Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 15

Some Comments on the 2022 Nebula Finalists

The finalists for the 2022 Nebula Awards were announced today. This time, the announcement didn’t happen that close to the Hugo nomination deadline, but then Hugo nominations close more than a month later than usual this year, which gives Hugo nominators enough to time check out worthy works they might have missed.

So let’s dive right in and take a look at the individual categories:

Best Novel

This category is a mix of the expected and the unexpected.

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree was not only one of my favourite discoveries of 2022, it also gave a boost to the already simmering cozy fantasy trend and I’m really glad to see it nominated. This one is also on my personal Hugo longlist.

Ursula Vernon a.k.a. T. Kingfisher is a long-time Hugo and Nebula favourite, so the nomination for Nettle & Bone is not a huge surprise. And a most worthy finalist it is, too. Nettle & Bone is another book that’s on my personal Hugo longlist.

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir is one of the most popular SFF series of recent years. The first book Gideon the Ninth was a Hugo and Nebula finalist,  while Harrow the Ninth was a Hugo finalist. Therefore, the Nebula nomination for Nona the Ninth is not all that surprising and I expect to see it on the Hugo ballot as well.

Babel by R.F. Kuang has been showing up year’s best lists all over the place, so it’s no surprise to see it nominated here. I have to admit that I haven’t read Babel, because Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy did not work for me at all. Maybe Babel will be more up my alley.

I also haven’t read Spear by Nicola Griffith and The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. The Mountain in the Sea did get quite a bit of buzz, but I don’t recall seeing a lot of buzz for Spear, so it’s a pleasant surprise to see it on the Nebula ballot.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 1 writer of colour, 2 international writers*

Best Novella

This category is another mix of the expected and unexpected.

Becky Chambers is one of the most popular science fiction writers to come up in recent years and the nomination for A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, the second novella in her Monk and Robot series, is no big surprise, especially since the first in the series was both a Hugo and Nebula finalist last year. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is also on my personal Hugo longlist.

C.L. Polk is a Nebula favourite and also was a Hugo finalist last year for their Kingston Cycle, so the nomination for their novella Even Though I Knew the End… is not a huge surprise. That said, I’m always happy to see fantasy romances recognised in a genre that traditionally has had issues with romantic elements. This novella is also on my personal Hugo longlist.

I have been enjoying Kelly Robson’s works, though I haven’t yet read her historical fantasy novella High Times in the Low Parliament. It sounds fun, though.

“Bishop’s Opening” by R.S.A. Garcia from Clarkesworld is another novella I haven’t read, though it also was a finalist for the Ignyte and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards.

I Never Liked You Anyway by Jordan Kurella completely passed me by. A quick Google reveals that it’s an Orpheus and Euridice retelling.

Tor.com still dominates this category with three of five finalists – the remaining two finalists were published in Clarkesworld and by the small press Vernacular.

Diversity count: 3 women, 1 man, 1 non-binary, 2 writers of colour, 3 international writers

Best Novelette

I have read only two of the finalists in this category. “We Built This City” by Marie Vibbert from Clarkesworld, and I’m very glad to see it nominated here. This story is also on my personal Hugo longlist.

I also read and enjoyed “Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S.L. Huang, also from Clarkesworld.

For some reason, I did not read any of the three nominated stories from Uncanny, though John Chu, S.B. Divya and Natalia Theodoridou are all fine writers and I will certainly check out the stories before the Hugo nomination deadline.

The final finalist in the category “A Dream of Electric Mothers” by Wole Talabi from the anthology Africa Risen, which I haven’t gotten around to reading yet either.

It’s notable that Uncanny and Clarkesworld dominate this category with only one finalist published elsewhere.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 4 writers of colour, 2 international writers

Best Short Story

I can’t say much about this category, because I haven’t yet read any of the finalists. 2022 was a stressful year for me, so I read less short fiction than usual. I will try to remedy that before Hugo nominations close.

That said, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and John Wiswell are two of the most exciting writers to come up in recent years. They’re both lovely people, too, and I’m really happy to see them nominated here.

Ai Jiang is a name I’m seeing in the TOCs of the various SFF magazines more and more, though I haven’t read the story of hers that’s nominated. Suzan Palumbo is mainly known as a horror writer and coincidentally the second writer from Trinidad and Tobago on the 2022 Nebula ballot next to R.S.A. Garcia. I’m not familiar with either Samantha Mills or Ian Muneshwar.

This category has the greatest variety of sources of nominated stories and includes stories published in Asimov’s, F&SF, The Dark, Nightmare Magazine, Tor.com and Uncanny. We don’t see a lot of finalists from the print magazines in the Hugos and Nebulas anymore, because the online magazines are more accessible and therefore read by more people. It’s also notable that we have two finalists from horror magazines, proving that  the Nebulas are a lot more open to horror than the Hugos, since we’ve had several horror stories on the ballot in recent years.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, at least 3 writers of colour, 3 international writers

Andre Norton Award for YA and Middle Grade SFF

I can’t really say much about this category, because I haven’t read any of the finalists and wasn’t even aware of most of them. I have heard of K. Tempest Bradford, of course, but mainly as an astute commentator on race issues in SFF and not so much as an author of middle grade SFF. The only other author in this category I’ve heard of is H.A. Clarke. Jenn Reese, Maya MacGregor and Deva Fagan are new to me.

Diversity count: 3 women, 2 non-binary, 1 writer of colour, 1 international writer

Ray Bradbury Award for Best Dramatic Presentation

Not a lot of surprises in this category.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is currently winning all the awards (and deservedly, too), so I’m not at all surprised to see it on the ballot.

Andor was the best of the three Star Wars series to air last year and put the political commentary, that has always been an integral part of Star Wars, front and center in a way that Star Wars rarely does. The nominated episode is the one about the prison break, which was truly excellent.

