Two Women and Some Books
Did you know waiting has claws
That scratch your skin
And lack of knowledge grows jaws
That drag you in
And hours become too long
While imagination
Sings a bewitching song
Of icy temptation
And a voice inside of your head
Whispers away
How does it feel to be walking dead
Better learn to pray
Did you know that waiting has claws
You must learn to ignore
Clamp bright hope around its jaws
And you will hear no more
Beloved Readers Who Write,
Although a reminder of my superb credentials and exquisite sensibilities is becoming increasingly superfluous, it is possible that a tiny minority of the denizens of cyberspace may, as yet be unacquainted with the masterful intellect that is Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV 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. Ecco, mes estudas, here one is. Prepared to pedagogueise…
For today’s little tutorial, one’s fickle Muse leads one further along the bridleways of characterisation and the building of those sprites which shall infuse your works with life and loveliness. Follow in one’s footsteps, mes enfants, and you will surely find that the strength of one’s pedagogical peregrinations shields your tender little souls from the hurricanes of blandness, excessive ‘realism’, cold bare prose, and that all-devouring vampiric creature whose name is critic.
Ergo, mes enfants, when you have your protagonistic personifications placed in your psyche allow them to speak within the pristine pergola of your mind. Listen as they tell you of their lives and loves and leisure pursuits. Speak with them aloud as their insubstantial forms draw flesh from conversation with their creator. Fear not the idle sneers of ignoramuses, listen not to well-meant advice wherein those less sensitive to etheric beings counsel against speech with those entities none else can see or hear.
Be brave and enter into such dialogues as the children of your encephalon will vouchsafe to you. Dispute with them, should that be their will. Declaim aloud your fractious floccinaucinihilipilification. Shout to the skies when Erato and Calliope send unto you an actor of such ferocious intractability as to madden the very core of your sensitivities. Sing lullabies to soothe the merciless breast of your insubstantial interlocutor. Eat only that which their nourishment requires, abstain from tobacco, strong drink, and hallucinogenic substances so that your soul can be pure and your psyche open to the voices from beyond.
In the ultimate analysis, when you have a protagonist who walks by your side directing your steps you have succeeded beyond mere measure, and you can allow yourself to be led by the hand into the labyrinthine lusciosity of lustful lubriciousness that is literature lubricated by genius.
Ah yes, mes estudas, when your careful construction takes breath into its own lungs your work is done. Cry tears of joy as you inscribe into insubstantial cyberspace the passages of pusillanimous prose your protagonists dictate to you.
When their clamour will not let you sleep, you will know you have achieved the ultimate in character creation!
I shall conclude with advice on antagonists. They are the bad people, everyone knows what a bad person is like, we all have neighbours, work colleagues or relatives we despise. So there is no need to explain them or their motives in more than the briefest of detail. Less is more.
Écrit 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…
For some reason the meeting was taking place in the sound recording room. After they finished the visual side of it, Joah usually insisted the human trio recorded their speech again. They were, after all, not word perfect and inflection precise in the same way their virtual co-stars could be. It was built with special insulation to eliminate any sound leakage in or out.
It was a bit of a squeeze getting them all inside and the door closed, especially for Dog who always found he took up more space than anyone expected. And Joah looked less than her usually confident self. That troubled Dog. He trusted Joah and if she had reason to be nervous it made him unsettled. At least Zarshay seemed at ease, she grinned at Dog as she squashed herself in beside him.
Heila looked long suffering and slightly bored, but that meant nothing, of course.
“So what is this about?” she demanded and then pulled a face. “Someone did not use deodorant today.”
“Shut up, Heila,” Zarshay said in a pleasant tone. “Before we start talking about anything else — are you staying with the show or are you jumping ship to Undergrove? Now we don’t mind if you are, but Joah and I would like a straight answer, please.”
Dog gave a small bark of surprise. He couldn’t help it. Not that anything Heila did should surprise him anymore, but that took a lot of beating.
The blue eyes instantly filled with moisture. “How could you think such a thing? I’m a woman of my word and I signed for five seasons.”
“You signed for six with Hopeless Hearts Hospital and walked out to join us after three,” Joah pointed out and the threatened tears seemed to reabsorb themselves somehow.
