Jane Jago's Blog, page 480
August 2, 2017
Wednesday Writers
From ‘Druid’s Portal: The First Journey’ – by Cindy Tomamichel
The pendant was solid gold, with a stylised oak tree and some symbols and dots she recognised as Ogham, the ancient language of the area. She frowned, turning it over in her hands.
It felt hot, and the heat pulsed through her until she felt dizzy, as if she was standing on the edge of a precipice. She held onto the cabinet as the museum faded around her.
Then she fell into a grey void.
There was a smell of forest earth, long undis...
A Bite of…. Cindy Tomamichel
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 stu...
August 1, 2017
Your coffee break quickie
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 whore...
A Bite of … Greg Krojac’s Wren
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 m...
July 31, 2017
Monday Meme
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...
Bitter sky
Twinkle, twinkle someone said
How many stars out there are dead
How many suns have crashed and burned
While our little lives have turned
We lift our eyes and try to find
Constellations in our minds
Where is the archer, where the goat
Where the virgin’s milk-white throat
Celestial bodies overhead
Ain’t it a shame that most are dead
© jane jago 2016
July 30, 2017
Your coffee break read for today
THE ALGORITHM
Sol sat hunched in front of his computer. His sister, Sal, stood behind him, her impatience was like little needles in the back of his neck.
“Back off sis. I can’t afford to make a mistake now.”
She moved away with evident reluctance.
When Sol rolled his chair back, Sal pounced on him.
“Have you done it?”
“I hope so.”
“What do you mean, hope? Have you done it? Will it work?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Be quiet. Watch. We’ll know soon enough.”
She wriggled in his grip and...
July 29, 2017
Weekend Wind Down – a dreamscape cross-over.
The dream came as it did every night…
An explosion crumpling the building to his right as if it were paper. Three more blasts in quick succession, the last close enough to spew out a lethal hail of masonry. The kinetic shielding on his armaments belt protected him so the rubble bounced away, but the screaming beside him was cut off abruptly. What had been two human beings a moment before, was now a pulped mess. To his left stood a man with his arms held o...
