Two Women and Some Books
It seems that nature’s aged somehow
Grown pale and brownly edged
The days have fluttered past and now
All the chicks are fledged
Ripe seed pods burst along the way
And spray their content green
While those who walk the path each day
Will see a changing scene
As yet the trees stand proudly leafed
And there’s no red and gold
Tween summer’s heat and winter’s grief
The year is growing old
Bonjour my little love muffins,
It is one, the beloved and multi-talented Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, world-renowned author of the classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ and patient teacher who, via the medium of this ‘Thinking Quill’ seeks to inform, educate and excite – via the vulgar coils of the Interwebs – the hearts and minds of a growing band of Readers Who Write.
Today, my Muse and I feel sportive and light and do gambol about in the water meadows of imagination in a harmony so perfect that to speak it is to mar its unsullied beauty.
Therefore, mes estudas, follow us quietly making your footsteps as gentle as the bleating lamb and as soft as the breast of the turtledove lest you dishonour the music of my life with your vulgarly large boots…. Ah yes, my children, follow in silence and listen with care, for today we discuss the pinpoint of blue-hot flame that is literary erotica in all its fine forms.
It must be understood that the act of fornication, in its multiplicity of guises, is the engine that drives humanity to live out its mundane day-to-day existence in the hope that a glimpse, a scent, a touch, or a taste will donate to any given moment that sexual ecstasy for which it strives. Equally we must always take into account the sensibilities of our gentle readership and the rules that govern what may be said and what should only ever be hinted at.
We are, mes estudas, above the simply biological. We may not discuss the precise size and thickness of the male appendage, any more than we should even hint at the width/narrowness, hair/baldness of the female docking station. No. You may leave it to your reader to understand that tab A is most usually inserted into slot B (with occasional excursions into orifices C and D).
Your task as a purveyor of fantasy is to bring a flush to the cheek and a heaviness to the stomach of literature in such a way that the reader experiences those selfsame heats and twinges. A properly written scene of sexual tension should leave its reader panting lightly and susceptible to the merest breeze of sensuality.
Do not grasp your unfortunate victim by the genitalia and wrestle him to the ground with the sledgehammer blows of sexually obvious language. No. And again no. Rather scent the air with tender sensuality and slowly bring your reader to a climax only by the tenderest touches of the fingertips of perfect prose.
Build your scenes of human love with care, lest they tumble around your ears leaving you like a pubescent boy with damp pyjamas.
Oh yes, my students, who hang on my every word with the sort of open-mouthed excitement more usually generated by a pole dancer at an adolescent birthday party, lead your readership along the paths of sensual gratification by all means. But do so with the siren song of your creative juices, not by lassoing them with a string constructed of pubic hair and bodily secretions.
To finish this lesson. I offer a small extract from my own greatest work wherein our hero first feels the gentle tug of his feminine companion’s sensuality.
They came out of the desert into the fertile valley of the big river, just as the sun was dropping. Buchtooth kicked her camel until it knelt and leapt off the saddle throwing her clothing off as she ran towards the water.
“Come on Fatswhistle you ugly bastard, get off your frigging camel and get into this water. You smell worse than him.”
Fatswhistle followed his companion in a much more leisurely fashion. He was just removing his cracked leather boots when she threw herself into the water. Her back was broad and freckled and as she dived, the white globes of her arse were displayed to Fatswhistle’s suddenly interested gaze. He removed his clothing at a rather accelerated pace and hurried after her into the brown water.
She was singing tunelessly and washing her long carrot-orange curls when he waded over to her and sat down. The river mud felt like silk under his buttocks and he picked up one of his own feet and looked between his toes. He watched his companion from under his eyelids finding her heavy breasts surprisingly exciting as they dipped in and out of the water. He scooted closer and put out a tentative hand. She snorted and wrung the water out of her hair. Emboldened, he touched the freckled skin on her shoulder. She jumped and swore, dunking him under the water until he saw stars..
“Gerrof.”
