Tempest Blades: The Withered King by Ricardo Victoria is available for pre-order now and is the first book in the Tempest Blades science fantasy series.

The sky was raging in fury, lightning slashing across the dark skies, the wind blowing away the mist. The square was being emptied, the townspeople trying to get as far away as possible from the giant creature, whose red eyes were locked on the man standing in front of him in defiance. Any other mortal would cower before the behemoth, but this one was smiling. The creature started a conversation, its deep, booming voice echoing all over the place.
“Why don’t you run like the other mortals?”
“Not really my thing.”
“I will crush you.”
“You can try.”
The creature roared with anger, stomping its way across the plaza. Fionn didn’t waste time and jumped into the fray, slashing it with Black Fang. The creature replied in kind, raising its massive right claw and trying to shred Fionn like paper. He parried the attack with the sword, but the strength behind it almost broke his arm. He got ready to parry the second one, biting his lips to tolerate the pain, when an attack by Gaby on the creature’s back interrupted the exchange between them. Gaby’s twin blades were out of their sheaths and each shone with a clear, bright light, one glowing blue and the other red.
“Are those Tempest Blades too?” Fionn asked with an incredulous stare.
“Yes,” Gaby replied with her crooked smile. “Their names are Heartguard and Soulkeeper.”
“How did you…”
“You are not the only one with secrets, Greywolf,” Gaby said. “But that will have to wait, there is work to do.”
Both Fionn and Gaby jumped, attacked, dodged and parried the blows coming from the creature. But after every attack that the creature suffered at the hands of Fionn and Gaby, it regenerated immediately. It was growing angrier by the moment, picking up trash cans and throwing them, breaking walls and destroying the windows of the shops and pubs. The creature kept throwing things at them, forcing them to take cover behind a semi-crumbled wall. Behind the cover, they saw the men-spiders returning, attacking the scared patrons who were trying to get away from the creature.
“Those civilians need help. Would it be too much to ask you to help them?”
“As much as I would hate to leave you with all the fun you are right. They need me more than you do.” Gaby winked at Fionn. “Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
Fionn could only smile at her with admiration in his eyes. Gaby ran towards the running people, not losing a second in attacking the men-spiders. Her blades were streaks of red and blue light in the dark. Parts of the spider-like creatures started to fly off. She was efficient, Fionn thought, too efficient even for a Sister of Mercy. There were so many things he wanted to ask her. But that would have to wait. A girl, running away from the conflict, broke a heel and fell in front of the path of destruction of the larger creature. Its collection of sharpened teeth was in full sight in a mockery of a smile. Seeing that, Fionn ran towards the girl, covering her with his body as the claw descended upon her.
“Oh shit,” Fionn managed to say before the creature hit him fully in the back with all its strength, sending him flying away with the girl in his arms. He managed to twist his body mid-air to absorb the blunt force of the imminent impact when they hit the ground. His jacket and the skin of his back were torn to shreds and he was bleeding profusely. His head was spinning. Fionn looked at the girl who was scared and crying, but safe. He shook his head to clear it and smiled at her.
“I will distract him while you escape. Can you run?”
The girl only replied with a nod and Fionn let her go.
She ran away into the streets. It was then that Fionn noticed a faint cut on his right cheek, a cut that started to heal amidst tiny green sparkles of energy.
This is gonna hurt tomorrow.

Tempest Blades: The Withered King, is Ricado Victoria’s first novel published by Shadow Dragon Press. It will be released on 20 August and is available for preorder now.

A Bite of... Ricardo Victoria

(1) You write science fantasy with an anime feel to it, what were the biggest influences on your writing?

Anime wise? Probably Vision of Escaflowne, Slayers, Ruronin Kenshin, Robotech, Saint Seiya and Shadow Skill. But my influences also come from similar sources, namely old school RPGs such as Final Fantasy VI and VIII, Secret of Mana, Baldur’s Gate and even Xenosaga.

(2) If you didn’t write in that genre, what genre would you most want to write?

