Dai Llewellyn was all but home when a gigantic figure loomed out of the darkness.
“Edbert, you spado, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“No. I’m trying to save your life.”
“Come again?”
Edbert’s laughter rumbled deep in his massive barrel of a chest.
“Julia has been in the kitchen. All day.”
“Julia? In the kitchen?”
“Yes. She has decided she should learn to cook.”
Dai digested that one and braced himself just in time not to buckle at the knees when Edbert clapped him on the shoulder.

Julia met him at the door with Canis and Lupo at her heels. He bent to kiss her and she dimpled demurely.
“Good day, love?” He asked with careful mildness.
She lifted a shoulder. “Same old. Same old.”
He grinned down into her face, noticing signs of frustration at the back of her bitter chocolate eyes but deeming it safest to say nothing.
“Go and wash your hands, supper is ready.”
Dai ambled off, and he could swear he felt his wife’s eyes boring into his back. This, he thought, could be about to get sticky.

He returned to the winter sitting room, to find the table set and have his nostrils assailed by a savoury aroma.
“Something smells good.”
She showed him her small, white teeth and he gave her his best grin in return.
“Sit,” she said firmly, before serving him with a bowl of thick soup and a hunk of buttered bread.
She brought her own smaller portion and sat opposite him watching as he dipped his spoon into the bowl. He tasted with some trepidation but the soup was fine. It wasn’t as delicately flavoured by any means as Cookie’s handiwork but it was hot and meaty and filling and he had no complaints. He ate his bowlful and cleaned out the bowl with the end of his bread. Julia eyed him narrowly, and he smiled into her eyes.
“What’s up love?”
“Nothing. Why do you think there is something the matter?”
She got up with what was perilously close to a flounce and whisked away his bowl and side plate.
“Cheesecake?” she asked.
“Yes please.”
Julia brought a glass stand to the table, on which rested a cake decorated with raspberry sauce.
“That looks nice.”
She frowned at him and put a knife into the confection, which promptly collapsed with its undercooked centre dripping over the edges of the serving dish.
Dai knew he had to act quickly to avert a potential meltdown, so he stuck his finger in the gooey mess and licked it.
“Yum, yum,” he said before taking another dollop of goo and spreading it on his wife’s face.
She opened her mouth to protest and he forestalled her by pulling her across the table and licking her face, to which treatment she responded with some enthusiasm.

A considerable time later she lay in his arms and he grinned down at her.
“You can cook anytime you like….”

©️ Jane Jago 2017

The Challenge: You have one week to write your own Dai and Julia flash. Invent a new character and write five hundred words or less set in Dai and Julia's world in Londinium or Viriconium. To get the feel of this Alternate History world, why not check out the free sample 'Look Inside' available for The First Dai and Julia Omnibus. You can reference any of our characters, of course.
 
Mail your entry to us here at workingtitleblogspot@gmail.com. All entries will be featured on the blog, with full credit of course. The best entry wins an ecopy of the Omnibus. Closing date 23 Dec 2017. Entries received after that date may not be included in the competition but may still be featured on this blog. Good luck.

An extract from 'Dying for a Home' from The First Dai and Julia Omnibus.

Less than an hour later Dai and Bryn were drinking in a downmarket dive across town from the Titus insulae. The Dog and Onion was a taberna in what constituted the ‘bad’ side of Viriconium. It shared a street with several nightclubs and most of the local residents could be assumed to be the kind who were not going to be earning their living by methods that were ethical even if they were occasionally legal.

Heads turned to see who had come in and one or two people quietly stood up and began making their way out. Dai was pleased to see that Bryn was getting well known in this community. His own status was probably too far beyond the horizon of these individuals’ social vision for them to know who he was by sight. Besides, as always when he was out doing groundwork, Dai had dressed down.

They took a seat by the main door and Bryn nodded to the woman who was serving behind the bar.

“She’s half of what counts for organised crime in this city. Aoife Broanan. She and her daughters.”

Aoife was in late middle age, overweight and with the hard eyed smile that Dai knew all too well from his years fighting crime in Londinium. She must have seen them arrive because once she had finished with the customer she was serving she came over and sat at their table. She glanced at Dai in brief assessing appreciation of his good looks, then fixed her attention on Bryn.

