A homeless man wandered the streets of Berlin, his hair was thinning and he wore three threadbare coats over each other, pushing his few possessions in a shopping cart. He shook his head and searched for something, his hands roaming through thin air as he became frustrated. A black sedan pulled up in front of him and four men in suits got out. Without a word they bundled the struggling man into the car and took off. They were never seen again.

In New York a young woman with a power suit and power hair made her way out of work, cutting a shortcut down an alley and plugging her headphones into her ears. A tall, bald man in a leather jacket approached her from behind, the sound of boots on gravel obscured by the tune. She hit the ground seconds later.

In London a mohawked musician slung a guitar onto his back and walked out of the bar he’d been playing in. He sung softly to himself and stopped when three beautiful women approached him. He gave them his most charming smile and the most stunning of them approached him. She leaned up to kiss him and broke his neck.

On the Stockholm leg of her tour a popular teen singer was gunned down in broad daylight. Security reports said she was shot by a crazed fan. The police never identified the killer.

A pair of children ran through the Beijing streets, scrambling and stumbling through a crowd. They tried to give away no angle of attack, to vanish into the crowd and hide behind people. They didn’t blend well enough.

A building that contained the boardroom of a fortune 500 company was bombed. The explosion took out several floors and cost thousands of innocent lives, including the company’s entire board. No clear motive was presented.

Only one thing was found in common on every scene. Two circles, one white with a red dagger inside it and one black with two intersecting triangles.

To those who didn’t understand, it seemed random, like a sudden burst of unreasonable violence in a world full of unreasonable violence. Dead men and women in a world of dead men and women. Senseless tragedy in a world of senseless tragedy.

To those who did understand, the answer was clear. The Seraph were falling, the Eldritch were rising, and the Legion and Lost were going to war.

It was harvest time. Magical potential was about to be discovered and for a few of those who would be caught in the crossfire there would be adventures, or tragedies. The rest, would be found by the wrong side and killed before they ever began to understand why.

Forty seconds either way changed everything for one.

From The Laughing Man by Robert J. Barlow.

Robert J Barlow is the author of the urban fantasy The Laughing Man.

Q1: If you had to choose would you live in the mountains or by the sea and why?

Q2: Which author do you admire most and why?

Q3: How much of you do you think is in your main character?

Robert James Barlow has spent his entire life telling stories. When it eventually occurred to him to start getting paid for it, he became an author. He writes sci-fi and fantasy, and has just completed his first novel, The Laughing Man. He currently lives in Brisbane, where he writes business profiles and speeches to support his three-a-week reading habit and sizable collection of geek paraphernalia.

When Anna had enthusiastically approved the house, even going so far as to purr when she saw the huge kitchen with its shiny red Aga, and Bonnie had given her seal of approval to the big rear garden with its tiny orchard, they moved Anna’s things in from the camper.

“You don’t have much stuff.”

“Got a bit more at Ted’s house. But not a lot. I’m not big on stuff.”

“Me neither, but all the women I’ve ever known have always wanted stuff.”

“Yeah. I can’t get my head around that. Plus, I never dared have stuff when mum was at home. She trashed it when she had a drink. By the time we got her into the care home, minimalism had become a habit. Now where can we put my china Bonnie?”

“There’s that cabinet in the hallway. I found it in one of the sheds I knocked down. It’d look well in there.”

“It would. Did you find much else?”

“Yeah. All the wood for the kitchen cabinetry, the big oak chair that’s also in the hallway, three very old Agas, and a lot of rats. The Agas were a lucky find, though, I exchanged them for the new one in the kitchen. Apparently there’s a booming market for reconditioned Agas of venerable years.”

“I love the one you have.”

“We have. The house is ours, nitwit.”

“Idiot. I haven’t been here ten minutes. You can’t go giving me half your house.”

“Can.”

She waved her arms in exasperation.

“Anyway is the Aga oil-fired.”

“Yeah. And fiendishly expensive to run.”

“I expect it is, but I can chip in there.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I do, Sam, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I’m not going to sponge on you.”

“I’m sure of that, but can you afford? I mean will you need to get a job? How long can you…”

He ran down and looked embarrassed. Anna laughed.

“Let’s go sit down. Then we can do the money thing.”

