She was okay until that bloody song came on the radio. The one where he used to take her in his arms and slow dance her around the old scrubbed kitchen table, while whispering how he would love her forever.
Then one day he just never came home. Got hisself shot in a drive-by.
She did her best for the kids. Every day. And mostly she managed.
But that one song…
She couldn’t believe it when she felt his beloved hands, and turned her face to his broad chest.
Dancing with a ghost solves nothing, but it beats crying…

©Jane Jago

Two days later Jenny was back at home in her own space and, honestly, feeling a bit blue. It was always hard to come away from the farm and leave Meg behind, even if she did know that she had no other realistic option. It was a bit of a relief when her phone rang. As it was an unfamiliar number, she let it go to voicemail. It was Mike.
“Hi Jenny. It’s Mike here. I’m sorry I have been so long calling. But Saturday night was beyond busy. Then I couldn’t remember how to find the contacts list on this phone. Today I got brave and Googled it so here I am. Please forgive me and call.”
Jenny laughed and returned his call.
“Hi Mike.”
He sounded genuinely happy to hear from her. “Jenny. It’s a pleasure to hear your voice.”
“Yours to. Even if you are a useless Luddite.”
He laughed. “I am, but if I admit it can I come and see you? Please don’t say you’ve changed your mind. I’m pretty well housetrained – haven’t made a peepee in the corner for at least a fortnight.”
Jenny found herself drawn to his unforced silliness, and then she remembered about the pony club set and flirtatious comments about kilts. It was too good an opportunity to miss. “So long as you promise to wear trousers…”
His crack of laughter warmed her ears down the airwaves. “One-nil to you. And I’ll leave the kilt at home if you can manage to not wear your wellies.”
“It’s a deal. When?”
“I’m off this coming weekend. Saturday night?”
“Yes. I can do that.”
“Do you like Italian food?”
“Love it.” She waited for him to suggest a restaurant, hoping against hope it wasn’t one of the style over substance places that would mark him as being just another plonker. He didn’t disappoint her.
“Do you know Luigi’s on the quayside?”
He had named one of her favourite places in the city and she could feel the smile stretching her cheeks.
“I do indeed. I will meet you there. What time?”
He mumbled a bit.
“Speak up man.”
“I booked a table for seven in the hope you would say yes.”
She was amused and a tiny bit flattered he had gone to the trouble of making sure they could get a table, but she wasn’t letting him know that. Instead she made her voice stern. “Not taking much for granted were you?”
“No. I truly wasn’t. I just hoped.”
“Okay, I’ll let you off just this once.”
His relief was palpable. “I’m glad, and I really wasn’t being pushy I just know how hard it is to get a table on a Saturday night.”
That being no more than the truth Jenny felt it would be churlish to mention it any more and they giggled their way through a few more minutes of light chat.
When the conversation was over she sat for a long time staring sightlessly into the middle distance. This all felt too right and she was going to have to be very careful not to be fooled by his charm. She went into the bathroom and dropped her loose t-shirt off her shoulder to expose the wrinkled monstrosity of a scar that marred the smoothness of the skin on her shoulder and a fair way further down he back. For a moment she was back in a tall thin house, in an overly genteel street, with a man holding a hot iron to her back while she screamed. The memory made her cold to her stomach and in the mirror her lip twisted in bitter self-mockery.
“Just remember what they do when you let them get to you, girl.”

Jenny is the latest book from Jane Jago

Susan had never really understood all this tech stuff – smart this and smart that. It was all too smart for her. So she was the only person in her town who didn’t have a fully connected house. She couldn’t even get emails except at the library.

But as time went on she began to wonder if she was indeed being old fashioned and even stubborn about it.

Until the day every smart meter and speaker, smart fridge and smartphone was taken over by the aliens.

As her neighbours were all forced to obey their new overlords, Susan felt smugly justified.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Frisson chills fired through his neurons rewarding each spasmodic jerk that twisted the controls in his hand.
“Die ya bastards!”
The three defending Triggalin Type 2s, exploded into space dust.
Dipping round under the belly of the behemoth that hung in space like a pregnant whale, he eased back to flip the Fast-Flight Superstrata Mk.VI onto its side to get the targeting crosshairs perfectly aligned.
Somewhere in that hulking vessel was a woman called Jedrachilla and her lover Box. She had broken one heart too many and now, in the midst of this luxurious cruise she was taking, she would meet her well deserved and long plotted death.
It just meant taking aim for the middle decks where scanners showed the Premier Class cabins and staterooms were located, pulling up the targeting screen, locking on and –
“Ryan? Have you finished your homework yet? Yer dinner’s cooked and the bins need taking out!”