Farewell for now dear students!
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.
Rupert booked them a holiday.
It sounded romantic, until Laura found out that the Camel Trail has nothing to do with camels and everything to do with cycling. Seventeen bloody miles of cycling.
There was worse to come. She learned that the next day they were to pedal thirty miles from Padstow to Fowey.
Breakfast time, bright and early, and Laura was nowhere to be seen. Rupert went to wake her, with an indulgent smile on his big red face.
The note read ‘Camel Trail gave me Camel Toe. Gone home…’
As far as I know they never spoke again.
His smile became feral and he pulled her out of the seat into his lap. ‘Are you talking about something like this’ he whispered as his hard, scarred, soldier’s hands reached inside her robe to caress her naked skin.
‘Oh yes. Something very much like that. Only fiercer…’
He responded by tearing her robe from her shoulders and burying his face in her small breasts.
‘Will I ever get enough of you?’ he groaned.
She bit him, hard, by way of a reply.
A good while later they lay entwined and he idly ran his hand up and down her slender back.
‘Goodness me, Princess Ida. You do fuck remarkably enthusiastically for a lady of quality.’
She snickered and looked through her eyelashes at him. ‘My Lord will have his joke at the expense of a poor innocent girl’ she replied in a very good approximation of the voice of a empty-headed excessively genteel city girl. Then she pushed him onto his back and lay across his body so they were nose to nose. ‘Why have I never wanted anybody but you?’ she mused in a soft voice.
‘Got me beat. Must be innate bad taste on your part. You could have had any man for the crooking of your little finger. But you chose a paid assassin twenty years your senior. There’s just no accounting for the female of the species.’
‘Ain’t that the truth. Are you glad?’
‘That’s a stupid question if ever I heard one. I’m more than glad. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You are intelligent, and funny, and vicious enough to be a match even for me. Plus, I love you almost beyond reason. But why are you making me say that now?’
‘Because I have something to tell you, and I don’t know how you are going to react. I was softening you up.’
He laughed, then with a lightning twist of his hips he reversed their positions before grinning down at her.
‘Out with it.’
‘I’m pregnant.’
For an instant he neither moved nor breathed.
‘Do you mind saying that again?’
‘I’m pregnant.’
‘That’s what I thought you said.’ He shook his head like a dog coming out of the sea. ‘That’s unexpected, after all this time. I’m sure I’ll be happy about it when it has sunk in. For now, why were you unsure of my reaction?’
‘Well. We are right in the middle of the most dangerous thing we have ever attempted. And I’m essential to the plan. So I thought you might think pregnancy would mess up the plan, or that I should go home and wait for the baby like a proper wife would. Or a thousand other things…’
‘Silly. Pregnant or not we’re in this together, like we’ve been in everything since I threw you onto Ali’s bed and screwed both our brains out. I love you, you silly woman. And we’ll just work around junior.’
She gave a great sigh of relief and wound her arms around his neck. ‘I should’ve trusted you shouldn’t I love? It just knocked me for a loop. We’ve been together twenty years and not a sniff of a pregnancy.’
‘Indeed. But one can’t predict these things. Do you think we’ll be crap parents?’
She laughed shakily. ‘Possibly. But any child of ours will probably inherit all our our worst character traits, and need our sort of crap parenting.’
‘It will, but we’ll love it anyway, won’t we?’
‘Yes. We will.’
From Billion Dollar Mountain by Jane Jago
The face smiled, belying the words it spoke.
“We have decided it’s not in our commercial interests to allow you to continue to use those chips in your tech.”
Targena drew a sharp breath.
“Is there nothing we…?”
“The decision’s been taken at the highest level and is final. All future shipments are cancelled.”
A moment later the smiling face vanished from the screen.
Targena sighed then picked up her phone and spoke into it.
“You have your funds, professor.”
It took less than a year to develop a superior chip and wipe the smile off that face for good.
Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. You can listen to this on YouTube.