“I think we’d better.”

They got coffee and sat at the kitchen table.

“You first,” Anna said.

“Okay. I earn a thumping big salary. Plus my parents died in a road accident just before my marriage broke up. I was their only chick, so I inherited a lump. Enough to buy this place and do it up. Plus a bit to save for the future. You?”

“More complicated than your situation. I had a good job. There will be a fat pension when I’m fifty-five. Originally, I planned to run away when that happened, but in the end I didn’t have to wait that long. My mum had an aunt who the family didn’t talk about. She ran off to London and went on the stage. But then she found a better way to earn a living: wealthy men. My brother, Danny, and I thought it would be fun to get to know her, and Dad agreed. So we found her and she turned out to be a grand old girl, living in a gloomy great mansion flat in Chelsea with a lady companion. She welcomed us with open arms and we saw as much of her as we could. When Danny got a job in the smoke he wound up living with her and being totally spoilt by the lady companion. Incidentally, it was aunt Ruby who paid for my mother to be cared for in the home. She set up a trust fund that paid for mum’s care until she died, then the money went to the home so they could take on another dementia sufferer whose family was at the end of its tether. But I digress. When aunt Ruby died Danny inherited the flat, and I got a big chunk of money, which bought my house and paid to have an annexe built on for my dad to live in. Danny kept the flat, and did it up with his own hands, making a super-modern living space of it. He settled in happily, and lives with his partner in a state of connubial bliss – when they are in London that is. For some reason best known to themselves, those two bought me a lottery ticket – and the bloody thing only won the jackpot. I tried to share it with them, but they wouldn’t have it. I was firmly told to start enjoying life. The rest, as they say, is history.”

She stopped speaking and Sam pulled her onto his lap. “Does that mean you are a properly rich girl,” he teased.

“Oh yeah. I’m loaded. But you can’t exactly be on the breadline.”

“I ain’t. So aren’t we lucky.”

Then he cuddled her close.

“Is your dad still alive?”

“No. He died five years ago, just after mum. I don’t think he wanted to go on without her. I missed him a lot, but I was lucky enough to let the annexe to a young couple who are related to Mr Patel who runs the mini market around the corner from my house. They are the ones who are renting the whole house now and want to buy it. Maybe I’ll sell it to them.”

“You should. You won’t be needing it any more.”

“I hope I won’t. But you might get tired of me.”

“Not going to happen.”

She sat quietly in his arms for a few minutes then kissed his cheek.

“We need to go food shopping” she announced firmly. “Your store cupboard and your freezer are a disgrace. Frozen pizza. Ready meals. Not on my watch…”

He groaned.

“Do we have to?”

“Yup. And you get to push the trolley.”

“Okay. If you say so. But don’t I need to stay here with Bonnie?”

“No. Good try though. However, she has her bed and she’ll be fine.”

Sam tipped Anna off his lap and got up obligingly.

“Doesn’t that dog have any vices?” he asked plaintively.

“Umm. Only one. She chases cats. Especially cats on her patch.”

“Good. Because there is one bugger that comes in and shits on the flower beds.”

“There won’t be. She’ll see it off. Now. Supermarket.

Jane Jago

I grow old and youth has fled to foreign lands
Where the grass waves green and lush
A place where ideas and dreams were the same
And there was all the time in the world.

Lands where I once danced with feet as light as air
Till dawn broke we were drunk on ideas
Ambitions for which there was always time enough
And talk was cheap and flowed like a river of wine.

My ship is sailing now to strange new ports
Distant lands are faint sketched by an unknown creator
The brow is wrinkled now that checks a calendar
Of days and nights that have a limit and then no more.

Plans and ambitions are sharp focused by fear
Maybe today will be the last dawning, the last awakening of all
Time races past, carried off by tasks and errands that matter not
Blue veined hands clutch tight, snatching a moment before it too is gone.

The future narrowed by time past is unknown
It’s shape unfamiliar but its border prowled  by stalking fear
That death is there to greet you and laugh at wasted time
Youth’s  ambitions drifted away on a tide of lost hours and broken dreams.