I’m really, really happy to see the gay pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death on the ballot, since it was such a delight and apparently still hasn’t been renewed.

Severance has gotten a lot of critical acclaim, though I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet, partly because office/workplace shows aren’t my thing at all, probably because I’ve never had that sort of office job. Though thankfully, no one has had the sort of hellish office job depicted in Severance.

Nope seemed to get less attention than Jordan Peele’s previous movies Get Out! and Us. It’s still a highly deserving finalist and I actually preferred it to Us, which didn’t really work for me.

The Sandman is a bit of a surprise, because the series came out ten to fifteen years too late and didn’t seem to get that much popular attention in a landscape crowded with excellent genre TV. On the other hand, it’s Neil Gaiman and it’s Sandman.

Interestingly, no Marvel movie or TV show has got a single nomination. Of course, last year’s Marvel movies weren’t all that great, but the TV shows were pretty good. So has Marvel finally lost its luster?

It’s also interesting that only two of the finalists are movies, the other four are TV shows. But then, we are living not just in a new golden age, but actually a golden deluge of genre television.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies and TV shows.

Best Game Writing

I can only repeat what I said about this category in previous years, namely that I’m not a gamer, don’t recognise any of the titles except for Elden Ring and can’t really say anything about them.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

***

All in all, this is another excellent Nebula ballot. Those who are worried that not enough men are being nominated for the big genre awards will be happy to see that there are several men, including white men, on the ballot this year. Though I’m sure they will find something wrong with the men in question anyway.

I don’t see a lot of notable trends at first glance. We do have fairytale and Greek mythology retellings, both of which are popular right now, though the fairytale retelling trend seems to be waning a bit. We have a couple fo historical fantasies and the Nebulas continue to be more open to horror than the Hugos. Interestingly, there is comparatively little science fiction on the ballot. Cozy SFF is clearly on the rise – which will annoy certain people to no end – and a couple of finalists clearly fall into the cozy category. Definitely Legends & Latte and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. You could also make a case for Our Flag Means Death and probably others.

Regarding publishers, Tor and Tor.com as well as Uncanny and Clarkesworld are still quite dominant, though let’s not forget that Tor is the biggest SFF publisher in the English speaking world. And we do have plenty of  finalists published in other magazines or by small presses. Even the “big three” print magazines get a look in – well, two of them, at any rate.

As for indie writers, Legends & Latte by Travis Baldree was originally self-published, but was then picked up by Tor. And I can’t tell if I Never Liked You Anyway by Jordan Kurella is self-published or published by a small press. Nonetheless, we used to see more indie writers on the Nebula Ballot five years ago (and the Nebulas were one of the first genre awards to nominate a self-published novel, well before SFWA started accepting indies), so something changed. Is it because indies don’t have the marketing budget of a big publisher and are thus invisible to many nominators (but then we do have a couple of small presses nominated and they don’t have much of a marketing budget either) or because indies don’t write the sort of thing Nebula voters are looking for or did the indies all take their ball and went home after the 20Booksto50K uproar of 2019?

All in all, it’s another very strong Nebula ballot.

*International authors means authors living and writing outside the US.

The Mandalorian and Baby Grogu are back and have become “The Apostate”

The Mandalorian is back and for now I’m doing episode by episode reviews of season 3. Previous installments may be found here.

Warning! Spoilers behind the cut!

When we last met our favourite clan of two, . Furthermore, Din Djarin also got himself a shiny new spaceship after the Razor Crest was destroyed. However, by removing his helmet to say good-bye to Grogu, Din had also violated the principles of his clan of fundamentalist Mandalorians and was cast out by his own people.

Season 3 of The Mandalorian opens not with our favourite duo, but with the Armourer, leader of Din Djarin’s splinter group of fundamentalist Mandalorians – and isn’t it interesting that all the leaders of this very macho warrior people that we see are women? The Armourer is forging a piece of armour which turns out to be a child-sized Mandalorian helmet. She then emerges from the cave, where a whole bunch of Mandalorians – at least fifty of them – are waiting. So there definitely are more Mandalorians in this particular splinter group than the ones who were killed in Nevarro. It’s also interesting that the last time we saw the Armourer in The Book of Boba Fett, she only had a single follower, a fellow named Paz Vizla. Now she has about fifty followers. Could it be that the fundamentalist splinter group are actually the majority of the Mandalorians that are left in the galaxy?

As for why the Armourer and her followers have gathered on a lake outside a cave, they are there for the initiation ceremony of an approx. ten-year-old kid. The kid is standing in the lake, recites the Mandalorian creed (or rather the creed of this particularly splinter group) and is finally fitted with the helmet and has to swear never to take it off in public. I’ve said before that the prevalence of what are essentially child soldiers in the Star Wars universe is disturbing, as is the fact that not only does no one seem to have a problem, but that the Star Wars universe has not one but two warrior cults which recruit children way too young to consent to anything to their cause. And in the Star Wars universe, being picked up and raised by Mandalorians is not the worst thing that can happen to a kid. At least, the Mandalorians only take in orphaned kids, emphasise togetherness and community and genuinely seem to care for the kids they take in. Case in point: There is a proud-looking Mandalorian in the front row of the ceremony, who appears to be the kid’s Dad (either biological or adopted).

However, before the kid can complete taking his oath, the ceremony is interrupted by the most Star Wars thing ever, a giant crocodile/turtle monster attacking the congregation and proceeding to eat several Mandalorians. The Mandalorians don’t fare very well in what is not exactly an impressive display of the prowess of the supposedly best warriors in the universe, since some fifty fully armoured up and armed Mandalorians can’t even take out a single monster. Lucky for them, Din Djarin and Grogu burst out of the sky in Din Djarin’s snazzy new starfighter and blast the monster, spraying its guts all over the beach and the surviving Mandalorians.