“Nice to see you SI Cartivel, what you doing here ruining my trade today?”

“Looking for someone, Aoife,” Bryn told her and showed her the three faces on his wristphone.

She pursed her lips and scowled. “Never seen them before. Sorry, can’t help you. But drinks on the house for all vigiles as usual.”

A moment later she was stalking back to the bar with a grace that seemed to belie her bulk.

“That went well,” Dai observed.

Bryn beamed back at him. “Better than I hoped.”

“I suppose it is good to have low expectations, then you are never disappointed. Shall we go?”

“What? And miss a free drink? We vigiles have a reputation to keep up Bard. Start turning down free drinks and next it’ll be no free sandwiches at lunchtime.”

Dai wondered what he was missing, but years of working with Bryn as his right hand had taught him to trust that there was something more here than he could see. So he sat back in his chair and smiled.

“You make a very good point. I hope the wine they have here is worth drinking.”

“The brandy is better. Local stuff.” Bryn’s eyes held high humour, but his face was straight. And Dai had to admit there was more than a touch of irony to think that this den of thieves was selling brandy produced by his own brother.

The drinks arrived, two shots of brandy in deep bellied glasses, brought over by Aoife in person and she set the tray down with a brief smile at Dai.

“Not seen you in here before, but if you come by again on your own sometime know you can have a warm welcome.”

“Now, Aoife, don’t go corrupting more of my vigiles,” Bryn chastised her. The woman turned her smile to embrace them both then winked and went back over to the bar.  The brandy was indeed recognisable as Llewellyn produce, albeit one of the cheaper distillations. Bryn drank his in a couple of quick swigs and got to his feet.

“We’ve not got all day, you know, need to at least look like we’re making an effort to find these people. The Submagistratus is not going to be a happy man if word gets to him we’ve been lazing around in here.”

Dai downed the rest of his drink in one and followed Bryn out of the taberna and back onto the streets of Viriconium.

“So what was that all about?” Dai asked as they were getting into their all-wheeler. Bryn grinned at him and reached into a pocket to pull out a beermat decorated on one side with a local brewery’s logo and flipped it round so Dai could see the other side where the printed image had been pulled back to reveal a neat hand-blocked address.

“I think your baby blues touched our Aoife’s heart, Bard.” Then he ducked to avoid Dai’s fist.

The Dai and Julia Mysteries are written by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook

Dear Reader Who Writes,

It always behoves me to assume that there will be at least one new reader of my inspirational course on ‘How to Write a Book’. So to that gentle reader I doff my hat and reveal that I am none other than Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV – author of the  brilliant and inventive novel, “Fatswhistle and Buchtooth”, a seminal work exploring the furthest conceptual reaches of science fiction and fantasy.

Today’s topic came to me a while ago and then I was distracted by my Muse offering other, more pressingly urgent dangleberries of wisdom and demanding that those took precedence. But then my focus was rehoned to the point by Mumsie walking into my writing cave, bearing her trademark pernod and gingerwine in a champagne flute with the inevitable green olive drifting in the murk. “Oh my god, Moons, this place stinks worse than a sumo wrestlers jock-strap!” I delicately pointed out that she was referring to my vetiver, bergamot and lemongrass aromatherapy oil, blended expressly to induce higher states of creativity.

Mummy was not, however, much impressed by this revelation. Instead she picked up my pristine first edition copy of Fatswhistle and Buchtooth and opened it, bending the spine and splattering droplets of her alcoholic creosote over it’s pages. Before I could recover from the horror of her deed, she had dropped the irreplaceably precious item back on my desk. “Don’t they say you can’t tell a book by the cover? Got it wrong with yours though. Shite inside and out.”

How to Write a Book – Lesson 14: The Write Cover.

A book cover needs to be a visual precise of your prose. It should capture and enrapture the roving eye as a reader runs through the rows of books either on a shelf in a shop or on a scrolling screen. Yours must be the cover that cries out as that putative reader sifts through stacks of books to find their next favourite fiction.

But how is this achieved? If you read the academic artists they will talk of proportions, the Golden Mean, of colour strengths and shades and other esoteric claptrap. It is actually stunningly simple – make it red.