“That was different,” Heila snapped. “That show was going nowhere fast. SP is in a different league.”
“So why were you flirting with Lon Undergrove?” Zarshay asked.
Dog wondered if she also caught the brief look of cold calculation on Heila’s face, smothered stillborn by a wounded smile.
“Talking over old times, darling, that is all. He and I were almost an item once.”
It was pretty clear neither Joah nor Zarshay were buying that. They just looked at Heila. Dog was glad he was not the one getting those looks. There was a hollow silence of expectation that hung in the room.
“Alright,” Heila lifted both her hands. “Yes, I was talking with Undergrove. They have a new show and want me for it. Nice money. Very nice. But only if they get Dog too. Lon says he likes our chemistry on screen. I told him there was no way Dog would leave SP, but he wanted me to try anyway.” She crossed her arms and huffed out a breath glaring at Dog as if it was all somehow his fault. Then she looked back at Joah and Zarshay and her expression changed again. “I’m sorry, alright? It won’t happen again.”
Joah’s face tightened.
“I’m serious here, this is something we need to take on as a team or it’s going to sink us — and maybe sink a lot of other people too. If you are going to play on being the spoilt brat Hiela, walk now because things are going to turn very nasty.”
Dog shook himself and earned an elbow in the ribs from Zarshay. But Joah’s words had the desired effect and Heila looked strangely expressionless for once.
“You’d better tell us,” she said, the usual childlike singsong she managed to make into a mature sultry roll for her Captain’s voice, was suddenly absent.
“This is not going to be easy to explain,” Joah said, “but it’s us against the President.”
Dog felt the furrows on his brow deepen as Zarshay and Joah went over what had happened and his mind flipped back to that evening out with Teram and his salvage crew. It was like taking the hopes and dreams of half the city and whoring them out for cold cash.
“We’re not going to do this thing, are we?” he asked as the two women finished talking.
Zarshay patted his hand reassuringly. “Do you really think me and Joah would buy into something like that?”
“But you left them thinking you have and you’ve signed us away — me and Dog — without so much as a do-you-mind?” Heila sniffed and crossed her arms.
Dog barked out a laugh. “You mean like you were going to do with me if I’d gone for your dinner dance date?”
At least Heila had the good grace to avoid his eye and study her fingernails intently. Then she looked back at Joah. “So what do you want us to do? I assume you have a plan?”
Zarshay grinned broadly and Joah nodded her expression grim.
Dog leaned forward as they started to explain.
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 1000
Things are not quite how you might remember them in the 100 Acre Wood for Christopher Robin, Pooh Bear and their friends…
***** ***** *****
My love is like a grouchy bear
That someone asked to dance
My love he really does not care
For kisses or romance
Yet what’s left of his hair is fair
And very blue his eyes
And he will be about somewhere
Till all the bars gang dry
Till all the bars gang dry of beer
And all the wine is gone
Yes I will love you still my dear
And bore you with a song
So goodnight, my friend goodnight
And sleep now for a while
And in the morn I’ll look a fright
But you’ll still make me smile
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…
Ante Diem Septimum Idus September MDCCLXXVIII Anno Diocletiani
The body lay sprawled on the cold, mosaic floor of the Basilica Viriconia. Dai found irreverent and irrelevant thoughts going through his mind about how having a murder scene so close to the Vigiles House was so convenient and considerate of the killer. He recognised them for what they were. An instinctive protection against the horror.
And horror this was.
The headless corpse had been carefully arranged so its posture fitted to the Caput Deum, the head of the Divine Diocletian, picked out on the floor there as it was in every official building in the Empire. Haloed in tiny golden tiles, it replaced in two dimensions the murder victims own head. The body was naked, male, and the only obvious identifying mark was the silver ring of Citizenship. Whoever this was they were most-likely Romano-British.
“Same M.O. as the last one,” Senior Investigator Bryn Catrivel observed. “This is getting sick and creepy, Bard.”
His familiar tone and form of address drew an odd look from the other man present, Sextus Catus Bestia who had recently taken up the role of Magistratus for Demetae and Cornovii. Recently enough, Dai knew that he had yet to realise Bryn and Dai were long time friends and work partners. That they had served together in the Vigiles in Londinium for eight years before Dai was appointed to be Submagistratus based here in Viriconium.