The Tribune breezed into the room like a beak-nosed hurricane. She rather wished that she could see her new partner’s face when the formidable Decimus Lucius Didero lifted her in his brawny arms and kissed her on both cheeks. She wriggled and kicked and he put her down.
“Llewelyn,” he grunted, “you take care of my little foster sister.”
Dai looked as if he couldn’t think what to say. Julia was very sure this was not the way he usually saw Romans interacting. The Tribune grinned.
“She will grow on you, and she can’t help being Roman any more than you can help coming from a place where they make up songs about everything and shag sheep. Now. I’ll assign you a contubernium of praetorians.”
Julia winced inwardly knowing how that would sound to the Briton and was not surprised that Dai’s looked furious although he said nothing. Decimus smiled a wolf’s smile.
“Calm down, you and Julia will still be in command and you can keep your own posse too, if you can trust them all. It’s just that my lads can get away with doing things you and yours never could. And they don’t have to wait for anybody’s permission. I’m thinking that by the time your boss has consulted all the people who are paying her, our bird could easily have flown the coop,”
Once again, Dai kept his mouth shut and Julia could see the knowledge that Decimus was right, openly warring with his loyalty to the force to which he belonged. She gave him a sympathetic look and he actually smiled back at her, a thin smile to be sure, but definitely an upward tilt of the lips. The Tribune, who she knew would have missed nothing, grunted at them, but it wasn’t an unfriendly sound.
“Right. Listen carefully. There are some things you need to know but I’m not supposed to tell you. Privileged information, praetorian confidentiality and that kind of merda. Well I’m not having it. My little sister doesn’t go to war unprepared.” He pointed a thick finger at the pair of them. “You need to know about your corpses. Bellicus and Docca were in big trouble. They were being targeted by a betting syndicate who try to get players taking money to fix Games. And I don’t mean any of your little Londinium locals, I mean the big boys from Rome. Those people do not play nice when someone says ‘no’. They also don’t take kindly to anyone poking a nose in their affairs, no matter who it might be.
“More of a worry, though, is this Luca. He left Rome under a cloud. It was either exile or death. He chose exile. You don’t need to know precisely what he did but you do need to know that at least six very powerful families had reason to want him punished. Whether or not they succeeded at arm’s length, I don’t care to speculate. Just be aware that he was very good at making enemies. The interesting thing is he was supposed to stay in Gallia Lugdunensis where Daddy has extensive estates around the town of Lutetia, under a form of house arrest. But clearly he didn’t and I heard today his wife didn’t either. We have no idea where she is right now.”
Julia looked at her old friend.
“That explains a lot. That old cunnus Marius looked as if he was eating merda when he had me in his office and sent me on this mission. He about halfway forbade me to bring Edbert and the dogs.”
“I hope you ignored him.”
“I did.”
“Good. You’ll need them. But you will also have an apartment here. Inns are insecure at the best of times. This is starting to smell bad.”
Julia opened her mouth to object, then thought better of it. Things were indeed smelling bad. She began to formulate a thought, but before she had time to work it through, Didero turned his attention to Dai.
“You’ll move your men in here for the duration of this case.”
Again, Julia could see the flare of pride in the Briton’s blue eyes being quickly damped by rational thought. She realised, at that moment, that she was dealing with a man who lived in a steady state of war with his own passions, a very Celtic trait. Somehow that thought just made him more intriguing.
“As you will, dominus,” Dai said. “And I see that would be safer. We’ll be in the barracks?”
“They will be, yes. They can share with the men assigned to you and Julia. I’ll arrange your accommodation too.”
Dai bowed his head.
“Dominus.”
The statue’s flat, fish eyes followed her wherever she went. She was afraid, but he was cold marble. How could he hurt her?
Yet his fixation with her even disturbed the other statues who creaked and groaned their disapproval.
“Leave her,” Zeus growled, but his sea brother sneered.
“I want.”
“You may not.”
