The adventures of Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson

Bearson reached into his capacious pocket and pulled out a packet of hunny sandwiches. He unwrapped the greaseproof paper and handed them around, frowning a warning at Homes who seemed about to question Yore.

“Leave the man be, Homes. He needs to eat before he talks.”

Homes glowered, but buried his sharp little teeth in a doorstop of brown bread liberally spread with butter and hunny.

After he had eaten his sandwich, Yore looked a little better and he turned his long mournful features to where Homes sat licking hunny off his trotters.

Once Yore was satisfied he had the pig’s attention he put a hand in his inside pocket and withdrew a newspaper which he passed across. The headline across the front page was smudged but readable.

‘Fearful Haunting. The Dartymuir Dog strikes again.’

“What has happened, man?”

“Yesterday the old Lord Sleepytown went for his morning walk on the muir. When he didn’t return, his heir went looking for him. The old man was found fallen in a bog, he had suffered some sort of a seizure. The young one carried him home on his own broad back. The doctors say the old one is close to death. He has only spoke three words since they laid him on his bed…”

“And what were them three words.”

“Orange bounding dog.”

“That was very much what I feared.”

Homes hunched in his corner of the carriage, looking, Bearson thought, like a wizened old crab apple hanging from a tree.

For a very long time he said nothing. But when he did speak, his words were utterly unexpected.

“Bearson, old chap. Do you recall the name of that rogue whose circus was accused of harbouring known criminals?”

“The man whose name you so cleverly cleared?”

Homes puffed out his skinny chest. “Yes. Him.”

Bearson closed his eyes to better think, calling to his mind’s eye the hulking brute who swore to be Homes’ servant for life. For a moment his brain paused among the tattoos that liberally decorated a torso rippling with muscles. And then the name came to him. 

“Crispermeadow. The man’s name is Arnold Crispermeadow.”

“Well done old man.”

Homes scrabbled about in his many pockets, coming up with a pad of telegraph forms and a purple indelible pencil….

Piglock Homes and his sidekick Doctor Bearson will continue their investigation into The Affair of the Dartymuir Dog next week…

Jane Jago

Don’t give me fabled glory or a great heroes life
I’ll settle for a muffin and a nice cup of tea
There’re those who like to spend their time in ongoing strife
I’ll just take the peaceful path, that’s the one for me.

I’m happy to applaud those who stand up for the rest
Without them we’d never have the freedoms we enjoy
But I’m not the kind to march on streets or to beat my breast
I’ll have another coffee please, a sweet latte with soy

Of course I care about the world, I live in it too, you know
I’ll sign all your petitions and support your right to march
Though my philosophy is to go with, not fight, the flow
But right now I need a cuppa, before my lips do parch

I’ll click your links and semaphore my virtue to the world
I’m the one who holds the towel in your fighting corner
I’ll cheer you on the telly with your protest signs unfurled
Then I’ll say how nice it is the weather’s getting warmer.

E.M. Swift-Hook

A Necessary End is the third part of Iconoclast, the final book in the final trilogy of Fortunes Fools. To celebrate its upcoming launch, the entire first trilogy in a single volume, Transgressor, is free to download today.

