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

The biggers must have had one hell of a party. Big came into the garden with both arms full of cardboard and bright paper. Stopping only to vomit in the herbaceous border he disappeared.
Little Frankie puzzled out the words on one of the discarded boxes.
“Fes Tiv Fa Ther Chris Mas G-Nome. Wassa G-Nome.”
“It’s a nome. The G is silent.”
Frankie stared incredulously at the oldest nome who sat on her toadstool knitting purple bedsocks.
“Is you Ranny then?”
Only the quickness of Big Bertha’s hamlike fists stopped ‘Ranny’ from hurling Frankie into the cement pond.

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

abotu (noun) – tribe of directionally challenged nomads

amind (noun) – the inability to think

beign (noun) – colour between beige and green often seen in the cardigans of off-duty geography teachers

bif (adjective) – descriptive of overweight men on gymnasium equipment

cotrive (verb) – cooperative toe sucking

doign (noun) – in architecture a big fat lump of stone serving no apparent purpose

ealier (comparative adjective) – of fish, longer

ewere (noun) – computer savvy half wolf

godness (noun) – pagan deity known for shortness of temper and thick ankles

irrlevent (adjective) – of authors motivated by angst and poverty

migth (noun) – biting insect similar to the Scottish midge, but native to the underwear of skinny women

myslef (noun) – small supernatural being with chronic anxiety

ne4ed (adjective) – being in possession of four knees

otu (noun) – Zimbabwean marsupial subsisting on beer and rich tea biscuits

presetner (noun) – woman on daytime TV who sits on the sofa next to an oily creep without cringing

pruruent (adjective) – of porridge being flavoured with prunes

shulk (verb) – to remove the calloused skin from the feet by means of a handy cheese grater

someoen (adjective) – of dogs or women, fond of an afternoon nap and liable to bite if rudely awoken

terhe (noun) – language spoken by the inhabitants of a small island in the North Sea whose attempts to enlarge the gene pool have led to some unfortunate encounters with irritated marsupials

zomie (noun) – a zed list homie

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.

Life is a glorious dance
Where your partner is much down to chance.
You might find your true mate
On a casual date
Or from friendship develop romance.

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…

Face the front, class and present your fingernails for inspection.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV is in the room. Your beloved pedagogue has arrived. For those, newly joined here, whose education may have skipped over the genius that is one, I am the orchidaceous creator of that classic of superlative speculative fiction ‘Fatswhistle and Buchtooth’, and the selfless purveyor of wisdom whose tablets of stone bring you ‘The Thinking Quill’ – wherein one strives against almost overwhelming odds to bring to your dreary little scribblings some iota of the polished grandeur of one’s own published words.

It’s a lovely autumn day, and the crispy, crunchy leaves make your Teacher think of the golden flakes in his breakfast bowl, drenched with icy-cold milk. We were, if memory serves, going to discuss the essential points of cover art, but my mood is too lightsome for such an arduous task today and my spirit is too refined to be constrained by such febrile chains of commitment. In brief, I can’t be arsed.

Instead, we shall touch upon a topic so close to my soul as to be all but embedded in my skin. Yes, my children, rejoice, rejoice. Today we shall speak of verse…

The Write Wrhyme

Oh what joy it is to write in the iambic pentameter. Oh how one’s soul rejoices at the birth of a sonnet. How the haiku spears one’s very vitals, and how the execution of the perfect marriage of rhyme and metre donates a pleasure as visceral as masturbation.

We shall begin with the haiku. Hands up if any child in the class can tell me what this exquisite word connotes.

Yes. The rule of seventeen. What joy. What bliss.

A flower petal
Weighted down under raindrops
Visceral delight

The purity of oriental form within that which enriches the soul must be expressed in seventeen syllables. Five. Seven. Five. With nary a drop wasted. The distillate of overwhelming emotion into a corseted form that screams of pain and coercion. Think, thou of forcing the white wobbliness of English thighs into the snug elastication of skinny jeans. Feel that pain, but think of the sculpted beauty that emerges from the chrysalis of dimpled flesh and apply that sharp constriction to your work.

Too difficult? Do not fret, mes petites, haiku is the quintessence of the poetic form and not a plaything for the amateur.

Very well. Let us look instead at rhyme and metre.

Hibiscus bloom of palest pink
I have not words, I have not ink
To speak of love’s bepetalled face
Watch from afar who walks in grace
Who walks in beauty as the dawn
Who in my breast true love doth spawn
Who shines like effervescent gold
Who shall not wither, nor grow old
Hibiscus bloom thy petals ope
And face the sun and dash my hopes
Hibiscus bloom of palest hue
Who murders hope with lies untrue
Hibiscus bloom of stainless steel
Who stamps my love beneath her heel

Read this, the least of my works, aloud and ponder my skill with the runaway horse that is metre. Admire my virtuosity as I wrestle the alligator of rhyme. Beguile your commonplace little intelligences with the mind-pictures drawn by a pen whose skill you can never hope to emulate. See how the hibiscus blooms in your very soul as you read and envy….

Then try a little verse of your own.

Should you be pleased with your tiny efforts then by all means post them on my Facebook page where I shall be sure to make the effort to read them. If I am not too busy.

Until a sennight. Dormez bien and ecrit bon.

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.