“Stop me…”
The statue of Poseidon was presumed to have fallen from its plinth and it lay on the floor broken into a thousand pieces. Only its eyes were alive and they rolled across the floor to lay at her feet, looking up her skirt.
She screamed….
It was a long time later, when the wagon ground to a halt, that Avilon opened his eyes, aware his mind had regained most of its normal sharp-edged clarity. Outside he could hear the sound of a camp being established: poles being thumped into place and the muted thud of pegs being driven into the ground. Above the babble of voices he caught the occasional dog bark, burst of laughter, the crack of a whip, a strange light clattering noise that was almost musical, and the sound of running feet and hooves.
The old woman had got up and was searching around in the various boxes and bundles that filled the rest of the wagon producing an assortment of small pouches and a large water skin. Then she began mixing the contents of the pouches with some water in an all too familiar bowl. Avilon cursed silently, the old hag was going to try and drug him again and short of strangling her with the chain that linked his wrists together, there was nothing he could do about it. And that was an unworthy thought, she was clearly trying to help him in her own way.
So far, he had no real evidence that his captors held any truly hostile intentions towards him. If anything these people had seemed to be trying to look after him – at least by their primitive best methods. They had not killed him when he was helpless – and they certainly seemed to be concerned enough with his welfare to set someone to treat him with their available medical skills. The chains, uncomfortable as they were, could even be explained as a reasonable precaution after what they would have seen as his unprovoked assault on one of their own. But he had no wish at all to submit to more of their brain-numbing drugs.
Avilon cleared his throat.
“Do you speak any Standard?” he asked, pleasantly surprised that this time his voice seemed a little hoarse but otherwise fine.
The old woman looked up from her work and muttered something in her own language.
“Perhaps you could find someone who could understand what I’m saying.”
The woman looked at him and gabbled some more, then gestured to the bowl she was preparing and nodded towards him. Avilon sighed and shook his head.
“Look, I don’t need any more of that. I am feeling a lot better and can assure you that I’ll recover much faster now if you don’t make me drink more of it.”
She obviously did not understand anything he was saying. The woman pointed at the bowl again and said something in a very firm tone of voice before busying herself with mixing once more.
From The Fated Sky part one of Fortune’s Fools Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook
Becca offered a silent prayer as the engine failed to catch then did. The car was too old but she couldn’t manage without it. Today, her day off, she had been temping as a receptionist. Tomorrow it was back to an early start as a home carer. But now she had to collect the kids from her mother’s. A neighbour’s daughter would babysit for her evening shift waitressing.
On the radio, a slimy politician sucking on his silver spoon was saying that poor people should get a job.
She wondered how many jobs she needed not to be poor anymore.
Have you ever asked the question “What if…?”
What if things had turned out differently, what if history had taken another turn, what if our world had gone another way?
That’s the question at the heart of the genre of alternate history – and that powers the stories in the new Inklings Press anthology, Tales From Alternate Earths 3.
Alternate history has had quite the renaissance in recent years – from TV shows such as The Man in the High Castle, an adaptation of the Philip K Dick novel, to the HBO series Watchmen, and more light-hearted adventures through history such as Timeless or Legends of Tomorrow. Even Disney is getting in on the action with their “What If?” series looking at what might have happened if key moments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe had gone differently.
That’s the fun of it – there’s so much range in the genre, but all so close to home that it could just be the slightest difference that takes us there.
That difference is usually called the point of departure, the moment when history departs from our own. That can be something huge – an alien ship arrives, say – or it can be a tiny difference. In one of the stories in the new anthology, it hinges on a man having a pair of boots.
Stories in the book span the world, from Hitchcock directing Titanic to a hunt for Jack The Ripper, from Cold War chicanery to a Roman Empire that never ended, from mythological beings turned real to post-World War Two genetic experiments. It’s a big canvas and it’s great to see what the authors involved bring to the table.