“Who the fuck do you think I am?” Cista Tyran found she no longer cared if her boss heard her anger, assuming that he was still her boss. “You set me up. You fed Dugsdall to the wolves. You gave me your word you’d let me hold his safety line. You’ve gone back on that. So now you want me out altogether?”
Perhaps if he hadn’t been lying in bed pinned by the weight of her body as she lay half over him and with the flush of exertion still on his skin, she might have responded differently. But she doubted it. She was done playing nice with the man she worked for who had become her lover. And yes, she was pretty confident that he did love her. He had shown it, putting himself out to protect her from events that could have ended her career. On her side, if not love there was real affection. It hadn’t started out that way, but no matter who else she had been seeing, he had been a constant. It wasn’t easy, but they were both highly capable of the kind of subterfuge it involved, finding ways and means to be together.
After all, he was Garn Jecks, head of the Coalition Security Force and she was one of his top project managers.
Outwardly, he seemed unmoved by her words, just shaking his head and remaining stone-faced. But that meant little.
“Right,” he said. “I’m sorry Cista.”
She stifled her usual annoyance that eight years into their secret affair he still insisted on using her given name and refused to call her Ty.
“You’re sorry but…?”
He lifted a hand defensively. Ty realised she had seldom seen him so incredibly distressed. Anyone else would have been screaming in her face, Garn Jecks just lifted a hand. “Right. I am. Truly. Things have changed and we have to change with them.”
“You mean the mad old bitch poked her crystal ball until it burped and you caved in to her crazy?”
He said nothing to that. But what could he say? They both knew it was true. Ty had no idea the nature of the hold Kahina Sarava had over Garn except it was powerful and had something to do with Future Data—the algorithmic crystal ball that seemed to be commanding everything. Sometimes she got the impression Garn was its victim, controlled by it. Which didn’t sit well with her image of him and she knew it must cut deeply into his own sense of self.
Feeling suddenly sorry for her outburst, Ty lowered her head to kiss him, but he moved impatiently and swung his legs over the side of the bed to sit up.
“You don’t understand quite how bad this is,” he said, his back to her. “And it’s not just Sarava. There is some…thing else.”
The slight hesitation made her wonder if he had been going to say ‘someone’. But it was hard to think of anyone with the ability to bring down Garn Jecks. After all, he was the man who was paid to ensure the security of every member of the Central corporate-political establishment. He knew where all the bodies were buried.
“This could destroy me,” he went on. “It will destroy you. Unless you let me get you out. Do you understand?”
A chill in the air made her skin prickle. He did love her, that was really sweet. So why was he being such a bastard about this?
“You think I could just walk away?”
She could feel the tension in his entire body and when he didn’t answer her right away, moved her hands to massage his upper back.
“I don’t want you to walk away,” he said at last. “I want you to run. Resign. Today.”
Something in his tone impacted deep in Ty’s guts. It punched into her anger and knocked the wind out of it. He was afraid. For her. She stopped moving her hands, resting them on his shoulders and leaning in to press her cheek against his, her hair swinging forward in a silver-blonde bell, loving how that was a stark contrast to his dark-complexioned skin.
“Maybe you should take a moment to explain what’s happened, what’s changed things, instead of just telling me you want me to resign from the service.”
“Right. I wish I could. I can’t.” There was an uncharacteristic note of hopelessness in his voice. This the man who was always in control. Always one step ahead in his planning. He turned to draw her into his embrace and buried his face in her hair for a moment. “Knowing would place you in even more danger. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you because of me.”
“I am all grown up, you know,” she said, squashing the surge of annoyance. “I work for the CSF. You may have heard of them? The S is for ‘security’.”
He sighed.
“You didn’t follow orders.”
That brought her up short and she pulled away. Distancing herself. Then started hunting out her clothes.
“It’s what you pay me for,” she reminded him as she dressed. “If I did everything by the book I’d be as much use to the service as a fractured fusion core.’
“Right. No. This was not that.”
“Then what?”
“I told you when I transferred you from the team hunting Dugsdall that you shouldn’t contact him to tell him so.”
Ty frowned, her teeth digging into her lower lip. How could he know…? Of course, Future Data would have thrown it up as a high probability. But she was also certain Future Data had no way of knowing if it had actually happened. No one could know that. She’d used a one-burn link and an anonymised message drop which would self-delete as soon as Grim picked it up.
“Yes,” she agreed. “You did. You said it was important. You didn’t say why though.”
His gaze met and held hers.
“But you did it anyway.”
“No. Not yet.” The lie came easily. But then lying was her day job and she was very good at it. “I was going to, but I’ve been too sick at the thought of how he’d react knowing you’ve cut the line.”
She let how she felt about what he’d done to Grim creep into her voice. This wasn’t the first time Garn had angered her with a work decision, but she had a policy of never allowing work into their relationship. The fact he had dragged it in now was breaking all their rules. It was that which scared her more than anything else he was saying.
He looked away, lips tightening and then stood up to get dressed.
“I’m not sure it makes any difference anyway. If you haven’t, then good. But it changes nothing. You have to resign.”
She finished dressing and then sat and watched as he did the same.
“I don’t see why.”
“Right. You wouldn’t. But you must. Today. It has to be a clean break.”
A clean break? Ty shook her head. Surely he couldn’t mean…?
“You don’t want to see me again?” It was harder to say than she would have imagined it might be. Somewhere along the line this man had crept further under her skin than she’d intended.
He pulled on his shoes and avoided her eyes.
“It is not anything I want. It is, if anything, the exact opposite of what I want. But it’s not anything I have any choice about.”
“And I don’t either?”
“Right. There is more going on than you know—than you can know. It’s not just what you think it is. There are other factors in play here that weren’t before.”
“Can’t you tell me—?”
He cut across her. “I’ve told you all I can. More than I should. Don’t ask me for more.”
And that was that.
She knew there was no point protesting, his entire body language shut her out, until he finished dressing and drew her to him, briefly.
“Put in your resignation—but don’t let what I’ve said today stop you doing what you always planned to do.” He palmed something into her hand and brushed her ear with his lips. “Keep in touch. Please.”
Then he was gone.