E.M. Swift-Hook

Things was bad. It was raining so hard that Ma was about at her wits end keeping the house even slightly dry, and Pa was fully employed with the health of the beasts.
So we kids went fishing.
The creek had long ago burst its banks so we dursn’t go there. But we found a pond where the fish was big and fat.
We was on the bank gutting our catch, when Cletus found a gold ring in the moss beside him.
It was Ma’s wedding ring, what she lost last fall.
She cried with joy. And it stopped raining…

©Jane Jago

Now Avilon understood why they were taking such care over his treatment – it was not from any compassion, it was from simple greed. To these people he was not a person: he was livestock – nothing more than an object to be sold.
A thing.
Even to his enemies in the Coalition he was more than that. At least they regarded him as an individual and a human being worthy of hate and fear, if nothing else. Feeling sick in his stomach and his soul, Avilon had one last try: “Tell the Captain I am a Coalition citizen and he will be in a lot of trouble when they come looking for me and my friends – abduction is a capital offence.”
The woman seemed unwilling to repeat his words and did so in halting, uneasy tones. The man shrugged and smiled at her translation as if it amused him. Avilon had hardly expected to be instantly released, but had at least looked for some trace of concern. Even on non-Coalition worlds, its citizens were treated with an overwhelming deference due to the power of the Coalition and simple fear of retaliation.
“The Captain say the ship gone – all other people dead. No one know you live. No one look to find you.”
Before she had finished speaking the man turned on his heel and left.
Avilon closed his eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted. Despite being half-expected, the brutal words hit home like a body blow. There had been over four hundred men and women on the strike mission, many of them well known to him, people he had worked with and fought alongside for years. All he had taken a hand in training. All young, idealistic, with blind-faith in him as their leader. And all dead.
It was a personal wound to his psyche – but greater still was the loss to the Legacy which was everything they had been fighting for and cared about. He could not keep the grief from rising, bitter as bile in his throat, and the primal force of it made a terrible cost on his reserves as he instinctively shifted his emotions to grasp and freeze the tide before it could engulf him.
It was not forgotten – it would never be forgotten. There would be time later to give the grief its due, but for now it must wait. He had no choice. For the sake of all those whose lives had been lost he had to survive – the Legacy’s need of him now could not be any greater.
“Kashlihk? You eat?”
He opened his eyes to shut out the dark within and saw the woman was looking at him, her eyes dull from a too long familiarity with hopelessness and anxiety. She seemed almost overwhelmed by the responsibility of translating for him.
“The Captain say no more drugs. Good food. You get strong. You eat?”
He nodded feeling relieved that he had won that concession at least. If they left him undrugged it would surely only be a matter of time before he could find some chance to free himself. He had no wish to eat in that moment, but his body needed food.

From The Fated Sky part one of Fortune’s Fools Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook

He’d been planning it for weeks, deciding what to cook and choosing a day she would be visiting anyway. It was their regular Friday evening wind down for the weekend, chilling with a box set and a bottle of wine. Usually, it was ‘order in pizza’ day, but today it’d be special – his meal, candles, flowers and the ring, of course.

He was just discovering that flower arranging was a lot harder than it looked, when the phone rang. 

“I need to tell you I’m seeing someone else…”

He put a ready meal in the microwave and ate it alone.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Jenny Ford has sworn off men forever, but just when she begins to think life is offering her a second chance her past comes to haunt her with bloody vengeance in mind. Jenny is the latest book from Jane Jago

