A poet was feeling so screwed
That he tore all his papers in two
The dread seventeen
Was turning him green
Coz he just couldn’t write a haiku

jj 2018

Taken from The Fated Sky the first book in Fortune's Fools and volume one of Transgressor Trilogy by E.M. Swift-Hook.

The door-flap of her pavilion was thrust back and the Black Vavasor strode in without any ceremony. He was dressed magnificently in a cream shirt with luxuriantly embroidered sleeves, a black jerkin spangled with tiny beads of jet and panels which touched the knee-high gleaming boots. Instead of the sombre riding cloak she had seen him wear before, he had chosen a dark red cape, in some shimmering offworld fabric, also embroidered with gems. His head was unadorned apart from the long, dark, locks of his hair.
This time when he looked at her he did see her. Alexa, who always noticed such things, watched the pupils of his eyes expand and was satisfied. He gave a courtly bow and moved to take her hand.
“Lady,” he said, “you are truly beautiful. I see now why the cities ring with songs about Alexa the Fair.”
It was a pretty enough speech, but disappointingly unoriginal. If that was the best he could manage she was in for a rather dull evening. Alexa let him draw her to her feet, feeling his eyes sweep over her body in mute appreciation.
“I have heard songs sung about the Black Vavasor too,” she observed sweetly and was rewarded by a tightening of his grip and a curious look which became a smile.
“But my songs are not so beautiful, I know.”
Alexa was determined to get her entertainment somehow.
“I am not so sure, Honoured One, the songs they sing about Terzibrand bring tears to the eyes of all those who hear them.”
He had been guiding her towards the entrance but her words brought him to a standstill. Alexa was tall and could meet the gaze of most men as an equal, but she found her head tilting back to meet the Vavasor’s dark eyes. If they held any expression at all, it was one of mild amusement, as he said: “Lady, if you feel we are already familiar enough to trade insults, you should call me Jariq – unless of course, you prefer one of the other names they give me in the songs. But then you might find it just a little embarrassing calling me ‘Baby-Slaying Bastard’ across the Castellan’s dinner table.”
Alexa let her lips curve up into a smile.
“I am sure ‘Jariq’ will suffice – at least for the first two courses.”
“Then may the gods make the third course a dessert dish to keep your tongue sweet,” he said reverently and led her out of the tent, helping her into the palanquin.

She was borne up to the Castle to cries of: ‘Make way for the Vavasor of Reva and the Caravansi Alexa’, for the night of the Bride’s Banquet was also a night of carnival for the common people and the streets were crowded with a festive throng. Peering between the drapes of her palanquin, Alexa was glad that she had a good guard. In places, the soldiers had to ride forward and beat people away with the flats of their swords and once she saw the Vavasor on his black pony, threaten a group of rowdy youths with his pistol before they drew back and let the small cavalcade pass through.
As they began the climb to the castle the noise of music and shouting died away below. Soon after, they passed through the gates and the palanquin was set down in the torch-lit courtyard near where a long carpet, finely woven with scenes picturing dancing and festival, had been placed over the steps that led up to the Great Hall. The sounds from within were of revelry little less restrained than that of the city. The drapes were pulled back and the Vavasor smiled down at her offering his arm. She returned the smile and accepted the arm, rising gracefully to step out onto the carpet.
“You have never attended the Bride’s Banquet before?” he asked as they walked together up the steps.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Not at all. But I had better warn you that it is not an event for those of delicate sensibilities. Towards the end, it can get quite – um -“
“Interesting? Entertaining?” she suggested, her eyebrows arching interrogatively.
The tall man laughed.
“I was going to say ‘hazardous’ but perhaps you are right. We can leave once the Castellan’s family have withdrawn if you like. It should remain relatively civilised until then.”
“I do hope not,” Alexa said with great sincerity and the Vavasor looked at her with an obvious amusement.
They were given seats next to the High Table as befitted the Vavasor’s noble status and Alexa was frankly delighted to find herself seated above the rest of Alfor’s merchant community. She also quickly realised that her concern of being overshadowed in such a glittering company had been unfounded.
Without a doubt, it was she who drew the marvelling eyes of the men and envious glances from the women, particularly when they recognised her escort. Even the Castellan’s wife, in her magnificent costume, still looked plump and dowdy by comparison, together with her plump, dowdy daughters. The Bride was very pretty indeed, but in this company, her youth and freshness were hidden beneath an air of nervous awe.
Alexa looked around the room, recognising many of the merchants and acknowledging them by the slightest tilt of her head. At the high table, apart from the Castellan’s family and the Bride, she recognised by sight only one other figure and that was Qabal Vyazin himself, who was already looking bored, as he made polite conversation with the young lady sitting to his left.
The table opposite where she sat was obviously set aside for the family of the Bride. They sat stiffly, as if ill at ease, dressed in their sadly inadequate best clothes and talking together in whispers. Only the girl’s mother seemed happy and she kept bestowing proud and adoring glances on her favoured daughter, who sat beside the Castellan. The father looked utterly miserable as if he were already regretting the high cost of seeing that his daughter secured this prize. If they were lucky their investment might be repaid through the girl making a good marriage to some minor noble. They were not a poor family, but from their dress and demeanour, Alexa guessed that they could ill-afford to waste money on such a gamble.