In their review at Tor.com, Emmet Asher-Perrin points out that pattern of Din Djarin has to kill some kind of large monster to solve somebody else’s problem is becoming very repetitive by now and besides, what about those monsters who just want to live their lives and go about their business. I agree that “Oh, there’s a giant monster! Let’s kill it before it eats us!” is repetitive, but then it’s been a Star Wars thing since long before Din Djarin and Grogu came along. Indeed, one of the many quirks of the Star Wars universe is that every cave, lake, river, sink hole, trash compactor or asteroid is inevitably inhabited by a giant monster which will try to eat our heroes. In fact, the biggest implausibility is that Star Wars characters are always surprised when a giant monster appears, because you’d think that given the prevalence of megafauna in the Star Wars universe, they’d have learned to scan for giant monsters before going anywhere.

Of course, Star Wars did not invent giant monsters lurking in caves or lakes or swamps and trying to eat our heroes. Pulp SFF is full of random giant monsters wanting to eat our heroes, as are Saturday morning cartoons (He-Man’s homeworld Eternia has almost as many random giant monsters as the Star Wars universe, only that He-Man doesn’t kill them) and most of them are a riff on the monsters of mythology. What do those monsters eat when there are no handy Stormtroopers, Mandalorians, rebels or civilians stumbling into their lairs? Who cares? Giant monsters are cool, which is why they keep popping up. Because inside all of us there is a ten-year-old kid who loves dinosaurs and giant monsters and thinks they’re the coolest thing ever. There’s a reason Schleich makes a lot of money selling toy monsters and dinosaurs.

You’d think that the Armourer would be grateful to Din Djarin for saving her and her little congregation of Mandalorians from a giant monster that was about to eat all of them. But then you’d be wrong, because the Armourer still thinks that Din Djarin is an apostate for taking off his helmet – and of his free will, at that – and wants nothing to do with him. Honestly, Din should just have let the monster eat her.

However, letting giant monsters eat your Mandalorian brethren, even if they want nothing to do with you, is not the way. And besides, Din wants to rejoin his people and redeem himself for the grave sin of taking off his helmet to say good-bye to his kid. He can redeem himself, too, by bathing in the sacred waters in the salt mines of Mandalore. There’s only one catch. The Empire literally nuked Mandalore from orbit and what’s left is a radioactive hellworld fused into glass. Din, however, believes that it is possible to go back to Mandalore and bathe in the sacred waters. As proof, he gives the Armourer a chunk of glass (which only proves that Mandalore was fused into glass) with some Mandalorian writing on it. The Armourer grudgingly admits that if Din manages to bathe in the sacred waters, he can return to the fold. Why in the universe Din Djarin would want to return to a bunch of fundamentalist fanatics is a question that remains unanswered for now?

After saving the Armourer’s bacon, Din and Grogu take off once again. We get a nice hyperspace interlude with Din sleeping in the cockpit, while Grogu is sitting in his converted droid port and marvelling at the universe, when we and Grogu suddenly see the shadows of some giant whale-like creatures accompanying the ship (which doesn’t have a name yet, as far as I know). James Whitbrook explains that these creatures are called Purrgils and have appeared in the Star Wars: Rebels animated series before. At any rate, their existence proves my point above that there is no ecological niche in the Star Wars universe that is not inhabited by megafauna. At least, the Purrgils seem to be harmless and don’t try to eat the ship, though Grogu finds them rather scary and crawls into the cockpit to cuddle with Daddy.

Din and Grogu travel – no, not to Mandalore, but to Nevarro to visit some old friends, only to find that the place has changed a lot since we last saw it. In season 1, Nevarro was the sort of rundown and dangeorus outer rim world we’ve seen so many times in Star Wars. By season 2, the place has started to clean up now that Werner Herzog and his Imperial holdouts are no more. This time around, the clean-up process of Nevarro’s one city (because every planet in the Star Wars universe has only a single city) has progressed further. The buildings have been repaired, there are automated messages welcoming travellers, there’s more green – including a tree full of wild Salacious Crumbs – and the market looks nicer. And it’s all due to one man, Greef Karga, who is now High Magistrate (he was only a plain Magistrate before) and sports an impressive gold chain and a cape that is born by two wheeled droids who follow him around everywhere. The little droids who only exist to carry Greef Karga’s ostentatious cape are of course another example of the beautiful absurdity that sets Star Wars apart from any other space opera.

It is notable with the development of both Nevarro here and Tatooine in The Book of Boba Fett that at this point in the history of the Star Wars universe, some five to ten years after the fall of the Empire, things are getting better on rim worlds like Nevarro and Tatooine. Okay, so the New Republic is mostly useless and neither Boba Fett nor Greef Karga are in any way democratic leaders, but life is getting better for the ordinary people and aliens of the Star Wars universe. Considering that the prequel and particularly the sequel trilogy showed that the Star Wars universe is a terrible place, has always been one and will always be one, it’s interesting that The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett both show what the original trilogy implied, namely that we encountered the Star Wars universe at a low point in its history. Things were better once and will be better once again. Personally, I’ve always preferred this view and one of my main gripes with the sequel trilogy is that it cemented the Star Wars universe as a place that’s forever terrible, no matter who is in charge.

Greef Karga is happy to see his old friend Din Djarin again and invites him to his office, where he offers Din a really nice plot of land to live on, while Grogu discovers the wonders of the swivel chair and uses the Force to steal candy. I for one was yelling at the screen “Take up his offer and build a home for yourself and Grogu”, but of course then there wouldn’t be much of a story, so of course Din declines in order to go on a dangerous quest to redeem himself in the eyes of people who neither want nor appreciate him.

