To celebrate the upcoming launch of A Necessary End, the final book in Fortunes Fools, Dues of Blood is free to download until 8 March

The tattooed face broke into an ugly snarl, as the spearhead nearly grazed one shoulder of its owner’s powerful frame. He lunged forward, the double-headed axe swinging and the crowd yelled as he claimed his kill, severing the arm of the spear-wielding warrior at the shoulder in a fountain of scarlet and removing his head with a backswing, as effortlessly as a chef might slice through a soft cheese.
It was a very popular kill. This animal, who had the fighting-name ‘Therloon’, had been the new darling of the Alfor crowds since he had arrived in the arena a couple of moons after the Fair. He was of the nomadic folk from the Eastern Continent and had their renowned tenacity and powerful build combined with a flair for the theatrical and a spectacular viciousness that was all his own. Playing to the crowd like the professional he was, Therloon swung his axe around his head and roared, his face contoured into a hideous grin which must have been visible even to those who stood furthest from the edge of the arena. The crowd responded to his signature salute and roared his name.
The powerful Easterner turned to where one opponent remained facing him. The smaller man held his sturdy frame prepared, the curving sword he gripped in one hand looked as frail as a blade of grass against the life-harvesting scythe of Therloon’s whirling axe. But the crowd expected good sport before they had their final glut of blood. For this was no ordinary combat unfolding before them and the money that rode on the outcome of this single bout would have paid the wages of half the troops Qabal Vyazin had been mustering on the outskirts of Tabruth. This was the kind of match that men waited years to see and could only be provided by this, the most prestigious Arena in Temsevar – that of the city of Alfor.
It occurred to Torwyn, watching this display as he ran a hand through his short terracotta-coloured hair, that there were many places better to be than standing less than ten paces away from the axe-wielding maniac and on the wrong side of the high barricades which protected the crowd from the fighting-slaves within.
Facing Therloon, now alone, stood the one they called the Sabre, whom the crowd had just seen defeat his own previous opponent with a classic display of athletic grace and skill. Now, invisible to all except those in the audience closest to where he stood, he shifted his weight very slightly, as if knowing what to expect. The charge, when it came, made him move quickly aside and turn to duck under the axe whilst bringing his own, lighter, blade across to cut at the bigger man’s back. It was not sufficient to do any real damage to his opponent, but enough to gain an appreciative call or two from the crowd and Torwyn could tell it had angered the Easterner.
“Sabre! Sabre!” He evidently had supporters out in strength, probably as many as were there to cheer for Therloon, but then few fighting-slaves were as well-known as the Sabre because few survived six years in the Arena as he had. Few overcame for that long the ever more creative and dangerous demands made on a crowd-pleasing favourite which turned life and death combat into gore-fest theatre or blood-drenched farce.
If it had not been for the coming war this fight would never have been allowed so soon. To end deliberately, the career and crowd-pulling earning power of a top fighting-slave was not a decision made lightly by the lanista of an Arena. More especially when the lanista was well renowned for being a tight-fisted miser, who kept his fighting-slaves in the minimum conditions and invested all his money in crowd-pleasing exhibitions and expensive exotics.
The dance of death continued on the blood-stained sand of the stadium between the unwieldy axe, made agile and serpentine in the hands of the powerful Easterner, and the insubstantial blade of the sword weaving the will of the man who held it. From the first, it had been apparent that the sword was no real match for the heavier weapon with its much longer reach. It was only because the man who held it seemed to possess almost precognitive reactions and a creatively robust athleticism, that the inevitable end was being delayed so long. The tension became palpable and the focus of the two men was absolute. For them, the world had shrunk to the circle of sand and the sweep of feet, hands and weapons.