The easy answer would probably be Science Fiction or perhaps horror. But in reality I have been suffering from an itching to write either Slice of Life stories with a touch of fantasy (again due out anime influences) or something pulp/researchy set in the real world, in the venue of Indiana Jones. I’m not sure if I would be good at it though.

(3) Street food – what’s your favourite and why?

Pizza. Although I can’t eat much of it anymore. But pizza, in the immortal words of the poet known as Michelangelo from the Turtles, is “a flying saucer food delight”. And technically can have all the basic food groups all bundled together.

Born in the frozen landscape of Toluca, Mexico, Ricardo Victoria dreamed of being a writer. But needing a job that could pay the rent while writing, he studied Industrial Design and later obtained a PhD in Sustainable Design, while living in the United Kingdom and working in a comic book store to pay for his board game & toy addiction. He is back now in Toluca, living with his wife and his two dogs where he works as an academic at the local university. He has short stories featured in anthologies by Inklings Press and Rivenstone Press, and he was nominated for a Sidewise Award 2016 for the short story Twilight of the Mesozoic Moon, co-written with his arch-nemesis, Brent A. Harris. He also won a local contest for a fantasy short story during college. But hey! That one doesn’t count, does it?

You can find his rants and other work—both fiction and opinion pieces—on his own website/blog and follow him on Twitter.  

This trend wasn’t quite as stupid as the puffball skirt or stiletto heels, but it wasn’t exactly a pair of flat sandals either.

The premise was that women who had been forced to wear jeans so tight they right about cut them in half would be thrilled by a garment whose whole raison d’etre was bagginess.

It was going okay – until a young starlet was attacked by a stalker. She screamed and tried to run, but her trendy gear effectively tied her feet together at the ankle. 

The sidewalk sleeper who rescued her was lionised and the fashion quietly died.

©️jj 2019

My dear Readers Who Write,

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV at your service, author of the science fantasy classic (or SciFan as we cognoscenti prefer to say) ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. Mummy was the one who identified the genre for me when she had been sipping on her fourth pernod and organic Greek yoghurt smoothie. “Moons, if you think that anyone is ever going to call that poop science-fiction you are living in a frigging fantasy.” I recall she spat the stone of an olive she had fished out from the bottom of her glass with the final words, so they impacted me deeply.

Today mes estudas, after our brief plunge into the murky pond of reviews and reviewing, we will return to the primrose paths of prose preparation.  To those of you who have had the supercalfragilistic fortune to be winnowing worth from my words of wisdom I say welcome back, and to those who have only just discovered my delightful calligraphy I say sit quietly at the back of the class and be sure to revise later.

And thus, my happy followers, my RWW, I propose to you the finest flora and bejeweled gems of my inestimable intellect. Read carefully, learn assiduously, and ingest intestinally that you may benefit from the experience of one whose writing skills are superior and sans pareil.

How to Start Writing a Book –  The Write Character

When creating fantabulous fiction, one of the building blocks one should consider perspicaciously is the characteristics of one’s characters, the pontification of one’s protagonists, and the mentality of one’s mendicants.  May one humbly suggest the ritualistic dismemberment of the dichotomy of despair is the first essential in the realisation and roundaboutification of perfect protagonists.

As we are fast becoming closely intertwined, one feels comfortable in sharing some of one’s own little ritual-ettes for the construction of credible character traits. Place upon the table a virgin sheet of the most beautiful of papers and upon its sensitive surface inscribe certain informations about the person growing in one’s psyche. Once you have these facts inside your cranium attempt to dress your shrinking physique in the insubstantial anatomy of your putative creation. Once having assumed this physical envelope, model it as carefully as if you were a supermodel on the catwalk and allow it to permeate every pore of your being. Only then can you begin to set it down with its contemporaneous companions inside the delicate framework of your histoire. Tread gently and allow each one of your persons to speak in their own tones, to walk in their own shoes, to listen with their own ears, to feel with their own hearts, and to expostulate to you of their hopes, dreams, passions and personalities.

