Two Women and Some Books
The life of an elderly delinquent in limericks – with free optional snark…
When you meet someone who’s talking crap
With full psychobabble and pap
There is nothing to say
So just walk away
Or else you might give them a slap
Winter was the bejewelling of Temsevar, its crystalline magnificence turning even the most sordid and mean peasant’s wooden hovel into a glittering palace of diamond. The snows softened the harshness, smoothing all into a glorious billowed largesse of white. From every branch and twig, every roof and casement, every eave and doorway, came the glitter of silver icicles, their growth arrested every night and scarcely allowed under the scant warmth of the red sun each narrow day.
Every ugliness was made mild by the glory of a shimmering white crown, every roughness made smooth and the uneven made plain. The winter was levelling, but it levelled in a way that paid vast tribute to the might of the elements. Rich and poor alike were equal before the onslaught, for both could share in the splendour which outshone the most regal opulence of the greatest noble. To watch the sunrise, blood red over the virgin white and silver landscape, washing it with a mystical ruby glow, was to be awed and left with wonder. To trace the pearlescent shimmer of the twin moons over the snow, where the whiteness caught and reflected back to the darkened sky the moist brilliance, until even the night might seem to dazzle, was to feel one had walked, waking, in a dreamscape or broken through to some celestial realm of deity.
But the beauty, if free, was also lethal. The cold wore down the resistance of the weak and made them prey to illness or starvation and the frozen ground would not open to bury the dead, who were burned in high pyres on the ice, in batches like cakes.
Here the rich and the poor parted company, for the wealthy had portals against death in the cold. They had piles of wood to burn, stores of bottled, dried and salted food, they had flour to bake with and flesh to cook. Not for them the privations of starvation in the snow-stricken land. A house could be counted wealthy by the fire that burned in its hearth, driving back the demons of cold and darkness. Even the meanest hovel that could light a fire all day was accounted rich when the chilling shroud of snow and ice descended.
It was in the winter that those who were free-born and poverty-stricken would envy the enslaved. For, worth money and offering labour, even the most meanly treated slave could expect to be kept warm and fed through the White Moons, where their free-born cousins could hope no more than that this winter might be light and their meagre stores of food and fuel might not be gone before the thaw. What value was freedom when the cost was one’s life or the lives of one’s children?
So winter was the glory of Temsevar and its greatest influence. Without it, perhaps the slave economy might have evolved and changed, but with it – and the utter dependence it brought of the weak upon the strong – the frozen arms of ice which embraced Temsevar for two-thirds of the year, also embraced the culture and values of its people, freezing them into patterns as cold and merciless as the brutal winter itself.
The ice cracked the marrow from the bone of the planet, riving rock and stripping life from the land, animal and vegetable. The rivers froze solid and the seas slowed as if sleeping and then surrendered to the embrace of ice. Only the hardiest in nature could survive and most of the larger animals only lived by entering the deep sleep of hibernation through the worst of the cold moons. You would not see tizarts playing in the snow or find therloons leaving ice-tracks under the twin moons.
Most people dreaded the onset of winter as much as they dreaded the onset of old age. For the annual revisiting of the Great White was a similar experience – the pace of life became slow and painful, cold and bleak. In the great Halls, poets would pass the wine, mulled with the herbs and berries of the autumn and sing with lysigal of the great deeds that had been done that summer and would be contemplated the next. But elsewhere, it was as though the planet slept and its people dreamed beneath the alluring counterpane of snow, fringed with its tassels of ice and embroidered with frost.
From Dues of Blood, the third book in Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook.
So why must they all sing ‘Auld Lang Sine’
Whilst so overindulging in wine?
And why when they’re built
for a suit, wear a kilt?
When jeans would be perfectly fine…
With Christmas over you might assume it safe to stick your face back up over the parapet.
Wrong.
When your finances are at their lowest ebb, and your face and figure are showing the ravages of Asti and chocolates the new year and its attendant horrors sneers at you from the pages of the calendar emblazoned with inspirational quotes that his mother bought – meaning you can neither throw it in the bin nor deface it horribly.
However. I digress.
The best advice is to be anywhere but at home. Sadly that isn’t going to happen. And when your dearly beloved suggested inviting a ‘few’ folks around for New Year’s Eve you should really have pinned him down on the word few.
So – you have just discovered that ‘a few folks’ consists of the rugby club, the darts team, his running buddies and most of the local Young Farmers. Unfortunately, this doesn’t constitute grounds for justifiable homicide (or divorce)…
What to do.
