Q1: If you had to choose would you be a kangaroo or a koala and why?

Well, while the rigors (comparative, no snow) of an Australian winter lean me towards being a fluff ball in a tree, I think a kangaroo or wallaby would be better. Wallabies are cuter and smaller and fluffier versions of kangaroos. I also did a stint cleaning koala cages in a zoo once, so I am a bit less keen on koalas after that experience!

Q2: Why is time travel like playing with a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff?

Because look how flexible we have imagined time can be! We can travel backwards by excavating things from thousands of years ago, and hold in our hands a letter written by a soldier missing things from home. We can open a book and travel forward, into the myriad pathways of scifi. We can do both of these things in a moment of time, today. Extraordinary, really.

Q3: Aussie slang is known for its odd contractions – which is your favourite and why?

I think my favourite is yous. As in ‘see yous later, yous lot’. It is a word that aggravates people with a sense of grammar, and I tend to use it a lot. More a made up word, so a proper contraction – sarvo. As in ‘this afternoon’ – ‘Seez ya sarvo.’ Or, ‘I will see you this afternoon’.

Cindy Tomamichel is a writer of action adventure novels, some with a touch of romance. The heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way.

Her first book Druid’s Portal: The First Journey– time travel romance in Roman Britain near Hadrian’s Wall has been published with Soul Mate publishing. She also has a number of short stories and poems published in various anthologies.

You can find Druid’s Portal: The First Journey on Amazon.

Her next book, Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey is in progress. An action adventure time travel with a touch of romance set in Roman Britain.

Connect with Cindy on her website or on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads or Google+.

Amazon Author page: https://amazon.com/author/cindytomamichel

THE NIGHT BUS

The midnight bus across town. Nobody’s idea of fun. But beggars can’t be choosers and without her job Louise would have been a literal beggar as well as a metaphorical one. Accordingly, five nights a week found her crouched in a corner of the upper deck making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

Fridays were the worst. At the end of the week it was all an exhausted Louise could do to endure the scent of vomit and the sting of routine abuse from drunks and tired whores.

This particular Friday, the bus was full to groaning and she was squashed in next to a huge woman with pendulous breasts and galloping halitosis. Five youths in hoodies erupted up the stairs brandishing knives. Louise’s companion screamed before throwing herself to the ground and rolling around as if in a fit. The would-be steamers stared
“Woss wrong wiv ‘er?”
One stepped in for a closer look and the jerking woman set her teeth in his calf, gnawing on him as if he were a chicken drumstick. He screamed and dropped his knife, too shocked to even kick out at her. His mates stared round-eyed.
“I’d watch that if I was you,” Louise ventured. “She probably has rabies.”
They turned and ran, falling over each other in their haste to be elsewhere.

The fat woman sat up and winked at Louise.
“Well done, love. I usually has to bite at least two…”

© jane Jago 2017

Wren is the heroine of

‘Reality Sandwich‘

I’m twenty years old and live with my parents and my brother Sparrow (though he hates his name and insists we call him Fox). There’s about 400 people in our village in the forest. Like any other young woman of my age, I like clothes. I love it when the scavengers return from an expedition and bring back some clothes they’ve found. I’m a librarian, like my dad. I love books and I love to read too. But I’m adventurous too. Mum says I’m like she was at my age. Full of curiosity. I want to know everything about everything. Dad says it’ll be the death of me.

Q1 What is your favourite meal?

Probably anything that isn’t rabbit stew. There’s not much variety in the food we eat – The Event and its aftermath means that there’s not much to choose from. I’ve read about marvellous places called supermarkets, where you could find hundreds of different things to eat, but they haven’t existed for decades. My dad says he’s seen a few when he’s been out with the scavengers, but they’ve been in ruins and any food that was there is long gone. But rabbits are everywhere in the forest, so we won’t die of hunger, just culinary boredom.

Q2 What do you love most about your life?

I love the fact that we’re alive. The Event destroyed most of humanity. We’re the lucky ones. Well, my great-great grandparents were. They survived. That’s the only reason I’m here. It must have been so tough for them. But now we have quite a good life. I mean, we don’t have electricity, or sanitation – what they used to call modern technology is a thing of the past – but we’re happy enough. We have food, shelter, and books. If we didn’t have books I think I’d go crazy. I suppose the best thing about my life is the library. I’m a librarian and can read a book whenever I want.

Q3 If you could have one wish granted what would it be?

