‘My own story begins when I was fourteen years old. Until that time, I lived with my parents at Massimo Schiapetti senior’s quinta two days’ ride south of the city. Just after my birthday, some women came from the big house and examined me to make sure I was a virgin, and that I was physically ready to bear children. Then they took me away from my parents to the house. There were a dozen or so of us, all told, gathered from the Schiapetti holdings, and after we’d been at the house for a few days we were bathed and nicely dressed and then paraded in front of the master and three strange men. The master pointed out a redhead from the distrada, and the three men indicated an interest in two other girls, myself and a shepherd’s daughter. I later came to understand that the Schiapetti sold me that day. Sold both of us. My companion was about seventeen, and as blonde as a wheat field, with impressive breasts and a stoical temperament, I was tiny, white blonde and scared out of my wits. If I had not had that older girl with me I don’t honestly know how I would have managed. Her name was Breda, and as we were whisked across the country in a closed carriage, she explained exactly what was likely to happen to us. She made it seem bearable and told me it wouldn’t be forever. She knew of other girls who had been taken this way and were later returned to their families more or less unharmed, and with a gift of money.’
‘After what seemed to me to be an endless journey we were brought to a hunting lodge where there were about twenty girls ranging in age from seventeen to twelve years. We were there to serve the pleasure of Seamus Shaughnessy, and to bear him the children his well-born and well-connected wife could not. The housekeeper wasn’t unkind, but she did make it clear that there was no escape, and that we’d better please the master or else. We never asked what ‘or else’ was, we were too afraid. Seamus was by that time nearing seventy, and a life of dissipation had left its mark on him. I prayed that he wouldn’t want me, but he did. Myself, Breda, and the twelve-year-old were chosen. Then the young one disappeared. I learned many years later that she threw herself off the roof after her first night in the master’s bed. I guess I’m of a more pragmatic turn of mind as I managed to take Breda’s advice and concentrate on the prospect of a good breakfast while the old sot was fumbling about me. At the end of a fairly unpleasant fortnight he returned to the city and we waited. As it turned out we were both with child. Seamus was tickled pink and we were brought to the family’s estate by the great river to give birth. Lady Shaughnessy was also brought to the estate to await the delivery of ‘her’ children. She was, it turned out, a deeply maternal woman, who wanted babies to love and care for. She was even kind to us.’
‘I went into labour first, and a long difficult time I had of it. I was really much too young and too small to have a baby, but, fortunately for me, I come of tough stock and I survived. I only saw my daughter for a few moments before they took her away. My friend Breda’s son was born dead. The cord was around his throat, and the midwife they employed wasn’t skilled. Breda managed to creep into my room three days after my baby was born to tell me that she had plenty of good milk and was feeding my little girl, also that the family had decided to keep her on as wet nurse and then nursemaid. She told me that my baby had been named Anita, and promised to love her. With that I had to be satisfied. I never saw either one again.’
‘I was sent home after my body healed, with a large present of money. It was enough for my family to leave the quinta, and buy a small inn in a valley close to the Imperial highway. I went north to learn healing and midwifery, determined to protect women from the unskilled and ham-fisted ‘care’ that cost Breda her child and almost cost me my life. I spent the next twenty-plus years in hospitals and monasteries, biding my time until my youthful looks faded and I could return to the city and ply my trade.’
‘In the meantime, my daughter grew to be a real beauty, as famed for her gentle kindness as the loveliness of her face. She was, it is said, very much in love with a half cousin from a humble branch of her father’s family, but such a marriage for Seamus Shaughnessy’s only daughter was not to be countenanced. And when she was nineteen her father married her to the forty-year-old Massimo Schiapetti. It was, by all accounts a loveless match, although Massimo was kind enough to his wife, and pleased to find her fertile. A year after the wedding she presented him with a son, who they named Rodrigo: he died of influenza at the age of four. Two years after Rodrigo’s birth Anita fell pregnant again, this time she gave Massimo a daughter, but lost her own life in the process. I arrived back in the city in time to learn that I was a grandmother, and my daughter was dead.’ An paused for a moment and wiped her tears cheeks with her wrinkled old hands.
‘My granddaughter was name Anaya, and she inherited her mother’s beauty, but her father’s nature, growing more and more vicious and depraved as she grew older. She had a succession of lovers and was notorious for her treatment of her servants. When she was twenty-five her father negotiated a marriage with the Emperor’s only son. It was a politically splendid move, but on a personal level it could scarcely have been worse. She loathed him because he either couldn’t or wouldn’t satisfy her sexually, and he despised her because she was stupid and vicious. Even so, they remained married, and I oversaw five accouchements in which she presented her lord with six children. Five sons and Princess Ana.’
‘So there you have it. My daughter, conceived by rape, and married for politics. My granddaughter, conceived for politics, married for politics, and murdered for politics. And my great-granddaughter, also conceived for politics, but with half a chance of making a life of her own…’