Cindy Tomamichel

This is the opening of The Fated Sky which is the first part of Transgressor Trilogy and the first book in Fortunes Fools by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Caer sat on his pony looking at the dead body on the ground and wondering if he should send more scouts back towards the road, almost a day’s trek behind the caravan. This man had been alone, half-mad and no threat to the caravan, but others might even now be following the same path that they had taken from the road and for the same reason they had taken it: others who were scouts for brigands, bandits or bigger caravans than his own.

He spat in the dirt and narrowed his eyes as he looked past the file of wagons, ponies and people. It was late afternoon and his breath misted slightly in the air. The long cold winter was over, but in the barren Wastelands, spring was always slow to come. The air still carried a biting chill, even in the heat of the day and the distant peaks kept their mantle of snow and ice, tinged with crimson by the light of the huge red sun. Spring was having to claw its way free of winter’s greedy clutches so that Temsevar could bask in an all too brief season of warmth and growth.

The Wastelands were vast and magnificent. Here and there, standing proud and alone in the plain, like the lost sentinels of a forgotten age, were towering flat-topped mountains of rock, some so massive they were too big to cross in a day on foot. It was as though at some point in the distant past the ground had simply dropped away, leaving the high plateaux stranded above, like giant stepping stones, creating a two-tier terrain. If in the winter, these high grounds were the coldest and most exposed, in the spring they seemed always flushed with new vegetation before any managed to creep out of the more parched stones below.

Caer made his decision. With the work to be done, the four men he already had out scouting their back trail were all he could spare for the moment. He called to one of the mounted men who was riding with the caravan.

“Shevek, we are camping here.”

The man he spoke to wheeled his pony away and rode at a brisk pace towards the front of the train of wagons and animals, issuing sharp orders to make the night’s camp around the rocky debris beneath the steep cliff face of one of the high monoliths. Caer felt a familiar sense of satisfaction as those orders turned the straggling ranks of moving people, ponies and wagons into a brief flurry of chaos, before brightly coloured awnings, tents and pavilions sprung up from the chaos, like strange blossoms. Caer and his men rode through the quickly forming encampment, shouting instructions, solving problems, helping secure ropes and encouraging any who were slow to respond with the whips they carried curled in their belts.

In a remarkably short time, the caravan resembled a miniature town with streets and open spaces, stables, and pens. Fires were being kindled, children tending the animals as women kneaded dough and cut the vegetables for the evening meal. Toddlers screamed and got underfoot or rolled like puppies amongst the big, sharp-toothed dogs, which ignored them and begged for scraps with soulful eyes and then turned on each other snapping and snarling when an unsavoury morsel was cast their way.

Once the familiar routine was well established, Caer’s men guided their mounts towards the middle of the camp. The ponies’ short stubby ears, thick coats, wall-eyed glares and powerful necks, made them far from beautiful to look upon, but their split hooves could splay to grip surefooted even on snow and ice or could run fast on firmer ground. It was their broad backs which carried the burden of human traffic in both trade and war with a sturdy strength and agility which, for Caer, had a beauty all of its own.

The men who rode were as tough as their ponies. The older ones amongst them wore their hair long, stained red and tied back into a heavy braid, the greater length of the braid telling of ever greater age and experience. The youngest men had their hair shaved so close to the scalp as to seem bald. They were not even allowed to begin to grow a braid until they had served a year of apprenticeship with the caravans. All the men wore coats made from a brightly coloured heavy-felt cloth, over shirts with billowing sleeves, patterned skirted jerkins made from fleeced hides and plain felt britches which gathered loosely into calf-high boots. All were armed: every man wore a bandolier of wooden cartridge boxes over one shoulder and carried a crude pistol; one or two had a long-barrelled musket or rifled carbine, on their backs and each wore a long-bladed knife with an ornately carved hilt and whips hung looped at their belts.

These men were of the Zoukai, a brotherhood of warrior guardians, hiring themselves to protect the caravans which carried the trade of Temsevar. Named after the swift and ruthless, red-plumed predatory birds which hunted from the skies in these very wastes, they were bound by a strict code of honour which placed loyalty to their captain and their caravan above all else.

There were around thirty men in all, talking in loud boisterous voices, their breath misting in the cold air, laughing together at crude jokes, whilst passing wine-skins from hand to hand. They had gathered in front of the central pavilion, where a clearing gave some measure of status and privacy to the impressive tent of their employer the caravansi – the owner of the caravan, its wagons, its slaves and much of its cargo. When Caer finally rode into the clearing, his check of the camp completed, one of the Zoukai called out:

“Here, Captain.”