The reunion of Greef Karga and Din Djarin is interrupted by the arrival of some space pirates led by a fellow called Vane. The space pirates are old associates of Greef Karga’s and haven’t yet gotten the memo that Greef and Nevarro have gone respectable now. And so they demand to be let into what used to be a bar, but is now a school. Greef Karga’s commitment to education is certainly admirable.

Greef Karga tries to persuade the pirates to share a drink with him in his office, since the bar is closed, but the pirates will have none of that. They want a drink, they want it now and they don’t care if the bar is now a school. Vane also reminds Greef that it was the money Greef made via deal with Vane’s boss, the Pirate King Gorian Shard, that allowed the bar/school to be built. Then Vane pulls a blaster on Greef. However, Greef may be respectable now, but he’s still got a quick draw and shoots the blaster out of Vane’s hand. This prompts the rest of the pirates to draw their blasters, but Din – who’d only been watching the entire exchange so far – shoots the lot of them. Only Vane escapes, but you know that he will be back.

Now Greef Karga also admits why he really wants to keep Din around, because he needs a marshall to deal with space pirates and other lowlives. “What about Cara Dune?” Din asks, whereupon Greef Karga explains that the New Republic recruited Cara for their special forces after she brought in Moff Gideon (who’s facing a war crimes tribunal). And that’s how The Mandalorian deals with the firing of Gina Carano following a series of increasingly problematic tweets. Now I liked Cara Dune the character a lot and hope that they will eventually recast her, since Gina Carano has slid even further into the morass of far right conspiracy theories since her firing and really is no longer tenable. At least the door is still open for the character to come back. And a different face can be explained away by injuries requiring plastic surgery or a disguise or something along those lines.

Din Djarin, however, doesn’t want to be marshall of Nevarro either. Instead, he needs help. Not from Greef Karga, but from IG-11, the bounty hunter droid turned nursing droid who heroically self-destructed in order to save everybody from the remnants of the Empire at the end of season 1. Din, who famously doesn’t like droids very much, wants IG-11’s help, because he needs a droid to explore what’s left of Mandalore and IG-11 is one of the few droids Din trusts, since he after all saved Din’s life.

The fact that IG-11 was destroyed would normally make it difficult for him to help Din. However, no one is every really dead in the Star Wars universe, not even Palpatine. And since IG-11 was a droid, there’s always the chance to repair him. And this is exactly what Din wants to do. Of course, the fact that IG-11 literally blew himself up might be a problem, but luckily surviving parts were incorporated into a statue commemorating the heroic droid. Emmet Asher-Perrin complains that the statue literally comes out of nowhere, but that’s not quite right, since it does appear in the background of the season 2 episode “The Siege”, as mentioned in my review of that episode. They are right, however, that incorporating parts of a sentient droid into a statue is rather creepy, akin to incorporating humans bones into a statue. And yes, I know that there are reliquaries containing bones and other bodyparts of saints, but personally I find that creepy as well.

Din, Greef and friends dismantle the statue and try to repair and reactivate what’s left of IG-11. They succeed, too, but unfortunately IG-11 has reverted to his previous bounty hunter programming and promptly attacks Grogu and is only stopped when someone tips a bust of Greef Karga (who of course has a gilded bust of himself in his office) onto the wayward droid. “That’s using your head,” Din remarks in what is the funniest line in the episode.

Because the remains of IG-11 are now even more smashed up than before, Greef takes Din and the droid remnants to a group of Anzellan droid smiths – billed as the best in the galaxy – who have set up shop on Nevarro. In case you don’t remember which of the many species in the Star Wars universe the Anzellans are, they are the species of Babu Frik, the tiny fuzzy droid smith who was the best thing about The Rise of Skywalker. We’re not sure if the Anzellan we meet on Nevarro is Babu Frik or another member of his species, but he’s still as cute and difficult to understand as ever. According to Guardian reviewer Jack Seale, his gibberish spouting voice is provided by actress Shirley Henderson who also voiced him in The Rise of Skywalker.

I wonder why Greef and Din tried repairing IG-11 themselves rather than take him to the Anzellans right away, though I guess that would have lost the IG-11 goes on a rampage and threatens Grogu action scene. However, Greef finally remembers the Anzellans and we are treated to a delightful interlude of Din sitting hunched inside the Anzellan workshop, while Greef is outside, helpfully translating Anzellan gibberish, even though Din – who has a knack for languages – can understand the Anzellans perfectly. And since Grogu goes where Daddy goes, he’s waddling around the workshop and spontaneously hugs and cuddles Babu Frik (if it’s indeed him), until Din tells him that Anzellan droid smiths are not pets. I certainly sympathise with Grogu, since Babu Frik is eminently huggable. It’s also nice to see two of the cutest creatures in the Star Wars universe interact with each other.

As for IG-11, Babu Frik declares that he cannot repair him without a new memory circuit. And since IG-droids are no longer made, finding a memory circuit will be difficult to impossible. Din, however, vows that he will find one and takes off with Grogu, who cheerfully waves good-bye to Greef Karga.

We now get another space scene with Din trying to explain the controls and instruments of his spaceship to Grogu with all the misplaced enthusiasm of a father trying to explain how to drive a car to a four-year-old. Still, Din is getting the hang of this  father thing, even though Grogu is still way too young to pilot a spaceship.

This father-son idyll is rudely interrupted by the return of the space pirates we met earlier on Nevarro. Of course, it was obvious that space pirates wouldn’t just let Din Djarin shoot several of their number without retaliation. And so we get a thrilling space battle in an asteroid field, but then space battles in an asteroid field have been a Star Wars staple since The Empire Strikes Back. At least, this asteroid field doesn’t come out of nowhere, since Greef Karga earlier mentions mining operations in the asteroid belt of the Nevarro system.