Normally, the element of drama would have featured far more in any performance by either man. The Easterner was famed for his love of blood and to watch him fight was to watch a butcher at work in a slaughterhouse – but a butcher with a malicious streak of sadism – and the crowd, never sated, loved that. By comparison, the Sabre was known for the humour and finesse he brought to his savagery, playing with his opponents in burlesque ways which would have the crowd fired up with laughter and then stunning them into silence by the breath-taking skill of his acrobatic agility.
Even now, apparently pressed to his limits, Sabre found time to dance a brief step or two with a flower in his teeth, thrown by one of the crowd. It proved to be an expensive crowd-pleaser as the Easterner seized the moment to strike and Sabre, ducking under the blow, raised his own weapon ineffectively to deflect the lethal weight of the axe. It barely turned the heavy slicing blade but at the price of being smashed away from its owner’s grip.
Disarmed, the Sabre dived into a desperate, ground-covering roll that brought him distance from the certain death of Therloon’s backswing, and a few more precious moments of life. But his move was accompanied by the groans and boos of the watching throng. Those who had placed their money on the Sabre were most vocal in their disappointment. The fight was lost and many who had bet on the old favourite knew they would go home the poorer. But the let-down was soon overlaid by a fresh building of anticipation. There remained the catharsis of the kill itself, and Therloon was a master of spectacular, messy killing. That was something to look forward to. The Sabre’s last show would be an essay in violent, agonising death and those he had just robbed of their winnings would enjoy that revenge.
Torwyn watched the Easterner as he advanced across the floor of the arena. Therloon was fully aware that this was his moment and the exaggerated grin that split the tattooed face was as much leer of derision as smile of victory. Only those nearest the edge of the arena heard the tattooed man’s words as he approached his unarmed foe.
“You want to take back what you said before?”
The Sabre backed off step by step as the other man advanced, his arms spread wide in a gesture of pacification or surrender and the roar of contempt from the crowd at this sign of cowardice swelled close to riot.
“Take it back? Why should I?” he said as if puzzled by the question.
“Because on that depends how fast you die.”
“I don’t see why.” The Sabre’s tone was soft. “No matter how quickly or slowly you kill me it is all still true, Gant. You are an imbecile, a laughably dumb brute. You have less intelligence than the beast they named you for.”
An animal growl in his throat, the Easterner shot forward, the long axe held lightly in his hands. Sabre stepped back in a nervous retreat and in doing so missed his footing and tripped, sprawling backwards over the body of Therloon’s previous victim. He fell on his back, arms wide, body spread open and helpless.
The Easterner charged the last few paces, his face congested by anger and hate and Torwyn knew he was going to make this kill one his audience would long remember. Then the fallen man moved. His body rolled suddenly backwards, looking for all the world like a street tumbler, legs disappearing over his head and he finished the movement smoothly on one knee, the spear he had rescued in the process of completing the roll, held in his hands and braced solidly against his foot.
Therloon could no more have shifted his course at that point than taken flight and his eyes barely had time to widen in horrified comprehension, before his stomach was impaled upon the spear.
Sabre was on his feet as the impact was carried through, driving the point home deeply, twisting it to bite into the spine as the Easterner went down. Standing above his fallen foe, the sturdy fighting-slave looked down, without compassion at the tattooed face which was broken now by a rictus of agony.
“How fast do you die?” he asked savagely, for once allowing the fury and disgust to boil up through his veins. But the Easterner was beyond words, lungs pierced by the ripping barbs on the side of the spear’s head and breathing only in wheezing grunts.
The adoring ululation of the crowd ran like a hurricane around the arena and a monsoon of flowers and ribbons rained down onto the blood-drenched sand.
“Sabre! Sabre! Sabre!”
Torwyn straightened up and looked around as if seeing the scene for the first time. Then, strangely impatient and with no more than the most perfunctory of gestures to acknowledge the adulation, he ran his hand through his short rust-coloured hair and strode back through the now open gates, into the dark tunnel beyond.