I want to know what’s inside the building just outside the forest. We call it The Complex. My parents won’t let us go there – they say it’s radioactive – but my brother Fox and I, we’ve seen strange bots going in and out of the buildings. I don’t know what they do in there, but they wouldn’t go in there just for the fun of it, would they? Fox reckons they’re maintenance bots. I think there’s something strange about that place. My wish would be to go inside the complex and see what’s going on.

Find out more about Wren, her world and her creator, Greg Krojac.

The Hysteria Was Real – by LN Denison

30 October, 1938: the day of the CBS radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’

It’d just turned 10:00pm, eastern time. The streets of Grover’s Mill were filled with people panicking about a series of news bulletins that’d been broadcasted between the times of 8 and 9pm, warning of alien attacks all over the world. I took no stock in the ramblings of mad men. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t been warned, that what they’d been listening to was a work of fiction, nothing else. They’d been told countless times during the broadcast that it wasn’t real, but still they chose to create mass hysteria as they ran through the streets, waving their arms frantically in the air.

I found the whole scene highly amusing and tried to stifle a laugh as I walked by. I mean, how gullible can some people be to believe in symbiont creatures from Mars, coming to our little planet and trying to occupy us. It was a ridiculous notion: one I took great pleasure in dismissing straight away. It didn’t matter how many times I heard it, I still didn’t believe that there was life on Mars. With that thought in mind, I carried on with my nightly constitutional, removing my head from the game for a few moments. I took in the same surroundings, as I did every night.  Maybe, in hindsight, it wasn’t such a good idea going through the cemetery that night, not with so many crazies’ out and about. The moon cast eerie shadows over the gravestones, which gave me goose bumps, and forced me to hurry along, as the bitter night chill snapped at my face.

I climbed through the hole in the wall the other side of the cemetery, and headed in the direction of home, almost going full circle. The sky was clear, to the point of seeing every constellation in all their glory, shining down on me as I stared up at Ursa Major. My concentration was suddenly broken, as I spied a shooting star in the corner of my eye. I hadn’t seen one in a while, and this one was a doozy; larger than life and full-on. I watched, and waited for it to disintegrate into the atmosphere, but for some strange reason, it carried on burning, hurtling towards the Earth’s surface. That’s no shooting star. I needed to follow it. Could it be that I was wrong all along, and there was life beyond planet Earth? I let my curiosity lead the way as I followed the descending streak.

My heart began to race, as I kept an eye on what appeared to be a fiery, egg-shaped vessel heading towards Grover’s Mill. With wide-eyed terror, I realised that the object was heading straight for my home, no one else’s, just mine. I ran as fast as I could, keeping my eyes locked on the trajectory of the ball of fire. I suddenly realised that all the kooks and crazies, weren’t so kooky and crazy as I first thought. And what was supposed to have been a radio play, read by a twenty-one-year-old actor by the name of Orson Wells, was actually a reality. Orson Well was not a name that I was familiar with, but he had managed to convince the majority of Grover’s Mill, that the threat was real, and now, I too was beginning to believe that Alien lifeforms existed.

I rounded the corner, and watched as the ball of flame made its final, speedy descent, which was then followed by a crashing, shattering sound; then a billow of smoke. I knew that whatever it’d hit was now a pile of rubble, how could it not be otherwise? I turned into my street, only to have my worst fears realised. I placed my hand over my mouth in horror as I looked upon the object, and the pile of rubble where my home once stood.

A few minutes passed, more people had gathered around the object, which on looking at it, was a diameter of around 100 square feet. Then suddenly, the top of the vast object began to unscrew; groaning and scraping as it slowly twisted open. With a clang, the top fell to the ground, followed by a plume of steam. The silence from the crowd was deafening. We all waited for something else to happen, and then it did. What looked like a periscope, slowly ascended from the steam, swivelling its head this way and that. It appeared to be scoping the its surroundings, scoping us. A strange glow started to manifest as the machine rose higher, vacating its holding cell, letting out a piercing, deafening screech, which began to cause me a great deal of discomfort, perforating my ear drums, and everyone else’s around me. Was this to be our end? I was beginning to think so.

The Alien machine had completely detached from the belly of the beast, and began to buzz into action. Laser beams shooting in all directions, vaporising anybody that stood in its way, indiscriminately, mercilessly. Was I next? I was going to make sure that I wasn’t. I started to run back towards the cemetery, but it would seem that I wasn’t fast enough, as I felt the Alien being’s ray start eating into my skin, disintegrating my flesh and bones. Suddenly, I felt nothing, the burning had stopped, for some reason I’d been spared from the ray’s penetrating beam, but I didn’t know why. I truly thought I was a goner, and then I woke up, startled by the sound of Orson Wells voice. The broadcast of the War of the Worlds had only just begun.

