It was Oliver’s turn to check FenceBook for pMails. He ambled across the garden and hopped neatly over the gate. The others went back to sleep.

Oliver came back with ‘smug’ written all across his face. 

“One up for us,” he curled his lip. “We have a new lady in the district, and I got to her pMail before Buster.”

McAllister stood up and shook his ruff.

“Maybe we should all go sit closer to the gate.”

There was an undignified scramble.

Oliver stayed where he was. What was the hurry. He’d already ‘met’ the lady behind the wheelie bins….

©️jj 2019

My child, you will never know
How much I cried inside over your tears
How I always tried to soothe your fears
How much each day I lived my life for you
How all you were, I see in all you do.

But now your fears are fears I cannot see
And all your tears cannot be soothed by me
Alone you face the trials that life has wrought
Alone, I watch you bear what it has brought.

The path you take is now far from your home
You walk through places I can never roam
But still I cry inside at what has come
And still I wish so much could be undone
My child, you will never know…

E.M. Swift-Hook

My dear Readers Who Write,

You will know of me as the renowned author Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV and have no doubt heard of the wisdom and erudition I have been putting forth in this highly enlightening series ‘The Thinking Quill’.

It is one’s intention today to depart from the pathways of rectitude and face squarely the chimera that is the erudite composition of a review.

“Now what,” I hear you ask, “has led our Ivy into these shark-filled shoals?” The answer, mes petits, is a review one recently received for that epitome of literary elegance that is the science-fiction classic ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. Some ignorant pensioner posted her abusive opinion and graded my magnum opus with a solitary gold-star. Her supposed ‘review’ was a single sentence in length: “This is the worst pile of crap masquerading as sci-fi I have read in over forty years.” One realised instantly the poor deluded female must be both menopausal, thus in her dotage, and also clearly the victim of dementia, so generously forgave her on the moment.

But it awoke me to the imperative of inducting the future generations of Readers Who Write into the subtle nemeton of the reviewers craft. No student of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV should be reduced to the single sentence, no matter how pithy when they are casting supreme judgement upon the literary ejaculations of fellow authors. So, it falls upon me to ensure you are equipped with the knowledge and skill to dissect the entrails of another’s corpus.

Now, there will be those misguided souls among you who have, until now, seen it as their deity-sent duty to encourage the writer and coddle his artistic soul with warming and conspicuously kindly rumination on the opus before them.

I rail against such foolishness. Nay, I cry. Nay, nay and thrice nay. The very existence of the reviewer demands a harsher task. Armour yourself with erudition, take up the sword of experience and the bows and arrows of superior lexicography, and sally forth to slay the mythical monsters of pusillanimous prose, insufficiently exquisite world building, flat ‘realistic’ characterisation, and unimaginative, ‘logical’ plot lines.

Take up your weapons and do battle.

Let your words and wit be as a scalpel with which you excise the necrotising flesh of mediocrity from the bones of boredom, the tendons of tedium, and the entrails of excruciating entropy.

Should any work not meet the most stringent demands of taste, texture and testicular terpsichory, one must be not afraid to consign the script to the dungeons known as ‘did not finish’ and to expostulate one’s redaction as coolly as a surgeon whose sharpened scalpel removes disease to save life.

Take as your talisman the words of that divine dame whose perfect pinkness and portentous prose shows all lesser mortals the direction in which the glorious Muse may be cajoled by an author of superlative talent and all superseding sensibility. Consider the exquisite gentility of her delicately virginal heroines and the craggy, all-embracing masculinity of her manly heroes. It matters not what the genre, take the advice of one upon whose knowledge you may safely depend and use the words of the divine dame as the yardstick by which you judge all literary pretensions.

Once you find a manuscript worthy of your attention, husband your gilded heavenly bodies with care, awarding each and every one as parsimoniously as if it were a child of your own bosom. Let not the spirit of generosity move you to sprinkle planetoids with a lavishness beyond the desserts of that which stands before you.

I present to you my own formula for asteroid assignation.

One heavenly body: some slight little thing. An example being Dying to be Roman, by those dreadful women who I allow to benefit from my enormous popularity

Two sleeping satellites: a book with sufficient eclat to hold one’s grudging respect. An example being  JRR Tolkien’s fantastical travelogue.

Three asteroidal amplifications: a volume where one is sufficiently engaged to need to peek at the ending to ensure one’s favourite characters survive. An example being ‘Game of Thrones’ – who’s bid for more shining lights was only scuppered by a little over fondness for violence within its pages.

Four twinklies: a work of superlative excellence. An example being the understated, linguistically purist, Gorean Saga

Five golden galleons: reserved for the work of the divine dame whose bejeweled pink slippers I am unworthy to kiss.

In conclusion, dear RWW, let your metaphysical pen be as feared in reviewing as it will become beloved in creation.

Lire Bon!