Never, mes enfants, permit yourself to press your own expectations upon the psyche of those who inhabit your writings. Rather let them fly on their own wings and listen with your inner ear as they speak to you of their lives and their loves.

Ah mes estudas, quel excitement, quel bonheur, as your little people walk the pages of your magnum opus and clamber around in the canyons of your consciousness. Let your creativity be as verdant as the grass, and allow your imagination to be impregnated by the words of those persons who have grown up to inhabit your worlds with the organic ossification of their beings.

And there we will leave the characterisation of Calliope and her sisters until next time when we shall consider the impact of those most precious people of our imaginations on the mundane and dour dross of everyday life.

Ecrit bon!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

It had been years since the train had taken him out of the valley to the university five hundred miles away. He swore that he would never return – taking nothing with him but the memory of a pair of velvet brown eyes.

But his father had died and he was duty bound to attend the funeral.

As the train pulled into the halt he realised they were gathered to see the prodigal son, but he saw nobody except her. As she came to greet him he saw his brother’s ring on her hand and his brother’s child in her belly…

©️jj 2019

She was just the girl
The nameless heroine
In pretty frocks and curls
Her face made up.

Each Hollywood show
There she is once again
Every TV drama
Her role remains.

Only to be seen
To titillate and lure
To decorate the screen
Not play a part.

The token female
To stir and slake men’s lust
Her words don’t count, just the
Size of her bust.

E.M. Swift-Hook

“You have no idea what you are letting yourself in for. How can you?”
Commodore Vane shook his head as he spoke, it was beyond understatement and beyond belief. The soldier’s green eyes were fixed on a point some distance behind the Commodore’s left shoulder. Their colour, so brilliant, Vane suspected genetic enhancement and their focus had been unwavering since he entered the room.
“I think I do, sir.”
He stood in a formal parade-ground stance, as ordered by the scowling Legionary Sergeant who had escorted him in and now lurked by the door. Vane had made a conscious choice not to relax him from the rigid posture. He never did with the conscripts. Vane glanced back at the remote screen he had called up, its contents invisible to anyone else. “Amnesia,” he read the word aloud and looked back at the soldier. “Total amnesia?”
“Total retrograde amnesia, sir,”
The Sergeant, a big, broad-shouldered man called Hynas, stood almost a head taller than his charge who was not much more than average height, and the ever-present scowl changed to a sneer at the words. Vane ignored him.
“And do you know why?”
“Due to an unknown trauma immediately prior to my arrest, sir.”
“Prior to, not during?” The way most of his men were brought in to begin their military career in his Legion it would not have surprised him in the slightest to find the injury had been inflicted at that point.
“Yes, sir.”
“I see.” Vane wondered if he truly did, the implications here were so disturbing. “You have no knowledge or memory of anything before your arrest?”
“None, sir.”
“And that means you have no direct knowledge or experience of what life is like outside the Legion?”
“No, sir. I do not.”
“Then how can you know you want to leave us, soldier?”
He noticed a slight hesitation then.
“I have no direct personal knowledge, sir, but I have researched a great deal about it.”
Which, he supposed, explained the hesitation. But the idea of researching the complexities of everyday life with zero experience of it, stretched his credulity. Vane tried to keep that disbelief from his voice. “Researched it?”
“Yes, sir. I have talked to other people in my unit and accessed information through the Lattice.”
Everyday life as filtered through the minds of violent criminals and a military tactical data provider. The Commodore shook his head but let the naivety pass. His job was to confirm that this man met the criteria required and was fit to be released. In fact, it had been made very clear to Vane he should do whatever was needed to speed the process and allow as little questioning as possible.
But this man was no ordinary ex-criminal. Once – and for many years – his name topped ‘most wanted’ lists throughout the Central worlds and the broader Coalition: the Protectorates and Independent worlds. In Vane’s circle, this man’s name used to be a household word for mindless destruction – the bogeyman of ultimate evil.
Avilon Revid.
Vane found it a curious experience to meet the man behind the myth, but it made the responsibility he now held a heavy one, weighing up all the factors to consider if Revid should be discharged. Revid might have a legal right to be considered for release, but that was not the same as having the right to be released. That decision ultimately lay with Vane and it was one he was not finding at all straight forward.
“Well, you passed your orientation course without any problem and have been declared no danger to civilians.”
No danger.
A bureaucratic joke even a military man such as the Commodore could appreciate. All the Special Legion were more than just dangerous. All serving a sentence for extremes of violent crime. A sentence that included enforced invasive surgery, implants, and drugs to enhance their capabilities.
The brutal training regimens and suicidal military missions were sweetened by the promise of freedom after five years spotless service – a promise almost never fulfilled. In the eight years he had spent co-opted as commander of the Special Legion, perhaps a dozen other men had stood before Vane for discharge approval. Of those, less than half walked out as free citizens. He was not willing to risk any of the monsters he commanded back onto the streets without a very high threshold of evidence to demonstrate they were indeed ‘no danger to civilians’.
Vane nursed no illusions about the fate of those conscripted to serve under him. For the vast majority, joining the Specials meant nothing more than a deferred death sentence. His troops served with an average life expectancy of just under two years. Most died very quickly, either on active service or were killed in the gruelling training. Others fell afoul of their own violent recreational activities or failed to sustain the psychological strength needed and committed suicide. Some died in brawls or were murdered by their comrades. Yet it remained a truism whenever a dirty job needed doing anywhere in the Coalition’s sphere of influence, the Specials were first on the ground, often ahead of the AI mechs. Vane took pride from that. He heard the troops did too.
Ironically, it meant, to be standing here, this soldier could only be the toughest kind: a man who could survive and even thrive in such an environment.