From Iconoclast: A Necessary End by E.M Swift-Hook, the final book of Fortune’s Fools which is out 24 March.

The cover is an original artwork by Ian Bristow, you can find more of his work at Bristow Design.

I’m cool in my shades and I’m telling you
If a pig can rap then a donkey can too
This is Yore Rap
(voices off) Our rap?
No. Yore Rap

See, donkeys are cool and donkeys are hard
And I’m coming your way to mark your card
This is Yore Rap
(voices off) Our rap?
No. Yore Rap

I’m wearing my hoodie and my high-top wellies
And I just don’t care if my underwear is smelly
This is Yore Rap
(voices off) Our rap?
No. Yore Rap

And that middle-class pig ain’t street or ghetto
Even if he do have a high falsetto
This is Yore Rap
(voices off) Our rap?
No. Yore Rap

And now just to prove the Yore ain’t soft
I’m about to chastise the voices off
This is Yore Rap
(sound of running feet)
Yore Rap

©Jane Jago 2021

Yup. Jacintha Farquar. Again. Here to moan in your lugholes about whatever turgid pap you writers seem to think you can hurl at us poor readers with no comeback.
I mean, here to help you aspiring novelists hone your art and improve your technique.
Honestly.

Life Lessons for Writers – Seven: Cultural References

You, yes, you, stop looking away as if this has nothing to do with you because you know you have done it. You will have dropped the names of movies you love, references to books or music you love and that esoteric hobby of yours, somehow into your magnum opus.
Along comes the reader who is twenty years older or younger than you, loving the book and then POW – you’ve lost them. They don’t care that your main character likes listening to Swooky Pizzaface or that the classic scene in Toy Story Two Hundred and Twenty Three was just soo funny. And maybe you were thinking all your fly fishing pals were going to just love that reference on page sixty-two of your post-apocalyptic novel? Well all two of them who ever read the book might do, but for the rest of your readership you’d probably have more reach by mentioning J.R. Hartley…
Did I lose you on that one?
Go Google it.
That makes my point.
One person’s cool cultural reference is another’s ‘Huh?’ or even ‘Ugh’.

