Nothing was said as they were riding back until a short way from his house, Zarengor reined in sharply, bringing his pony in front of Ralik’s and forcing him to stop.
“Gods, I am sorry Ralik. You should not have had to do that.”
Ralik said nothing. It was true. He should not. Zarengor cursed and turned his pony back to the street. They rode on in silence for a while before the other man spoke again.
“I do not know what I am supposed to have done. These people seem to want to find me a monster.”
“You think it is nothing of your own making?” Ralik was unable to keep silent at that.
He found it unbelievable that Zarengor should think he owned no responsibility for the reactions he provoked in others.
“I know what I have done elsewhere. Well, what I am believed to have done elsewhere, but I have done nothing to harm so much as the fingernail of any Harkeran. I am here to fight their war with them and I will do so and win it for them too if we have even the most leisurely break of good fortune. You would think they might have some sense of that.”
Ralik moved to ride alongside him. It was strange to him to see this side of the man whose strength and self-confidence had once been more than an inspiration for him. It made him question again what he had been doing in Harkera.
“Why should they be grateful to you? They do not know you except by reputation. Perhaps when you have won their war they will be grateful.”
Zarengor looked into the gathering darkness and shook his head.
“Maybe. And maybe they will suddenly find me inconvenient, an embarrassment, something best put away as quickly and quietly as possible. Or am I getting too cynical?” He sighed slightly. “Tell me, Ralik, have you ever known happiness?”
Ralik’s thoughts instantly filled with a beautiful face whose storm-grey eyes held a depth of emotion he had never inspired in any one before.
“I think so. But what man can ever call himself truly happy? The gods may take all we have in a moment,” he spoke quietly, but with conviction.
“Then perhaps happiness is not the goal, just a fleeting side-effect of other events in life. Perhaps the goal is something altogether more straightforward.” Zarengor fell silent a moment and the sounds of the evening streets closed in: a shout of laughter, a woman shrieking, a child crying, two dogs fighting. “What really matters to you Ralik? What do you steer your life by? What principle or creed governs your direction?”
The questions took Ralik by surprise. They were not the kind of questions one fighting man asked of another and they were questions he suspected that the Vavasor in a sober state would never have asked of him. He was tempted to say nothing, to let the moment pass. But, for some reason, the questions had touched upon the disturbing thoughts and events in his own life in recent days and he found himself considering them almost without meaning to do so.
“Honour,” he said stoically. It was the answer he would have given in all honesty until a few moons ago. But now? Well, now he knew there was something he held higher than honour, although he was not sure he could admit it to anyone else and he would still never forsake honour lightly.
“Oh yes, honour,” Zarengor said and sounded weary of the word. “We were brought up with it as our wet-nurse’s milk, you and I. Honour for ourselves, our families, our lord, our clan, our city – a desolate field is honour. Can it put food in the mouths of the hungry? Can it heal the wounds of the injured? Can it make Castellans strong and merchants wealthy? We make whores of ourselves for honour.”
Ralik was shocked.
“Without honour, what is a man?” It was the creed he had been born to and Ralik could recite its catechism as well as any other nobleman from the north. Zarengor looked at him directly for the first time in the conversation.
“I am not sure, Ralik, but I am beginning to think that without honour a man becomes something more. That without honour, he is free to choose the best way to live.”
“Then perhaps that would be a new way of honour,” Ralik suggested.
“Or perhaps it would be a new way of living.”
Nothing more was said until they dismounted at Zarengor’s house, a small but well-appointed courtyard residence in the wealthiest quarter of the city, close beside the residence of Ralik’s own Castellan. He had taken this house after the attempt on his life for greater security. The Vavasor threw the reins to the hands of a stable lad and strode towards the house.
“I am not to be disturbed,” he informed the guard at the door, then paused and turned to say briefly: “Good-night Ralik, I will not keep you up on my account any longer tonight – and thank you.”

From Transgressor Trilogy 2: Times of Change a Fortune’s Fools book by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Buddy was sulking. He sat in the garden with his back to the humans. They made encouraging noises and one of the small ones brought him sausage from the food burning machine. But he was still angry. They had to understand that being small didn’t mean he had no dignity.

In the end, the big one came and crouched beside him.