An extract from The Long Game by Jane Jago

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Assumptions About The Old

I am old. But I resent being parcelled as:

• A sweet little white-haired old lady
• Somebody’s grannie 
• A person who needs to be invited to Christmas Dinner in case I don’t cook. (On which point what about the rest of the year.)

I am not 

• miserable
• lonely
• prim and proper. 

I did not fight in the war and neither did my unlamented. 

So let’s unpick this. 

Old people were not put on this earth so you could patronise us.

We are here because we ain’t dead. 

And because we like life enough to hang on to it.

F**k you!

The apartment was less opulent on the inside than it appeared from outside. There was fine furniture and a couple of pieces of wall art, but it all had a worn look about it. Only the small niche where the lares sat gleamed with what looked to be several gold items, and one penate holding a cornucopia with jewels pouring from it. Dai wondered if he had interrupted her private devotions; as there was a small offering bowl visible and the slight smell of incense.
Octavia must have seen the direction of his gaze, because she walked quickly over to the niche and closed the doors, pulling the beautifully embroidered hanging over them. Then she turned to face the men, standing with her hands clasped behind her, almost looking defiant, as if engaging in the worship of her own household gods in her own house was something less than acceptable.
“I know you’ll think it all silly superstition,” she said, lowering her gaze demurely, “but I find it very comforting.”
Dai felt Bryn stir behind him and give a soft cough of embarrassment.
“Not at all, domina,” Dai told her, wondering how such a naive innocent could have wound up with a cunnus like Urbanus Hostilius Rufus. “Perhaps you would sit down and we can talk, there is something we need to tell you about your husband.”
She smiled and moved to one of the couches, arranging her stola with an easy grace and reclining on it completely, cradling her head on one arm as she looked at them with sky blue eyes.
“He’s in trouble again?”
“I am afraid it is a bit more serious than that. Do you have any friends or family near by? Anyone you could ask to stay with you for a few days?”
Octavia’s eyes glanced involuntarily at one of the inner doors and then looked back to Dai. She had coloured very slightly.
Deo Damnatus, Dai thought and exchanged a brief look with Bryn, she has a lover in the bedroom.
“He’s been arrested?” she sounded surprised.
“No,” Dai said, his tone flat. “I’m afraid he’s been murdered.”
Her mouth opened and she uttered a low cry came which picked up in pitch and intensity until it was a full-blown scream.
Dai found himself beside her, unsure whether he should slap her or hold her. She made the decision for him, sitting up and pulling him close, her hands gripping into his tunic as she almost stifled his face in her bosom.
“My Roo-Roo! My poor Roo-Roo!” she wailed.
With some difficulty, Dai disentangled himself and managed to hand her off to Bryn, who was not at all averse to having a beautiful young woman pressing herself against him as she sobbed.
“I’ll find you some tissues,” Dai said vaguely and moved to the door that Octavia had glanced at before. He was about to open it when she squealed.
“No! Not in there.”
Trusting Bryn to keep her from getting in the way, Dai opened the door to what he fully expected to be a lavish bedroom and a naked young man. Instead it was an undecorated room, with a simple double bed and cardboard boxes stacked up with clothes visible neatly folded in them. On the bed sat an elegantly dressed woman, who got to her feet as soon as she saw Dai. Her designer stola was draped in soft folds of silk about her. It took him a moment to place her, to think where he had seen her before. Then he realised he hadn’t, but he had seen pictures of her and the odd moment on TV when the news was covering some swish event. She had been on the arm of Tribune Decimus Lucius Didero.
Instinctively he bowed his head.
“Domina.”

From Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook You can listen to this on YouTube.

The dream-catcher hung in the sunny window, feathers stirring slightly, crystal beads glinting.

Useless thing. 

It didn’t stop the bad dreams coming to him every night, didn’t catch the creeping menace, whispering voices in dark corners, haunting his sleeping hours, accusing him of having failed her and showing why it was his fault she had left.

