‘Balance’ by Cindy Tomamichel is one of the stories in It Takes A Village, an optimistic anthology speculating about the meaning of care.

The domes glowed pearly white and pristine in the distance. From the wasteland outside the domes they looked like paradise. Inside people lived clean, ate clean. For a price. I could hear my Grandpa saying. He had a lot to say about the domes and the people who lived in them. More than I wanted to hear. I squinted through the brown haze. It looked like they were building an extension. Swarms of bots roved the surface, placing globs of the solar energy plastic roof in a mosaic that set hard and protective.
I grubbed up another twisted carrot and checked on my little sister. She had rickets, so we let her be in the sun as long as we could, between the cyborg surveys, but the air brought on her asthma. I’d had a few years when we still had respirators, but the tech had broken down. I hacked and spat, noticing more blood this time.
“Come on, sweetheart.” Ruthie raised her arms to be picked up, and I swung her onto my back. It was nearly noon and would take till dinnertime to get home. We walked through the sparse forest, the trees sick and dying. But there were still a few butterflies, so I made up a silly song to make her laugh. The path twisted in amongst the trees, in under a few wire arrangements that my grandfather thought protected us from surveillance. I didn’t have the heart to tell him they probably knew where we were, they just didn’t care.
I had been a baby when the internet started. It’s hard to think about how much people used it. I grew up with a smart phone in my hand, always online, chatting with friends. Playing games… Lord that seems a long time ago. I shifted Ruthie on my shoulders and gave her the carrot to gnaw on. Games. I’d heard someone say the phones had more computing power than the computers they used to send a rocket to the moon. We played games when we could have travelled the stars.
It was getting dark by the time I reached the shack, and Ruthie drooped on my shoulders. I put her down near the stream, and she squeaked when I put her dirty feet into the cold water. Not for drinking, but washing was probably ok still. I glanced up the hill. The shack blended into the hillside, the timbers built into the stone wall rotting with the damp.
“Watcha thinking about, Moses?” Ruthie asked.
“The before time, when I was your age.”
“Bet it was better. I could have had a calculator instead of doing my sums with a stick in the dirt.” She coughed and wiped a drop of blood off her lips.
I bent down, grabbing her hand. “You been bleeding when you cough?”
“Yeah. But maths keeps my mind off it.” She gazed at me, her light blue eyes bright in a scrawny face. “I worked out the circumference of the earth today.”
“Don’t tell Dad.”
“I know.” She sighed a very grownup sigh for such a little girl, and I had to hide a smile. “But even Galileo knew the Earth was round.”

A chat with Cindy Tomamichel

(1) What do you feel is the key message of your story and why is that an important thing to consider?

The key message in my story ‘Balance’ is that the things you fear may not be what they seem. Is a fear of AI realistic? Yes. Is it therefore a true fear? You won’t know until you put aside your fear and find out. Doing so may risk everything you care about – your family, even your life. But it may also be the best thing you’ve ever done.
The world is full of conspiracy theories, fear mongering and online hatred. I wanted to investigate one such fear – that of AI. It also thinks about what it is to be human- in all our failures and triumphs.
So that was the idea, but it also has a strong theme of family. Moses, the teenage boy main character, cares and works hard for his family and will do anything to protect them – even face his fears.

(2) Why did you want to contribute to this anthology in particular?

The theme is a great one and reverses a lot of what has been the common perception of who does the caretaking for a family. The unacknowledged burden of housework and family does not have to remain a burden based on gender. That care and compassion can wear many faces.
I had been struggling to write for a while, and I found inspiration for this anthology, developing a story that took some unexpected turns. It started from a prompt about AI from my local writing group, so it is fitting that a story about caring is a result of brainstorming with friends.

(3) What role do you see fiction serving in changing attitudes in society?

I have heard of a book described as a way to see that you share the same thoughts with the author, even if the author is far distant in time and space. That sense of connection can work in many ways. It can help someone not feel so alone, or it might change an opinion by living another’s experiences. Humans are at heart storytellers. To share experiences is to realise that not everyone is the same, and that can be a powerful thing.