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy's profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book, the worst ever 'how to write' book. Read IVy's advice with editorial comments on each blog piece by his mother, Jacintha. All courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

The day Father died Oldest Brother’s body was found at the bottom of a staircase where he had no business to be. 

Third Brother moved with vicious precision, becoming Head of the Family before the mourning period was over.

Custom demanded that Chi become his sister-wife. She hid her fears under a smooth face, even when he led her to his bed.

He laughed and stroked her hair.

“Fear not, small one. I have no thought to incest. You will not bear halfwitted babies to satisfy the priesthood.”

Chi’s adored husband bought her a bodyguard, who fathered strong sons.

©️jj 2019

Elron and his sister-wife Elanda dallied in the dappled shade of the forest. They walked hand in hand, stopping every few steps to kiss and caress. Elanda slipped away and ran a few steps, for the sheer joy of him catching her in his strong arms and bearing her down into the sweet loam to ravish her with tender savagery.

They strayed closer to the homes of the human creatures than was their habit, standing for a while to watch as the white-clad and silent women of the sanctuary bore a wrapped bundle to the flat rock of sacrifice, leaving it there before scuttling away on silent feet.
“I wonder what gift they spare to the old ones,” Elanda spoke idly, even as her beloved’s clever hands worked their magic. He bent her over a convenient tree branch and they began their unending game yet again.

This time the little mewing cries did not come only from Elanda’s throat as they continued even after she drooped like a spent lily.
“It’s a child. The old one will dine on child tonight.”

Elanda walked on soft feet to where the babe lay and pulled back the blanket from his fair features. She gazed enraptured.
“Look Elron. Is he not beautiful?”
Elron looked, without too much interest, but found to his surprise that the child was indeed of surpassing beauty. Gold of hair, blue of eye, and possessed of skin so thin and white that the blue veins could clearly be discerned beneath their fragile coverlet.
“He is indeed beautiful. Shall we keep him?”
“We could. But what of the old one?”
“I will call him up a fat boar. He will like that better anyway.”

Elanda’s smile was a thing of witchery, so the deed was done. They retraced their steps, only this time The beautiful fae had a beautiful child in her arms. Once away from the grove of the old ones, she stopped and seated herself on a sweetly scented bank of wild flowers.
“The child must feed,” she declared opening her garment.
Elron expected to feel jealousy at the sight of another mouth at his beloved’s breast, and he was surprised to find that all he felt was excitement as the child’s perfect lips encircled Elanda’s long pink nipple.

He watched for some while, until, impelled by some appetite he didn’t know he possessed, he bent his handsome head to suckle the other breast.

As quickly as a bolt of summer lightning, the child stirred in Elanda’s arms and struck like a viper sinking sharp and yellowish teeth into the pulse that beat in the big male’s neck.

Elron was paralysed and could only groan in agony as the creature drunk his life force. The eyes that had looked so blue in the sacred grove now glowed red as the succubus fed.

Seemingly unknowing, Elanda crooned a lullaby and stroked the baby’s milk-white skin…

Jane Jago

Endymion was the most eligible bachelor of his generation, and there was not a debutante or matchmaking mama who was unaware of his preeminence. 

Imagine, therefore, their shock and repugnance when he married some dab of a girl nobody had heard of. One who presented him with an heir a scant six months after the wedding ceremony.

In the lovely mansion at the centre of his family acres, Endymion watched his wife feed her child, as did his lover from her other side.

She smiled at them both – safely bulwarked by the affection of her brother and his life mate…

©️jj 2019

I cooked a full English and as we sat wiping our plates with thick brown toast he raised an eyebrow.
“Can I ask you a geek question?”
“Don’t see why not.”
“What do you know about artificial intelligence?”
“Depends what you mean by artificial intelligence. On one level I’m the best there is. On other levels I neither know nor want to. So, if you are counting computers and games consoles as AI then I don’t suppose there is too much I don’t know. But if we are into the realms of androids and the like I know nothing, and that’s too much.”
“Why? What’s the difference?”
“A lot. But mostly it’s that computers need operators. Droids don’t. I mistrust AI with any kind of autonomy.”
He frowned at me. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t have free will. Surely they would only be able to do what they were programmed to do?”
“Maybe. But I know a lot of smegging flaky programmers… Look Aidan there’s no guarantees with any form of AI. So why give it arms and legs and stuff? I had a robotic foot once, and every so often the bar-steward would go feral on me. Made me think.”
“Surely there’s the first law of robotics.”
“Isn’t. That’s sci fi. We live in the real world not Isaac Asimov’s world. Plus. What has been programmed can be reprogrammed. Give me ten minutes with an android’s chip and I’m pretty sure I could have it do whatever I pleased, and it ain’t even my field. Bad shit!”
He grinned. “So my dream of a sexy android nurse who never needs a day off, and never has a period, is just a dream then?”
Good recovery boy, I thought, as I pasted a snarl on my face. “Only you could be such a bumhole.”
“Me and just about every other doctor under the age of ninety.”
I laughed and waved a hand at him “Finish your food and go away. I have work.”
“What sort of work?”
“Somebody in Nagasaki wants to build a supertanker, unfortunately there’s a big fat hole in their proposal, and a big fat bonus if I can drive a bus through that hole. I’m about halfway there.”
He grinned again. “It ain’t the bonus, though, is it?”
“Course it ain’t. It’s the challenge. The money is just a way to keep score.”