Dai looked around the broad expanse of the civic building’s portico and noticed the dead-eyed cameras.
“They even found a way to take the surveillance offline, I’m guessing.”
The Magistratus cleared his throat. His long face looking distinctly sallow beneath the carefully trimmed black hair. He lifted one hand, palm forward, the heavy gold patrician ring of Citizenship very obvious on his index finger.
“Um. I’m terribly afraid that might be my fault. I was testing it late yesterday afternoon and I told the disadattatus I would restore it to normal mode as it was the end of his working day, but I must have forgotten and I suppose it stayed down overnight. Mea culpa. Isn’t there a night watchman of some sort?”
“Used to be, dominus,” Bryn said heavily. “Until Aprilis. That was when the last man retired and as the automatic surveillance had been upgraded it wasn’t felt necessary to replace him.”
“Oh dear. That is not good, not good at all.” The Magistratus looked profoundly unhappy and shook his head. “The poor, poor man.”
Dai was wondering whether the ‘poor man’ in question was the retiring watchman, the disadattatus or the deceased when he caught the look Bryn sent him.
“Dominus, we should allow SI Cartivel to continue this murder investigation. As long as we are here it is getting in the way of what he needs to do.”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” He started walking towards his office and Dai walked with him leaving Bryn giving clipped and efficient orders to his team. “Two Roman Citizens killed in this bizarre way.” He frowned heavily. “Wasn’t there some extreme Anti-Roman group operating in this area recently?”
“Yes, dominus. We had an unpleasant encounter with such a group last year. But they were dealt with conclusively.”
“Such evil can grow deep roots and spring up like mushrooms. But if you are certain, Llewellyn…” He trailed off as another thought clearly distracted him. “Considering how this is going I think I should take over the investigation myself.”
Dai felt his guts tighten. The new Magistratus had been in Viriconium for less than three weeks and in that time the impression he had made was not one to inspire any confidence in his ability to lead an investigation.
“Might I suggest, dominus that as you are still settling in and are not fully acquainted with the local circumstances, it might be better to let me do so.”
The Magistratus stopped on the spot.
“Well isn’t that the point? How am I ever going to get to know how things are here if I don’t jump in and get my hands dirty? Oh, don’t worry. I won’t be breathing down the neck of the local Vigiles – I’m sure they know what they need to do, I’ll just be overseeing not interfering. This is the kind of thing that can echo all the way to Augusta Trevorum and even Rome, you know. I just want to keep across it so if there is any come back I am the one who gets to do the testudu and your Vigiles won’t have to worry about taking any flak.”
Dai stifled the urge to snap that the Vigiles wouldn’t need any protecting if they were just left to do their job, but clearly the Magistratus meant well and was trying to show care and consideration for his subordinates.
The Magistratus placed a heavy hand on Dai’s shoulder.
“I know I have a very large set of sandals to fill to be able to measure up to Magistratus Ambrosius, but I want my people to know I have their backs. So I’ll have my primus secretarius – what’s his name again? Turtle? Turnbull? Terfel. That’s it – arrange for SI Cartivel to brief me twice daily and on any key developments. I can provide any support and resources as the investigation might require.” He nodded as if well satisfied by his own solution to the issue then smiled encouragingly at Dai. “It’ll be for the best.”
From Dying on the Mosaics by E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago
This is primarily aimed at the distaff side of the population – although it wouldn’t hurt the male of the species to read it, or a similar essay, before charging off to Victoria’s Secrets with lust in their eyes and no idea of size.
But I digress.
Underwear.
What a daily conundrum it is.
Let’s see if we can unwind it a bit.
The brassiere. Nature’s way of reminding us that being a woman sucks. If you are possessed of a small, pert bosom ignore the next couple of paragraphs they probably don’t apply. But for the rest of us there is always the brassiere dilemma.
To wear. Or not.
Underwires. Or not.
Padding. Or not.
Front fastening. Rear fastening. Climb in.
There are too many choices and most are lousy. So let’s dig down to the best advice there is – that of an old woman who has tried the effing lot.