About the author:
Cindy Tomamichel is a multi-genre writer. Escape the everyday with the time travel action adventure series Druid’s Portal, science fiction / fantasy and romance short story collections. Discover worlds where the heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way. You can find her on her website and sign up for her newsletter.

Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…

Brenda slapped Oisin’s little green hat. “What the frag is poteen?”
His smile was even more foolish than usual. “Tis bathtub whiskey ma’am.”
“Bathtub whiskey?”
“Home distilled. So it is.”
He grabbed another deep slurp before anyone else got chance. Staring at the sky though half-closed eyes he began to sing.
“Oh, Danny boy, the pipes…
What happened next had even Big Brenda clapping her hands over her eyes. The sight of a naked leprechaun, capering around the sundial and playing a loud tune on his fiddly-diddly, isn’t something you easily forget.
No matter how hard you try.

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

affrection (noun) – the fondness a male feels for his partner while his penis is turgid

chocoalte (noun) – high caused by the overconsumption of Cadbury Flake

defract (verb) – not to reflect

ehter (noun) – one who believes a kebab is the cure for all evils and later loses same kebab in the gutter someplace 

friedns (noun) – crispy bits of chip and batter from the bottom of a deep frier

frisustrate (verb) – to cook bacon until it resembles roof slates

gassropper (noun) – smaller relative of the praying mantis that lives on the smell of farts

lifst (adverb) – of walking, to lift the feet very high and put them down gently as if creeping upstairs drunk

meman (noun) – northern expression indicating the speaker’s husband

osmat (noun) – prayer mat for antipodean use

pruitan (adjective) – of dress, spectacularly slutty

recongise (verb) – to throw dog toy again

reserach (noun) – little-known dialect spoken among the nomadic peoples who roam the western borders of Germany

sxe (verb) – to establish the gender of baby rats

topato (noun) – vegetable, not one of five a day, always served fried 

wehat (noun) – small headgear

zbeu (adjective) – having the texture of elderly porridge

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

Because life happens…

Exploring the mysteries of life through the versatile medium of limerick poetry.

Some say that life’s but a show
And you should take a bow ere you go
But it really is fine
To have your final line
In your will, so then they will all know!

E.M. Swift-Hook

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV takes time from his immensely important life to proffer profound advice to those who still struggle on the aspirational slopes of authorhood…

Dear People Who Read This,

This is Jacintha Farquhar and I’m the unfortunate mother of Moons – that’s the twonk who usually writes this blog thing for you and always signs himself Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV. He wrote a truly dreadful book once called “Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’ and peed himself with excitement (and I am not being metaphorical) when it rose to one million on the Amazon ‘in store’ sales listing. He’d just bought a copy I think.

Anyway, Moons isn’t writing his thing this week because he’s in bed with man flu. Which, now I come to think of it, is probably the manliest thing the miserable little squit has ever laidclaim to in his life. Be that as it may, I even offered to lend him my tablet so he didn’t have to go into that pokey stinking coal-hole he normally writes in and could do so in bed. But he turned me down saying his creative muse was mocking him or some such delirious crap. Honestly, there are days I wonder if they made a mistake at the hospital and I’ve had to bring up some other poor cow’s freak of an offspring. More likely it was that terrible school his sperm-donor insisted he went to. It was all cold showers, canings and stiff upper lips – and stiff other parts too, from what I could tell.

Sec. Bear with. Need a refill.

That’s better. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I’m supposed to be doing something about how to write. Moons gave me his notes, but I used them as a coaster and the ink’s gone smudgy with the advocaat. So, you lot will just have to put up with my thoughts instead. I mean, you read his shite week after week so you can’t be very discriminating. Fact is most of you won’t even notice it’s not Moons.

How To Write A Book

So you really want to know how to write a book?

S’easy. Pick up your frikking metaphorical pen and write the sucker. I remember that some poncey author or another was once asked how he wrote and the big festering gobshite replied ‘one word at a time’. Ha bloody ha ha! Who’s a clever asshole then?

But there is a grain of truth in. You can read enormous amounts of pretentious shite about courting muses, and engaging with your characters, and story arcs, and much other meaningless birdcrap. But as far as I can see that is about as likely to result in a bestseller as any of the puerile stratagems employed by my sad excuse for a son.