If you want to keep reading, Trust A Few by E.M. Swift-Hook is FREE to download until 2 June. Check out these other FREE sci-fi and fantasy books available this weekend.

She watched as her only son waded into the moonlit sea. When a seaweedy head broke the waves, it was almost an anticlimax.

“Hold,” she cried, “by Ephrezel and Baliel I bid you hold.”

The merwoman froze.

“Who are you to call on the power of such as they?”

“I am the blood that leaps in his veins. He is mine.”

The merwoman showed bloodstained teeth.

“Very well, but be sure he comes not here again. Or next time he will see only what he wants to see.”

She disappeared beneath the waves and the boy broke down in tears.

©️jj 2019

When you’re in a singles bar
Friday night’s been dead so far
If he has his teeth and a car
Then he will do

If you’ve had enough Jim Beam
No request is too obscene
When you’re in a singles bar
At half past two

Fate’s a bitch
She brings bad luck
Nobody could give a f**k
Days like this they really suck
You know they do

If sometimes your life is shit
And you’re standing in a pit
Use your wits and shake your tits
It might just do

©️JJ

An extract from Hyde's Lament the sequel to Only The Few by L.N. Denison, set in a post-apocalyptic England. Which is FREE for you to download until Monday!

Two men, armed with semi-automatic rifles, entered the dingy makeshift medical wing of the bomb shelter. One held a straitjacket, and the other, a syringe. Looming over Hyde, the man with the syringe slowly motioned toward her thigh. Hyde had been watching them through her eyelashes, feigning sleep. Without warning, she opened her eyes, and widened them as the needle’s point headed towards her left leg.
“What’s that?” Hyde’s voice shook. “Get that thing away from me.”
Pulling violently on the tightening restraints, she could do nothing to resist the needle as it slid in.
“Just a little Diazepam to calm you for the short journey to the training facility, that’s all.” The man regarded her with indifference as he slowly pumped the drug into her system.
Hyde became weak as the drug took effect, relaxing her muscles as though she had no bones holding her together. Her eyes grew heavy as she struggled to keep them open. The men released her restraints but by then, she was too feeble to take advantage of it and had no way to resist as they lifted her off the bed. They threaded her limp arms through the sleeves of the straitjacket, fastening the buckles tight and forcing Hyde to exhale sharply. Each pull stole her breath away. The sleeves were wrapped across her chest and the ties secured behind her back. As well as being so relaxed she could hardly walk, she had now lost the use of her arms.
With a man stabilising her either side, Hyde was led out of the cold room into the corridor devoid of any life or feeling. The bad lighting seemed to be the norm in the bomb shelter. Whilst being pulled along, she took in the starkness of her surroundings as they passed her by. She tried to marshal her thoughts against the creeping effects of the drug that flowed through her system, and to resist being pulled..
“Don’t be getting any ideas in that pretty little head of yours,” One of the men said in Hyde’s ear. “I can see what you’re doing; I’m not stupid.” He stopped and pulled the thin, green cloth scarf from around his neck. Swaying unsteadily, Hyde could not stop him using the cloth to cover her eyes, depriving her of vision and winced as it was pulled tight around her head.
“If you can’t see where you’re going, you can’t think about escaping.”
Not that I could escape even if I wanted to, not in this thing…. fuckin’ idiot!
