Built upon an asteroid, these mighty habitation towers are the final stronghold of humanity in a star system ravaged by a long-ago war. Now, centuries after the apocalyptic conflict, the city thrives — a utopia for the rich who live at the top, built on the labours of the poor stuck below. Starway Pathfinders is a science fiction show that entertains the better off and brings hope to the poor…

The sleek, gleaming corridors and brilliant fake sunlight had Joah half convinced the very air was sweeter here than her home. They were on the floor below the Presidential Suite. She had never climbed so high before; even the most prestigious of the celebrity glitterfest awards she had been to were held in a posh venue several floors down. Zarshay, in her neat, fashion-conscious outfit and without the tight hood suppressing her hair, looked nothing like the ultra-rational Xexe Chay she played in the show. Instead she was transformed into the perfect appearance of a PA, radiating an aura of efficiency. It was on such occasions as this that Joah wished she was as good an actress.
The meeting room projected from the side of the tower with a solid but transparent strip running across the floor, offering a vertiginous vista of the city below. But in this room, you were not encouraged to look down. The ceiling gave the appearance of being intangible, and somewhere above them an illusory sky seemed close enough to touch, soft blue, the colour of Heila’s eyes, with fluffy clouds. Joah wondered what the trick of it was.
They were served by silent figures who could have been people or not, it was hard to tell these days. Drinks and nibbles. Zarshay nibbled. Joah didn’t. Her guts were too tight even to let her sip at the drink in front of her on the dark oval table.
The door opened several times as they waited, and each time Joah was half out of her seat before she realised it was not the president’s aide, just a lowly admin or security person doing a check. After the third false start, she felt Zarshay’s hand squeeze her own, reassuring and calming. Glancing at her, Joah saw she was wearing her best “we can do this” smile.
She knew when Dain Strand finally arrived. There was a sudden flotilla of fussing humanity filling the room and then he appeared. He shook Joah’s hand with a warm grip. She found herself thinking there was not too much family resemblance, but it did not surprise her to be dealing with a Strand. The president was renowned for liking to keep his extended family gainfully employed at a high level.
“Glad you could make it,” he said, as if they were friends and he had asked her over for a social event. He moved past her before she could reply, and settled into a chair on the other side of the table, flanked by two of his staff who Joah assumed were bodyguards.
“Look, let’s get down to business right away — I’m sure you have places you need to be, Ms. Meer, and so do I. Your show — the one about that spaceship. It’s a good show. Great show, in fact, I’ve not missed an episode since it started airing. The president loves it. He loves it a lot.” He stopped speaking as if that was all he had to say, and there was a moment of awkward silence.
“Uh — well, thank you for saying so. We do try to pack in as much fun and excitement as we can. I am happy you both enjoy it so much.” Joah bit her tongue to stop herself gushing.
“I do. A lot. And it has given the president an idea — something the whole of the City can get behind.” Dain Strand paused and suddenly Joah could see the family resemblance in the way he managed the moment. “The president wants to build The Golden Strand and he wants you and your crew to be a part of it.”
Joah closed her mouth, which had fallen open on the word “Strand”. Not for the first time, she wished she had even a fraction of Zarshay’s ability to act.
“I — I —”
“I know what you are thinking, and I promise you that you’ll get full royalties for use of the name and theme, and we’ll be packaging out some media prompts with your people getting to share a platform with the president for the launch of the project as well. But I’ll need you to make over all the blueprints, designs, everything, to my engineers.”
His expression was serious, but it had to be a joke.
“We don’t run to blueprints. It’s only some virtual modelling artwork,” she explained, hearing the edge of desperation in her own voice. “It’s not like it’s a real spaceship or anything.”
Dain Strand smiled and she felt the full force of his predatory charisma.
“I know that,” he said, lifting a hand as if waving away her protests. “But building it would be a project everyone in the city would get behind.”
Zarshay had been silent until then, but now she spoke.
“What I am hearing, Mr. Strand, is that you want to get the city to support this project, not that you want to build a ship to explore the galaxy.”
For a moment there was a cold silence, and Dain looked at Zarshay in a way that made Joah’s flesh creep. Then he laughed, a short, mirthless bark of sound, and leaned towards Joah.
“She’s good. If she’s on your business team, I can see why you do well.” He winked, and Joah suppressed a shudder. Then Dain was pushing himself to his feet. “Well, as we are on the same node here, I guess my work is done. I’ll leave the details to the legal team.”
Everyone rose and Joah had her hand pressed once more, then the president’s emollient hatchet man was gone.