Basically, find a rattling good story and tell it. Sprinkle it with the most perverse sex you can imagine. Add a goodly dollop of blood and gore. And don’t forget the happy ever after.

Job done.

Consider this. The horrendous old bat Moons moons over (in a literary way) managed to churn out over 700 of her sickly tales in between interfering in the lives of anybody who would listen to her. By my reckoning, that means anybody should be able to knock out two or three a week. You will be wealthy by Christmas.

Or maybe not.  

Who knows? Who cares?

Coffee time now so you’re on your own. If you get really unlucky, Moons will be back next week.

Go on, piss off then. I’ve said all I’m going to say.

Jacintha Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound advice in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

‘The Quiet Revolution’ by Jane Jago, is one of the stories in It Takes A Village, an optimistic anthology speculating about the meaning of care.

The story came to be because I was considering the idea that heroes don’t necessarily wear shiny armour, or ride dragons into battle. Sometimes it is the poorest and most humble of folk whose quiet courage reaches into the hearts and minds of others and shows them a better way.

I bring you, then, a situation where gender is the defining factor in every avenue of life, with neither men nor women having any use for their opposite numbers except as breeding tools. What can possibly change such entrenched ideologies? What has the power to right such an imbalance. And how can hatred be overcome? You’ll have to read the whole thing to find out. Here’s a small taster to whet your appetite…

When human beings came here to start a brand-new home, they called the place Utopia. Which was taking hubris to a whole new level, even if the intention was pure.
Things went smoothly enough when the first settlers set themselves to build Utopian cities or to cultivate the virgin land. Working from dawn to dusk on a newly terraformed planet doesn’t leave too much time for factionalism and everyone was deemed to be of equal value. Maybe the spirit of sharing would even have lasted had not the final shipment of stevedores and manual labourers been drawn from Terran prison colonies where brutality was the norm. Sometime on their intergalactic journey, the convict labourers killed their jailers and when the transport landed their sole intention was to take the new planet for their own.
The beauty of Utopia was despoiled by greed and the lust for power, while running battles befouled the streets. Those who sought power fell into two camps: misogynistic men who called themselves ‘alpha males’ and considered women as no more than the vessels for their lusts; and misandristic women who saw no future unless men were subjugated and reduced to sperm providers or castrated as pets. Each camp boasted heavily armed militiamen and women whose sole function was to enforce the will of their leaders by whatever means they saw fit.
By the turn of the century, the two gender-based ideologies, who had more or less carved the planet up between them, became more and more entrenched in their beliefs and less and less likely to put aside their enmity for anything less than world domination.
It’s not surprising, then, that those people who lived outside the militia-controlled cities started hiding their children away. Sure, some hid them to drive up the profit when they ripened, but most just wanted to keep their little ones safe from the marauding militias.
While men and women fought each other for every blade of grass and every drop of water the Utopian beauty around them was going to hell in a handcart—until the quiet revolution happened and changed us all forever.

Jane Jago is an eccentric genre-hopping pensioner, who writes for the sheer enjoyment of the craft and gets in terrible trouble because of her attitude.

Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends. Life seems to be going well when…