From Transgressor: Dues of Blood a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook which is free to download until 8 March. You can listen to this on YouTube.

The cover is designed by Ian Bristow, you can find his work at Bristow Design.

I miss my old bookshelf, he sighed
It reminds me that time passes by
That the books that I read
Now exist in my head
Though no more in front of my eyes

©jj 2021

Yes, it is me. Jacintha. Struggling to be sober enough to write something sufficiently significant to be worthy of putting out in public, which is more than many of you lot try to do.
I have been making a point of reading you ‘indie’ authors a bit over the last few weeks and I have to say there are some really stunning books out there that you people have written. Wonderful, captivating and more than worth my Kindle Unlimited sub five times over. Well, maybe not that good, but pretty damn good.
I must also say there is also some really dreadful drek which some of you seem to feel you have a right to inflict on the rest of us. The sort of writing that, were I the author, I would be embarrassed to put my name to it.
So maybe I can address some of the problems from the drek pile.

Life Lessons for Writers – Six:Too Many Heads

Oh. My. Effing. God.
I have no idea what it is with you writers, but get behind the wheel of a story and the first thing you want to do is tell it from five thousand different perspectives. Either by hopping from head to head like a libidinous frog, which I surely have no need to tell you is a terrible idea, or by having a character change break every other page.
No.
Don’t do it.

In my extremely humble opinion as a mere reader of your wonderful creative ramblings, I can spot a newbie a mile off by the fact it is page thirty and I have already run through five or six different characters’ heads like a bad dose of Montezuma’s revenge.
There seems to be this conviction that every last detail of the story has to be fed to the reader in a scene through a character – and sometimes the same scene from more than one character as there was this tiny nuance the reader might miss. I blame those so-called creative writing classes who ram ‘show don’t tell’ so far up the jacksie of every would be writer that they are incapable of writing a sentence that says ‘It was snowing’ but have to write ‘The soft bosomy whiteness settled from the skies upon the reluctant face of mother earth.’ So they then think they have to ‘show’ every last effing nuance of the whole damn plot!
No.
No.
And again …NO!

If Shakespeare managed to have action take place ‘offstage’ and still keep his audiences at fever pitch, you can too – unless you are a truly crap writer in which case go back to reading until you’ve learned how to do it better and stop inflicting your vile ‘brain babies’ on a long suffering world.

Gods I need a drink now, where did I put the tequila and pernod?

So, let me try and explain this again for those of you at the back who were busy on your smartphones.

(1) Before you write your book choose no more than four characters (and that is pushing the limits) through whom you can tell your story and accept that now and then you will have to find some other way than character presence to explain to the reader something that has happened. And yes, there can be one ‘guest’ POV in the book as well, but no more. You. Can. Do. It.

(2) Do not think you have to give your reader insight into every last damn thought of every last damn character. You don’t. Those that really matter can be conveyed to the reader through your POV character. That is what good writers do. Yes. Really.

If you don’t learn these lessons, you’ll be dug deep and drowning in the drek pile for life and good luck to you.

Now bugger off the lot of you, I want to watch the reruns of Bridgerton in peace.

Slyvester never had an ego problem.

Those around him did.

The only child of a wealthy magnate, his every whim indulged from the moment he pooped his first nappy, it never occurred to him anything he wanted was not his by right.

So when he saw Bianca he did what he always did, sending five hundred bouquets to her house – all at the same time –  and hiring a famous rock band to serenade her on his behalf.

Then he sent the gold edged invitation to dinner.

He had no idea how to cope when she sent it back saying no.

E.M. Swift-Hook

To celebrate the upcoming launch of A Necessary End, the final book in Fortunes Fools, Times of Change is free to download until 6 March.