There are stories by Alan Smale, Daniel M Bensen, DJ Butler, Minoti Vaishav, Brent A Harris, JL Royce, Jeff Provine, Ricardo Victoria, Rob Edwards, Matthew Kresal, Aaron Emmel, Christopher Edwards, and the fabulous EM Swift-Hook and Jane Jago!
Oh, and there’s a story by me, Leo McBride. It’s called Heaven Above, Hell Below, and here’s an extract right here:
The manmade island was quite a sight from the air. Two islands would be a more accurate description – an outer ring around the central island. Four long roadways connected the two as if they were spokes, making it look somewhat like a wheel. The outer rings had the most construction going on, with vehicles and workers buzzing around putting up hotels, while groynes extended into the sea to help to create the beaches shown on the glossy cover of the brochure on Ellie’s lap. But it was the central island that was her business.
“Make the most of it, no one will get a view like this soon,” said the man sitting across from Ellie, a slim older white man dressed in the clothes of a pastor, complete with white collar and crucifix around his neck.
Without looking away from the window, Ellie replied: “I know. Anyone tries to get this close, two F15EX2 Eagle 2 jets will blow them out of the sky. If that’s not enough, the tower has Sea Sparrows mounted on all corners able to take anything down far enough away not to worry about fragmentation.”
The man coughed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “Clearly you know far more about the defenses of Shinar than I do. Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Bishop John Wilson. And you are?”
He extended his hand across the space between them, and Ellie took it, his pale skin a contrast to her own black skin.
“Ellie Floyd,” she replied, “and yeah, I guess you could say I do – I designed the defenses. You here with the religious advisory body?”
“That I am. Although I do fear my opinion might not matter much, I’m not sure how much I can offer to a project as ambitious as Shinar.”
Ellie paused. “That’s the second time you’ve called it Shinar. So far, it’s just Pacific Base while the marketing teams do all the brand testing. Why are you calling it Shinar?”
The pastor raised his hands. “Oh, you know what they say, if you want something try to speak it into being. I figure if I keep on using it, it might stick in someone’s mind and might just make it to the final list. My own little contribution.”
Ellie smiled. “Well, clearly you know far more about where that comes from than I do. I’m afraid my days of learning scripture are a long while back. What’s Shinar?”
“Ah,” he said, “well, Shinar was once—“
He was interrupted by the chopper pilot calling back. “On final approach, buckle up, we’ll be touching down in a moment.”
Ellie smiled. “Something to tell me over lunch,” she called, as she buckled her belt and the helicopter banked and descended to the central island.
(1) What draws you to write alternate history? Is it the what ifs? Or maybe the if that happened it would be funs? Or something deep in your soul.
For me, it’s all about the tantalising possibilities. It’s great when you think back to that moment where everything shifts and realise how differently our world can play out. That’s only half of it, thought, you have to tell a story in that world, and that has to get right to the heart of who the characters are and what is important to them. So the change in history sets the backdrop, but the people still tell the story.
(2) Do you think your writing is driven by character or storyline?
I think I tend to be focused more on character. Maybe part of that is years of playing roleplaying games and having one single character that you’d play for session after session and while the adventures changed, it was the growth in your character that was important. But yes, I like to get as close to the character as I can in the story, and why the events that take place matter to them.
(3) What is your favourite street food/takeaway?
Parmo. I may live very far from there now but the Teesside parmo is a thing of legend. Chicken parmesan, which sounds healthy when you say it like that, but it’s beaten and baked and smothered in cheese and béchamel sauce and served like a pizza with oodles of chips, a big splosh of garlic sauce and some salad just for show. It’s unhealthy, it’s far from fancy, but by golly it’s magnificent.
Leo McBride is a journalist, editor and fiction writer born in Northern Ireland but who has since drifted across the ocean to The Bahamas. He has been published previously in each of the Inklings Press anthologies, along with collections from the Sci-Fi Roundtable, Rhetoric Askew, Starklight Press and elsewhere. He has also self-published his own short story collection Quartet, and ghost written and edited a number of biographies. You can find more of his work on his blog, on Twitter and on Facebook.
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