You can find LN Denison’s Books  HERE and catch up with her on Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter.

You can also read the interview she did for us.

Jazatar Baldrik meets Darek Kemp

The dream came as it did every night…

Something moving, lifting him, an arm under his shoulder. A voice – his brother’s voice – Avilon Revid.

“Let’s get you out of here.”

….. waking was always sudden and never easy.

A Fortune’s Fools’ story by E.M. Swift-Hook.

Featuring Darek Kemp from Earth No. 105,

courtesy of Ame Terra.

From ‘Moristoun’ by Kevin McAllion

The journey from Buchan’s desk to the toilet at the far corner of his office was only about 10 metres but it felt far further as he dragged McSorely’s body across the floor. The frame of his apprentice was deceptive as McSorely’s suit did a good job of concealing the spare tyre he had been cultivating with comfort food and Cliftonhill pies since Sarah’s departure from the kitchen had freed him from the constraints of healthy eating. Over 13 stone was packed into his five foot 10 inches and as Buchan hauled McSorely into the toilets, he yearned for a return to the days when the development of a Rubenesque figure was limited to wealthy gourmands. After laying McSorely down on the toilet floor, he made a mental note to invest in a wheelbarrow before Farqhuar added another Q99 to his workload. It was only a matter of time before the burden of obesity pushed a more dedicated aficionado of square sausage, caramel wafers and takeaway pizzas towards suicide and Buchan realised he would need some assistance if taking them through the portal was the only way to avoid permanent passage to Moristoun by more conventional means. Such cases were admittedly rare but the sight of McSorely slumped across the toilet floor provided all the motivation Buchan needed to prepare for all eventualities. Although the most physically demanding aspect of taking his passenger to Moristoun was now over, Buchan was still faced with the challenge of fitting both himself and McSorely into the cubicle marked with the sign “Out of Order”. One final heave was required to hoist McSorely on to the toilet seat and Buchan made sure his new employee was balanced enough to avoid a headlong fall before turning round to lock the cubicle door. He then pressed down on the flush and waited for the required 30 seconds as they were spirited away to Moristoun’s shores.

When Buchan opened the cubicle door, he was relieved to find Farqhuar waiting for him in the toilet attached to his Council office. Any hope his superior would lend a helping hand in transporting McSorely soon vanished, though, as Farqhuar insisted such an act of manual labour was beneath him and limited his contribution to holding the toilet door open as Buchan dragged the new arrival into the office. This soured Buchan’s mood somewhat and ensured he failed to fully appreciate some rare words of praise from Farqhuar after all three figures had taken the weight off their feet. “I doff my cap to you, Buchan,” he said. “I really didn’t fancy your chances with this particular Q99 but, if my eyes do not mistake me, that is most definitely the pathetic figure of James Patrick McSorely slumped in my leather armchair. I take it you have the required paperwork to justify his presence here?”

Read our short interview with Kevin, follow news of the book on Twitter: @Moristoun, check out the cool trailer  – or just buy the book!

We caught up with Kevin McAllion, author of ‘Moristoun’ and asked him a few probing questions.

Q1. Haggis or porridge and why?

The idea of eating haggis pretty much terrified me when I was younger. When it comes to a disturbing list of ingredients, haggis can only be matched by the rider for Black Sabbath’s infamous 1983 tour. But haggis has won me over as I’ve grown older and the prospect of eating offal cooked inside the lining of a sheep’s stomach now fills me with excitement rather than dread. I’m also a big fan of porridge, mainly as a 43 pence bag of oats from Lidl can keep me fed at breakfast time for at least a couple of weeks, an alluring idea for any penny-pinching Scotsman. But when tasked with picking between these two national dishes, I would have to plump for haggis as it also contains oatmeal, so you technically get to eat some porridge at the same time.

Q2. What DO Scotsmen wear under a kilt?

Many people will tell you that a true Scotsman wears nothing under his kilt but that’s a load of bollocks. Any self-respecting Scot will have a bottle of Irn-Bru, a fish supper and a Proclaimers CD safely stored away under their kilt in case of emergencies.

Q3. If you were sent to your own island what would be your one essential item and one luxury and why?

My essential item would be a monkey hypnotist, something I rarely leave home without. The hypnotist could fool all the simians on the island into thinking I was their God, handing me an army of compliant and fearful apes. I could then live a life of luxury as my underlings deliver a steady supply of food and provide constant entertainment. The hypnotist can even get the monkeys to create a statue of their divine leader, leaving a permanent reminder of my glorious reign as ruler of the isle before I’m eventually overthrown and beaten to a bloody pulp by either a cabal of revolutionary macaques or a jealous hypnotist.

