Summer is icumen in
Loudly sing cuckoo!

Or some such rubbish…

Since time immemorial (even before I was born), people have been seriously skittish about the summer solstice. 

Building bonfires, prancing around in impractical clothing, singing songs, and celebrating the longest day of the year. All of which was perfectly understandable – back in the mists of time when things like the rotation of the earth and other such wholly fascinating science were undiscovered and people seriously thought that prancing around naked with a wreath of mistletoe on your noggin guaranteed health, wealth and happiness. (Of course it didn’t. You were more likely to catch a heavy cold – if you were lucky. Or an STD – if you weren’t.)

This having been said we are now in the twenty-first century. We know that the days stretch and contract, the moon waxes and wanes, the seasons more or less follow a set pattern, and it’s quite likely that time will continue to flow in a linear pattern.

There Is No Excuse for turning up on Salisbury plain (probably in the pissing rain) to listen to some geezer in a nightie exhorting the sun to carry on rising. It will rise and set as it pleases, and our sad little ball of clay will continue its eccentric orbit without the intervention of a man who gets his hair cut at an MoT station.  It just doesn’t make sense to burn enormous amounts of fossil fuels in order to get to an event that’s supposed to be about being at one with Mother Earth (who would probably clip you around the earhole if she had hands).

Stop it already.

If you want to greet the rising sun do it in your garden. Or in the beer garden of the Dog and Prolapse. Or in your local park. Just don’t drive there. 

Personally, I shall be greeting the sunrise from behind closed eyelids – unless of course Gyp wants out for a piss. In which case I will salute the sun in my own back garden – and I shall be fetchingly attired in a candlewick dressing gown of indeterminate colour and vintage paired with a pair of wellington boots. (The grass in my garden is seriously unkempt because that’s how me and Gyp like it.) Unless of course it’s raining in which case I will remain in the nice dry kitchen giving the sunrise barely a glance as I swear at the fucking dog.

In a nutshell then. There is nothing special about the summer solstice – or the winter one, or the equinoxes. These things just happen. (I blame physics myself, but that’s another whole story.) 

So. Just please grow up. Wear normal clothes, or some clothes anyway. Don’t eat odd mushrooms. And please stay the fuck at home; the A303 was never built to cope with Druidic influxes.

Right that’s bloody midsummer dealt with. Me and Gyp are off down the pub. He fancies a Guinness and I’m gagging for a pint of Crop Circle.

Piss off then. Or are you buying the beer?

Graham was devout as his parents before him, Elsa less so and struggled with the idea of bringing up their daughter to be an unquestioning believer.

Things came to a head when Ruth was doing Noah’s Ark at school. Graham sat with her and read through the entire Bible story.

Afterwards, troubled, Ruth found her mother.

“I asked Daddy why Noah saved all those animals then sacrificed some of them,” she said. “Only two of each were saved so some must’ve gone extinct. God isn’t very nice sometimes.”

Elsa wondered what to say. 

From the mouths of babes, she thought.

E.M. Swift-Hook

This is the opening of Bolded Hearts, a fantasy short by Jane Jago. which is FREE to download until 22 June.

The fog came down suddenly: sleek and white and thick and cold. It felt like being draped in a clammy cobweb, and it became impossible to hear one’s own footsteps on the grassy pathway. If it wasn’t for the feel of the warm fur of the great dog who paced majestically at her side Amal would perhaps have been afraid. But she had walked worse than this with Chin-Cha as companion and protector. She wove her fingers into his great ruff of grey and silver hair, leaning on his strong presence as she had been able to do for so many years. Chin-Cha, she thought, the love of my life and my biggest single regret. She knew that the great dog now pacing at her side was a shape changer trapped in his present form by a powerful bear witch, who had then ensorcelled him to the service of a six-year-old girl. That child had grown up to be Amal the healer and witch-woman. A woman who loved her protector with every fibre of her being but would rather die than burden him with the knowledge of that love.
As the fog grew even denser, a voice spoke in her ear, it was woody and breathy, and sounded like a poorly tuned wind instrument.
“People ahead. Hiding. Ill intentioned. Those who have been hunting you since harvest moon Yuri thinks.”
Yuri was a frost imp and trusted friend. Amal put up a hand as if to touch him, and he blew on her fingers. Surprising warmth.
“How many?”
“I will see” and the sense of his presence was gone.