They pulled into the practice car park and it wasn’t difficult to locate Mike’s car, as the rather battered BMW sat in solitary state.
Jenny shook her head.
“Are all your possessions scruffy and poorly maintained?”
“Mostly. Probably. And anyway I’m getting a bit fed up with the car. Beamer jokes and all that.”
Jenny chuckled. “Why are BMWs like haemorrhoids?”
He grinned back at her, showing excellent, white, teeth. “Because sooner or later every silly ass gets one.”
She offered him a high five, and he leaned forward to open the door. He stopped with his fingers on the handle. “Jenny. Can I buy you dinner? By way of thanks for the lift and the loan of the phone.”
“Sorry, Mike, but no. Not here and not now. Mum and Dad suffered enough gossip when I was seen to have failed in my marriage to Graham. If I was thought to be occupying the attention of the new young doctor who is the natural property of the Amanda and Lucinda brigade, the whisperers would have another field day.”
He swore under his breath. “Sometimes,” he said in a grumpy voice, “I wonder whether or not this place is actually living in 2017.”
“This far south and west, no. Round here things have barely crawled out of the nineteenth century. Get used to it.”
“It’s all very well for you to say, but I’ve been here for six months now and the first woman I meet who interests me turns me down flat because of the gossip mongers. It’s not amusing.”
Jenny patted his arm. “Okay. I get that. If you are serious about wanting to get to know me Exeter isn’t that far.”
“Neither it is. So. Can I come to Exeter and take you out to dinner?”
“Yes. I think I’d like that. Give me your phone.”
He handed it over and her thumbs flew. “There you go. My number is in your contacts along with my email.”
There was one of those awkward pauses, which was interrupted by the phone in his hand playing ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ slightly off key. He grinned as he answered, but then his face changed.
“I’m on my way.” He jumped out of the disco, stopping only to touch Jenny gently on the cheek. “Sorry. Emergency. I will call you. Soon.”
He ran to the disreputable Beamer and within a matter of seconds he was gone.
Jenny drove back to the farm in a pensive mood. She was more than halfway persuaded that she should refuse to meet Mike, but then she thought that a single date wasn’t exactly a lifetime commitment and it might even be fun.
When she walked into the kitchen, her father was sitting beside the Aga unlacing his boots. He smiled at her.
“What’s your idiot brother been up to now?” He tried to sound stern but underlying worry tinged the edges of his deep, country voice.
“He’s okay, Dad. Really. And surprisingly it doesn’t even seem to have been his fault. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“So your mum said, but we all know his rugby club mates would swear black was white to get him off the hook.”
“They would, but the guy who brought him home wasn’t one of his oppoes. It was the new young doctor from the Streamside Practice.”
Dad looked less tense. “Your mum never said. Too busy worrying about Bob.”
“Well it is the first time Sorbo Man’s come home with anything worse than gravel rash no matter what idiocy he’s been involved in.”
“True. But now your Mum’s in such a flap that I’ll have to get my own tea.”
Jenny laughed. “You are a bloody old fraud. Go and make sure he’s okay. You won’t rest any easier than Mum until you do. I’ll see what’s for tea.”
Dad slid on his slippers and went quietly out of the room while Jenny checked the oven, where she found a tray of pasties that were just on the edge of being overcooked. She rescued them and set the table for three. Meg came to her side and she crouched for a brief conversation with the pretty blue merle collie.
“You are a lovely girl. It’s a shame you are bugger all use with the sheep.”
Meg wagged and Jenny rubbed her silky ears.
Mum and Dad weren’t that long, coming into the room hand in hand. Mum was smiling, but then she threw up her hands in horror.
“My pasties.”
Jenny grinned. “I rescued them. How’s the son and heir?”
“Groggy. But he woke up enough to give me a hug.”
“And say sorry. Which is a first.”
Jenny thought about that one. “He’s probably just figured out he isn’t immortal. Always assuming he has the equipment to figure anything out.”
Mum shook her head. “He’s not as thick as he chooses to appear. He just learned from an early age that if he bodged things up sufficiently his big sister would always rescue him.”
“Mum. You aren’t trying to say that the adventures of Sorbo Man are my fault are you?
“No love. I’m just trying to explain the world as Bob sees it. He learned from an early age that being thick has quite a lot to recommend it.” She looked at Dad who was standing open mouthed. “Think about it, Tom,” she said earnestly. “He’s never been a disaster about the farm has he? He even enters his expenditure on the spreadsheet Jenny set up. Which is more than either of us does.”
For a moment Dad said nothing as he absorbed the portent of what he heard. He shook his head in a bewildered fashion before responding. “You know something. You’re only right. And now I feel bad because I never noticed.”
“You weren’t supposed to notice.”
Jenny found herself laughing helplessly. “He really is an unprincipled…”
“He is. And I shall have to adjust my thinking a bit.” Dad scratched at his thatch of curly auburn hair.
Mum laughed, bright and young, and Dad leaned over to kiss her smiling mouth. Jenny could see how their love affair still burned with a steady flame after better than thirty years and wondered if she would ever find half of that.
To distract her mind from uncomfortable thoughts of marriage to the wrong man, and the mistrust it had engendered, she moved to dish up pasties groaning with meat and vegetables.