Din shows off his mad flying skills, while several of the smaller pirate craft either crash into asteroids or each other or a shot down by Din. However, the small pirate craft clearly aren’t out and about in deep space on their own and so Din and Grogu eventually meet the pirate mothership, while we meet Pirate King Gorian Shard who turns out to be a plant-covered alien creature. My first thought was Moss-Man from Masters of the Universe,  AV-Club reviewer Sam Barsanti compares him to the Swamp Thing and io9 reviewer Germain Lussier calls him “Salad the Hutt”. You get the idea. Gorian Shard is a plant creature. He is about to have Din and Grogu shot down, but Din gets away.

Their flight takes Din and Grogu… – no, not to locate a memory circuit, but to Kalevala, a planet in the same system as Mandalore. Din lands his ship on the landing pad in front of a Mandalorian castle, an enormous Brutalist structure. The camera follows Din and Grogu through a deserted hallway, until they meet the person they’ve come to see. It’s none other than Bo-Katan Kryze, would-be Queen of the Mandalorians, who is lounging on a throne and has clearly been hitting the bottle.

Bo-Katan’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse, since we last saw her in the season 2 finale. Her followers have deserted her, since Bo-Katan failed to win back the darksabre, symbol of the rulers of Mandalore, from Moff Gideon. Instead, the darksabre is now in the possession of Din Djarin, who did take it from Moff Gideon. Din was perfectly willing to hand over the darksabre to Bo-Katan, however, she declined, for Mandalorian legend decrees that the darksabre must be won in battle or it will bring the ruler bad luck. It’s very clear that Bo-Katan is no fan of Din Djarin’s – because she thinks he’s a religious fanatic from a fundamentalist splinter sect (well, he is) and because he managed to ruin her plans for uniting the Mandalorians and taking back Mandalore by winning the darksabre.

Din, on the other hand, seems to be utterly oblivious to the fact that Bo-Katan doesn’t like him and comes to pledge his allegiance to her and offers her to help her retake Mandalore, so he can bathe in the sacred waters. He even tells Bo-Katan as much. Bo-Katan does not accept Din’s allegiance, especially since she no longer had any followers. Though she does tell him how to access the mines with the sacred waters and that the access point is located under the civic center in the city Sudari on Mandalore. The Mandalorians have civic centers? The mind boggles.

Bo-Katan bids Din and Grogu a rather sinister good-bye, as Din goes off on his mission. It’s clear that Bo-Katan means trouble for Din and Grogu, though Din refuses to see it. Cue credits.

Some reviewers have been complaining about the meandering pace and lack of clear direction of this episode, but then The Mandalorian has always been a meandering show that moves at its own pace and keeps sending Din and Grogu on various side quests. Particularly, the early episodes of every season so far have been Din and Grogu wandering around the galaxy on one quest or another. The pace usually doesn’t pick up until the halfway point, once we realise what the main objective of this season is.

I for one like that The Mandalorian is a show that takes its time and doesn’t mind spending an episode or two exploring the beautiful weirdness of the Star Wars universe. Because in this era of serialised shows with limited episode counts, all of those meandering side quests and adventures of the week that were a staple of TV shows will into the 1990s are a thing of the past. Furthermore, while the plot may or may not have an overarching aim, Din’s main motivation is being a good Mandalorian and a good Dad to Grogu. He doesn’t care about galactic politics.

As for what – if any – the overarching plot of this season and the show as a whole might be, for now Din’s objective is clearly to bathe in those sacred waters and redeem himself in the eyes of the Armourer. However, Din not only has won the darksabre in battle, which theoretically makes him King of the Mandalorians, Din and Grogu are also the best hope the Mandalorians have for a way forward. Because neither Bo-Katan nor the Armourer, both fanatics in their own way, are leaders you’d want to see in charge of the Mandalorians.

Personally, what I’d like to see is Din not only stepping up to lead his people, but also ditching some of the more idiotic ideas of the Mandalorians. No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with people taking off their helmets once in a while and you don’t have to bathe in water-filled caves on a radioactive planet in order to redemm yourself. No, you don’t have to win the darksabre in battle to become ruler of Mandalore – there are better and less violent ways of determining your leader. And yes, you can be a Mandalorian and a Jedi and maybe Grogu will be the one to finally unite the two somewhat nutty warrior cults in the Star Wars galaxy.

Of course, I’ve also been waiting for forty years now for the Jedi to finally take a step forward to ditch some of their more idiotic and downright toxic teachings – you know, that whole no attachments, no families, no relationships, no sex, don’t be angry, don’t be afraid, there’s only light and dark and no shades of gray nonsense that the movies themselves have shown to be toxic and harmful time and again. Yet whenever it seems that there a step in the right direction – in Return of the Jedi, in The Last Jedi – the powers that control Star Wars inevitably pull back again to the status quo. It’s part of what makes Star Wars so frustrating – that there is no real path forward for this universe, just an endless cycle of misery and failure.

Of the four Star Wars TV shows to date, The Mandalorian is the one I like the most, simply because it at least leaves room for a way forward. There is no future for Obi-Wan Kenobi and Cassian Andor (good as Andor was), since we already know how and where their stories end. And The Book of Boba-Fett never really seemed to know where it was going and what it wanted to be. Din and Grogu, however, have a future that’s wide open, if not for their respective people, then at least for themselves.

And while I’d love to see Din and Grogu uniting the Mandalorians and perhaps even the Jedi and taking them forward, I also don’t mind watching them just zip through the galaxy in Din’s shiny new starfighter to explore the weird and wonderful corners of the Star Wars universe, make friends and enemies and solve other people’s problems and maybe even their own.

