled mirthlessly.
    I could see the flaw in the air as he formed a portal.  A familiar figure strolled out onto the warm grass with a metal-studded oaken club balanced negligently on one shoulder. It was the alpha female troll, Mabel. She grinned as us before turning her countenance on the by now shrinking elf in Aanda’s grasp.

From  Aaspa’s Imps by Jane Jago.