If you can get away with it, don’t wear a bra – they are the inventions of Satan.
If you have to immolate yourself because you need to for comfort and to avoid having pendulums swinging over your stomach, get measured properly and buy the best you can afford. With a bit of luck you will avoid shoulder ruts and undertit pinches. Good luck.
Having disposed of the bustenhalter let us take a passing slap at leg coverings.
sighs and lights ciggy
In an ideal world we would all wear trousers. All of the time. Long trousers in winter and maybe a little shorter in warm weather. But the world is not ideal, and women wear skirts. Why is beyond my comprehension. However, it is a fact and it needs to be dealt with.
In the summer you may be tempted to go for the bare-legged look. This is fine and very comfortable. But. If your legs are neon white and look like some child has been drawing on them with a blue biro it may be kinder to the rest of the world to slap on a bit of fake tan before venturing out. Or not if you really don’t care.
For more formal occasions there are the horrors of delicate fine tights, or, even worse, stockings and suspenders. Don’t do either. The tights will either crawl up your bum crack or droop into concertina like folds. And it goes without saying that one leg will be twisted – giving your walk something of the air of Quasimodo on a night out. Does that leave us with the huge physical and mental discomfort of stockings and suspenders* as our only option, do I hear you cry? No. If you really have to look like a member of the royal family on a walkabout get a pair of hold-ups with a decently wide elastic top and hope for the best.
*Hint. If you must wear these godawful things the suspenders straps go inside your knickers (not how it is depicted on the front of your/his favourite soft porno). Get this wrong and you will be unable to drop your pants to piss.
An aside here is those items of underwear that claim to slim you that’s anything from corsets to control knickers. They. Do. Not. Work. All they do is shift unwanted flesh from A to B or C. That roll around your waist will just be pushed up above your foundation garment in such a way as to make you appear to have grown an extra pair of breasts. If you care about being fat lose weight.
And finally. Knickers, or panties as our colonial cousins call them. You’re on your own here. I have only one piece of wisdom to impart. Thongs…
Just don’t.
You can now have a collection of Granny’s inimitable insights of your very own in Granny Knows Best.
Sol sat hunched in front of his computer. His sister, Sal, stood behind him, her impatience was like little needles in the back of his neck.
“Back off sis. I can’t afford to make a mistake now.”
She moved away with evident reluctance.
When Sol rolled his chair back, Sal pounced on him.
“Have you done it?”
“I hope so.”
“What do you mean, hope? Have you done it? Will it work?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Be quiet. Watch. We’ll know soon enough.”
She wriggled in his grip and he turned her to face the screen.
The figures had stopped and the screen was blue.
“Good,” he mumbled, “so far so good”.
He watched intently as the blue started to bleed into green, then yellow.
“Come on,” he whispered, “work”.
For about fifteen seconds the yellow held and Sol sighed. He opened his mouth to explain that he had failed, but the yellow gave way to a blank screen.
He leaned forward and touched the shift key. The printer at the other side of the room started to chatter and he ran to look at the sheet of paper it was spewing out. The loopy handwriting and random crossings out made his heart swell with pleasure and pride.
“There it is,” he exulted, “the algorithm we wrote has created the first chapter of the next Inspector Evans novel. We don’t need Mother, she can carry on drinking herself to death and we won’t starve.”
Dear Reader Who Writes,
It always behoves me to assume that there will be at least one new reader of my inspirational course on ‘How to Start Writing a Book’. So to that gentle reader I doff my hat and reveal that I am none other than Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV – author of the brilliant and inventive novel, “Fatswhistle and Buchtooth”, a seminal work exploring the furthest conceptual reaches of science fiction and fantasy.
Today’s topic came to me a while ago and then I was distracted by my Muse offering other, more pressingly urgent dangleberries of wisdom and demanding that those took precedence. But then my focus was rehoned to the point by Mumsie walking into my writing cave, bearing her trademark pernod and ginger wine in a champagne flute with the inevitable green olive drifting in the murk. “Oh my god, Moons, this place stinks worse than a sumo wrestlers jock-strap!” I delicately pointed out that she was referring to my vetiver, bergamot and lemongrass aromatherapy oil, blended expressly to induce higher states of creativity.