Because “The hero wanders the world, always on the run from something and solves other people’s problems, but never their own” used to be a TV genre not all that long ago. It’s the formula that fueled Route 66, The Fugitive, Time Tunnel, Kung Fu, The Incredible Hulk, The A-Team, Quantum Leap and many others. It’s clearly a formula that worked and still works (the Jack Reacher novels very much follow the same pattern), only that we hardly ever see it anymore in this era of serialised TV and season arcs.

So if The Mandalorian wants to bring back the wandering hero formula, I’m certainly all there for it. If the show actually wants to take the Star Wars universe a step forward out of its endless cycle of failure, misery, defeat, I’m all there for that as well.

First Monday Free Fiction: Seedlings

Welcome to the March 2023 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

March marks the start of spring when gardens begin to bloom and seeds are planted, so enjoy Seedlings, a sweet science fiction story about chickens, little girls and gardening… IN SPACE! from my Shattered Empire space opera series.

So follow Holly and Ethan as they plant…

Seedlings

The rebel world of Pyrs spun through the black vastness of space, a cold rock orbiting a dying star.

Once, Pyrs had held deposits of rare minerals, gallium, germanium and indium, gold and platinum, even diamonds. So humans had come to the inhospitable world to harvest the precious minerals. And then, once they had taken every last grain of ore, every last raw diamond, every last nugget of gold from the ground, they went away again, leaving behind a gutted husk of a planet, crisscrossed by a warren of tunnels and mine shafts. And so Pyrs was just another dead rock hanging in space again. Until the Rebels came and made it their home.

The Rebels no more liked Pyrs than the miners had. It was simply too cold, too dark, too far from its own faltering sun, let alone the galactic core. However, the Rebels had even less choice about living on Pyrs than the miners. For if you had a death sentence on your head everywhere in the civilised galaxy, Pyrs was the only place left for you to run.

Holly di Marco, former mercenary and currently one of the two thousand five hundred and sixty Rebels on Pyrs, was currently headed for the lone bright spot on that cold, dark lump of rock. It was called the greenhouse, a dome of glass collecting the rays of Pyrs’ fading sun, bundled and amplified by a cunning arrangement of mirrors. This meant that the greenhouse was the only place on Pyrs that got a bit of daylight for six hours a day, about as much as other worlds received on a grey and cloudy day.

The miners had used the place for recreation, an oasis allowing them to soak up the meagre sunlight. The Rebels, not having the advantage of regular supply ships, had given the greenhouse over to food production. The yield wasn’t much, but anything that spiced up the monotony of all protein sludge all the time was more than welcome.

Born on a planet that was only marginally more hospitable than Pyrs, Holly did not have much use for the greenhouse. Plants, particularly in larger numbers, tended to make her nervous. That much green just wasn’t natural.

As it was, Holly had only one reason for visiting the greenhouse and that reason was Ethan Summerton. Lord Summerton, to be precise, for Ethan had inherited the title by default after the Empire had murdered his father and brothers along with the rest of his family, leaving Ethan the sole survivor of a once numerous clan.

Holly had saved his life, which meant that she was stuck with him now, by decree of Arthur Madden, leader of the Rebellion, himself. Apparently there was an old Earth saying which claimed that once you’d saved someone’s life, you were automatically responsible for that person until the end of their days. Personally, Holly thought it was all just a load of bunk, but her objections had been overruled. So for the time being, she was stuck with Ethan, Lord Summerton.

Not that she minded much. For someone who had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, Ethan was surprisingly non-annoying. He didn’t even insist on being addressed by his title. On the contrary, he said that whenever someone called him “Lord Summerton”, he always had to turn around, expecting to find his father standing behind him. And since his late father — either heroically killed in the service of the Rebellion or cut down in the streets like the traitorous dog that he was, depending on which version you chose to believe — was something of a sore spot for Ethan, Holly refrained from doing anything that might trigger painful memories. For heaven knew, he sure had enough of those.

In spite of his high birth, Ethan had ended up in charge of the greenhouse. Though the assignment wasn’t a jab against his aristocratic background. It was simply the most suitable job for him, given the circumstances.

Ever since joining the Rebellion, Ethan had been eager for revenge and desperate for a mission, a job or just something to do. Holly certainly sympathised. Being cooped up on Pyrs was bad enough when you had a job and the prospect of getting off planet eventually. When you had nothing to do, it was infinitely worse.

However, Ethan was also badly traumatised — seeing your entire family slaughtered in front of your eyes will do that to you — and simply not ready for any kind of combat mission. Before sending him into battle, he first needed to heal.

But sitting around cooped up in his quarters and brooding wasn’t conductive to healing either, especially not since Ethan hardly ever slept and was plagued by nightmares, whenever he managed to catch some shut-eye. What he needed was something to do, a job to stop him feeling like dead weight and take his mind of his murdered family, at least for a little while.

So Arthur Madden in his infinite wisdom had finally hit upon the long neglected greenhouse and turned it over to Ethan. For prior to suddenly finding himself an outlaw and a Rebel, Ethan had devoted his life to studying farming methods and cultivating plants and had even won a prize for breeding a new type of squash, whatever that might be. Apparently, he had originally turned to agriculture as a sort of “fuck you” to his illustrious ancestors and their long lineage of warriors.

“We also have a long family history of winemaking…” Ethan had once told Holly, “…and I prefer making wine to killing people.”

Not that Ethan ever got to grow any wine in the greenhouse — nice though that might be. No, it was mostly leafy greenish things and thick brownish roots and tubers that looked as awful as they tasted. Still, Ethan never seemed more at peace than when he was puttering about in the greenhouse, so Holly approved. For Ethan found little enough peace as it was.

Though there were also times in the long dark nights on Pyrs, when Ethan confessed to her that he felt useless, felt that he should contribute more to the cause, that he should go on combat or espionage missions like the other Rebels.