After you finish kicking his ass, make him empty the garage and borrow his Aunty Betty’s caravan awning. This party is coming nowhere inside your house. Get straw bales for seating. Hire a couple of horrible portable toilets and some space heaters. Get the ancient ghetto blaster out of the attic. And dress warmly
Catering should be basic.
Booze wise offer only beer. Anybody wanting anything else can effing well buy it themselves.
Food? Tempting though it is to go down the route of crisps, nuts and the sweets nobody likes from the selection boxes this is a dangerous way to go .
Better by far is to construct a huge vat of stew with the leftover turkey and as much root veg as you can blackmail the husband into peeling. Vegetarians can be catered for with a bean pot of equally large proportions. Serve in paper bowls with plastic spoons and huge chunks of bread.
Job done. Zero washing up and enough stomach lining to prevent alcoholic poisoning, drunken orgiastic behaviour, or the annual drunken brawl…
A final word of warning.
Let nobody in the house or you will discover said person asleep under the stairs on about January 5…
Father Time his heavy scythe set down
Upon his face there was a weary frown
“This race of days and months and passing years
Is bringing less of laughter more of tears.”
Beside him stood a golden youthful lass,
She smiled and said “You know that all things pass.
From every tear that waters all those woes,
Comes Wisdom and ways to defeat life’s foes.
Each passing year and month and every day
Is building Hope and finding a new way.”
But Father Time his head he still held low.
“What use is that if all we love must go?
If every blessing deep within its core
Bears the curse that it will be no more?
How can we smile and laugh and dance and sing
When death and loss are all that Time will bring?”
The youthful maid did soothe his furrowed brow
“What matter time to come, when we live now?
The future may hold more than you yet see
And even Time’s own curse may one day cease.
Why weep what hours and days and years away
When you can fill with laughter each new day?”
Then Father Time did smile and with a sigh
Picked up once again his heavy scythe.
“You speak the truth, dear Hope, so as we walk
We’ll laugh and smile and jest and share and talk.”
So hand in hand did then they take the road
With Hope relieving Time’s so heavy load.
And in their footsteps, shy Wisdom did steer
To bring with joy this Happy New Year.
It’s that time of year again when we at the Working Title reveal our top twelve best reads of the year (yes it’s usually a top ten but this year there was so much good stuff we had to expand our horizons!). Please bear in mind that this list is not an exclusive list of all the great Indie books out there – or even all the great indie books we have read this year. It is a well-considered recommended reading list of books we have enjoyed in the last twelve months, consciously spanning genres and all books we have given 5 stars in a review.
The main thing is we recommend these books wholeheartedly and if you have yet to read them you should consider doing so if they are in a genre you enjoy.
So, onto the list. This is given in alphabetical order of author name and there is no ranking. All are stonking good reads!
Pussycats Galore by Stephanie Barr.
Twenty tales that will change the way you look at cats.
Contact (Instinct Theory #1) by Ian Bristow
When the earth is dying humanity is faced with a terrible choice.
The Interspecies Poker Tournament: The Roshaven Case Files No. 27 by Claire Buss
Ned Spinks and Jenni are back with a new case to solve in Roshaven.
The Legacy of Pandora (Shan Takhu Legacy #1) by Eric Michael Craig.
Well researched hard sci-fi in which a mysterious discovery changes human destiny forever…
The Business of Bees by Chrys Cymri
Penny White’s ongoing adventures take her across the Atlantic.
Massachusetts by Warren Dean.
A racehorse finds himself racing to save the earth across a hostile, alien world.
Human Starpilots by Stephan Fabrice
Earth has just been invited to join the space-faring worlds – at the price of providing her finest young people to undertake the dangerous training to become starpilots.
Last Fight of the Old Hound (Lost Dogs Book 1) by Nils Ödlund
In this exceptional urban fantasy, a professional fighter is faced with a life-changing decision.
Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey by Cindy Tomamichel
Romance and time-travel when the son of a gladiator encounters the daughter of his parent’s most deadly foe.
Thrill Kings: The Size Of Minneapolis Upright by Rik Ty
An interdimensional rescue worker is tasked with making sure all the people in an area of Missouri are safely out of the way of a gigantic alien invader.
A Rose By Any Other Name by Jo van Leerdam
A brilliantly twisted fairy tale for grown-ups
Tempest Blades: The Withered King by Ricardo Victoria
A rollercoaster of blockbuster science fantasy, with elements of anime, steampunk and mythology.
And here’s to another year of great reading in 2020!
Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook.
Valeria Dalca held up the vial.
“And this holds immortality?”
Cahaya shook her head.
“Not immortality. You can still die from illness or accident. It just reverses and prevents the degeneration of natural ageing.”