Catching the wineskin, Caer let the warm liquid cut the dust of the day from his throat, swilling out his mouth and spitting, only then swallowing a single mouthful before replacing the stopper and passing it on. Then he nudged his pony forwards and moved amongst his men, sending four more out to join the scouts and a handful of others to support the pickets who were already guarding the outskirts of the camp. He wanted to be extra careful today. Then he moved on, talking briefly to each of the others as he passed: a word of praise here, a question there, advice and the occasional sharp reprimand, all delivered with an easy authority.

A sudden stillness, as sharp on the senses as any loud sound, made Caer turn towards the pavilion, already knowing what to expect. The flap was being held up by a slave girl and a woman had just stepped out of the shady, incensed interior. It was her appearance that had silenced the horsemen and Caer understood why. Alexa the Fair they called her on the roads and the title was well deserved. Caer had lived twenty-five years and had never seen a woman he thought more beautiful. Her mere presence was enough to draw every male eye and deprive a man of his next breath.

She was tall, very tall for a woman and slender with it – long necked, long limbed and lithe, almost boyish with narrow hips and small breasts that barely lifted the sheer satiny substance of the emerald robe she wore. Beneath the magnificence of her dark auburn hair, her face with its clear skin and high cheek bones lent her an ageless beauty. Her violet-blue eyes swept imperiously over the Zoukai and when they came to rest on Caer, he felt the impact as if she had reached out and physically touched his skin.

E.M. Swift-Hook.

Manythanks to Robert Lee Beers for the illustration which is the cover of the Transgressor Trilogy.

Bonjour mes petites!

I am your practical pedagogue in the arcane art of literary logistics, Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV, Ivy to my friends and much acclaimed author of the science fantasy masterpiece ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’. Those necessary formalities having been removed, it behoves me to explain how the topic of today’s teaching entered the arena of my awareness.

Last week, you may recall, you learned from my loquacious lecture of literary lore which explored the concept of Voice – the unique belling of tone, taste and texture which each and every author brings to their work. But when I told Mumsie of my pedagogical piece de resistance, she stopped buttering her toast and reached over to wack me on the back of the hand with the flat side of her cutlery.

“You are a muppet, Moons,” she told me in her usual loving snarl. “Voice is not some literary fa-di-da subtle imponderable thing, it’s grammar!” And nothing would satisfy her except my writing to explain to you, my dear Reader Who Writes, that there is another use of ‘voice’ in the literary kingdom – the grammatical usage.

How to Start Writing a Book – Lesson 27: The Write Voice – II

There are, as I am confident you will already know, two grammatical voices. The active and the passive. This is, of course, as applied to verbs. Verbs? Did I hear somebody say the word verbs with a questioning note in their voice. Depart immediately for the naughty step and sit there considering your ignorance while I enlighten your classmates. And desist the whining. Verbs are, as if explanation were needed, doing words. In the sentence Adam chased Eric around the classroom. The verb is chased. Hands up all of those who knew that already. If you didn’t put your hand up one is ashamed of you.

But to our muttons. To quote some dry old grammarian or another: the passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is acted upon by the verb, rather than the subject of the sentence verbing.

Simple explanation:
John smacked Alec’s bottom. Active voice.
Alec’s bottom was smacked. Passive voice. And an intriguing question. Who did the smacking?

This is the wonder of the passive voice, it opens up multifarious imponderables for the reader’s eager speculation to latch onto and expand within the nemeton of his or her own imagination. Take this example and see how the mystery is enhanced and the sense of inevitable doom is heightened:

The final blow was dealt when the mighty Robot Lord was empowered. Falling to the ground, the Queen’s head was cleaved cleanly from her shapely shoulders. Her face was smashed beneath the boot of the victor. Fate was satiated and destiny was fulfilled.

From the point of view of the humble scrivener, the wiseacres out there will tear their sparse and greying locks and cry despairingly – use not the passive voice lest the house of cards you have constructed upon the shifting sands of your enfeebled imagination collapse in a whining heap of pips and smirking pictures. Well I am here to reassure you my little students. They speak of that which they wot not. A beautifully turned sentence is a beautifully turned sentence irrespective of whether the quick red fox jumps, or the lazy dog is jumped over.