Then the doors of the hall were closed as the last arrivals took their seats and the Banquet began in earnest. The noise was, of course, tumultuous: the hubbub of voices, the clatter of plates and goblets and the drone of the inevitable musicians made it very difficult to talk even to your neighbour at times. But Alexa was quite content to sit quietly and observe. She noticed that the Vavasor, too, seemed little inclined to conversation. He was diligent in seeing that she lacked for nothing, but his mind was clearly elsewhere and occasionally she would catch him in an unguarded moment looking strangely pensive. Although he kept her platter and goblet filled he ate sparingly himself and only sipped at his wine.
At one point his expression hardened and she followed his gaze to where it was resting on a curly blond head. Its owner had his back to them and was drawing the undivided attention of several tables at the lower end of the room, as he was playing on the thirteen-stringed lysigal and singing. Although the musicians nearer at hand made it impossible to hear what he sang, the reactions of those who could hear seemed to suggest it was humorous in the extreme, most were laughing – some uncontrollably.
The third course came and went and Alexa found that she had as yet encountered no opportunity to use the Vavasor’s given name or any other. She decided that it was mildly insulting to be escorted by one of the most notorious and desirable men in the Western Continent and not be the sole object of his thoughts. With malicious intent, she leant towards him.
“Would the Baby-Slaying Bastard care for some more wine?” Her voice was deliberately pitched to be just loud enough to make heads nearby turn towards them.
The Vavasor glanced at her with distant dark eyes as though scarcely aware she was there and then seemed to come to himself and gave a crooked smile.
“Lady, you take your revenge unfairly,” he said softly so only she could hear.

E.M. Swift-Hook

My wife’s Father. A remote authority figure who poured charm on all outside the family and scorn on all within it. The day he left, his children breathed a sigh of relief, and began to learn to be happy.

But their mother died, bringing them back into his orbit where they suffered his sadistic humours and his wife’s cold indifference.

Susanna was seventeen when he decreed she should marry the son of his oldest friend. Me.

Three months later, he met with a fatal accident whilst out shooting with me.

It was the first time I saw my wife smile…

©️jj 2019

My love is like a grouchy bear
That someone asked to dance
My love he really does not care
For kisses or romance

Yet what’s left of his hair is fair
And very blue his eyes
And he will be about somewhere
Till all the bars gang dry

Till all the bars gang dry of beer
And all the wine is gone
Yes I will love you still my dear
And bore you with a song

So goodnight, my friend goodnight
And sleep now for a while
And in the morn I’ll look a fright
But you’ll still make me smile

©️jj 2018

.... or 'How To Speak Typo' by Jane Jago

beilliance (adjective) – of elderly ladies the belligerent desire to hit people with their walking sticks

cazenda (compound noun) – Charlie and Danni from the trailer park. You will find this written over the windshield on Charlie’s truck

dence (verb) – to move to music in a very refined manner

differnet – (noun) the weird Internet

excitigns (adjective) – of rocks, prone to giggle and wet panties

fangipan (noun) – sweeties with added blood

hersute (noun) – business garment belonging to a woman

migth (noun) – furry stuff on the teeth of vagrants and others who can’t be arsed with dental hygiene

noccyer (proper noun) – rurally owned mobile phone company

oka (noun) – small rodent inhabiting the underarm area of very fat people

papperbok (noun) – erudite antelope

prasie (noun) – small ego-sucking insect

qweer (adjective) – asexual specifically of frogs 

ratehr (noun) – what your plumber charges per minute

sill (adjective) – not actually interesting enough to be called silly

teasco (noun) – a disaster in a shopping mall

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

Grandad was minding the children, while upstairs mother laboured to bring a new baby into the world. Gran hurried into the room. 

“Bert, babby’s presented wrong. We needs to turn ‘n.”

The old man went and scrubbed his hands.

Dad came and crouched at the fireside. His face was sober and worried.

Alice laid her hand on his leg.

Dad’s face grew greyer and more worried, and when they heard a thin cry his grip on Benjamin’s shoulder grew vice tight. It may have been minutes, or hours, until Gran came in.

“You can go up. They’m both doin’ fine…”

  ©️jj 2019

It was bitter winter when Father returned from the city with yet another painted whore on his arm. Bunyan and Bennifer eyed her shyly, but she was certainly not built of the ilk that notices a seven-year-old boy and even less his sister.