Mummy was not, however, much impressed by this revelation. Instead she picked up my pristine first edition copy of Fatswhistle and Buchtooth and opened it, bending the spine and splattering droplets of her alcoholic creosote over it’s pages. Before I could recover from the horror of her deed, she had dropped the irreplaceably precious item back on my desk. “Don’t they say you can’t tell a book by the cover? Got it wrong with yours though. Shite inside and out.”
A book cover needs to be a visual precis of your prose. It should capture and enrapture the roving eye as a reader runs through the rows of books either on a shelf in a shop or on a scrolling screen. Yours must be the cover that cries out as that putative reader sifts through stacks of books to find their next favourite fiction.
But how is this achieved? If you read the academic artists they will talk of proportions, the Golden Mean, of colour strengths and shades and other esoteric claptrap. It is actually stunningly simple – make it red.
Red is the most eye-catching colour as everyone knows. We are all primally preprogrammed to see red as a signal of something requiring our attention. Therefore, so long as your cover is red your book will be read.
A more sophisticated and subtle touch can be achieved by drawing on that other universal colour combination guaranteed to draw the eye – black and yellow. Our perceptions are precisely honed to hover our eyes on anything that resembles hornets or wasps. So, if red is not appropriate for your magnificent tome – black and yellow may well serve the same end.
Of course, to be sure, combine the two concepts.
Oh and put a naked lady on it, ideally headless.
Follow these infallible rules and you will create a cover that none will miss and your book will bound from shelves be those physical or metaphorical.
Until next time, au revoir mes petites poissons.
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…
“We don’t have any real choice, do we?”
They were on the glides home and it was slowly sinking in. Joah had signed a dozen different contracts and now Starways Pathfinders had gone from being an entertainment to… What? A top class project or a political scam?
“No. None.” Zarshay sounded more speculative than upset.
Joah looked at her sharply.
“We are being roped in to con the entire population.”
Zarshay grinned at her and nodded. “That is what our President and his coterie intend, yes. There will be promises and claims. Probably even some attempt at designing a ship that could do the job, but we have nothing that could go fast enough. Everyone knows FTL is pure science-fiction — it breaks the laws of physics.”
“But?”
“But nothing. It won’t work. So, there will be a load of money raised for whatever the Strands’ private purpose might be.”
“And we are the bait — our show is the bait.” Joah could hear the bitterness in her own voice.
Zarshay squeezed her arm and said nothing, but she was smiling to herself as if at some private joke all the rest of the way home.
“Oh please, Dog, just for one event. You, me, dinner, dancing, the media. Is it too much to ask?”
Dog ran his fingers through his hair and looked down into the warm pools of Heila’s eyes. Her face was tilted at the perfect angle to display the soft expression of appeal. He felt his jaw grow tight and his lips compressed. This was not good. There was no escape either as they were waiting together in the changing room. Their basic costume was all they had to worry about, everything else would be added by Joah in the editing — makeup, effects, everything. Dog sometimes felt it didn’t even matter how well or badly he acted as even that could be put right in Joah’s magic post-production booth.
“Pu-leese, darling?” Heila must have thought his hesitation was doubt or indecision. It wasn’t. He just couldn’t think of how to say ‘no’ without sounding too rude.
“I said before; I wasn’t going to do that sort of stuff except for the show,” he told her.
“This is for the show, it’ll be a Captain Gervain and Sub-Commander Stude thing, not a Heila Camarthy and Hengast Gethick thing.”
“I’ve not had any word from Joah about it.”
The soft expression slipped a little, like the padding from a hard chair. He doubted anyone else would have seen it, except maybe Zarshay, but he’d spent too many days in the last three years staring into that face and watching it shift moods with plastic elasticity. He wondered if even Heila knew who she really was or what she really felt anymore.
“It’s not like it would cost you anything, Dog — and the chance to get your face and mine on the top of everyone’s newsfeed has to be worth it.”
Worth it for who?
Dog was spared having to say that or thinking of a better reply by Zarshay bundling into the changing room and dropping her hooded costume on a bench.
“Glad I grabbed you before you got changed,” she said, we have a team meeting with Joah whilst Wilf is setting up.
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 0111
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