Star Dust by E.M. Swift-Hook, originally appeared in The Last City, a shared-universe anthology. This version is the ‘Author’s Cut’ and differs, very slightly, from that original. Next week – Episode 0110

Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…

***** ***** *****

Did we but love,
Our love might ease this parting of the ways
Did we but hope,
Then hope might lift us through the darkening days
Could we believe,
Belief might make us fear the ending less
Could we but pray,
We might have just one prayer of some success
If we had care,
Then one bright light the tunnel’s end might show
If we had sight,
We might see in the dark a candle glow
Could we find faith,
Then in that faith we might discern a chance
Could we find calm,
Perhaps we would find healing in a glance
Did we have peace,
Perhaps our fear of death would fade and die
Did we but love,
Why then we’d have the strength to say goodbye

© Jane Jago

A sign hung down, still half attached to the top of the pay-booth, its broken back clapping against the heavy door set in the side of the small brick cabin. The words were barely visible:

…COME TO ….HELL…

Somewhere an owl shrieked and, despite herself, Jess drew a sharp breath. She took a step towards the broken, flapping sign and played the torch beam over it from end to end:

WELCOME TO SHELLEY’S FUNPARK

The owl screeched again and Jess smiled. You had to love it when the atmospherics played up to the occasion. It would only take a sea mist rolling in to turn this place into something out of an old-school Hammer Horror production. The really chilling thing was not any kind of supernatural danger here, it was the realisation that this was indeed an abandoned and empty place, with no one around who might have a phone she could use to call the roadside recovery and this place was a very long walk from anywhere. Only a year ago that would have meant very little. She might even have enjoyed the bracing breeze and the countryside at night. But not now. Now she would not make it more than a mile before she was crippled with pain.
The laughter carried on the night air, coming from behind the low roofed building immediately in front of her. At a guess it had once been some kind of cafe, but now it was heavily boarded up, metal shutters pulled over the windows, like a creature retreated into its shell.
Shelley’s Funpark? Why did that sound so familiar? Jess would have given it some more thought but the laughter came again, masculine, plural and loud. It was not from someone with any thought of trying to avoid attention. Still gripping the magnalight, its beam dimmed, Jessica made her way past the cafe-building and into the open area beyond.
The shadowy figures moving vaguely on the far side, close by the enclosing wall, sprang suddenly into stark relief and were revealed, as as an orange glow flared behind them. Jess froze, hearing drunken cheers as the fire took hold and watched as, like the ritual of some strange coven of witches, the group of youths all started throwing things into the flames.
She sensed this was indeed a ritual, though not one of any religious kind. Things were passing hand to hand, bottles of water and white cider. It was a scene she had witnessed a few too many times in her career. In her previous career, she mentally corrected and felt the small inner lurch of loss that always left in its wake.
Then someone moved right behind her and a pair of hands gripped her shoulders.
“Hey bros, look what I just found.”
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 
No. It doesn’t. 
It really doesn’t.
Not when it breaks you inside.
That was all Jess could think, standing, paralysed by her past. There was not even a conscious sense of fear, though she could feel her heart rate slam up and the floor drop away. It was as if her conscious mind had shot out of her body and hung suspended, mid-air, above it. There was nothing she could do. It was going to happen again.
The yelp seemed to come from a great distance away not from right behind, but the moment the grip was gone from her shoulders, it was as if she were restored. Restored to a body in panic. She would have run blindly, but there was a gentle touch on her arm and a girl’s face, looking at her. They ran together.
Jess had no idea where they were going, past half demolished buildings, and broken metal structures that reared like scaffold dinosaurs, against the moon-lit sky. The ‘bros’ were either more worried about what had happened to their companion or already too out of it to be able to give chase, because after a few shouts and some sounds of running feet, the night closed behind the two of them into quiet.
They went past the barrier with an old height restriction sign on it and cartoon-like pictures of stick men standing up in cars on a roller coaster, or leaning out, circled in red with a bar through the image.Then they were clambering over a heap of twisted metal beyond. It was not a hard scramble the way her guide was going, or a long one, which was as well because the shooting pains had started up in her legs as they reached what looked a bit like a metal box, buried in the middle of the debris. 
The girl touched her hand again, then opened the door making some kind of sounds, as if reassuring an animal. Then a small glow of light came from inside and Jess went in. 
She was not really sure what she had expected. But not this. It was almost obsessively neat and very clean. For a moment, Jess was thinking of paisley furniture and over-polished wooden floors, then chastised herself for assuming that the homeless could not also be house proud. For that was clearly what this was, a homeless person’s private shelter. There was a counter top along two sides and a closed fire on the third wall opposite a comfortable bed. It was more of a sleeping platform really, covered in an odd variety of multicoloured fleece picnic blankets. Two very large cats were curled in the middle and watched her with wary feline eyes.
Jess took it in then looked at her rescuer. The girl looked to be in her mid-teens, a runaway maybe. That realisation pushed Jess out of her bubble of self-concern and she mustered a smile.
“Thank you, I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there,” she said. The girl said nothing, just glancing briefly to the cats and then back to Jess. So she tried again:
“My name is Jessica Monday, what’s yours?”
The girl kept looking at her, but the silence went on.