Red is the most eye-catching colour as everyone knows. We are all primally preprogrammed to see red as a signal of something requiring our attention. Therefore, so long as your cover is red your book will be read.

A more sophisticated and subtle touch can be achieved by drawing on that other universal colour combination guaranteed to draw the eye – black and yellow. Our perceptions are precisely honed to hover our eyes on anything that resembles hornets or wasps. So, if red is not appropriate for your magnificent tome – black and yellow may well serve the same end.

Of course, to be sure, combine the two concepts.

Oh and put a naked lady on it, ideally headless.

Follow these infallible rules and you will create a cover that none will miss and your book will bound from shelves be those physical or metaphorical.

Until next time, au revoir mes petites poissons.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

Adoring Fans can join my Facebook Group.

Q1: What kind of institution would you most like to be named after you?

I think I’d like a library named after me. I think reading is the most important skill we can possibly learn. They tend to save that for Presidents and the like, though, so my hopes aren’t high!

Q2: Which common technology we have today do you consider to be the most harmful?

I guess that depends on your definition of “common technology.” If you mean “commonly understood,” then I’d have to say that nuclear tech still wins hands down. Nothing else yet that we know of could destroy everything in a single, horrible moment. Even superbugs have medicines usually. But if we’re talking about “commonly used technology,” I’m going for the cell phone. We have already raised an entire generation with social anxiety because they don’t know how to talk to each other in person, and online discourse encourages and rewards a lot of negative behaviours, such as rudeness, and “siloing,” in that we can choose to limit our discourse to people that we already agree with. I used to work as a taxi dispatcher, and it was a soul-killing job. People were horrible to me on the phone. But then I started riding around in my hubby’s taxi, and meeting the people face-to-face who were nasty to me, and they stopped being nasty, simply because putting a human face to a voice makes it harder to be cruel. But I hesitate to call any technology “harmful.” It’s really all in how it’s used. For example, writing is so much easier with the internet, and cell phones put all that at our fingertips any time we like. And nuclear power is the most effective power source we currently have; though I’d advise we consider putting the power plants in space and harvesting their energy from there so that we can minimize their damaging potential.

Q3: Would you rather have more intelligence or greater wisdom?

That’s a good question. I would have to side with greater wisdom. Intelligent people often lack common sense, and this can make them do stupid things simply because they think that, rationally, humans should work that way, when in reality humans aren’t often rational. Take economics, for instance. Economists theorize about logical systems that never work because people just don’t act that way.

Diane Morrison lives with her partners in Vernon, BC, where she was born and raised. She likes pickles and bluegrass, and hates talking about herself. An avid National Novel Writing Month participant and gaming geek, she is proudly Canadian and proudly LGBTQ. Under her pen name “Sable Aradia” she is a successful Pagan author, a musician, and a professional blogger. After a lifetime of putting the needs of her family first, she is striking out to become what she always wanted to be; a speculative fiction writer.
Follow her on Twitter or on her blog.

‘Londinium Falling’, one of fifteen stories, in Postcards from London by Tim Walker, is set in the year 64 when the young town suffered its first calamity – Boudicca’s Iceni army attacked a small Roman garrison and overran the town, massacring those within and burning down the buildings. This much is history. Tim’s story imagines that fateful day through the eyes of two world-weary legionaries, Marcellus and Septimus, who must fight for their lives against the screaming blue-painted, blood-thirsty warriors pouring over their flimsy earth bank defences…

The dockside was a mass of jostling and shouting townsfolk – sailors and slaves were carrying a variety of imperial objects aboard three galleys, and lesser traders filling a dozen or so small boats with people and supplies.

“Watch where you’re going!” A citizen carried on a sedan chair whacked Hywel on the head with a leather whip, causing him to stagger, as the jostling tide of humanity made their way to the row of waiting boats on the Quayside.

“Do not abuse my slave, sir!” Julia shouted above the din. “My husband is a legionary fighting for our safety.” She hugged her child tightly and glared at the fat, impassive Patrician.

Hywel turned and grinned his appreciation at his plucky mistress. “This way, my lady – Petronius the wine merchant has a boat. Your husband is a regular customer – he will help us. Let us make haste.” They battled through the anxious crowd as the distant sounds of battle grew increasingly louder.