Now, completely in the dark, Hyde’s legs were made to walk faster than her body and mind would allow, but no amount of pulling back was going to stop the speed in which she was being carried along between the two soldiers.
She stumbled once and was hauled back upright.
“Don’t give me an excuse to hurt you, caver.”
And this is where it would begin: the name-calling and prejudice. She knew she had been changing, felt it happen, but they had not let her see the changes for herself. The thought left her heart heavy with sadness and dread. Am I really changing? I haven’t looked on my face in weeks. What have they done to me? I need to know.
A tug on the straitjacket sent Hyde to her knees, but with the momentum of the fall the two men could lift her straight back up and keep her moving. A sudden, jarring halt made her wary.
“You’ve reached the end of the line,” the man to her right said as he pushed her forward. There was the sound of a door being opened just in front of where she stood and then she was being pushed through it. Not being able to see, Hyde wasn’t sure what this room might be, but like everywhere else, it was a cold, and smelt damp… and unwelcoming.
“Bring her to me,” a man’s voice said from some distance away. “Take that blindfold off, and leave us.” They forced her forward, and removed the cloth from her eyes, then turned and left. The room she was in was as depressing as the one she had been dragged from, and to add to the anxiety that grew in her mind, she spotted a steel six by six cage in the corner, which she guessed was for her.
The only other occupant of the room was someone very familiar to her, and one that frightened her. It was Judd. But how? I was told that he was scheduled for execution. He should be dead by now. Hyde’s knees buckled, but there was no one to catch her this time. Judd watched as she fell, but did nothing to help her.
“Do you intend to stay there all day, Hyde?” Judd asked, his voice stern and angry. “Get to your feet, soldier. I won’t ask again.”
Hyde felt her gorge rise with anxiety, and the blood in her veins begun to run cold, as she tried, but failed several times to obey the captain’s order. With a sense of purpose, the man stalked towards her letting her see how displeased he was by the lack of response.
“Get to your feet,” he bawled as he bent over her. “You look disgusting, Hyde. Have you seen yourself lately?”
She answered with a single shake of her head and he stepped back, his nose wrinkling in disgust.
“Just get up!”
With no hands to push herself up, Hyde tried again to stand. It hurt to do so, as her muscles were still in such a state of relaxation from the Diazepam, that her whole body was uncooperative. It took every ounce of energy to keep her from falling again.
Grabbing at the straitjacket, Judd led her over to the cage and pushed her inside. He kept her trapped in her canvas prison as he closed the door and locked it.
“This will be your new home for next few months, get used to it.” 

L.N. Denison

If you would like 12 more FREE sci-fi and fantasy books, please check out this amazing Great Spring Giveaway!

Matteo was big and stupid, with a side order of mean, so most everybody gave him a wide berth. He set eyes on sixteen-year-old Elisabetta waiting tables in her grandpappy’s pizzeria. But she would have none of him, which couldn’t be allowed to go unpunished.

He waited until she finished work, and grabbed her as she walked to the subway. Spinning her to face him he backhanded her so hard her slender neck whiplashed.

She didn’t bother to take the gun out of her handbag, merely shooting his fool head off through the leather and walking gracefully away.

©️jj 2019