Extracted from Jackdaw Court by Jane Jago.

Last night’s John had crossed the line. She looked at her bruised face, and her sense of the ridiculous deserted her.

She made a phone call.

Three days later a very wealthy man awoke from an unnaturally deep sleep to the awareness he wasn’t in his custom-built bed. Instead he was spreadeagled somehow on some sort of a frame. He went to move his hands, but he couldn’t.

“It looks as if Sleeping Beauty is with us now. He must have pissed somebody off royally.”

He heard the whistle a nanosecond before he felt the bite of the whip.

©️jj 2019

An extract from Trust A Few the first book of Haruspex, a Fortune's Fools Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook.

A few days after that, Jaz finally agreed to a meeting which he received an invite to attend soon after he started working for Sarnai. He was not sure it was wise or careful, but he was going to go anyway. He did not tell anyone about it and if it went wrong he did not expect anyone to take the consequences except himself. If it went well, he was hopeful it could clear the way for the happy family he was now bound to, to leave the ‘City one day. It was a risk. But he was the one in hazard. Before he left for the meeting he arranged a time-delayed secure link message to Avilon. At least they would not wait needlessly or wonder why he vanished if he did.
He hadn’t had the dubious pleasure of visiting the Coalition Security Force main offices in the ‘City very often before, but he remembered it was low-budget. The crystal-plex walls were half-panelled and the view through them was pure, hard-core, industrial. The room he was shown into might have been the front office for any small company – workspace and seating provided – and the air of infrequent use robbed it of any sense of individual purpose.
“I do apologise for keeping you waiting, Vor Baldrik.” The woman walked into the room and dismissed the two men who had been watching Jaz in case he stole the desk. “I am Var Tyran and I hope we can do business.”
Jaz was reminded of some kind of predatory animal, the way she moved and took a seat.
“I think it would be useful if we could,” he agreed.
She was already pulling up screens and Jaz noticed with interest she ran a link-slot on her wrist. “So – Jazatar Baldrik, ex-Coalition Marine Corps, ex-mercenary, ex-terrorist, ex-Special Legion. A lot of ex’s for one lifetime,” she said. Jaz had no idea what he was supposed to say to that so he just nodded. “Present employment, Security Consultant for Sarnai Altan. Which I assume is a cute way of saying you kill people for her?”
“I protect Var Altan’s interests,” he corrected, more certain than before this had been a mistake.
“Then I am talking to the right person.” She smiled just enough to allow her perfect teeth to show, resting on her lower lip.
“You asked to speak to me. I have no reason to refuse you,” Jaz said carefully. He was walking through a minefield.
The Tyran woman sat back in her chair and just looked at Jaz. He looked back, which was not at all too hard on the eyes. After a long silence she moved slightly, resting one arm on the desk between them and seemed to be reading some data, perhaps she had been waiting for someone to find it for her – or perhaps she was in another conversation.
“You are a man we have been hoping to talk to for some time. Hard to find, Vor Baldrik.”
“I’ve been busy,” Jaz said.
Her lips pursed as if in disapproval and her eyes, a shifting shade of blue, held his own.
“But here now.”
Jaz waited. They had approached him. He had come.
“You have something of a reputation,” Var Tyran observed, sounding as if she was reading from a script. Her neat teeth appeared again and she leant forward on the desk. Jaz got up and walked towards the door, only turning back when she called him: “Vor Baldrik?”
“I’m not here to be flirted with,” he said. “If that’s all you have on offer – then, sorry, but I have better things to do with my time.”
The door shimmered as if in soft focus. Jaz recognised the meaning of that and stepped away from it.
“Please sit down, Vor Baldrik, I regret I cannot allow you to leave just yet.”
Alright.
So it really had been a mistake.
Jaz went back and sat down.

Trust A Few – E.M. Swift-Hook

He found her hiding in the darkness all but frozen. Took her to his humpy and wrapped her in one of his precious survival blankets. In the morning she looked at him.

“Thanks. I think…”

He passed her a cracked mug of stew, with a heel of almost fresh bread.

She ate hungrily, before saluting him and leaving.

He thought no more about her. Survival took all his energy.

It was a few days later when she reappeared, dressed now in warm furs and bringing with her a bow-topped vardo and a sturdy horse.

“Thanks,” he said. “I think.”

©️jj 2019