Then we come with anachronisms.
Why is it every damn character in the future has a secret passion for 21st Century movies/books/HipHop or history? Now I know for a fact there will be some of you reading this who will be saying ‘Yes, well I have a passion for 4th Century BCE Greco-Roman pottery’. Well good for you if you do, but you know what? There is a reason shows and books about that are not topping any popularity charts.
My son, Moons, won’t even watch a film from the 1990s as he says the visual quality is too crap so by the time we get another century on things from this time will just be sad and dated in the minds of most.
You may fondly imagine readers are smiling as you name check the entire cast of Farscape, but no, they won’t be. They will be being reminded that they are reading a frigging book set five hundred years in the future in which the main character has an utterly unlikely obsession with an old show they never even liked themselves. You will have broken their reading immersion at best and alienated them at worst.
It is not an effing ‘easter egg’ it’s a bloody shambles.

And what about if you write in the past?
Get your facts right. It is not hard to learn when various items were discovered/invented, Google is your friend.
Don’t have someone in Tudor times wave a red rag at a bull – that kind of bull fighting didn’t exist then, and a ‘waving a red rag’ meant flapping your tongue to no good end.
Don’t have your Viking feeling his heart pumping to circulate the blood around his body, no one knew it did that then.
Don’t have a character in the Wars of the Roses thinking about the cells in his body, or talking about a virus or about bacteria – or even germs. They were not known about then.
Don’t have your Roman Senator say he is going to handbag someone or that he fights according to Queensbury rules…
Just don’t…

So in brief make sure your cultural references fit the culture. 

1. Don’t try and shoehorn in pop-culture references to the present day in your distant times sci-fi. Far from being something the modern reader can relate to you will alienate those who dislike your referenced material and break the reading immersion of everyone else. 
2. Do check that whatever cultural references you do use fit the setting both historically and – well, yes, culturally.
3. Don’t impose your own boring geekdom on your poor bloody readers thinking you look clever. You don’t, you look an effing pratt!

And if that hasn’t sent you scurrying back to your keyboard looking for the delete key I don’t know what will. So sod off unless you are going to make me another Bloody Mary…

After twenty-two years of happy marriage, Bob and Carol marched into the guidance counselor’s room wearing identical expressions of fury and heartache.
“He is utterly intolerable,” Carol declared.
“She is completely unbearable,” Bob countered.
“He says strawberry ice cream is best, which is obviously just wrong.”
“She thinks chocolate tastes better. How could she?”
The counselor sighed. It was the usual problem.
“A good marriage is about compromise, you know. Do you agree on vanilla?”
They both nodded warily.
A short time later they left wreathed in smiles – and with a tub of Neapolitan ice cream in a carrier bag.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Not To Be, is the second part of Iconoclast the final trilogy in Fortunes Fools. To celebrate the upcoming launch of A Necessary End, the last book of both the trilogy and the series, the entire first trilogy in a single volume, Transgressor, is free to download until 20 March.