Chin-Cha pressed himself against her leg, silently urging her off the path. She allowed herself to be guided to the rough trunk of a big tree. He pushed her thigh with his nose, indicating that she should climb. Doing as she was bid Amal soon found herself on a wide branch beside a sheltering hole in the trunk. Wrapping herself in the blanket from her pack she crept into the very heart of the tree. She could no longer see her companion, but had the reassurance of his spirit as he hunkered down in the brownish bracken. Then he was coming towards her. Fast. She felt him bunch his muscles and erupted out onto her branch. He made a prodigious leap and she grasped his harness to steady him. They both crawled into the tree cave and huddled together for warmth and comfort.

It was not long before Amal got the sense of Yuri’s presence. She was about to speak when a small icy hand was placed on her lips.
“They are here” the woody windy little voice whispered, seeming to come from right inside her head. “Be still and silent and listen.”

At first Amal heard nothing, then she made out the sound of laboured breathing. There was a noise as if a heavy boot hit flesh.
“Where is the woman, tracker?” a harsh voice demanded.
“She came this way. She can’t be far. But I can no longer feel her presence. It must be the fog.”
“You had better not be lying to me. Gopal get the hounds. They will track her dog, and the old woman said that once we kill it the witch woman will lose her magic.”

You can keep reading here…

The collected ‘wisdom’ of seven decades on this planet condensed into poetic form. Certainly not philosophy to live your life by…

There was an old woman who lived by the water
Started a club known as Robin Hood’s Daughters
With twenty-five grannies and a male nurse called Dick
Who stole from the rich. And then kept what they’d nicked

©️jj

County Durham, Autumn 1642

“This is witchcraft!”
The man they called ‘Dutch’, which was strange as the furthest east he had ever been was Whitby, picked up the gruesome object and studied it. The dead eyes of a ginger cat stared back at him from its severed head.
“You are certain, Master Fanthorpe? There can be no mistake?”
“No mistake.”
Dutch looked from the cat’s head to his dead sheep and sighed.
“So we have feared, Master Fanthorpe, though we have prayed it was not so – I mean to think that in our community we have such a person… I -”
“You never find a witch alone!” Fanthorpe said sternly, sounding like the Puritan preacher he had been until recently. “There will be a coven here. All the signs are plain.”
Privately, Dutch thought Fanthorpe looked like an overgrown crow. Clad in fine, black wool from head to knee, his sharply angled face, gaunt beneath close-cropped grey hair and a black hat. The only concession to ornament was an oddly shaped buckle on the front of his hatband. Even the linen of his cuffs and collar was plain, unadorned by any lace – strangely at odds with the quality of his dress. He also looked the kind who would enjoy pecking at dead things.
“A coven?” Dutch echoed the words, doubtfully.
“Of course. This is the third case you tell me – so there must be a coven.  But do not fear Master Sawyer, the Lord is watching over us and has us in His keeping. Let us pray for deliverance from this evil”
Dutch bowed his head and let the sonorous drone wash over him, his mind entirely elsewhere. The loss of the sheep was going to be another blow to his struggling small farm, one he could very ill afford. The family had clung to the land against the odds over the last two generations, now it was a struggle to make ends meet enough to keep food on the table. But serious as the loss of livestock was, in that moment another matter clouded close upon his thoughts. He was wondering how he was going to break it to his youngest lass that her favourite ginger tom, the one she had raised from an orphaned kitten, had died.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Melinda believed in doing at least three good deeds every day. So each morning as she walked Muffins in the park she would look for opportunities to help her fellow man and woman.

“You need bigger shorts, your backside is showing,” she called after a jogger. Then there were the children. She helpfully read them the ‘no ball games’ sign.

Her neighbour was out with a young girl, probably his niece as they held hands. Which was good because she was able to tell her neighbour’s wife where to find them, when she got home.

It was wonderful helping people!