Jaelya Roussal, Regent of Harkera, woke up to almost total blackness and silence, her heart hammering hard and a shimmer of perspiration coating her body beneath the light coverlet. She woke as one awakes from a bad dream, with the vague and yet urgent sense of danger that the rational mind, still blurred from sleep, takes time to dispel. There was no possible danger, she told herself, two men stood guard outside her door and the grounds of the Summer Palace were well patrolled by night and day. No one would harm her in her own bed-chamber.
During the civil war she had woken like this many times and occasionally with good cause, when there were sounds of fighting brought to her on the night air. But the fighting was over, Mandervik himself was dead and the war, which had only finished in the spring, seemed now to belong to another lifetime and a different Jaelya.
Waking to the dark left her with a feeling of unreality – as if the universe itself had disappeared and she was all that existed, alone, floating on an island suspended in a void. Then beyond the invisible door to the solar, she heard the sound of booted feet and a muted exchange of words as the guard was challenged formally. The footsteps receded, leaving the stillness of the night to descend again like an unbroken veil.
She was fully awake now and she cast her mind back, wondering what had disturbed her sleep. It had not been a dream – more a jolt of surprise, of the kind that set the pulse racing.
Then she knew.
Alize had been there. She did not question how,with the door bolted and guarded and the windows shuttered against the night air. She just knew that Alize had been in the room and touched her as she slept and had spoken the words which had woken her:
“My poor child – you thought the war was over, but it has only just now begun.”
“Alize?” she spoke the name hesitantly and in little more than a whisper. But there was no reply and the room was empty. Alize had somehow come and was now gone, leaving no trace of her presence.
Sighing, Jaelya turned on to her side and drew her knees up close to her body, hugging the coverlet around her as she had done when a child. She refused to dwell on the words or their meaning or even why tonight, of all possible times, Alize should come to her after so many years of silence. Such thoughts were best left for the clear light of day when the ghosts of the past walked more warily and her mind could be better focused on the demands of the present.
But, like a shy creature of the wild, sleep eluded her. Her thoughts drifted, against her will, until those time worn ghosts that hovered about her, led her gently along the paths of unwilling memory to the beginning of everything.
It was, of course, Alize who had been there then.
Her first awareness of life had been of holding Alize’s hand on that day – as if she had been flung into the world fully-formed at the age of three. Even now she could still see clearly the high beamed roof, with its painted and vaulted ceiling, arching over the huge black and white slabs of stone which paved the floor. She had stood in the doorway, as if looking into the universe from outside, one hand holding onto a small bundle of clothes and the other gripping Alize’s hand tightly – as if her life depended upon it.
She conjured the scene easily, untarnished by the passage of years. The long table, taller than herself then, the chairs which had seemed made for giants, the fireplace which looked large enough to roast a good-sized ox and the faint, musty, smell of cold ashes and old books. Seated at the table, a heavy bound book open before him and a remote screen set up to one side, sat a boy with a mop of curly hair who had looked up as they entered. To the Jaelya in the memory, he had seemed so grown up himself – but he cannot have been much more than five summers her senior.
Feeling confused, she had looked up at the figure of Alize towering beside her and the face that had looked down at her contained blue eyes that seemed to embrace the world and all the stars beyond. Jaelya had felt as though she might be swallowed up in their depths, but somehow the thought made her feel safe rather than frightened. Then Alize’s gaze had moved from herself to the boy, who had got to his feet and was standing quietly behind the table, his square face framed by unruly golden curls.
“Child, this is your sister. Her name is Jaelya and I want you to take care of her.”
The boy had been staring at her with open curiosity as if wondering what manner of creature she might be, but at Alize’s words a miracle happened and his face broke into the most gentle and wonderful smile.
“My sister,” he had breathed the words as a triumphal declaration rather than as any kind of question and then the boy had come across to her, his hands held out in welcome, his honey-coloured eyes lit up by the brilliant smile that was for her alone. “Hello Jae. I am your brother and I’m always going to keep you safe.”
And in that moment Jaelya had loved him with a fierce devotion, a devotion which all the years between and all the tests and burdens of those years had done nothing to diminish. So why was it, as she lay now in the dreamless darkness, that the thought of his returning to Harkera filled her heart with nothing but apprehension?

From Transgressor Trilogy: Times of Change by E.M. Swift-Hook, a Fortune’s Fools book which is free to download until 6 March.

The cover is designed by Ian Bristow, you can find 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 so you shouldn’t do that
You should only like knitting. And cats.
It shouldn’t be you
With a brand-new tattoo
Making love on an old yoga mat