Things were surprisingly quiet for a few days. By which I mean the pub was buzzing, but the bad guys were keeping a low profile. Our updated security included a set of panic buttons in strategic places, rather a lot of cameras, and some ordinary objects carefully modified for self defence. These reminded me of a certain weighted baseball bat with which Morgan disabled a woman who was about to shoot me dead. I didn’t know whether to smile or cry, so I put it to the back of my mind and got on with being busy.
Along with the electronic and inanimate additions we also acquired some impressive muscle. Four big lads, called Andrew, John, Pete, and Simeon, moved into the bothy and made themselves useful busing tables, washing glasses, and driving the big mop that deals with spills and accidental messes. I watched them carefully for a couple of days and was satisfied that they’d be an asset come any trouble, but until then they were content to blend in, and work hard.
After a particularly fractious Sunday lunch, when it seemed that every argumentative woman who wanted to see the manager, and every bratty, undisciplined toddler, had been squeezed together in our beer garden, I found the biggest of the boys, who I was almost sure was Simeon, sitting next to me at the big table in the private garden where we were having the staff scoff that signals pub closed until Monday evening. He grinned at me and applied himself to a vast plate of roast lamb. Judging him to be of the ilk that deals with the inner man before speaking, I ate my own meal and kept an eye on my twin daughters, who were inhaling lunch and twinkling at the assembled company. With his plate cleaned the young giant leaned back in his chair .
“Mrs Beckett,” his voice was almost unfeasibly deep.
“Joss please. I never quite know who Mrs Beckett is.”
He rewarded this sally with a chuckle before turning serious. “I bet you know exactly who she is. Just like I’d be willing to put a few bob on you and your man knowing precisely what goes on right across the business.”
“Rumbled. I just don’t like to make an issue of it.”
“Fair enough. But whatever the cause, this place runs like clockwork.”
“We try. Keep an overview and make sure everyone has a defined job.”
“And gets on with it. Which they do. I’m by way of being good friends with Morgan, so I was glad to pull this assignment. I wanted to see why she thinks so highly of you both.”
“And now?”
“Now I do see. And I’m bloody impressed. There’s a few fools around the company who think you and Mark are doing the dirty. I was never one of them, and now I see you and Ben together it becomes even more obvious that’s a crock of shit.”
“But?”
“But me and a couple of others believe that old chestnut is liable to raise its head again.”
I sighed. “I expect it will. But I hope Debs knows it’s a falsehood.”
“She does. And Ben?”
“He’s always known it for bullcrap.”
“So that only leaves a couple of impressionable idiots at Brown Brothers. I guess I need a word with Mark.”
“If you have a reason to be concerned, then you do.”
“I wouldn’t call it a reason as much as an itch in my head.”
“That’s the best reason of all. Talk to the man.”
“I will. I’ll call him in the morning. Him having a fixed dislike of being interrupted on a Sunday afternoon.”
Before I could think up a suitable response, an alarm sounded from the ice cream parlour. My companion and his mates were up as if they had been shot. The pelted across the grass and disappeared through the open back door of the building. Ben stood up and stretched. He offered me his arm.
“Shall we pop along and see what’s toward?” He sounded genial enough but there was a set line to his jaw and I knew he was keeping a tight rein on possible rage.
“That seems to me like a good idea.” Then I turned my attention to the twins. “Will Roz and Allie please stay here?”
They nodded. “We will.”
“Excellent people.”
Sian grinned at me. “Go in you two. The gruesomes will be fine with us.”
Roz and Allie turned identical versions of the stink eye on her allowing us to escape without further questioning.
Inside the ice cream parlour three youths were laying face down on the floor. Each one had his hands behind his head and a heavy booted foot in the middle of his back. Morgan stood with her hands on her hips, and the two middle aged women who worked with her leaned against the counter, appearing to be rather more amused than upset.
“What happened, Morg?” Ben asked.
“The last of the lunchtime crowd had spizzled off and we were just having a bit of a cleanup ahead of the afternoon mummies and brats. Carol was wiping finger marks off the window and she saw these characters running across the car park brandishing pick axe handles and trying to look hard. We pushed the panic button and the cavalry arrived in time to intercept them.”
“That’s good. But what about if our boys weren’t close?”
Morgan pulled an aerosol out of her pocket.
“Pepper spray. Courtesy of Dad. Who says he’ll bail me out if I need to use it.”
Unusually for me, I was at a loss for words. I knew I should disapprove, but I wasn’t sure what to say – especially as Morgan had calmly loaded shotguns for me when we were repelling an invasion of particularly unpleasant white supremacist thugs.
Ben rescued me. “I think me and Annie Oakley here will just pretend we never saw that.”
Morgan chuckled, but her voice when she spoke was diamond hard.
“I’d very much like to know what them three think they were up to.”
“Me too.” Ben sounded as accommodating as a hungry grizzly bear.

There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.