Ignore the small minded and febrile who would collar your creativity in the bonds of grammatical usage or common phraseology.

Or look at it this way if you have eyes to see.
John Smith wrote a book. Meh. Blah. Boring.
This example of the authorly genus was made with skill and love by the fair hand of Johannes Smythe.
I rest my case.

Until next my fuzzy little bunnies.

May your voices be passive and your heroes erect.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

Adoring Fans can join my Facebook Group.

Regina Jackson Stinnett is the author of Refuge.

My name is Regina Jackson Stinnett though I prefer to be called Gina.
I'm a grandmother who loves to write, draw, paint, and sew. I run a small seamstress shop and love to create. I have a page on Facebook called 'Refuge' that you can go to and become a fan or check for updates or just give me a' like' if you wish. I also have a page called 'Ravenscraft Studios' also on Facebook.

I am old and my wrinkly old face
Tells tales of a life lived at pace
Each laugh and each tear
Has left its mark here
As has every slap and embrace

© jane jago 2018

It isn’t given to everybody to be able to identify the precise moment when they fall for the love of their life…

It was Saturday night and the drifter drove his beat-up truck into just one more trail-end town. Truth to tell he would have preferred somewhere livelier as he had money in his pocket, but he was tired and hungry. He parked the Dodge outside a tiny diner only to see the closed sign go up on the door as he swung to the ground. An old timer and his equally ancient dog stopped and looked at him.
“Food at Belle’s Bar over the street’s better than the slop they serve here. Can even get decent coffee if’n you don’t want beer with your meal.”
The drifter tipped his hat in a grateful salute and made his way to Belle’s.

The old timer hadn’t lied about the food or the coffee. By the time the stranger had got outside of a huge plate of savoury stew, a generous helping of peach pie, and three large mugs of steaming hot coffee he was feeling almost human. He decided he might as well stay for a beer while he chewed over his options.

His usual Saturday night agenda involved picking up some lonely woman in a bar and getting invited back to her place for the night. He got bed and breakfast and his lady hostess got what he reckoned to be some pretty hot sex. Something for everybody, and no offence taken if his advances were spurned. However, he had worked for the better part of two months helping a group of dirt farmers plough and weed and build fences, so he was bone weary and he had money enough to get his own room. He’d have that beer and think. He bellied up to the bar and the woman tender stopped polishing glasses.
“I get you, bro?”
“Bro?” the drifter was amused and that made him look closer at the woman. She was maybe thirty years old, and plain of face, but with an infectious grin and the light of intelligence in a pair of strange bi-coloured eyes. She chuckled.
“Yup. Bro. Saves me trying to learn the names of all the damned fools that come in here looking for beer and sympathy.”
He found himself laughing too, and for some reason that felt good.
“I’ll take a beer please, and one for yourself.”

Somehow or other, he was still by the bar when it was closing time. He watched the bartender take off her apron and hang it on the beer pumps before he spoke.
“Anywhere I can get a room in these parts?”
She looked at him for a long moment then seemed to come to a decision.
“I got a bed too big for one woman.”
The drifter felt his smile flow across his cheeks. This one, he thought, would be a real pleasure. He held out a hand and the woman came around the bar and put her own hand in his.
“Hi, pretty lady,” he said, “my name’s…”
She put the fingers of her free hand across his mouth.
“Let’s just keep it to bro, shall we? This time tomorrow you’ll be gone and your name’ll be no manner of good to me.”
He nodded his understanding and they walked out of the bar shoulder to shoulder.

It wasn’t early when she slid from his embrace and padded out to the kitchen. He watched her go, marvelling at how comfortable she was in her own nakedness and how much he had enjoyed that nakedness. He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He was still deep in thought when a voice floated in from the next room.
“I’m sorta making breakfast. What do you want on your toast?”
“A couple eggs would be good,” he responded without thinking.
Almost instantaneously a laughing face appeared in the doorway.
“Eggs bro? Sheesh. The sex wasn’t that good.”

And he knew at that moment that his fate lay in a one-horse trail-end town with this woman by his side.

©️ Jane Jago 2018