© jane jago

“A copper penny for your thoughts, Domina Julia.”
“None of your never mind, Llewelyn,” she tried to sound severe but even to her own ears her voice sounded thin and strained.
“Relax, my lady, I’m not about to jump your bones. It would be a little difficult to explain to the Tribune. Not to mention a pair of hairy praetorians in the atrium.”
She snorted.
“That’s not my worry. I’m more concerned about what might happen if I jumped your bones.”
He looked at her for a moment, his eyes searching her face as if he was unsure whether she was teasing him or not, then laughed deep in his chest.
“If we were somewhere less public, I might just call you on that,” his voice was deep and lazy and Julia felt it reverberate through her body like half-remembered music. She must have blushed, because he put one finger under her chin and gave her the grin she was becoming so familiar with.
“When I first saw you, I thought you were a little boy. How wrong can a man be?” He dropped his hand, but his gaze remained heated and Julia found it difficult to regain her breath.
“Are you flirting with me, Llewelyn?” she heard herself actually purring.
“Oh no. This is far more dangerous than mere flirting.”
“Really? You think it’s not dangerous to flirt with me?”
She turned her face to him in mute invitation, wondering if he had the courage to back up his words with a deed. He did not disappoint. Dai grazed her lips with his own and she sighed. He leaned away from her but kept his eyes on her face. Julia looked away first and he touched her cheek before grunting in a dissatisfied manner.
“Not here. Not now. Not like this. Please talk to me before I get us both arrested. Or more likely just me.”
Julia mentally acknowledged the truth behind his comment. It seemed wrong to her to even consider their respective positions in society, but they needed to be thought about. Even though he was a man with a legitimate family lineage and she was a product of the slums whose mother was a whore, she was still a Roman Citizen and he wasn’t. 

She sighed.
“What would you like to talk about?”
He thought for a moment.
“The Tribune and Boudicca. Do you think they are…”
“Almost certainly, but I haven’t actually asked.”
Julia leaned forward and dipped another ladle of water onto the hot stones. When she leaned back, Dai’s face was a picture of pity.
“What?” she asked a tad testily.
“What happened to your back?”
“Oh. That. That’s what happens when a party of Mongol slavers has you and you don’t prove yourself biddable enough.”
He lifted her hand to his cheek.
“So much courage in such a small body.”
She snorted.
“Courage or stupidity. Call it what you will. I’d have been better off capitulating. They might have raped me less brutally.”
He turned her hand and kissed the pink palm.
“And yet you don’t hate men.”
“No. I did for a while, but you can’t stay bitter forever.”
“Many would. And the Tribune was right.”
“What did the old fool say?”
“Only that you have the sort of courage and integrity that shames most men.”
Julia mentally beat her foster brother about the head and face before turning a smiling face to Dai.
“So that means he told you the sorry story, does it?”
“Just the outline. He wanted me to understand how it had been for you. I don’t, of course, but I do at least know you are not a spoilt patrician.”
“Indeed I’m not.”

“May I ask you one thing?”
She lifted a shoulder.
“Ask away.”
“How did the slavers get you? In Rome?”
“I wasn’t in Rome. A group of orphan children of vigiles parents who had died in service, were sent north to the mountains to avoid the summer heat. Only the charitable patricians who organised the trip actually sold us to the Mongols and put it out that we had been abducted. The had pulled the same scam with other groups of orphans but, fortunately for me, unlike the others the Vigiles were not going to accept nothing could be done or abandon their own without a fight. It should have been a huge scandal, but money changed hands and it was all hushed up.” She paused as she realised something for the first time. “I think that is why justice is so important to me.”
Dai swore for quite some time, and, for reasons she wasn’t prepared to analyse, this gave Julia a warm fuzzy feeling in her stomach. When he calmed down, their talk became general and light-hearted, as if they both realised there were things they needed to say to each other, just not quite yet.
After steam and massage, they were forced to separate as the actual baths were segregated. Julia found herself alone in the female caldarium, and allowed herself to float in the hot water enjoying the looseness it promoted in her limbs. She let her mind drift back to Dai Llewellyn in all his almost edible masculinity and a small smile spread across her gamine features.
She was so lost in her daydream that she didn’t even feel the blow that rendered her unconscious.

From Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Edwina was the studious hard working kind. Her few friends voted her ‘Most Likely to Succeed’, but privately thought she worked too hard to ever enjoy life.
They seldom invited her to any social events, even online ones, because there is a limit to how often you can listen to descriptions of the intricacies of noncovalent bonds and leukocyte adhesion.
One day Edwina looked out of the window and saw a child laughing with delight whilst playing with a balloon. The next, she was on a plane to Bermuda where she lived the rest of her life as a beachcomber…

E.M. Swift-Hook

To celebrate the upcoming launch of A Necessary End, the final book in Fortunes Fools, The Fated Sky is free to download until 4 March