Because life can be interesting when you are a non-player character in an online video game…

The airship was moored to a platform just along the waterfront from where the real ships came in. It turned out to be a boat-shaped basket which could hold perhaps eight people if they stood close together. Above the basket was a bright red egg-shaped bubble, decorated with some kind of complex heraldry and attached to the basket by ropes. At the back, behind the basket was a large whirling device which Pew told her was called a propeller. Which made sense as it was this which propelled the airship along.
Pew and Glory both ran up the stairs to the top of the platform and jumped into the basket. Milla followed them more cautiously, wondering what would happen. It didn’t look very safe to her. Indeed, no sooner had she got in than the ground dropped away below them. Milla’s stomach felt as if it was still on the ground, but the rest of her was high in the air. She gripped the sides of the basket and closed her eyes, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and her stomach to rejoin the rest of her body.
When she finally managed to open her eyes, she saw an amazing sight. There, beneath her, were hills and fields and forests, rolling away. In all the time she had lived in Wrathburnt Sands she had imagined what other places the Visitors talked about might be like. Over the last few months she had pestered Pew with questions about the places he had visited and so she thought she had some idea of what to expect. But the reality was incredible. Her fear evaporated and she stared with awe and wonder at the world.
Then the ground below became stoney and bleak. There were massive wooden houses almost tall enough to touch the bottom of the ship and a group of giants waved their huge cudgels and snarled up at the passing air ship.
“They don’t seem very friendly,” Milla said. But Pew and Glory were bickering about something they called ‘stats’, throwing initials and numbers around fiercely and apparently oblivious to anything else. It was odd to think that they took this incredible journey so much for granted that they didn’t even look at the view.
The airship had begun following the course of a river and then suddenly Milla’s stomach dropped away again as the river thundered over a cliff and the airship plunged down with it. For a few giddy moments she thought it had lost it’s magic and was falling, but Pew and Glory didn’t even stop their argument, they both just grabbed the edge of the basket and carried on. Reassured, Milla looked down again and felt as if she could see to the very edge of the world, but a world that was now purple and brown. And very flat. This, she assumed, must be Seersucker Swamp.
Odd creatures like giant slugs and worms and other things with tentacles that Milla really didn’t want to know anything about, slithered in and out of the rusty looking pools which pocked the surface between close pressed tussocks of purple grass. There were occasional trees with trailing branches and uplifted roots, with the same purple foliage and grey trunks. These trees grew more frequent as the swamp progressed until the airship had to swoop to avoid it’s canopy. A pathway snaked through the swamp, marked by posts with skull shaped lanterns and the airship moved to follow it towards some kind of village which was built on stilts with walkways connecting the various buildings.

Log on to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook for the 20th Quest next week.

‘Wrathburnt Sands’ and ‘Return to Wrathburnt Sands’ were first published in Rise and Rescue: A GameLit Anthology and in Rise and Rescue Volume 2: Protect and Recover.

Though the biggers never see it, there is much going on in their own backyard where the ‘nomes make their home…

According to Granny, it all was Big Bigger’s fault, but Brenda tended towards blaming Chiggers and his bosom buddy Oisin…
What is clear, however, is when exactly it started.
Big was in trouble, again, and he was skulking in the rhododendrons with bottle clutched to the sweaty mound of his belly.
When his name was called from the back door, he heaved his ass off the ground and ran, leaving his half-empty bottle behind him.
Chiggers led the dash, but Oisin snatched the bottle out of his stubby fingers.
He put it to his mouth and groaned delightedly.
“Poteen.”

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

athanema (noun) – wheezing breath caused by running uphill when fat and unfit 

broing (verb) – the act of shyly suggesting a homosexual relationship 

depsite (noun) – place where ill-gotten gains are secreted

diea (noun)  – slightly wobbly locomotion caused by the ingestion of alcohol

feredom (verb) – of novels, the act of returning to the wild

infalt (verb) – to suck in air in preparation for giving somebody a right ear bashing

motger (noun) – small antipodean rodent that can be found in the holes in cheese

neote (adverb) – of speech weirdly hesitant and with an apologetic air

perguler (noun) – person paid to lie in court

rogjt (noun) – very hot chilli only eaten by the foolish or men at chucking out time on a Saturday night (yeah, okay, the foolish)

trud (noun) – very hard poo

upseide (adjective) – having the colour and texture of earwax

vitgun (noun) – peashooter loaded with vitamin pills

wjat (noun) – another term for a thingamajig

xplid (adjective) – pale green and about to vomit

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