A Bite of… Jane Jago

(1) As a genre-hopping author, what is the biggest challenge you face with your writing?

The biggest challenge is getting it all done. Sometimes I wonder where all the words come from and why my brain is so full of stories. That having been said I have never found a change in genres challenging – it’s like the difference between having a shower and brushing your hair: instinctively different but each thing is familiar in its own way.

(2) What advice would you offer your younger self sitting down to write her first novel?

Advice? To the younger me? As I wrote my first novel when I was a pre-teen maybe I’d say there was plenty of time. Of course had I known I wouldn’t publish an actual novel for another fifty years I might have freaked.

(3) Mountains or seaside for a vacation – and why?

There’s a question. It’d have to be the seaside because my dog loves to swim and he likes me to swim with him. So not a freezing cold mountain stream. So. Seaside, but nowhere too people-y. Someplace with nothing but white sand and blue sea and me and my little crew.

Jane Jago lives in the West Country with a large shaggy dog and her husband. The term genre-hopper could have been coined to describe her and her books, modern-day thrillers sitting side by side with sword and sorcery, wicked dragons, and short stories and verse. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.

We were half drunk on the heat when we found her. Sitting under a tree with her feet bare and a rucksack beside her.
Bud offered her a lift, and she climbed silently into the truck, settling on the bench seat between Bud and Arnold like a butterfly on a branch.
Arnold turned up the music and we all started to sing.
I watched her small, pale hands on Bud’s thick thighs and my mouth grew dry.
We’ve been on the road now since 1963, but we can’t ever stop and nobody but me even sees the years slipping by…

©Jane Jago

Because life can be interesting when you are a character in a video game…

Milla took a moment to orient herself and work out which was the exact tree the griblin had pointed out, then she strode over the purple tussocks. The tree felt pretty solid, it’s grey bark a little slimy, but there seemed no way though it. Her shoulders dropped. The griblin must have lied. She heard the others come up behind her and couldn’t bear to turn and face them with her foolishness.
“Oh Em Gee! Look at that.” Pew’s excitement made her spin round without thinking. Half his body was visible the other half had vanished through the tree.
“But… but it’s solid to me,” she protested and thumped on the broad trunk.
Glory put her hand into the tree and pulled it out again.
“I reckon that’s cos you’re an NPC. You’re part of the same graphics as this is so to you it’s solid.”
Pew was nodding. “That makes sense.”
“But that means I can’t come with you. I’m stuck here.”
Pew emerged from the tree again and took her hands in his.
“It’s ok. I’ll go through this graphics glitch and you and Glory can walk through the village. Like she said you’re an NPC so you shouldn’t need griblin faction. We’ll meet on the other side. It’ll be fine.”
And for once – just for once – it was. But Milla was so worried the whole time about Pew getting stuck in the swamp on his own or running into a monster that she barely noticed what the griblin village was like. She just hurried as fast as she could after Glory who seemed to know which walkways to take and which to avoid. They finally headed through a closed gate to which Glory held the key and down a narrow ramp onto a tongue of gravel and sand which jutted out into the lake.
Behind them the griblin village was barely visible, hunkered down behind a wall of outward pointing wooden stakes. Ahead of them was a broad expanse of blue sparkling in the sun and for a moment Milla felt homesick. But only for a moment, before her anxiety overwhelmed it. She spun around studying the treeline on either side of the village.
“I don’t see Pew.”
“I’m here!”
She turned again but saw nothing. Just the stake wall and the trees. Then Pew stepped out from a tree almost beside her. Not caring what Glory might think she threw herself into his arms and for a moment they clung together.
“Um… guys?”
She heard Glory’s voice and the edge of tension in it but, Milla’s eyes were closed and she was kissing Pew. Properly kissing him. Their first proper kiss and rainbows and unicorns were dancing around them.
“Guys!” Glory’s voice was sharp and Pew broke the kiss.
“Oh crap!”
“Incoming!” Glory shouted, drawing her sword and Pew stepped forward so he was in front of Milla, but a good pace or so behind Glory.

We will return to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook next Sunday.

Return to Wrathburnt Sands was first published in Rise and Rescue Volume 2: Protect and Recover.