“How about if I promise not to let them put clothes on you ever again.”

Buddy sighed, and scrooched over until he was able to lean against the one who understood.

He smiled, and big scratched his ears consolingly.

©jj 2019

Thrill Kings: Not so Bad by Rik Ty is a short, Interdimensional Sci-Fi.

Outdoors in the sunny springtime! Nonstop not only has to get used to a new bike, he has to get used to new rules with the girl he likes, and he has to somehow stop a wave of leaping, octopus-giants from stampeding through a small shoreline town. The creatures are too big to send home with a glancing shot of tap-beam, and too fast to catch in a sustained one. How much time for trial and error is there? Fast-paced action and intriguing interaction make this a quick, breezy read! 

As she looked for Nonstop, she lost sight of the landscape, and the next time she viewed it, she got a surprise.
“Nonstop! I see something! a few streets up, there’s a dust cloud coming.”
Nonstop looked at 8-ball’s display, like Rattletrap’s, on the visible side of the arms’ engine pod.
“I see the haze cluster coming. But not the dust. Oh wait…”
“Oh-MY- G – Nonstop, it’s like a giant octopus!”
“What?”
“I just saw it for a second. It jumped up, and then slipped below the tree line again.”
“Well, now its heading west. Did it see you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. You think it’s running?”
“Yeah.”
And with that, the giant pink octo-monster breached the treeline again with a leap, and this time, Grace saw the back of its head. Big. Massive. With a surface that seemed to waver and flutter slightly from its own movement. For the instant she saw it, the creature’s head looked like a giant, partially-inflated-parade-balloon. Either that, or a giant, pink tonsil.
And then it was gone again.
“Yeah, he’s running.”
“Okay, we’re going to stay on his left and try to get in front of him,” Nonstop said. He gave the bike some juice and tripled its speed.
“When I catch up to it, I’m going to hit it with tap and try to send it home. You’re ready with your camera things, right?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about the cameras. Just do your thing like I’m not here.”
Grace sped up as she answered, but fell behind. She sent two cameras ahead of her, but they couldn’t keep up with Nonstop either. Ten seconds behind him turned to two minutes behind him, and finally five before her cameras found him again. She could see some mayhem on her screens, and she could see some mayhem with her own eyes, just by looking up.
Far off, she saw the octo-monster leap onto a peaked roof, gallop over it with ropy, folded legs, straighten its legs to their full length and leap off the roof, gaining massive amounts of distance. Nonstop shot up the same roof, launched it like a ramp, arced over to a tree, swung the bike from a branch, over to another tree, swung from another branch, landed on a long flat roof, drove it at high speed, and had the motorcycle cartwheel over the edge and down to the street below, where Grace lost sight of him again. Rather than chase after Nonstop, Grace opted for height. She kept a general idea of where Nonstop was, but up high, she saw dust clouds all over town, most with leaping pink centers, The town looked like a giant griddle filled with weird fried eggs. What would it take to get one single creature isolated and what would they miss in the meantime?

A Bite of... Rik Ty

Q1: How much of you is in your hero/villain?

None and all – each of my characters has a little bit of me in it, but I don’t think that would surprise anyone. It’s easier to say that Nonstop is the opposite of me – I’m not young, I’m not a free ranging nomad, and I don’t know the first thing about driving motorcycles – here’s an interesting thing: there was a writing challenge I encountered in a facebook group last year. They suggested we write a few paragraphs of our characters doing our real world job. My job at the time was a frantic tangle where nothing was ever actually “finished”, and comically, I couldn’t put Nonstop in that position for even a second. He wouldn’t sit still for it. He escaped. I could actually envision myself looking up through the window and watching him drive away. That floored me – suddenly there seemed to be more wish-fulfillment therapy in Nonstop than I realized.

Q2: Is it important to include all shades of belief and sexual orientation in a book?

There are ZERO obligatories. You decide what your story needs. If it includes all shades of belief and sexual orientation, fantastic. If it includes none, fantastic. Obviously, a close cousin to this question is “is it important that all shades of belief and sexual orientation appear in literature?” and the answer to that is OF COURSE, and for all sorts of reasons – validation, inclusion, recognition, empathy, sympathy – you spend a little time with a character in a book who is different from the people you know in real-life, and it can’t help but promote understanding.  Everyone who invests in learning language should find themselves included somewhere in the world’s literature. It would be heartbreaking if that weren’t true.