Marcellus searched the crowd for Julia and Cato, but could not see them amongst the multitude of milling townsfolk and soldiers. He did see Governor Decianus and Centurion Maximius standing on the prow of a galley, the latter bellowing out orders for a defensive square. Legionaries with shields and weapons intact started to move towards the outer edges of the square and stand side-by-side, awaiting the barbarian onslaught.

Septimus grabbed Marcellus by the arm and pointed to a small boat already bobbing freely in the river. On it Julia and Cato were shouting and waving to them, their words snatched away by the breeze and hubbub. A broad smile cracked Marcellus’ cheeks as he waved back – relief was written on his blood-spattered face.

“Now we can fight barbarians,” he said, grinning at his friend. Septimus called his unit into a huddle and left them to go in search of a friendly sea captain. But no sooner was he gone than a boisterous optio commanded them to form up in the defensive wall. Marcellus duly complied with the rest of the unit, and they found themselves with members of the first cohort who had not yet faced the enemy – as they had been guarding the docks and both ends of the bridge.

“What’s it like?” one of them asked the cut, bleeding and battered unit.

Marcellus replied, “Imagine thousands of blue-painted screaming devils being chased through the Gates of Hades by the three-headed hound Cerberus. Look – here they come…!” He pointed with the tip of his gladius as the first group of warriors raced from the streets that fed into the open space before the docks, screaming and waving their bloody weapons. They stopped short of the wall of Roman shields and seemed to wait for a leader to come. They shouted obscenities and banged their swords, spears and axes against their round shields, and some threw the severed heads of soldiers at the Romans. The evacuation of non-combatants was swiftly completed and Maximius, from the safety of his galley, urged them to hold the line at all costs.

“General Paulinius is on his way!” Maximius shrieked, his words barely carrying above the racket to a doubtful Marcellus.

The warriors then quietened and parted to allow three chariots to enter from a side street. A tall proud woman with long flowing red hair and blue swirls on her cheeks, wearing a shining metal breastplate and clutching a spear, glared at the Roman Centurion. She urged her driver to ride between the two lines of opposing soldiers, periodically throwing heads over the Roman shield wall as she went. Marcellus gazed at her in awe, her authority over the seemingly wild rabble was undisputed. Some even bowed as she rode by. She lifted her spear again and screamed a command as her chariot reached the end of the line, and her faithful followers fell on the Roman shield wall with maddening ferocity.

Postcards from London is Tim Walker’s second collection of short stories and draws on the vivid history of the vibrant city of London where he has both worked and lived. Imagine Iron Age fishermen, open-mouthed to see Roman galleys rowed by slaves dropping anchor at their village on a river the Romans would name the Tamesis – at a place they would turn into the port and fortified town of Londinium.

This happened two thousand years ago and those Romans were the first of many men of vision who would come to shape the city we see today. London’s long and complex history almost defies imagination, but Tim has conjured citizens from many familiar eras, and some yet to be imagined.

And I can’t speak out your name,
it is lidded, sealed, locked away.
You’re here, you’re there.
How can I know just where you are
and find you everywhere?
Reminded every day,
knowing that a chance to forget
would be met, should it be taken,
with regret.
Drink the Lethe, I don’t care,
plenty of other rivers know our names.

P. F. Marún Oxenford

This is a story that hit me right between the eyes.

I always remember the first time I saw Mumsie crying. She was standing there with tears flowing from her eyes and holding a knife in her hand. At the time I was, mayhap, still a mere young teen but aware enough in the ways of the world to know that a weeping parent must mean an extreme of emotion and a knife gripped in one hand could only mean one thing. She was going to murder Daddy.

I ran into the room shrieking in my piping soprano voice (I was a late developer), begging her to put down the knife. She glared at me through red-rimmed eyes and stabbed the point into the chopping board.

“Oh for fuck’s sake Moons, I’m just chopping the sodding onions. Go and do something useful. Or do something – anything! Here!” and she grabbed a book from the shelf beside her and hurled it at me. The corner of the book hit me between the eyes causing a bruise that lasted several days and after I had redeemed it and found a solitary corner of the lounge, I read it.