“Growing vegetables…” he said bitterly, “…isn’t nearly enough, when people, good people, are fighting and dying out there.”

Whenever he had one of those moments, Holly always assured him that vegetables were very important, even vital to the Rebellion. Not because she believed it, cause she didn’t. But Ethan needed to hear it and that was enough for Holly. Because she’d really come to like him by now.

***

Whenever the bulkhead door to the greenhouse cycled open, the first thing that hit Holly was the air, a couple of degrees warmer and several percents more humid than the rest of the base. The smell was next, since it turned out that plants quite literally grew in human shit. No wonder Holly had always been suspicious of greenery. Finally came the sniffles, which occasionally rose to the level of a fully blown sneezing attack, for it turned out that Holly wasn’t just suspicious of plants but actively allergic to many of them. Greens — you just couldn’t trust them.

Holly had barely managed to suppress the inevitable sneezing attack — for now — when she spotted a figure in a grey utility coverall hurrying towards her. Not Ethan. This was one of his assistants, an effusively polite fellow named Stuart.

“Miss di Marco…” Stuart sketched a bow which looked more silly than anything, considering he was wearing a utility coverall and mud-splattered work boots. “Lord Summerton has been looking for you.”

“Well, that’s helpful,” Holly said, “Cause I’ve been looking for him, too.”

Stuart bowed once more. “If you’ll follow me, Lord Summerton will be right with you.”

He bowed one final time and scurried off, presumably to fetch Ethan or rather Lord Summerton, as Stuart insisted on calling him. Ethan himself seemed more embarrassed than anything to be addressed as Lord Summerton and repeatedly asked Stuart to stop.

But Stuart didn’t care. His mother had taught him proper manners and brought him up to show respect to his betters, he said. Somehow, Stuart hadn’t quite gotten the hang of this whole democracy thing yet.

Still, odd as Stuart was, he and Ethan got along well, probably because they both hailed from the same planet, Caswallon, a farming world that had been home to the Summerton family since forever or at least since humanity had taken to the stars.

When the previous Lord Summerton, Ethan’s late father, discovered his conscience and decided to throw in his lot with the Rebellion, the Empire’s retaliation had been both swift and brutal. Not only had they slaughtered every member of the Summerton family they could get their hands on — no, once the Empire ran out of Summertons to avenge themselves on, they instead focussed their anger on the clan’s homeworld.

The Emperor wasted no time and put Caswallon under martial law and then let one of the more sadistic Imperial generals run riot. There were bombings from orbit, random arrests, disappearances, public executions and the like. The general, sadistic bastard that he was, even brought the good old practice of decimation back… in the most literal sense of the word.

As a result, any inhabitant of Caswallon who could get off planet, evading the increasingly strict controls at the only spaceport still in operation, did so. Not a whole lot of people managed to escape. Stuart was one of the few who did. And since he had nowhere else to go — any attempt to escape from the planet-sized prison that was Caswallon carried an automatic death sentence — he eventually made his way to the Rebellion where he met Ethan. They immediately hit it off, bonding over reminiscences of their lost homeworld and discussions of farming techniques. And if the thought ever occurred to Stuart that if only the elder Lord Summerton had minded his own business and kept away from the Rebellion, none of the horrors visited upon the planet of Caswallon would ever have happened, he kept it to himself.

Holly found a wall to lean against and surveyed the garden. There were rows upon rows of plants, some of them mere bushels of leaves close to the ground, others larger shrubs. There even were a handful of tall and menacing tangles of leaves and what looked like tentacles. Other plots had only been planted recently and were still bare brown soil, dotted with the occasional sprout of green. And because the ground was not enough to hold all the crops, there were also pots of greenery hanging from the ceiling and set onto shelves along the walls and generally crammed onto every available surface.

A labyrinth of pipes snaked overhead, studded with nozzles that sprayed water onto the plants at pre-programmed intervals. Micro-drones buzzed about among the rows of greenery to pollinate the plants. Powerful spotlights were set around the perimeter to supplement the meagre light provided by Pyrs’ weak sun. And above it all loomed the glass dome of the greenhouse and the blackness of deep space beyond.

Chickens — ugly, noisy, feathery things — were scurrying between the neat rows of plants, picking at the ground. The chickens had been Stuart’s idea. Apparently, his family had been keeping chickens back on Caswallon and Stuart believed the eggs they produced would enrich the Rebel diet. Stuart’s family had been keeping pigs, too, but Ethan vetoed the pigs. Too big and too smelly, he said. Holly was inclined to agree. The chickens were about as much animal life as she could handle.

At the far end of the greenhouse, Stuart was talking to Ethan who was engaged in some cryptic task or other. The other assistant, a tall taciturn fellow named Mikhail, was carting buckets full of soil back and forth, again for some unfathomable reason. Ethan sometimes tried to explain to Holly just what they were doing in the greenhouse. Holly didn’t pretend to understand much of it, even though she usually grunted and nodded out of sheer politeness.

Together, Ethan, Stuart and Mikhail made up the entire full-time staff of the greenhouse. But they sometimes had helpers. Such as the three little boys, too young yet for serious work, who were diligently putting plants from smaller into larger pots.

Pyrs, it was generally agreed, was no place for children, and so the Rebels made very sure that there wouldn’t be any more children born here. Nonetheless, there were children on Pyrs, because some of the men and women who joined the Rebellion already had kids. And even if everybody agreed that though Pyrs was a horrible place for children to grow up, leaving them behind would be even worse, because the Empire had absolutely no scruples about killing children.

The Rebels did their best to accommodate and protect the few children on Pyrs, to arrange for schooling and supervision. But nonetheless, it was hard, for Pyrs was a dangerous world and truly no place for children. For starters, the Rebel base was cramped, so the children constantly got under foot. Plus, pretty much everything on Pyrs, every room, every vehicle, every piece of equipment, was actively dangerous to children, particularly children of the more nosy sort who simply had to touch everything and press every button they could find.