February comes with snowdrops
Green spears through frost-shot soil
As reaching up through snow and ice
Their small white flags uncoil
Proud banners soon a-flying
The vanguard of the spring
They hold the first pure promise
Of what the year will bring
Like resurrected martyrs
In dresses all of white
Beneath the ground just yesterday
Then rising overnight
The ones beside my window
I look for every year
To see the modest stand return
And know that spring is near

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.

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

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

Milla left Pew muttering to himself nervously and marched up to the drakkonettes.
“You shall not pass,” one said. He hawked and spat then looked a bit surprised as if the action were new and unfamiliar to him. “What the…?”
His companion looked across at him strangely.
“You feeling alright there, dear?”
The first drakkonette blinked a bit then nodded a few times.
“Right as rain my hunny-bunny.” He stiffened his spine and glared down at Milla again. “You shall not pass!”
“I have to. My dog, Ruffkin, he’s inside and I’ve got to rescue him. Isn’t there some way we could come to an agreement? Like…” She tried hard to think of other such agreements she knew of in and around Wrathburn Sands. “Like I bring you ten locks from sandylion manes, or ten landshark tails, or ten vials of dog spit, or…”
The drakkonette pulled a face.
“What would we do with any of those?”
“I – I don’t know,” Milla stuttered. “It’s what some of the people around the village ask Visitors to bring them so I thought…”
“It’s alright, dear,” the other drakkonette said. “We don’t need any of that kind of thing, but I’d love a pot of fruit tea, if you could manage it. Then we might be able to look the other way for a moment.”
“And a couple of flyberry cookies would be good to go with that,” the first one put in. “It’s hard to notice people going through the gate when you’re dunking a cookie.” One of his eyes dropped shut in a wink.
Milla wondered where she might get those then remembered seeing a pile of some kind of cookies in One Eyes’s store and she could brew up a fruit tea on her hearth at home. She opened her mouth to tell them that was fine when a loud yodelling cry came from right behind her.
“Leeeeeroy Jenkins!”
Pew was charging towards them, robes tangling around his legs, staff in one hand with its shimmer extending before him like some kind of magical shield, and a dagger in the other.
It was over so fast Milla barely had time to yelp, she squeezed her eyes shut and heard a loud thump and a groan. When she opened them again, the drakkonettes were standing back in their guarding pose and the noble Firecaster Pewpowerpwnsyou lay in a crumpled heap of shimmering robes at their feet.
“Is he…?”
“He’s a Visitor,” the first drakkonette said contemptuously. “I’ve seen it all the time when we were up at Terraraptor Gorge. Charge in. Blat. Blat. Faceplant. Give them a few moments they go away and then they come back a bit later on and do it all over again.”
The other drakkonette made a maternal clucking sound. “Don’t you worry about him, dear. Just go and fetch us the tea and cookies and he’ll be right as rain when you get back, I promise you.”
Feeling a little uneasy but not really able to see any other course of action open to her, Milla headed back to the village and the provisions shop.
“Flyberry cookies?” One Eye grunted. “I have the very thing. Good you’re not a Visitor though, young’un. If you were I’d have to be asking you to harvest me some flyberries before I could be letting you take these.”
“But there are no flyberry bushes around here.”
“Well no. It means the Visitor has to head out to the Mirage Oasis where they grow and find some there.”
“But that’s on the other side of the Many Miles Mountains. It would take them ages. And that just for some cookies?”
One Eye nodded. “Aye. That’s the thing with Visitors, they do stuff no one in their right mind would bother with normally.” He wrapped the cookies for her and held them out. “Here you go. Good luck on your venture. Hope you find Ruffkin.”

Log on to Wrathburnt Sands by E.M. Swift-Hook for the 6th 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…

Big Bigger crouched in the herbaceous border, in the pouring rain, wearing only his jimjams and a look of terror.

“Wossee doin’?” Bernard was puzzled. 

Big Bertha snorted. “You just watch.”

Mother Big appeared in the doorway. She had a shotgun in one hand and a bag of something in the other. Putting the bag down on the veranda she hefted the shotgun and the sound of birdshot hitting grass made Bernard wince.

“If that’s still there in the morning, the next shot is your balls.”

“Let that be a lesson to you, Bernard, never buy your wife costume jewellery.”

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

buson (noun) – heavily armoured brassiere 

cadgiran (noun) – warm woolly, worn by unreliable gentleman

chils (noun) – small person with a perpetually runny nose

digsust (noun) – assistant gardener

ebhind (noun) – a person with a Bambi fixation

fiendr (noun) – false friend

giggkes (noun) – chuckles that end in hiccoughs

moom (noun) – elongated female parent

nomran (adjective) – of architecture, seldom perpendicular 

rokcet (noun) – salad leaf whose flavour is vaguely reminiscent of elderly  training shoes

sumb (noun) – a column of numbers that comes to a different total every time you add it up

sytaighforward (adverb) – of gait denoting having the chest poked forward and the ass cheeks pressed as far back as possible

tuhmb (noun) – the sound a cat makes just prior to vomiting

usueful (adverb) – of teaching not entirely successful but well-intentioned

waelse (noun) – the offspring of a marsupial and a garden chair

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.

Irresolute

It is strange how at January’s end
We all stop trying to pretend
That we’ll be super fit
Or we’ll size-down our kit
And resolution‘s no longer a trend…

E.M. Swift-Hook