It was late morning when Father came into the warmth of the kitchen to find his son rolling out the dough for ginger biscuits. The man snarled, but before he had chance to do more than curl his lip Grandmother speared him with a glance.
“Do you perhaps wish to take your children and move elsewhere?” Her voice was sugar sweet but the threat was nonetheless explicit.
Father shuffled his booted feet, but he had imbibed some hot spiced wine and was feeling unusually brave. “Should he not be outside with the other boys?”
Grandmother made a clicking sound with her tongue against her teeth.
“Grow up, man. It’s beyond cold. Even the Sergeant at Arms is inside this morning.”
Father seemed to shrink into his cotte like an eel into the mud of the duckpond. Then he lifted a shoulder.
“I see I have been remiss, I shall shall have to ask after his progress with proper men’s tasks.”
“You just pop along and do that,” Grandmother sneered, “Bunyan is beyond his years in all the manly pursuits, as you would know if you stopped drinking and whoring long enough to take notice.”

For a moment Father eyed his own parent with something like dislike, then he lifted his shoulders in a gesture of defeat. To Bunyan’s great surprise, Grandmother stepped over to him and held out her arms. Father dropped his head on her bony shoulder and held on for a moment before stiffening his spine. Then he did something even more surprising, he reached out and ruffled his son’s chestnut curls.
“Never mind, boy,” he spoke with a rough kindness Bunyan had never heard before. “It’s none of your fault.”
Then he was gone, leaving a man-shaped hole in the kitchen air.

The children looked at Grandmother with their mouths agape. She smiled albeit grimly, and wiped a furtive tear.
“He was a fine man once. Before your lady mother died.” She made a visible effort to cheer up, but Bunyan felt that his father had a great deal to answer for.

Some hours later, with the baking done and the kitchen scoured. Bunyan and Bennifer sat at the table with mugs of foamy milk and gingerbread biscuits.
“Look Bun I made this one like Father,” Bennifer put one pink-tipped finger on a gingerbread man with a beard and fur-trimmed cotte iced on its brown body. Bunyan picked it up and stared, still feeling unsettled by the near row and Grandmother’s silent tear. He smiled before he snapped the head off the gingerbread man and thought, that’ll teach him.

© Jane Jago 2017

She must have been about three years old when Father bought her Bear. 

The brown furry toy became her one constant, as divorce, and Mother’s restless, games kept her rootless throughout her childhood.

When she was sixteen Mother was killed and the father she hadn’t been permitted to see reappeared in her life like a burly whirlwind. He whisked her away before her maternal grandparents could object.

She was a little afraid, but he spoke gently. 

“Do you remember Bear?”

She nodded and pulled the shabby toy out of her bag. Father opened his arms and she ran to him.

©️jj 2019

If you enjoyed Sam Nero and the Case of the Disappearing Daddy here is a chance for you to meet Sam Nero in an interview.

Excerpt from the notebooks of Anastasia Throbb, ace reporter, and presenter of the prime-time magazine show The Throbbing City.

Sam Nero didn’t want to meet with me. It took six months of poking and prodding, and outright bribery before I found a man who was both willing and able to lean on this most archetypal of private investigators and make him talk to me. In the end, a friend of a friend introduced me to a man who goes by the name of O’Halleran, who promised me an hour of Sam’s time. Rather to my surprise, it even seemed as if he was going to deliver.

He sent two huge mutes to my office and they escorted me to a back-street diner where a sullen-faced waitress stuck me in a booth and stopped chewing gum for long enough to mouth “sit”. I sat and waited, concealing my growing impatience as best as possible. I was just about to make as dignified an exit as I could when a shadow fell across the table.
“Miss Throbb, I presume.” The voice was lazily amused.
I turned and got my first look at Sam Nero in the flesh. He was about six three, maybe six four, wide at the shoulder and narrow at the hip, and his face looked as if it had been designed to meet the expectations of every pre-pubescent female in the city. It was hard, and sculpted, and sported what I could only assume was a permanent five o’clock shadow. I turned my attention to his companion, a lush-bodied bottle blonde who looked at me as if she could discern my innermost secrets. I think I hated her on sight.