E.M. Swift-Hook

The music started up again and there was a tap at the door. Distracted, he turned smiling, knowing who it would be.
“I grabbed a drink. Thought you’d like one too.”
This was the reason he had taken that retirement two years ago. Vexana. Nearly sixteen years old now, Legacy raised and the perfect age to become willing cannon-fodder for them. He was trying hard to convince her that there were other, better, ways to serve the cause, ways that could achieve just as much — more — and not cost you your life. So far he wasn’t sure he had succeeded, but it was a work in progress.
Torbalen hoped she would, one day, be able to learn the kind of skills needed to do his job here, or maybe she would move on to something different, better and safer. It would be folly to assume he could ever persuade her to step away from The Legacy. Much as he wanted her to do exactly that, he couldn’t deny her the same right as he had to serve the cause for which her parents had died. But he could, and would, do his best to ensure the way she served that cause was one that would never place her in the same kind of extreme hazard her parents had so willingly undertaken.
He accepted the drink she offered and sipped at it as Vexana dropped into the only other chair available.
“So you think these two are any good?” She gestured vaguely in the direction the music was coming from.
“Not bad. They have that raw edge you kids seem to like.”
The girl rolled her eyes.
“You kids? Sheesh!”
Torbalen hid his smile.
“Sorry. You young adults. Let me try it again. This duo has the kind of unconstrained spontaneity that young adults seem to find inspiring. Is that better?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed slightly. He felt she was judging his very soul and finding it wanting. It was a court with no facility for appeal, but it was also a judge who could be merciful and accept age as a mitigating factor. She looked away and glanced at a screen, firing off a couple of quick, texted, messages before deigning to give him her attention again.
“She was back there today.”
Torbalen tried to make that comment fit into the landscape of the world he shared with his granddaughter. He failed.
“Who was back where?”
The slight impatient sigh told him he had made some mistake by not knowing.
“At the dojo? That new girl I told you about? She’s good. You should come see her. She was talking politics with some of the others too.”
He felt a lurch of concern at those last few words. He owned the building the dojo occupied, it was one of the main places he had people keeping an eye out for potential recruits. One of the first things many of those angry and hate-filled kids wanted to do when they got here from whatever war zone hell-hole they had fled, was to learn how to defend themselves. They believed if they did they would never feel so vulnerable again. So, it made good sense to have his people there ready to listen to their woes and alert him to any who might be more useful.
In terms of recruitment, it was right on the front-line and the people he had doing it there were all well trained and experienced.
His grand-daughter didn’t know any of that. She was simply passionate about martial arts as a sport. Vexana trained there and she also helped out a couple of hours each day after school assisting in teaching the children’s classes. Torbalen had complete trust that his people would watch over her there with as much care as he did himself. Although of course, Vexana had no idea of his real role here on Skapandir. She knew he owned the dojo and maybe even believed she was the only one bringing him word of what happened there. But she was also not naive and would have worked out by now that there was some kind of Legacy connection with the place.
“Vexy, you know you mustn’t get into that kind of conversation with anyone.”
She glared at him.
“I just said she was talking with some of the others.”
“Good. Because it is really not — ”
“Not what?” Vexana snapped. “Not appropriate? Not my business? My parents died because of it so I think that makes it my business.”
She was brittle and defensive. He said the wrong thing, as he always did.
“My son and daughter-in-law died because of it, Vexy, and I would rather my granddaughter did not and I have the suspicion that they would’ve felt the same.”
“They died. You didn’t.”
He sighed heavily. It was an old argument and he had never yet won.
“I have given my life to The Leg— ”
“Really? How is that? You were just running a shipping business.” The girl almost spat with contempt. “How did that help anyone?”
“I was doing other things too.”
“Like what? Making a donation now and then? How very noble and heroic.”
“It wasn’t like that. We’ve been over this before. You know I can’t tell you exactly what I was — ”
Vexana made a sound that was a half-growl, half-groan of frustration and threw herself out of the chair, back towards the door. In a moment she would slam it hard and he would hear her feet thump down the small staircase.
He hated that.
Each time it happened he was left with the chill of fear that this might be the time it had gone too far and she might do something rash.
“Tell me then,” he said quickly, breaking the usual script of their ongoing melodrama. “Tell me about this new girl.”

From Mistrust and Treason the first book in Iconoclast, a Fortune’s Fools trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The collected ‘wisdom’ of seven decades on this planet condensed into poetic form. Certainly not philosophy to live your life by…

There was an old woman
Who really liked booze
Who had gin every day  
And an afternoon snooze
She liked drinking and smoking
And very fast cars
And picking up young men
In small back street bars

©️jj

C H Clepitt has just brought out the first in a new series of queer fairy tale retellings. Eye of the Beholder is the first story in the Magic Mirror series of books which will retell these stories in a different time period, with queer protagonists.

When pressure from his materialistic children turns Claude into a thief, it is down to his youngest daughter to set things right. Angelique agrees to take her father’s place as prisoner to what she is told is a hideous beast. Angelique soon discovers that the so-called beast is nothing more than Rosalie, a princess cursed to remain trapped in a castle, unless the curse can be broken, something she assures her is impossible.
Angelique does not believe in the impossible, and sets about trying to find a way to save her new friend, who she is rapidly growing to love.