The dreamcatcher was her first gift – even before she’d moved in – to give him sweet dreams of her, she’d said.

He took the thing and threw it out of the window.

That night he slept well for the first time in over a year.

E.M. Swift-Hook

There was a tap on the door, breaking into his thoughts and Jaz got up from the bunk to open it.
Marche Taram. With that larger than life painted-on smile. Chola would have loved it, even he never managed to keep that kind of dental display going on for so long.
“Just making sure everything’s alright for you, Vor Baldrik. And to let you know we’re now in FTL waiting on your further instructions.”
Jaz nodded and moved to the door. She stood aside so he could make his way back to the cramped social room. Her team was all there, around the small table, heads turned towards him like he was some visiting head of state. The respect in their eyes was real. Then these people had no idea he had been coming apart for the last year or more. It was like they still saw him as he had been at his height. Then he could have named his own terms of employment with just about any class merc unit operating out of the ‘City.
It was a weird kind of feeling, almost like their thinking it about him made it a reality. And maybe it was. Because whatever else those bastards in that clinic had put in his brain, they had also taken out much of the poison that five years of living hell in the Specials had injected deep into his system. That and the gruesome time he had spent in the ‘City afterwards, trying to make people more afraid of him than of their own death.
That was a very long walk from the kind of things these people were going to be admiring him for. They would be thinking of his mercenary career and that had been spotless. He’d always run with the best. Shone amongst them.
The Marche woman and the three sitting at the table were still looking at him expectantly. He shoved the nagging thoughts down in the back of his mind.
“Thanks. You did good.”
Their nods were curt but Jaz could see they absorbed the praise like parched ground in rain.
“Gil, Cran and Ruse,” the Marche woman introduced the others briefly.
It was a small table with room for four around it. Marche took the last space and made a small gesture to one of the two men, Ruse, who scooted to his feet and stepped back, making room for Jaz. It would have been rude not to take the seat.
“So, where you people based?” he asked as he sat down.
It was clear there was some kind of family connection here. Two of the team—a man and a woman, Cran and Gil—both shared the same look as Marche and both looked younger than she was. But at least neither seemed to smile as much. The fourth, Ruse, was a man who seemed kind of attached to the woman called Gil, from the way he stood in so close to her, hands on the back of her chair. It was almost as if he thought Jaz might want to make a move on her.
“We have a bay rent on Invercallus,” Marche was saying. “That’s for the ship and our gear. But we stick in the ‘City mostly, ‘cos that’s the best place to pick up work, even better than the underlink.”
Jaz nodded. He knew Invercallus. In his earliest mercenary days, when he was fresh out of the regular forces, he’d run with a couple of teams based out of there. It was a low-pop mostly desert world that made its sole living from being a cheap abutment to several nearby well-to-do Middle Worlds with more expensive docking prices. It was where you went if you were a merc team just starting out and couldn’t yet manage the cost of being based even in one of the dreg areas of the ‘City’s spaceport—or maybe could afford that but had too much pride to be seen in such a place.
“Then how ’bout you take me there? I need a quiet place for a bit and if you need me to pay rent,” he gave a slight shrug, “I can offer you consultancy or hands-on assistance with whatever you’ve got running.”
That made all their eyes go big. It was like a professional sports star had just offered to play with them in their local amateur ballgame.

From Not To Be, the penultimate book in both the Iconoclast trilogy and the Fortune’s Fools series, by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Pearls of wisdom from an octogenarian who’s seen it all…

Brown eggs

Before you go off on one I’m not being racist about eggs. Entirely the opposite.

I contend, and I believe the science supports me, that the colour, flavour, texture, aroma of an egg has feck all to do with the colour of the shell.

The colour of the shell is dictated by the breed of chicken.

The colour of the yolk is determined by the quality and variety of food said chicken eats.

You can get brown eggs from battery hens who live a life of misery, and white ones from happy chickens who frolic in the sunshine…

You choose.

Claire Buss is a multi-genre author and poet based in the UK. She wanted to be Lois Lane when she grew up but work experience at her local paper was eye-opening. Instead, Claire went on to work in a variety of admin roles for over a decade but never felt quite at home. An avid reader, baker and Pinterest addict Claire won second place in the Barking and Dagenham Pen to Print writing competition in 2015 with her debut novel, The Gaia Effect, setting her writing career in motion. She continues to write passionately and is hopelessly addicted to cake.

(1) This is not your first rodeo with NaNoWriMo, why do you do it?