From Maybe by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

Okay you horrible lot, listen up. Granny is about to impart knowledge.

If you are a married lady of a certain age, look across the room and consider your significant other. How does he appear?

Dashing, debonair and handsome

Rough, tough and dangerous

Slightly grubby and with jam on his vest

Tidily harmless in his cardigan and carpet slippers

If he is any of the first three it’s an even bet you don’t call him  your ‘hubby’….

Also for ladies who should be old enough to know better. What do you refer to your lady bits as?

Fanny?

Man Trap?

Minge?

Front bottom? 

If it’s any of the first three you probably still have a sex life….

Are you beginning to catch my drift here? What we call things matters.

If you call a man ‘hubby’ he will grow into the neutered tom cat smugness the word suggests.

If you really do call your fanny a ‘front bottom’ the chances of it ever getting a visitor diminish with the years as the terminology becomes more and more at odds with the age and the experience of the speaker.

My late husband – god rest his OCD little soul – once referred to me as the little woman, and wondered why I didn’t come across for a month. Although I am certainly a woman, I am far from being little and the term is pejorative in the extreme. It is like so many words used about women, being designed to remind the ‘fair sex’ of its position in society.

So let’s strip the cute nicknames bare, shall we?

Fur baby. Nope. It’s a cat or a dog or whatever. It is not a baby. Gyp is a dog and he is my best mate (except when he barfs on the floor). I would no more call him a ‘fur baby’ than buy him a pink coat and have his toenails painted. He needs to be allowed to be a dog.

Your tiny daughter has baby fat in bracelets around her wrists. You decide to call her ‘chubbykins’. She has body image issues for the rest of her life.

And so on.

Words have power.

So please stop fecking about.

And if you want to neuter the old man send him to the vet. It’s quicker and more dignified.

You can now have a collection of Granny’s inimitable insights of your very own in Granny Knows Best. 

It was ten times ten years since the day when the oasis ran red with blood, and an exquisite woman sat in a red silk tent out on the white shining sands. She was a realist, for all her transcendent beauty, and she knew, as surely as she knew her own name, that this was the last sunset she would ever see.
Fayruzi, named for her remarkable turquoise eyes, stared unseeingly out at the cruel whiteness of the sands and carefully considered her options. She was surrounded by the various means by which she could take her life, and all that remained for her was to choose the one she found least repugnant. There was poison, there were sharp blades, there was even a tiny decorative pistol taken from some long-forgotten ajnabi who had fallen foul of the desert, and there were the sands themselves. The killing sands. The unforgiving mistress of every creature that ran, crawled, swam or flew on her breast.
But wait. Do I hear you ask why such loveliness would choose to die? Of course she did not so choose, it was simply her ill luck to be the jewel of the zenana in a year when sacrifice was called for to propitiate the god and in remembrance of those whose blood stained the waters of the oasis all those years ago. It had been an easy choice for her husband, having no love for women, to give that which another man might have prized beyond his own life as his gift to the pitiless sands.
Fayruzi studied her own white hands and thought about the last possible choice: to simply do nothing. To sit and watch the moon on the face of the desert and await the coming of the dawn and the death priests in their blood-red robes. To await those who would slit her nose before dragging her by the hair to the oasis where they would stone her to death.
She sighed. Just once. And determined to await moonrise before making any decision.
As the moon lifted over the dunes, turning white to silver, Fayruzi lifted the pistol in one pale hand. It would, she reasoned, be the least painful and degrading way to meet her end.
She thought herself fantasising when the sound of hoofbeats came to her ear, and hallucinating when she saw a tall, black horse coming across the sand towards her. Unthinking she stood, and walked out onto the sand to meet her fate. The rider of the horse reached down a hand and she grasped it in both of hers, making a graceful leap onto the saddle in front of the burnous clad figure.
He smiled down at her and she saw his eyes were as black and lightless as the night sky.
As the bedou wheeled his horse and galloped back from whence he had come, it would have been apparent, had there been anyone left behind to see, that the horse left no footprints in the soft shifting sand.