So. My review.

This is a book written by a Frenchman who clearly should have been born English as it is the most translated book in the French language. Had he been born English it would have needed less translating.

The story is very sweet and cloying.

An airman crashes in the desert and for some unbeknownst reason meets a small boy who is suffering from delusions of grandeur. Instead of telling the clearly deranged infant to leave him alone, our hero befriends him and has to listen to a load of unbelievable tales about life on other planets.

There is a fox in it too.

I never understood the point of it.

Nil stars.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

Adoring Fans can join my Facebook Group.

Midwinter Miracle

I.

It was Midwinter.

Tegwyth reminded herself of that. A time for celebrating that the longest season had finally turned on its pivot and the warmth of summer, though short-lived, would come again. A time for gifts to be given and feasts to be eaten. In past years she had been given gifts by the owner of the caravan – her owner – trinkets to wear, bangles for her wrists and ankles, a fine scarf to protect her hair and pull over her face, keeping the dust from her nose and mouth, as it was thrown up by the caravan on the road. She had been pampered and cosseted, well treated and cared for. She had even believed she was loved.

Then last Midwinter she had become a gift.

She had seen it coming from the moment his true-born child had started speaking venom – one who would take no competition for her father’s affections. And he, in his turn, adored her and indulged her. Then the boy-child Tegwyth carried was born to live no more than a few gasping breaths, like all his sons before. She had failed him.

So at Midwinter she had been given away. A gift to seal a trading pledge with a merchant from across the ocean – a merchant from this city, from Keran. The merchant had taken her into his house and then taken almost all she cared about from her – even her hope. But when he threatened to take and sell the most precious thing in her life, she had risked everything and run away. It had been her Midwinter gift to herself.

So yes, Midwinter was about gifts and feasting, but sometimes, maybe, you had to take the gifts and help yourself to the food.

It sat on the table beside a smeared empty bowl with a lingering savoury smell of soup. Someone had bought it, eaten their fill and left half the loaf. Whoever it was did not want the bread and it had already been paid for, so it could not really be considered theft.

She had first seen it through the small window, as she stood, shivering, in the frozen white outside. Somebody had wiped away the condensation of the warmth within so they could look out, which had granted her a half-glimpse inside the tavern. That had been enough. Following a group of wealthy men and their whores through the briefly open door, then shrinking into the shadows to disguise the quality of her dress and the thin felt cloak that had been worn through in patches.

The loaf still sat unguarded. The boy clearing the tables did not seem to have noticed it yet. He was at the far side of the room, dodging between the patrons with their fine and fancy faces, plump from good eating. He ducked, avoiding a cuff aimed at his ear, as he picked up a jug someone had not yet deemed empty.

The loaf looked bigger than it had through the window. Tegwyth’s stomach called out to it and she was grateful for the sounds of raucous cheer. Without them, the man standing with his back to her, close by the fire, might have heard. He was tall and even from behind she could see the wider whiskers of his beard as they spread from his chin.

She knew who he was, of course, all of Keran had heard of him. They called him Drum. He was someone special here and his arrival the previous day had been talked of everywhere as she hunted for food. Not many sons of Temsevar, as she knew well, made their way to other worlds and even fewer of those who did ever came back as he did. Even here in Keran, where the twin domes of the spaceport humped high with snow dominated the city, it still seemed strange beyond imagining for Tegwyth. She struggled to believe that anyone could come from worlds beyond the stars.

Her eyes moved back to the loaf which seemed so far away – as if, it too, sat on another world. Beside it, cast aside onto the stool and partly pooling its fabric over the table, was an odd, sleeved garment that might be some kind of coat. It was the colour of freshly shed blood but had a sheen in its fabric which the flickering firelight caught and played with. She had seen the bearded man wearing it out in the snow on his way here. It must be warm to wear as he had needed no cloak. Even above the gripe of her stomach for food, she felt a sudden desire for the coat and the warmth it could give.

Midwinter Miracle is available as a free short if you request a copy in December or can be read online.

This is the place.
Here.
Once it was full.
Life.
People warmed, working.
Here.

This was the place.
There.
Empty and bleak.
Dead.
No one left, useless.
There.