Caer sat on his pony looking at the dead body on the ground and wondering if he should send more scouts back towards the road, almost a day’s trek behind the caravan. This man had been alone, half-mad and no threat to the caravan, but others might even now be following the same path that they had taken from the road and for the same reason they had taken it: others who were scouts for brigands, bandits or bigger caravans than his own.
He spat in the dirt and narrowed his eyes as he looked past the file of wagons, ponies and people. It was late afternoon and his breath misted slightly in the air. The long cold winter was over, but in the barren Wastelands, spring was always slow to come. The air still carried a biting chill, even in the heat of the day and the distant peaks kept their mantle of snow and ice, tinged with crimson by the light of the huge red sun. Spring was having to claw its way free of winter’s greedy clutches so that Temsevar could bask in an all too brief season of warmth and growth.
The Wastelands were vast and magnificent. Here and there, standing proud and alone in the plain, like the lost sentinels of a forgotten age, were towering flat-topped mountains of rock, some so massive they were too big to cross in a day on foot. It was as though at some point in the distant past the ground had simply dropped away, leaving the high plateaux stranded above, like giant stepping stones, creating a two-tier terrain. If in the winter, these high grounds were the coldest and most exposed, in the spring they seemed always flushed with new vegetation before any managed to creep out of the more parched stones below.
Caer made his decision. With the work to be done, the four men he already had out scouting their back trail were all he could spare for the moment. He called to one of the mounted men who was riding with the caravan.
“Shevek, we are camping here.”
The man he spoke to wheeled his pony away and rode at a brisk pace towards the front of the train of wagons and animals, issuing sharp orders to make the night’s camp around the rocky debris beneath the steep cliff face of one of the high monoliths. Caer felt a familiar sense of satisfaction as those orders turned the straggling ranks of moving people, ponies and wagons into a brief flurry of chaos, before brightly coloured awnings, tents and pavilions sprung up from the chaos, like strange blossoms. Caer and his men rode through the quickly forming encampment, shouting instructions, solving problems, helping secure ropes and encouraging any who were slow to respond with the whips they carried curled in their belts.
In a remarkably short time, the caravan resembled a miniature town with streets and open spaces, stables, and pens. Fires were being kindled, children tending the animals as women kneaded dough and cut the vegetables for the evening meal. Toddlers screamed and got underfoot or rolled like puppies amongst the big, sharp-toothed dogs, which ignored them and begged for scraps with soulful eyes and then turned on each other snapping and snarling when an unsavoury morsel was cast their way.
Once the familiar routine was well established, Caer’s men guided their mounts towards the middle of the camp. The ponies’ short stubby ears, thick coats, wall-eyed glares and powerful necks, made them far from beautiful to look upon, but their split hooves could splay to grip surefooted even on snow and ice or could run fast on firmer ground. It was their broad backs which carried the burden of human traffic in both trade and war with a sturdy strength and agility which, for Caer, had a beauty all of its own.
The men who rode were as tough as their ponies. The older ones amongst them wore their hair long, stained red and tied back into a heavy braid, the greater length of the braid telling of ever greater age and experience. The youngest men had their hair shaved so close to the scalp as to seem bald. They were not even allowed to begin to grow a braid until they had served a year of apprenticeship with the caravans. All the men wore coats made from a brightly coloured heavy-felt cloth, over shirts with billowing sleeves, patterned skirted jerkins made from fleeced hides and plain felt britches which gathered loosely into calf-high boots. All were armed: every man wore a bandolier of wooden cartridge boxes over one shoulder and carried a crude pistol; one or two had a long-barrelled musket or rifled carbine, on their backs and each wore a long-bladed knife with an ornately carved hilt and whips hung looped at their belts.
These men were of the Zoukai, a brotherhood of warrior guardians, hiring themselves to protect the caravans which carried the trade of Temsevar. Named after the swift and ruthless, red-plumed predatory birds which hunted from the skies in these very wastes, they were bound by a strict code of honour which placed loyalty to their captain and their caravan above all else.

You can keep reading The Fated Sky which is free to download until 4 March. It is the first part of Transgressor Trilogy, and the first book in Fortunes Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The cover is designed by Ian Bristow, you can find 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, and that prompts me to ask
How certain events came to pass
How you got a gold fang
And a piercing that hangs
And a dragon tattooed on your ass

© jane jago