The Prologue

You may assume that this will be a tale of magic and mystery, of love and of the inadequacies of those self-indulgent creatures known as humans. All of those things are true, and whilst the events I am going to relay to you happened a long time ago, in a land you may not have heard of (for indeed, human memory is short), their truth is universal and the lessons we take away from them are never quite learned in their entirety.
It was a time of great sadness. The people mourned the death of the King, for he was a wise and kind King who loved his family and his people equally. There are some amongst the race of humans who see sadness as weakness, and one of those such humans was the ruler of the adjacent kingdom. A selfish and heartless man who craved power above all else, he kept his people in poverty, for it was the best way to break their will and keep them subservient. Despite owning all the riches of his kingdom, and sitting upon a golden throne, he was still not satisfied. He mistakenly thought that he deserved more riches, and the acquisition of these would lead to his happiness. It was with this thought that he decided to invade the bereaved Queen’s kingdom.
The wicked King underestimated the Queen’s sense of duty, and her love for the people for whom her husband cared so dearly. So, charging the protection of her daughter and only living family to a wizard, she led her army to meet the invaders and fend off their advances.  
The wizard had been one of her husband’s most trusted advisors. He had arranged the marriage between them and was godparent to their daughter. But the Queen was betrayed by the wizard, who, as the Princess had gone from child to woman had grown to covet her for himself. Being a proud and conceited mage, he did not once doubt that the Princess would return his affection.  When the Princess rejected his advances, he slashed her face with his dagger and was only prevented from doing further harm by a brave footman who fought him off and drove him from the castle.
Incensed by the rejection, the wizard lay a curse on the castle.  The curse made it so that none who seek the castle should find it, so those who left the castle could never return. So upon her return from the war victorious, the Queen was unable to find her home, or her daughter, the Princess 
Distraught, the Queen continued to rule her kingdom from a new castle, but she never never stopped searching. However, the curse was so powerful that she never did find her castle nor her daughter.

A Bite of… CH Clepitt

Q1: What is worse, ignorance or stupidity? 

Ignorance. People can’t help stupidity but they can fix their ignorance

Q2: Are you ticklish? If so where?

Nope, and don’t touch me.

Q3: How much of your writing is autobiographical?

All characters are fictitious, any resemblance to persons, living or deceased is purely coincidental. I write own voices queer fiction so to that extent it is autobiographical, and a lot of emotions/experiences could be transposed. But I have never been trapped in a magic castle or anything

Q4: Have you ever written somebody you love into a book?

What’s love?

C H Clepitt has a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of the West of England. As her Bachelor’s Degree was in Drama, and her Master’s Dissertation focused on little known 18th Century playwright Susannah Centlivre, Clepitt’s novels are extremely dialogue driven, and it has often been observed that they would translate well to the screen.

Since graduating in 2007, she gained experience in community and music journalism, before establishing satirical news website, Newsnibbles in 2010. In 2011 she published her book, A Reason to Stay, which follows the adventures of disillusioned retail manager, Stephen, as he is thrust into village life and the world of AmDram. Clepitt’s feminist fantasy, The Book of Abisan not only crosses worlds, but confuses genres, and has been described as a crime drama with magic. She has often said that she doesn’t like the way that choosing a genre forces you to put your book into a specific little box, and instead she prefers to distort the readers’ expectations and keep them guessing. Her 2016 work, I Wore Heels to the Apocalypse does just that, as just like the characters, the readers won’t know what’s going on in this laugh out loud satirical scifi.

 About her latest book she says…

“Representation matters. It matters so much, and you only realise how much when you eventually have it. Queer theory and queer readings of stories and films developed because queer people wanted to see themselves in stories. They wanted their own happy endings, so they read them into the narrative. This series is going one step further. It’s rewriting the narrative and inserting overt queer rep. We deserve better than hints and readings. We deserve to see ourselves, to have our own stories. That is what I’m hoping to do with this project.

“I am also reworking all the aspects that would be problematic to a modern audience. In this retelling of Beauty and the Beast I have taken out the kidnap element and changed lots of other aspects too. If you want to find out more, you’ll just have to read it!”

You can find her on Twitter and her own website.

They’d been for a walk by the lake, they did every weekend. Then John made lunch whilst Stella tidied. In the afternoon there was facetime with the grandchildren and a game of Scrabble. Putting the box away, Stella caught a glimpse in the mirror and sighed.

“You remember weekends before we played Scrabble? We’d make love, sometimes on a blanket under the trees. When did we get to be old?”

“Speak for yourself woman!”

“But we are.”

John drew her into his arms with a smile.

“Guess that’s the last game of Scrabble we’ll be playing for a while then.”

E.M. Swift-Hook