In anticipation for this eventuality, I’d pick all of the Planet of the Apes movies and a portable DVD player powered by solar energy as my luxury item so I can study simian military manoeuvres and psychology in depth then draw up a watertight counter-revolutionary plan.

You can find out more about Kevin on his Website, follow him on Twitter @kevmcallion or find him on Facebook.

A HOME TO DIE FOR

I’d like to show you my humble home.

I’m sure you notice the gorgeous redwood floors, Those are actually 80 year old oak floors that I stained with human blood. The wood was dry enough to soak up the blood nicely and then I just had to varnish them.

I can see from your expression that you are amazed, and I do admit it was a lot of work but well worth it.

I also made the couch myself, I had to learn to make my own leather. Human flesh is tough to work with but after a few botched skins I learned to make it. And I think that handcrafted charm gives the room just the right touch.

Have a seat, the padding is made out of human hair and it is amazingly comfortable.

I see you’re shaking your head no. I guess with your hands tied behind your back it would be hard to sit comfortably.

Coming into the kitchen, I’d like to point out the grout work. Those flakes you see in the grout I made myself out of human bones. It’s a tough process grinding up a person’s bones to a uniform small size but in the end, the satisfaction of creating a truly unique floor is well worth it.

As an added bonus, what I couldn’t use on the floor makes a great soil enhancer. You wouldn’t believe the size of the tomatoes I grew in the soil where I dumped the left over bone dust.

Of course I have to use a gentle soap to keep it looking nice.

I make my own. Human fat makes such a wonderful soap.

On the table there you can see my soup bowl collection. I could have gone out and bought a set, but that seemed too impersonal. I hand crafted each one out of human skulls, It’s quite a process sanding and polishing the skulls, but I feel the food tastes so much better out of a bowl I made myself than out of some cheap bowl made in China.

Although the raw materials from one did originally come from China, I think that’s where she was from anyway.

Of course the set wouldn’t be complete without the silverware. I polished and shaped each handle from the hand bones of the owner of the skull, it’s a small detail but I believe it’s the attention to the little things that lift good design into a work of art.

Wouldn’t you agree?

I can see by your wide eyed stare that you are trying to take it all in, I’ll take that as a compliment.

In keeping with the theme, if you notice the frame of the chalkboard there, the flakes of texture are the left over fingernails, I dipped them in fingernail polish before gluing them on, which I think is a nice touch.

I do have to make a small confession here, I cheated on the glue. At first I tried to make my own glue from finger and toenails but I found that was a lot tougher than you’d think.

That wasn’t the only thing that didn’t go exactly as planned, of course.

I wanted to replace the plumbing with bones. I figured cleaning out the marrow from the bones would make a nice replacement for pipes, but I never managed to get them to form a watertight seal. I just ended up making a big mess.

I can see the thought of a mess terrifies you, but don’t worry it wasn’t that bad. Nothing a good mopping couldn’t take care of.

I must apologize, all this talking has left me a little thirsty, do you mind if I pour myself some wine. I’d offer you some but that would involve taking the gag out of your mouth.

Oh, do you like my Bota Bag for the wine. It’s made from the human stomach. It doesn’t really hold enough to be practical but since I’m not a heavy drinker I can sacrifice a little convenience for style. And I think the added layer of formality enhances the flavor.

I can see from your look you’re nervous about why I am showing you all this. Let me put your mind at rest I’m not trying to sell you this house.

After all the work I put into personalizing it, I don’t think I could ever sell it.

No, I wanted you to see the loving care I put into remodeling this house to let you know I’ll take the same care with you.

I wish it could be different, but I really have to redecorate my home office.

A HOME TO DIE FOR was originally published in Alienskin Magazine. It is available for free with another short story, THE ADJUSTER, at Smashwords.

Darrell B. Nelson is a former Securities Broker and Insurance Agent who has decided to use the total meltdown of his former industry, and the total destruction of any illusions of personal financial security the meltdown caused, as an opportunity to pursue a writing career.

When he started writing he knew in the future his works would be of great importance, as time travellers arrived and started watching his every move. Or, maybe they were cats, wondering if he would pet them and rub their ears. Time Travelers have whiskers and like to curl up in your lap, right?

In his free time, he likes to hang out on Facebook, marvelling at how far we’ve come since the time of the Egyptians who would worship cats and write on walls.