Jane Jago's Blog, page 456

Life

Can science create proper life?
Will Frankenstein make him a wife?
Can a sentient soul
Be grown in a bowl?
Or is mankind just heading for strife?

© jane jago 2017

A Shocking Revelation – from ‘Dying as a Druid’

From Dying as a Druid – the latest Dai and Julia Mystery which is out today.

After a final blessing, the doors of the sanctuary were closed behind the shivering priests, who scuttled inside bearing with them the expensive offerings of a grateful city.

“Thank you so much for doing that, Julia, especially with it being so cold. I do have to think the Divine Diocletian didn’t have in mind that we should stand freezing in his honour when these festivities were first added to Saturnalia,” Caudinus...

Horny heroes

When launching a book don’t get corny
And don’t let your hero be horny
Even if slags
Are your natural bag
You can’t make a whodunnit porny

© jane jago 2017

Monday Meme – The twins

 

She pushed the buggy briskly, half listening to the twins yakking away about whatever, and half making a shopping list in her head. That double concentration must have been why she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. She certainly never felt the stunning blow to the back of her head. She dropped like a stone, but it can only have been moments before she found herself looking into a pair of concerned eyes. She tried to sit up, but the world began spinning and she felt very sick.
“The child...

Mnemonics

Mnemonics contain all the wisdom of men,
So every good boy deserves favour again.
Without them how could we know it was true
The year when Columbus sailed the ocean blue?
Unravelling the wonders of Taxonomy,
King Philip cut open five green snakes you see.
And the rainbow remembers the war and the pain
When Richard of York, gave battle in vain…

Sunday Serial – VIII

He ended the call and stared reflectively at the phone.

“That wasn’t easy. But I think they understood. It was helped by the fact that Jim’s mother had already said a lot of those things.”

“Oh. She would have. She’s amazing. Looks like she’s made of teak, but nobody understands children better. Now you do look exhausted. Recline your chair a bit and have a nap. I’ll wake you when we’re on the motorway.”

Anna drove for a couple of hours, then handed over to Sam who also managed a couple of ho...

You are old…

You are old, let there be no dubiety
That the aged are a drain on society
You should spend your twilight
Being humbly polite
But you won’t even practice sobriety.

© jane jago 2017

Weekend Wind Down – Writer Battle: The Grind

by E.M. Swift-Hook and S Shane Thomas

It always began with an explosion.

Any explosion – any one of the hundred or more he had survived.

The explosion would lock him in, trap him, make him a prisoner of his sleeping mind. In the real world, he was safe in bed with a woman curled close beside him. Vel’s cousin, Lea, her body warm and sated. But it was not enough. The moment sleep claimed him the explosion would still come, shredding his sanity. Then the nightmare would run on, making him reliv...

The Thinking Quill

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 od...

Friday Friends – from ‘If I Wake’ by Nikki Moyes

I wonder if I leave a body behind. In my mind, I imagine Will and Robert burying my remains, carefully so they don’t catch the plague from my lifeless body.

I don’t want to be added to the pile of unnamed dead in Will’s hastily dug ditch more than six hundred years ago. Maybe I vanish like I appear. I prefer that idea, but worry it might bother Will. Like I never existed in the first place. I don’t like that idea after all.

This is what I’m thinking as I sit in the doctor’s office staring bla...