Q3: Why do you write? Money is an acceptable answer.

I have a peculiar answer, but one that might make me an interesting oddity. The ONLY thing I write in prose is Thrill Kings – Novels, novellas, short stories, 100 word drabbles, and whatever else I can think of. I spent the earliest part of my career producing graphic novels and shopping them around. My works rarely got published, but often, the person across the desk would suggest that I help them with their project, or help a friend with the friend’s project. This was fun and exciting, but my own projects languished. The same thing happened when I shopped toy ideas around. I’ve had two demanding careers over the last 30+ years – creative freelancer (writer/illustrator/designer) and design manager. I did well at both, constantly solving creative problems for other people. Very nice, and very wonderful, but I wanted to get SOMETHING of my own out in the world before I died. I chose Thrill Kings because it seems a little like Sherlock Holmes, or Conan to me, a project that could keep growing the more that was put into it, and perhaps something that I could leave my kids. 
(I did produce one Thrill King comic. It took me a year to complete. I switched to prose – much harder – but at least for me, faster.)

Rik Ty in his own words

I was a cartoonist/toy designer/writer/illustrator in the 80s and 90s (Marvel, Matchbox, Scooby Doo, Cracked etc). Almost all my clients were in Manhattan. Around 2000, there were shake-ups at several, and 9-11 was the last straw. Most of my clients became understandably cautious, and as a result, I suffered a drastic slowdown. I was helping Toys R Us with their ET line at the time. They were expanding their product development department and I asked to be considered. 7 months later, I got the job of Senior Design Manager, and I held it for 15 years until the company closed in 2018. Now I am reinventing my freelance career and hoping to gain a toe-hold with Thrill Kings. I have been happily married since 1984, and my daughter is getting married this very weekend (!!!).

You can find out more on the Thrill Kings website.

One last fight. 

Fred’s opponent stomped into the cage, and the floor shook. Fred looked into a pair of flat, killer’s eyes and knew a frisson of genuine apprehension.The Juggernaut’s secret weapon. Terror. 

But Fred was made of stern stuff, and the purse for this fight would set him and Rosa up for life.

He fought.

In the end superior speed and better physical condition won out, although it was a close run thing. 

Fred stood outside the cage with his chest heaving, and Rosa threw herself into his arms.

“Never again,” she said fiercely.

“I promise…”

©jj 2019

One greets the assembled disciples.

Should it be that you are a lost soul, who has recently slipped into the back of the class in the hope of improving your limited literary endeavours, allow me to introduce myself. I am Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, fondly referred to as IVy by my chums. The acclaimed author of that prodigiously enchanting science fantasy work ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ which has been removed from the shelves on a temporary basis so it can return and be lauded as it truly deserves.

The end of summer is upon us and as harvests are gathered in I am once more returned to my writing room to reap the rich harvest of a summer gleaning inspiration from the very lap of the Muses in their homeland. Thus I was less than delighted to be disturbed whilst revisiting the profound passages of my previous literary highlights and admiring the lavish style, the graceful similes, the elegant turns of phrase and the superlative use of descriptive ornamentation.

It was, of course, my maternal parent who was well into her second admixture of Benedictine and Calvados. I knew that because the sickly smell of honeyed apples hung on her breath as she stuck her face into mine, muttering: “Why did I do it? What was I doing? How did I ever do something to deserve this?” Then, fuelled by alcohol and the disappointment she feels in her own sad little existence, she trailed off into a long-winded monologue in which I was unflatteringly compared to a chocolate teapot, a leadless pencil and other random objects.

Once I was again mercifully alone, the door bolted to avoid any further distractions, I realised Mumsie had unwittingly pointed out an area of English grammar that I have been remiss in bringing to the attention of my pupils. The ‘doing’ words.

How to Write Right  –  The Write Verb

Right class! Today we shall explore one of the backbones of any sentence. Indeed, that without which it is not a sentence at all.

Verbs are words which inform us of action. You all knew that of course, so I shall skip over asking for a show of hands and cut to the chase: how to choose the right verb for your sentence.