It was ten times ten, and one more, years since the day when the oasis ran red. It was dawn, and the red tent once more stood on the white sand where the desert wind ruffled its silken walls. This year there was no sacrifice but the priests still came as tradition demanded.
The chief among them bent his head and entered the empty tent, except it wasn’t empty. An exquisite woman sat on a pile of cushions in the centre of the floor. She had a babe at her breast.
The old priest felt his heart leap into his throat as he recognised Fayruzi.
“Lady,” he said respectfully.
She turned her face to him, and he saw her eyes – as black and lightless as a desert night.

©️jane jago

Buenos Dias!

It is indeed I, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, writer, agony aunt and astrologer to the famously credulous.  The renowned author of the speculative fiction classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’.

One had been racking one’s cranium for a topic for this week’s tutorial (yes, even I sometimes find inspiration needs to pursued vigorously), when a question from Claire prompted one to consider the vital importance of symbols and symbolism to those who would create literature.

Even that bastion of unthinking vulgarity, that outpost of alien mindset, that epitome of hard-handed hard-headedness, that creature one calls Mater has in the recesses of her underused and underdeveloped brain a vestigial understanding of the importance of symbols. Only last week, she was watching some interminably boring panel programme sur le téléviseur, upon which the current Archbishop of somewhere was being castigated about yet another cover-up of ecclesiastical child abuse. Mater looked across the room at me and smiled a twisted smile.

“Moons,” she said a thought sadly. “Moons. If that churchman was to have worn his episcopal regalia, instead of sitting there like a mouse in a poorly fitting lounge suit, I reckon most of them oiks would’ve been a lot more respectful. It’s the symbols of office doncha know.” Then she refilled her gin and Guinness and no more was said.

But that brief moment of lucidity is proof, if proof were needed that the power of symbols reaches deep into the psyche – even of those as sunk into alcoholism and depravity as one’s unlovely parent.

However. En avant.

How To Start Writing A Book: The Write Symbols

When one seeks to create literary magic one needs many tools at one’s disposal. Not the least of which is the noble quest. A device by which your hero may be dispatched wherever your imagination chooses in search of some artefact or some creature without which the story can progress no further. But what does that have to do with symbols, do I hear you cry? Yes, of course, I do as your tiny crania cannot hope to make the leaps of understanding that come to one’s mind as easily and gently as a bluebottle lands on a plate of rotting meat.

Of course, the noble quest is to do with symbolism. It is one of the most symbolic of all the storylines.

First. The quest itself is a metaphor (or symbol) for the struggles that beset all humans from cradle to grave.

Second. Your hero’s solid helpmeet – uplifted from the lower orders to become his right hand – is symbolic of the common clay’s need for a god to worship and of the need gods have for worshippers.

Third. Whatever or whoever is searched for, the vicissitudes of the search are the symbolic harbingers of events in human life which must be overcome with stoicism and bravery. Tempting though hysteria and Tia Maria may be.

And finally. That which is sought is the most powerful symbol of all. It symbolises human love and human endeavour. It shows us the beauty that may be found in the depths of the human soul as we try ever harder and climb ever higher in our quest for perfect beauty.

Some common symbols explained
The dragon. Strength, coldness, avarice, and sex.
The virgin. Unattainability, truth, and the desire for sex.  
Water to cross. The struggle to be loved, and the desire for sex.
A cup or grail. The thirst for knowledge, and the desire for sex.
A dove. Hope and sex.
A raven. Despair and sex.
A knife. Cutting the thread that binds a child to its mother, or sex.

One could continue almost infinitely, but I am sure you are following by now.

So, my bambinos, choose your symbols with care and write them with delicacy.

Until next. Do not have nightmares and ecrit bon.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

Built upon an asteroid, these mighty habitation towers are the final stronghold of humanity in a star system ravaged by a long-ago war. Now, centuries after the apocalyptic conflict, the city thrives — a utopia for the rich who live at the top, built on the labours of the poor stuck below. Starway Pathfinders is a science fiction show that entertains the better off and brings hope to the poor…

Home was her sanctuary — their sanctuary. It had been hers alone for so long that Joah could never have imagined sharing it. Then she’d met Zarshay and the naturalness of the sharing had been something she still found strange. It was beautiful, wonderful, amazing, but very, very strange. Their lives enlaced in many sweet ways, enhancing each aspect: work, leisure, friendship, sex.
“You know Heila has been for lunch with a guy from Undergrove Promotions?” Zarshay murmured.
It was so not the kind of topic Joah would have chosen for post-sex warmth and cuddles. She heaved a sigh and sat up, reaching for a throw-on wrap. “All right, if you want to talk about it now. I really don’t mind.”
She heard a snort of amusement from behind her on the bed.
“You are the very worst liar I know. You can’t act worth a thing.”
Warm arms embraced her and for a moment she considered giving in and lying back down again. But it felt wrong to be bringing the stress of day-to-day life into their bedroom.
“If we need to talk work,” she said, turning, “I’d rather do so with a strong drink in my hand.”
Zarshay grinned, her face suddenly that of the mischievous teen she had been when they met.
“Always,” she agreed.