Dalca made a dismissive gesture.
“Immortality in effect. But is humanity ready for it?”
“Of course. It’ll make people value life more as it is no longer ephemeral. It will make them consider how they treat the planet as they themselves, not their descendants, will be living with the consequences.”
Dalca smiled and put down the vial.
“You really don’t understand people very well do you?”
Dying to be Roman by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook is a whodunit set in a modern day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. If you missed previous episodes you can start reading from the beginning.
Julia was barely conscious, but she was aware enough to know that this respite from beating boded her no good at all. She should hear the woman breathing heavily, almost as if sated by sex, and the man gave a coarse laugh.
“Better now, domina?”
“I am, but it’s such a shame we can’t keep this one to play with. She’s so small it’s like beating a child.”
“You are insatiable. Though you do have a point.”
Julia felt something at her back and realised that somebody was actually licking her wounds. It was all she could do not to scream. She made a huge effort of will and dragged her mind away from the torture chamber, choosing instead to contemplate Dai Llewelyn and all the disturbing emotions he evoked in her that she had kept firmly in check through denial. A furtive tear coursed its way down her cheek as she allowed herself to feel regret that the only hands she was likely to feel on her body would be driven by hatred and perverse lust. The licking stopped and a rough hand tangled itself in her short curls.
“Wake up, lupa. You can’t pass out on us now.”
The man’s other hand slapped her face first one side and then the other. When she opened her eyes, she found his face so close to hers that she could smell the cloves and menthe on his breath. He smiled, and somehow that was more frightening than a snarl would have been.
You are the cause of our downfall,” he whispered. “Because of you we have had to hide in this cellar, without even running water or electricity, and we are likely to lose all we have worked for. Don’t mistake me though, you have only delayed, not defeated us. We have friends in high places in both Rome and Karakorum. This is just an inconvenience, but one you are going to pay for.”
Julia heard the woman’s indrawn breath a second before she felt another searing pain. She had been stabbed in the thigh with something long and sharp and rasping.
The man at Julia’s head hissed irritation. “Stop playing and hand me the sopio,” he ordered.
The woman laughed, low and throaty and Julia heard her move away. A moment later the man grunted. He pulled her head back so viciously he all but dislocated her neck, then he put a metal contrivance right in front of her eyes. He laughed, a surprisingly high-pitched sound before letting her hair go so suddenly that she hit her forehead against the crossbar of the frame she was bound to and saw stars.
“That, my dear,” he gloated, “is the instrument of your death.”
She felt hands parting her nether cheeks and then the metal was forced into her with agonising brutality. She didn’t scream or cry, but she wasn’t sure how much more it would take to break her. The sopio was removed with a vicious twist and Julia concentrated on simply breathing.
She felt breath against her ear, and this time it was the woman who spoke.
“The next time you feel that it will have been heated in the brazier until it glows red. If you aren’t dead by the time it is cool enough to handle, I will snap your neck myself. Enjoy.”
It became very quiet in the dark room and Julia set herself the simple task of dying with as much dignity as possible. She closed her mind to the sounds of excitement as her captors watched the brazier with barely concealed impatience. Once again, her thoughts wandered to a certain moody Celt, whose blue eyes seemed to offer a means of escape at this eleventh hour, even if it was one that only existed in her imagination. Goodbye Llewelyn, she whispered in the vaults of her mind. It was an education. Then she closed her eyes and composed a prayer for the repose of her own soul.
Somehow the window
Disappears
Allowing the snow
To chill my ears
To ache my teeth
And wet my head
Even as I lay
In bed
Somehow the winter
Echoes the life
Of a person who was
Once a wife
Jane Jago’s prizewinning take on the zombie trope.
It was the hottest June day since records began, or so they said, and it was certainly the hottest anyone could remember. In the mundane world of humans, roads melted, and people fell into inexplicable rages.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of people dealing with it, there was no arguing that it was hot, darned hot. And, if you think about that with any semblance of logic, it really wasn’t the best day for a zombie picnic. But the date was the date, and June twenty-three had always been the zombie holiday.
The Creator, not having the heart to disappoint these, the most reviled of all the creatures that crawl on the earth, opened the portals at dawn. The zombies poured in from every reality and every timeline, some bled and oozed, some stumbled and mumbled, others looked much as they had when they were whatever they were before death and magic had their way with them. All wore faces of shining happiness. The island dwellers ran into the pure blueness of the sea, while others grabbed beer or musical instruments, or searched out old friends.