I have absolutely no idea lol. I think it’s the challenge of trying to write 50,000 words in a month and the fact that so many other writers get involved. You really feel part of a community – you can commiserate with others, spur each other on, take part in writing sprints plus you get bragging rights if you make it.

(2) What is the best part of doing NaNoWriMo?

The best part is having that daily focus to get your butt in that chair and get writing. I find that I usually write around 700 words per session so I know I have to sit down twice in one day. That kinda works for me as I have so much other stuff going on. But obviously, there are days when that doesn’t happen so then I know I have to try and find extra writing time. It’s like a huge push to get the words written. 

(3) What is the hardest aspect of taking part in NaNoWriMo?

Trying to get the words written lol. I mean, if I had lots of time to write then I would be kicking out 50,000 words every month so I really use November to try and give me a push on my latest project. It can be kinda depressing when you realise that if you knuckled down, you could write every day and you might be able to kick out 50,000 words every month. We writers so we use any excuse to beat ourselves up and procrastinate!

(4) What has happened with the book(s) you have written in a previous  NaNoWriMo?

I wrote The Rose Thief in my first NaNo year. It’s a humorous urban fantasy inspired by my love of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and has the same observational humour. In my second NaNo I wrote The Gaia Project, the second book in my hopeful dystopian trilogy so my third NaNo meant the third book in the series, The Gaia Solution. My fourth NaNo (wow I’m really racking these up, aren’t I?) was my humorous urban fantasy novella The Interspecies Poker Tournament. These books have all been published and are available everywhere. Last year I changed track and wrote the beginnings of a brand new book with new characters and a new world. It’s fun and I will definitely be going back there to finish that story and write some more. 

(5) What project are you working on this year?

This year I am finishing off The Silk Thief and beginning The Bone Thief, both of these are humorous urban fantasy novels set in the same world as The Rose Thief and are a continuation storyline. Sort of. 

(6) Finally, what advice would you have for those attempting it for the first time?

Be gentle with yourself. Yes, the aim is to write 1667 words a day but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t make it. If you ‘only’ write 500 words a day – that’s still 500 more than you would have had. The key take-away from doing NaNo, I think, is being focused on your book and your writing and dedicating a portion of time every day to your craft. That is a sustainable goal that we can strive for. And if you only do for one month a year that’s still a book a year. Not too shabby at all.

You can find all Claire Buss‘ books on Amazon, share her thoughts on her blog, follow her on Facebook stalk her on Twitter or sign up for her newsletter. You can also participate in her Facebook group.

“Oh, darling,” she said. “Tell me why, tell me what you see?”

“It’s been a long and winding road, but after the things we said today, I’ve got a feeling we can work it out.” His voice blurred by rock and roll music. “Thank you girl.”

They had gone from ‘you never give me your money’ through misery to ‘love you too’.

No reply.

“It’s all too much.”

“What you’re doing?”

“Martha, my dear, money, that’s what I want.”

A long, long, long wait.

“Not a second time,” she said, “let it be, mean Mr. Mustard, you’re like the taxman.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

‘Much Dithering in Little Botheringham’ is an everyday tale of village life and vampires, from Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.