The important message I need you to take from today’s lesson is that any sentence can be instantly improved if you consider varying the verb. Truly. It can. Allow me to demonstrate briefly:

The stars shone.

Nothing wrong with that at all. It tells the reader the simple fact and they will absorb it and move on. But oh what a wasted opportunity! Instead of having the reader merely register the idea of the stars being there, doing what we all know stars do, you could have informed their imaginations with your creative genius (however small that might be) and awed them by your command of the depth of beauty in the language. Thus, thusly:

The stars blazed.
The stars lustred.
The stars scintillated.
The stars effervesced.
The stars coruscated.
You, by now, begin to assimilate the idea.

Thusly, my innocents, do not ‘walk’ but ‘promenade’. Never merely ‘jump’ when you can ‘frolic’. And remember, dear disciple mine, any noun can be enverbed to add to your treasure trove of possibilities:

The handsome young man entabled his firm buttocks, peachifying my day by his very beauty. (Voila mes crudités, deux pour le prix d’un)

And thus have we indeed ‘done’ the doing words.

Now go and try some out.

Until we next…

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.

White flowers sprinkled the grass in the clearing, looking Clea thought like spilled milk. In another time, or another place, she might have shared that thought but she didn’t think the grim-faced woman who had hold of the leash around her neck would appreciate whimsy so she just looked at her feet and kept plodding.

Her captor made a queer grunting noise and as Clea turned to look, she  collapsed with the vanes of a crossbow bolt protruding from between her shoulder blades.

Relief made Clea light-headed.

But the swathe of white flowers was now stained with blood.

©jj 2019

How fares the one I chose to love now that the years have passed?
The face that I once looked upon each day will be much changed.
I wonder how I once believed your love for me would last
When even then I saw your heart from me was oft estranged.

But folly is as folly does and youth’s not folly’s foil,
Full hearts will empty wit and blind the eye from truth so plain.
When in the field of love just one doth plough and plant and toil
The harvest reaped at season’s end is only tears and pain.

I never gave my heart again into another’s keep
And lived my life in many ways that seldom brought me peace.
Yet still, in dreams, we walk the hills, steal kisses as I sleep
And know again the trust and strength I’d thought could never cease.

Tis forty winters, come and gone, since I did see you last
How fares the one I chose to love now that the years have passed?

E.M. Swift-Hook

Zarai had been Lord Ho’s favourite concubine for five seasons. Then Lady Ho died.

The lord spoke. “Do you look to be exalted?”

“No, to be sold.”

His sigh sounded almost genuine. 

“Sadly. I make political alliance with the horse tribes. But their headman demands your person to complete the deal.”

“As my master commands.”

Three suns later Lord Ho wedded a wild daughter of the tundra, and a slave left the palace.

The horse lord was young and kind. He gave her a pony and wove wildflowers into her hair. 

Some forms of servitude are less onerous than others…

©jj 2019

We tried to catch the wind today
My fickle friend and me
But as the zephyr flew this way
My friend deserted me
We tried to catch a friend today
The winter wind and I
But as my friend came out to play
The breeze did wave goodbye
Oh you may have the wind he sighed
Should that be as you choose
Or you may have me at your side
You win one, one you lose
We tried to catch the wind today
A wind to sail us home
But fickle fate gangs aft agley
And now I cry alone

© jane jago 2017

One remembers a rather exciting games master at the old alma mater reading us random chunks of this, among other books, when it was too inclement for rugger practice.
For this reason, it will always be associated in one’s mind with the smell of lineament and teenage sweat and the burns on the back of one’s legs caused by sitting on the clanking, clunking radiators in the second form changing room.
Happening upon a dogeared paperback copy propping up the door of the summerhouse* one determined to visit the whole oeuvre. Quel disappointment.

Review

A girl child called Scout lives somewhere. I think it is colonial. Possibly America. Persons seem truly uneducated and not one’s type at all.
Nothing much happens for a very large part of the book. Then a man is accused of a crime he seems not to have committed. But he is found guilty anyway.
And nothing much happens again. There is a rabid dog, and a nasty man who has evil designs on the heroine and her brother. There is a struggle. The bad man gets killed somehow, I’m not clear how.
End of story.
One star – for longevity.

*It’s a shed, you pompous little prat! ed. Jacintha Farquhar

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.