All the while The Creator walked among them, with big bare feet enjoying the silkiness of the pure white sand, and a face wreathed in the gentlest of smiles. Many stopped what they were doing to exchange fist bumps or handshakes or hugs, and the outpouring of love from every direction warmed as no amount of worship ever could do. It was humbling to see how these, of all beings, were so open-hearted and joyous in the face of their eternal bondage.
Once, more years ago than they cared to remember, they had asked one of the crumbling oozing ones how it could be so happy with its lot. The creature had screwed up its face and scratched at its foetid scalp with one long, yellow fingernail. When it finally spoke, the simplicity of its reasoning pierced the heart of the Creator like the sharpest of arrows.
“Tiz having this day every year Your Honour. There ain’t many of the things back there what gets even one day of perfect happiness in their whole lives. We gets one every year. Makes us the luckiest of all your creatures.”
This was a shaming thought, and one The Creator didn’t care to dwell on. Instead they walked among the smiling crowds pulling the warmth of happiness and love into the very fibres of their being to last them through the barren days of loneliness in the marble halls of their mountainous retreat.
The fires in the barbecue pits were at the perfect temperature and the zombies rolled potatoes, and plantains, and bananas, and whole pineapples into the embers to join the pigs that had seemingly been roasting all night.
When they sat down to eat, The Creator broke all their self-imposed rules and sat with them – with a horn cup of mead in one hand and a sandwich of pulled pork and hot sauce in the other. The undead one at their left-hand side was assiduous in topping up the mead, and, later on, the usquebaugh. It’s just as well immortals can’t get drunk, because the booze was running like water.
A zombie kitten the immortal one remembered from last year’s festivities came purring and rubbing around, and it seemed the most natural thing in the multiverse to smooth its silky fur and rub noses with it.
As the day wore on the music got wilder, and the most scaly and scabrous of the undead performed an ad hoc ballet in which they mimed their short human lives, the way they died, and their rebirth as zombies.
The Creator clapped until their hands ached.
Then an oozy old female with only one eye and half a nose began to play the standing harp and sing. She sang in no language any person living or dead could comprehend but the sheer heartbroken sorrow of her song had tears standing in every eye and a lump in every throat.
As they lounged in the shade, with a stone jug of usquebaugh at their side, and a warm furry kitten on their lap, it came into the mind of the Creator that this was indeed happiness in its purest and least selfish form. All around them creatures were storing up memories to last for the next three hundred and sixty-four days, and in their innermost soul they had to admit to doing the selfsame thing. As the sun dipped into the sea turning it to molten gold, the zombie who shared their whisky jug spoke in a voice so quiet the Creator had to strain to hear.
“It’s a lonely thing, being undead. My wife and our babies died so long ago that I can no longer remember their faces. And where I spend my days the fear and loathing are like whiplashes against my skin. And yet. When I come here, for this one day I feel whole. The comradeship of those around me right now, gives me enough warmth in my soul to carry on for another year.”
The Creator felt shame. “Do we do wrong then to let your kind exist?”
“No, Great One. We serve a purpose on the faces of the earth. Some of us are old and ugly with our faces falling like autumn leaves, but we serve. We take the newly dead across the river. We cleanse the land after plagues. And always we stand between the children and the stuff of nightmares.”
The Creator bowed their head. “It is so. Indeed it is so.”
Their companion laughed showering the ground about it with flakes of skin and gobbets of things it is best not to consider. “It is, Magnificence, but for all thy beauty and strength and power I feel in my soul that you are as lonely as we.”
“That may be, my friend. That may be.”
The darkness around them was velvet blue and filled with little white moths and fireflies. It was beauty at its simplest and was as hypnotic as it was warming.
The Creator suddenly became aware of the time and snapped back to the realities of life. They leapt to their feet.
“Oh no! I can’t believe I forgot my responsibilities so easily. It’s time my friends.”
They opened their arms and all around the enchanted place portals opened. The undead filed out, most turning for one last look but none complaining at the necessity to return to whatever hardships the humdrum of everyday held for them.
As the last portal closed, the Creator’s shoulders slumped and they stood quiet for a second, trying to breathe in the last vestiges of peace and society.
Of a sudden something landed on one bare foot. It was a stick. A stick dropped from the mouth of a white puppy with floppy ears and mismatched eyes. The Creator bent down and saw this to be one of the undead. A very new one if they did not miss their guess. The creature had a plaited collar around its tiny neck. There seemed to be something whitish wrapped around that collar and they unwrapped it with unsteady fingers. It was a piece of slightly grubby paper.
This is Shoddy. He understands being lonely too.
When the Creator returned to their marble halls they carried a small furry bundle beneath one perfect arm.
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