It was like walking around with a bomb in your head.
That wasn’t such an unfamiliar feeling for someone like Jazatar Baldrik who had served time in the Special Legion. There they plumbed a direct link into your brain and set it so that you had to keep connected to the data network lattice or it would fry out and kill you. Even if you made it through the five years of hell so you could qualify for release from the convict unit, as very few ever did, the device had a bad effect on the brain tissue it was implanted in and would kill you eventually anyway. Jaz had personal experience of that too. He had recently lost a friend that way. A man he had once considered as close as a brother.
But this was different.
Different because this bomb wasn’t going to go off and kill himself. When it went off, it was going to kill one of the very few people he actually cared about. Getting that news had been the most unexpected event of the day. But still only one in series of unexpected events. and that in a place where the unexpected was so rare it never happened.
For the past two cycles Jaz had been effectively imprisoned. Initially against his will and now with a kind of grudging acceptance, he was held in a secure clinic run by the terrorist organisation known as The Legacy. It was the kind of place where today was the same as yesterday and tomorrow wouldn’t be too much changed from that. Running to its own quiet, pre-planned patterns, nothing was allowed to penetrate which might risk breaking the steady rhythm of daily life. It was the sort of protected and predictable environment Jaz had never known any time in his forty-two years of life. He had even begun to feel safe.
Which was a mistake.
When they told him he had a visitor, he’d been a bit puzzled, but mostly just curious. It wasn’t like anyone he knew had any idea he was even here. So he didn’t expect it to be the kind of visitor most of the other inmates of this place got now and then.
It wasn’t going to be some family member who would look all concerned. Or even an awkward work colleague, checking up on how he was doing because someone had to and they had drawn the short straw at the office. Jaz had seen those kinds of people in the reception area sometimes, waiting to be taken through to see one of the inmates – or guests as the staff smilingly called them. There was even an elderly couple standing there now, the look of worried parents clear on their faces. Obviously distracted, they didn’t even notice him. He walked right in front of them and into one of the therapy rooms.
It took him a moment to realise who his visitor was and when he did, his first reaction was to turn himself around and walk right out again. He had to use some real willpower to make himself stand still and not do that.
Car Torbalen.
The man ultimately responsible for Jaz being put in this place and being taken very much out of circulation. Even thinking that was enough to make Jaz tense up all over. But, in a place where yesterday and tomorrow were both so much the same, he was curious enough about this sudden shift to see what it might be about.
Torbalen greeted him with a slight smile, holding out his hand like some formal event.
“Jaz. I was delighted to get your message that you wanted to see me today. Let’s go for that walk you suggested, eh?”
Something was wrong.
Jaz was more than sure he’d sent no such message. Even if he had the faintest idea on how he might have set about trying to get in touch with Torbalen, he would never have been inviting him over for a cosy one-to-one, walking in the grounds.
This man had effectively betrayed him. But the fact was Torbalen was standing there and knew that. He must also know he wasn’t going to make it on to Jaz’s link list in any conceivable future. Which made Jaz wonder enough that he didn’t deny or challenge what Torbalen had said.
There was nothing to read in the pleasant smile, because Torbalen was an operator with a lot of skill, but there had to be something important behind this. For him to step away from his so-busy life drawing in ever more fanatics for The Legacy, there had to be something pretty big on his mind. So Jaz took the offered hand briefly in a firm grip and said nothing. Then he went through the door which Torbalen had opened and walked out into the secure grounds around the clinic.
And they were very secure. When he was first allowed out, Jaz had spent some time examining the perimeter wall, observing the security measures and figuring there was no way he was going to break out. The grounds themselves were one big garden. Lawns. Flowers. Bushes. Trees. Paths. All the things a garden should have. Probably garden people would like it.
When you had enough walking, there were plenty of benches so you could sit and look at some bit of it for a good long time. Torbalen chose one of the benches and gestured Jaz to sit beside him.
The grounds were also the nearest you could get to privacy in this place. It was the ultimate freedom here, given only to those who were felt to be safe out on their own. There were surveillance drones up high, but they were so discreet you could forget they were even there. Not like indoors where the sense you were being watched never left you— that and the knowledge it wasn’t any kind of paranoia. He glanced up and Torbalen caught the look.
“They don’t have audio. I checked.”
Jaz nodded. “Good to know.”
He studied the man beside him, but there was nothing he could read in the bland expression. “So— I don’t get it. Why’re you here? What’s this about?” He knew he sounded closer to hostile than friendly, but right that moment he wasn’t up for caring about that.
The bench they were sitting on was in one of the smaller sections of the garden, one made more private by a row of bushes. It had a whole load of colourful plants set carefully around a raked sand area, with a small pile of stones in the middle where running water spilled into a pool. It was one of the places Jaz liked to come alone as there was a wide stretch of lawn, invisible to the main building, on the far side of the planted area. Most days now he’d go through his martial arts routines there and then sit on this bench and just sort of unwind and think of not much after. So in the pleasant warmth of the afternoon sun, Jaz would normally have been feeling pretty relaxed in this spot. But then normally he’d not have been sitting with the man who had put him in the clinic against his will. This man owed him more than just some regular kind of an explanation and they both knew it.
That was awkward.