The police car drove to the bottom of the street at a sedate pace, turning around by the padlocked gate and returning to the main road equally quietly. Em’s mobile peeped. It was Agnes.
“Them buggers are on their way. We good to go, Em?”
“Yep. Let operation ‘thwart the bastard’ commence.”
Em and Ishmael walked to the top of the street where they waited in silence. First into their line of vision came an oddly formal little procession led by the familiar figure of Ronald Dump himself, flanked by Harmsley Gunn on his left and a thin man, with an earpiece in one ear and an iPhone glued to the other, on his right.
“Where are my pipers?” Dump’s strangely atonal voice sounded querulous.
“They said this is Dorset not Drumnadrochit. Then they effed off.” It was the thin man who spoke somewhat grimly.
“Schilling,” Ishmael spoke without moving his lips.
Em studied the man who was variously supposed to be either Dump’s right-hand man, or his boss, or even his boyfriend. She discounted the last strand of rumour, but which of the two other options was correct? The man himself was as unprepossessing as his boss if in a completely different mould. Dump was corpulent, bald, and smooth of skin, with one of those small heads that seems to have sunk into the rolls of flesh around the neck. Schilling, by contrast, was thin, bespectacled, saggy around the neck and eyes, and possessed of what looked to be a permanent five o’clock shadow.
The dynamic between the pair was difficult to decode, and Em decided it didn’t matter and gave up trying. Instead she stood quietly and waited for events to move along. The first sign of rent a mob came in the form of glockenspiel music and the sound of feet. Round the corner from the opposite direction to the Dump party came a group of sub-teenage girls, and a fair sprinkling of their grandmothers, playing a vaguely familiar tune on glockenspiel, tambourine, and penny whistle. They were followed by a troupe of trainee drum majorettes inexpertly twirling a variety of ‘batons’ – including at least two sets of nunchucks – and stamping their feet in approximate time to the ‘music’.
Ronald Dump positively beamed.
“Maybe we didn’t need the pipers after all, these lovely young things have come out to welcome me…”
Both lovely and young were perhaps open to interpretation, as was the musical skill of the orchestra. Em saw Ishmael frowning.
“Little Botheringham Marching Majorettes. Affectionately known in these parts as the panzer division. They don’t win many cups, but they’ve yet to be bested in a fight. If the Morris Men see them they run like blazes.”
Ishmael grinned his approval.
As the marching ladies bore down on his group, Harmsley-Gunn opened his mouth, then obviously thought better of it. Behind him, Em caught a glimpse of Ginny’s grinning face before the marching girls, and a crowd of local (and not so local) folk parted like the Red Sea as they encountered the Dump admiration committee. Coming back together again, the marchers turned smartly into the estate. The girls of the band stopped moving and marched on the spot, while those who accompanied them passed through their ranks and then turned to form a loose wall of flesh, duffle coats and Laura Ashley print. Having effectively blocked the road, the musicians turned around and broke into an enthusiastic if barely recognisable rendition of ‘We Shall Overcome’ led by Ginny who conducted with a baton that to Em, looked very like the one belonging to Major Harmsley-Gunn.
As the crowd behind them unfurled their banners and began to sing, it finally dawned on Mister Dump that this was whatever the opposite of a welcoming committee might be called.
He turned to his cohorts and snarled. “Get these people out of my way.”
Harmsley-Gunn stepped forward. “Go home all of you.” His little moustache bristled disgustedly. “And give me my cane back you atrocious female.”
Ginny ignored him but signalled the end of the singing as they completed the chorus, leaving the protesters standing in the silence of solidarity.
Harmsley-Gunn, face puce now with ill constrained fury waved his hands at them as if shooing a flock of chickens. “You are blocking the road to progress for the whole village.”
“What sort of an idiot thinks DumpCorp’s proposals are progress?”
The voice from the centre of the crowd was as resolutely middle class as Harmsley-Gunn’s own tones.
“The parish council thinks the plans are excellent,” Harmsley-Gunn spluttered. “We are unanimous. Now unblock the road before I call the police.”
The flour bomb that took him in the middle of his face burst just as it had been designed to do and left him standing like a forlorn ghost. Ginny slid the cane under his arm as if adding an accessory to a snowman.
“Not quite unanimous,” she said curtly.
Dump looked on in increasing amazement. He waved his pudgy little hands at the crowd. “Go away. Go away nasty people.”
Nobody moved.
Schilling spoke up. “Look here you lot. You can’t go about blocking public roads and refusing people access to their own property. Just go home and we will say no more about it.”
Ishmael grinned mirthlessly. “They most certainly couldn’t block a public road. But this isn’t a public road. It’s private. And there is no right of access to anywhere leading through it. So you’d be best advised to turn around and go home yourselves.”
Harmsley-Gunn, recovering from the assault to his person and dignity, drew himself up to his full height and flouryness. “As chairman of the housing association, I invite Mister Dump and his party onto the estate.”
“Nice try, old boy, but the trustees terminated their arrangement with the housing association two days ago. A little matter of malfeasance. The letter informing you is in the post.” He turned to Em with a slight smile “By the way do tell Jamelia that her work on that was watertight. I couldn’t have done better myself.”
As Ishmael spoke, Em could see a dozen or so DumpCorp security operatives moving purposefully towards the scene. The dog handlers were conspicuous by their absence and she idly wondered if Fang and Killer were still running.

Part 29 of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

November sunshine’s more of steel than gold
Pellucid light that drips through cloud
And slides as subtle gleams
Transmuting green below and blue above to grey
Enwrapping all in chastest shades
Drawing more of shadow into each day
And close about the naked trees
Discarded twigs and leaves
Acorns, chestnuts, all next seasons seeds
And smoke that lingers in the clinging mist.

E.M. Swift-Hook