They sat in the windowed alcove of the apartment, on a cushioned couch, taking in the glorious vista of graceful towers and the spans between them, small vehicles dipping like living creatures in the air between.
“Is it serious?” Joah asked.
“For Heila, everything is serious: everything is a melodrama and everything is always on the edge of catastrophe.”
It was, Joah thought, a pretty astute assessment.
“So, we may lose her?”
Zarshay wrinkled her nose in doubt.
“Maybe. But you can’t forget about the Dog factor. There is the huge Hengast and Heila thing all over social media. She loves that and—”
A soft buzz broke into their conversation. Joah looked at the unfamiliar contact details on her phone, then accepted it. It came from the upper floors, which meant it was unlikely to be any kind of time waster. She flashed the screen at Zarshay as she answered, and the other woman’s eyebrows rose.
“Joah Meer Productions, how can I help you?”
“You the people who make Starways Pathfinders? Good. I’m Dain Strand, a personal aide to Toros Strand, and I want to talk to you about a very special project we have in mind.”

Star Dust by E.M. Swift-Hook, originally appeared in The Last City, a shared-universe anthology. This version is the ‘Author’s Cut’ and differs, very slightly, from that original. Next week – Episode 0101

Who is playing chess with Tess Monroe’s life?

Tess Monroe sat at the triple mirror that dominated her dressing room, slowly brushing her smooth, pale hair. She had often thought the greenish glass rather sneered at her, but it was the only thing her husband ever had of his mother so she put up with it.

When her hair was sufficiently tamed she spun it into a complex knot at the nape of her neck which she secured with a pair of emerald-headed hairpins. Shrugging into a fantastically embroidered brocade jacket she picked up her tiny weeny evening bag and walked to the head of the stairs.

The sound of running feet made her turn her head and crouch down to the level of her approaching son. He stopped very still and looked at her for a moment, then his pink lips formed a perfect ‘o’ of surprise.

“Mama,” he said reverently, “you look beautiful.”

“Why thank you, kind sir. Now come and kiss me goodnight because you will be fast asleep by the time I get home.”

He came closer and kissed her carefully. She touched his curly head and kissed a rosy cheek.

“Sleep well babbino caro.”

Philip junior, known as Pip, chuckled, and his teacher-stroke-bodyguard came forward to take one small hand in her own.

Tess straightened up and made her way downstairs to where a car awaited on the raked gravel outside. Her driver, Sylvia, jumped out to open the rear door. Tess smiled, understanding that she was supposed to sit in the back like a proper lady. As they pulled smoothly away, she settled quietly into her seat while the big car ate up the miles to her destination—a place she personally disliked. But she had been brought up to do her duty, however tedious.

This evening’s excursion was a rarity for Tess, as there are few social occasions that are improved by the presence of an extra woman. Tonight, though, the dignitaries of the county were entertaining representatives of a production company, which was filming some parts of a television series on the bleak shoulders of the moor, and she was summoned—no doubt to look pretty and keep her mouth shut.

The drive passed rather too quickly and at the entrance to the restaurant complex, a uniformed doorman leapt to attention. Her driver turned to smile.

“Drop me a text when you are ready to leave. I won’t be far away.”

“Thank you.”

Tess exited the car with the quiet grace she had perfected in her years as the wife of the man who had been touted as the next Prime Minister – until his life had been cut short in a motorway pileup two Christmas Eves ago. As soon as her feet hit the ground, a young man she vaguely recognised as a gofer for the local party chair bustled across. He made to take her by the arm, but she froze him with a glance. 

You can keep reading if you snag a copy of Queen to Black Knight, the new book from Jane Jago which is out today!

Nowadays lives are all lived most virtually
Virtual pictures with filters applied
Everyone now can be kept in a pixel
And our photo albums in small phones reside

I recall times that we lived in monochrome
Black and white telly, and black and white snaps
Black and white memories stare from the photographs
Black and white moments our lifetime maps

Back before then they all lived in sepia
Sepia pictures in sepia frames
Formally posed with hands in laps folded
Gazing from history, lost – without names

Further before that they lived life in oil paint
Brilliant colours that spring from the past
Glorious scenes of magnificent ancestors
Whose mighty deeds will our own deeds outlast.

E.M. Swift-Hook