The opening of Iconoclast: Not To Be part of the Fortune’s Fools series by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The cover is an original artwork by Ian Bristow, you can find more of his work at Bristow Design.

Advice on growing old disgracefully from an elderly delinquent with many years of expertise in the art – plus free optional snark…

You are old, let me just make it clear
That even your knitting is queer
You should knit baby clothes
To warm tiny toes
Not merkins in purple cashmere

© jane jago

“So what do we do now?” Edbert asked. “We’ve summed it all up pretty neatly between us, but so far I don’t see where it gets us.”
Gallus opened his mouth to speak, but was forestalled by Bryn.
“It’s very much a case of waiting it out at the moment. I have people with ears to the ground and leaning on anyone they think might have any ideas. We are doing all we can do. When the reports come in, then we can act.”
Julia could feel for Edbert and in many ways shared his sense of frustration. She wished her heavy body away for just one day so she could be the one out there asking the questions, demanding the answers. But she knew Bryn was right and that he would be doing everything that could humanly be done.
“Then you had better get back to Viriconium,” she said, “in case those reports come in. I think we’re done here for now.”
Gallus gave a salute as if dismissed from parade, but Bryn stood solidly.
“Do you have a moment, Domina?” he asked. “Your cook is just outside the door looking very unhappy. She was wanting to knock when I came back in, but I said I’d let you know as soon as we were done.”
The one thing Cookie never did was interrupt Julia when she was working. If something had driven her to do so today it had to be very pressing and urgent, above the ordinary run of domestic crises.
“Of course, show her in please.”
Bryn opened the door and stood aside.
“Thank you so much Domina Julia.” Cookie’s normally placid face was creased with worry, and she never normally called Julia anything but dearie, Julia set her own worries aside and beckoned her forward. Cookie twisted her apron in her big red hands.
“I’m sorry to bother you but there is something odd going on. It’s my nephew, Ban and the boy Dewi who helps Edbert with the dogs, and the youngest garden lad, Cerdic. They are getting hold of porn somehow. And they have started trying to spy on the younger girls in the household. Luned caught them. She boxed all their ears and thought no more of it, except to come and tell me, but almost all the rest…” She took a deep breath before ploughing on. “I decided to see if I could find out what they are up to. I tracked them to the bothy, where they are now – swigging cider they have pinched from the store and watching stuff I don’t want to describe. And the youngest of them no more than fourteen. They’re not bad lads, but this..this… Well, I dunno what to do.”
Julia held out her hands to the distressed woman and nodded to Edbert who produced a massive handkerchief in one of his pockets.
“Chin up, fach,” he said. “They are all three under age, so a quick visit from the local law should frighten them into good behaviour.”
“It should indeed,” Bryn had managed to dredge up a grin. “We can go by that way as we leave. Bothy you said?”
Cookie nodded and Bryn cocked his head at Gallus. They left shoulder-to-shoulder, walking as easily together as if they were friends. Cookie blew her nose lustily and offered Edbert his handkerchief back. He looked at it in some distaste.
“Tell you what, Cookie, you can keep it.”
She smiled her appreciation, pocketed the hanky and ambled off back towards the kitchen.

An extract from Dying to be Fathers by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook which is the sixth Dai and Julia Mystery, set in a Britain where the Roman Empire never left…

It is hard to let go, I know I need to but relinquishing the things that you have had all your life is not just painful it is soul destroying.
“It’s a lovely place, mum, sunny, bright and such nice people.”
“Yes, it is,” I say, “but it’s not my own house with my own possessions and my own world. It will be like living in a hotel, except I can never go home.”
I don’t think she really understands. But one day she will.
I won’t look back at the house. I don’t want her to see me cry.

E.M. Swift-Hook