They slipped into the booth opposite me, and something about the pair of them set the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. For a moment I was floundering, then I realised what had spooked me. There were two of them, but only one shadow. While my flesh was still crawling, the waitress appeared with a pot of coffee and two tall mugs. She put a mug in front of Nero and one in front of me before favouring me with a sneer and sloping off.
“Doesn’t your lady friend get coffee?”
The voice that responded was feminine and breathy and sounded to me as if it had been honed over a lot of years of practice.
“I never touch the stuff. Ruins the complexion.”
Then Nero laughed. It was a deep sound that sent little shivers running around all sorts of inappropriate parts of my anatomy.
“Be nice.”
“I was being nice, Sam. You should know that.”
She laid a red-nailed and possessive paw on his forearm and he smiled.
“Sure you were being nice, Sugar. I’d just like to keep it that way.”
“Sugar?” I think my voice went up an octave, I mean what sort of a prehistoric monster calls his woman sugar?
“It’s my name. Sugar Kane. That’s Miss Kane to you.”
Mentally cursing my luck I turned my most winsome smile on Mister Nero.
“Sam,” I said. “May I call you Sam?”
He raised a lazy eyebrow and looked me up and down for a moment before laughing that damnably sexy laugh again.
“I guess so. It’s what Ma Nero named her little boy.”
“Is it really? I mean I can find no record of a family called Nero, let alone a male child called. Samuel?”
“Nah. Just Sam. And where I was born nobody keeps records.”
“And Miss Kane. Where and when was your sidekick born?”
“That ain’t the sort of question a gentleman asks a lady. Not if he wants to keep wearing his face. You can ask if you are that stupid.”
I looked into his companion’s icy eyes and quickly framed another question.
“The first record I can find of a Sam Nero is about four decades ago when a licence to operate as a private detective was granted. Would that be you?”
“Maybe.”
“The age of the applicant is stated as being forty-two.”
“Sounds a responsible sort of age to me. What say you Sugar?”
They exchanged a look of such naked trust that for a second even I felt de trop. But I pressed on.
“But that can’t be you, Mister Nero. If it was you would be in your eighties by now. And you don’t look like an eighty-year-old man to me.”
“Neither he does.” The blonde seemed to be laughing at me, and I didn’t like the sensation one little bit.
I made my voice hard and assertive.

“In my book, Mister Nero, that makes you an impostor. I’m sure the authorities would love to look at my findings and throw you into jail for a good long time.” I leaned forward and slapped the palms of my hands on the table hard enough to sting.
Nero laughed.
“Think again, sweetheart. The authorities as you so sweetly call them know precisely who I am. Next question.”
He took a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up.
I coughed.
“I do not care for tobacco smoke,” I said icily.
Nero sneered at me.
“Door’s over there. Make sure it doesn’t hit your ass on the way out.”
I was incensed, but some vestige of intelligence stopped me leaving. This was my only chance to persuade an icon of old-school cops and robbers violence onto my show so I swallowed my bile and tried for a forgiving smile. The obnoxious Sugar shrugged her shoulders and her rather overblown assets jiggled.
“I think the lady has decided to forgive you.”
He grinned lazily, and twitched a mobile eyebrow, sending my hormone count soaring yet again. This man was hot, hot and dangerous. I needed him to boost my flagging ratings, and maybe for the odd other job or two.

I set myself to charm him, sipping my coffee and running my tongue along my lower lip. He watched with what I can only describe as detached amusement, and I felt my anger begin to rise up once more.

“What’s with you Nero?” I snapped. “You come here sneering, and looking down your nose at me…”
He leaned back and crossed his long long legs.
“Wasn’t me asked for this meet. Suck it up.”
I drew in a breath and tried for calm.
“Fair point Mister Nero. I asked to meet you.”
The blonde bombshell laughed huskily.
“I think the lady is after your body, Sam.”
“Why’d that be Sugar?”
“As if you didn’t know, big boy.”
“And as if you didn’t know old Sam’s heart is yours alone.”

It seemed to me as if they had completely forgotten my existence and I rapped my nails against the crazed china of my mug.
“I’m still here,” I grated.
“Why so you are.” Nero looked me up and down a bit more, and the silent insult in his stare had the blood rushing to my face and I blushed for possibly the first time in two decades.
“Why are you being like this? You have been chauvinistic, unpleasant and downright rude. Why? What have I ever done to you?”
He got up from his seat and looked down at me with a most peculiar expression on his face.
“It’s not always about you. I am what I am. How I was made…”
Then he was gone, and the woman went with him. Two entities with one shadow…

©️jj 2018

Read Sam Nero and the Case of the Disappearing Daddy or check out the book to see Sam Nero in action and meet the other strange and dangerous denizens of The Last City.

The pop-up stall in the market sold the most realistic garden gnomes anyone had ever seen. By lunchtime the stall had sold out and the sellers left town.

All was well until the next full moon.

When…

Gardens were full of little men carousing, and fornicating, and using vile language. Not a cat in the district was safe from missiles and abuse and woe betide any dog who had pissed on a garden ornament.

By sunrise the gnomes had gone, leaving carnage in their wake. And one abusive daub on the wall of the vicarage.

‘Fuc yu’, it read

©️jj 2019