The greenhouse was actually one of the least dangerous places on Pyrs. Because while plants might make you sneeze, if you happened to be allergic to them, and the squeaky, noisy chickens might stink and hack at you with their beaks, none of them could actually kill you. Besides, children — just like plants — apparently required sunlight to grow. And so the greenhouse was the ideal place for the children of Pyrs to hang out, when they were not in school. As a result, there was always a handful of children, not always the same handful, hanging around at the greenhouse.

Holly had often told Ethan that he should just throw out the children, if they bothered him. Let the people whose job it was to supervise the kids actually do their job for once. However, Ethan claimed that the children were welcome, that he did not mind them. On the contrary, he even found little jobs for them to do, jobs like digging holes or potting plants. Or maybe it was simply that the smaller hands of children were better suited to certain tasks than the giant paws of Mikhail and the only slightly smaller ones of Stuart.

A commotion somewhere among the endless rows of green leafy things attracted Holly’s attention. A little girl, much too young for any sort of useful work, was stumbling through the plot on unsteady legs, chasing after the ubiquitous chickens. The chickens outran her easily, for the girl was barely able to walk, much less run. Nonetheless, she did not give up, apparently having decided that a chicken would be a fine catch indeed, though Holly had no idea what in the universe the kid wanted with such a screechy, feathery thing. But then, children were weird.

Holly leant back to watch the uneven chase, a smile on her face, though she did not quite know why. And then it happened. The race between child and chicken was decided once and for all, when the little girl stumbled and fell face first into the soft brown ground, flattening a bunch of delicate leafy greens in the process. The child immediately erupted into a wail of pain and frustration, while the chicken fluttered away in a blur of wings and feathers.

“Uh-oh, kid,” Holly thought, a sinking feeling in her stomach, “You’re in trouble now.”

The girl’s wail was loud enough that Ethan and Stuart stopped discussing whatever vitally important thing they were discussing and turned around to see what was going on. It didn’t take them long to spot the source of all that uproar, for the little girl was not just wailing louder than a life-support failure alarm, she was also trying to push herself back to her feet again and managed to crush even more plants as a result.

“Now you’re really in trouble,” Holly thought.

Stuart scowled and set off towards the girl, but Ethan held him back. So he was going to deal with this tiny threat to his precious plants himself. A few long-legged strides and he had reached the little girl, who was still trying and failing to get up. Ethan bent down and picked the child up. Holly averted her eyes. She did not want to see what came next.

She expected more crying, but to her infinite surprise the little girl quieted down. So Holly made herself look and saw that Ethan had crouched down beside the kid and was gently brushing dirt from her clothes. Tears were still streaming down her little dirty face, but at least she was no longer wailing. She was also standing on her own two feet again.

Blood was seeping from a gash on the little girl’s knee, so Ethan reached into a pocket of his coverall and produced a tissue to wipe the blood away. The kid made a face, as the disinfectant did its work, but she did not start wailing again.

“Yes, I know it stings,” Ethan said, “But if you blow on it, it stops hurting, just like magic.” To prove his point, he blew some air on the kid’s scraped knee. “See? It’s already better.”

It was all bullshit, of course, but then kids were naïve and believed pretty much anything. And so the little girl stopped crying, wiped her eyes with her little hands and flashed Ethan an uncertain smile.

Ethan picked the kid up and settled her onto his hip. “And now come on, sweetie. We don’t want to keep Holly waiting, do we?” He planted a kiss on the kid’s forehead.

Holly watched as the little girl nestled against him, her tears already forgotten. And as she watched Ethan with the kid, she couldn’t help but think that this was the way the universe ought to be. A universe where a child did not have to fear beatings and punishments for a simple mishap. A universe where she would not have to work as soon as she was old enough. A universe where someone dried her tears when she was crying. A universe without pain or terror.

Her eyes stung with stupid, silly tears. Angrily, Holly wiped them away. Damn those blasted plants!

Ethan — wouldn’t you know it? — caught her just as she wiped away the last of the silly tears that ran down her cheeks. Even worse, he noticed.

“Holly, I… — What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Holly said. She pulled a not very clean tissue from a pocket of her uniform and heartily blew her nose. “I’m just allergic to your bloody plants, that’s all.”

Ethan gave her a strange look. With his tousled brown hair, mud-splattered boots and equally shabby utility coverall, not to mention a snot-nosed kid on his arm, he didn’t look very lordly at all. A chunky ugly ring — the symbol of his lordship — dangled from a chain round his neck. He wore it that way, so the ring wouldn’t get in the way when he was working in the garden — and because it was way too big for him and kept slipping off his finger.

“Still, I’m glad you’re here…” Ethan said, “…cause there’s something I want to show you.”

Abruptly, he turned around and stalked off again, still carrying the little girl. Her head was resting against his shoulder. She looked straight at Holly and stuck out her tongue.

“Okay, now you’re really pushing your luck, kid,” Holly thought and went after Ethan, careful not to step on any of his precious plants. The greens had suffered enough for one day.

She didn’t know what Ethan wanted to show her, but she had her suspicions. For ever since Ethan had taken over the greenhouse, he tended to use Holly as a guinea pig for his latest produce, probably to see if it was fit for human consumption. To be honest, most of it ranked barely above protein sludge in terms of taste. Endless green leaves and root vegetables weren’t Holly’s idea of a good meal.

Still, feeding his plants to her seemed to make Ethan happy. And since he did not have a whole lot of reasons for being happy these days, Holly usually humoured him and ate his plants without spitting, choking or making a face, even if she sometimes wanted to.

Today’s crop seemed to be something really special (or really horrible), for they all gathered around to see what her reaction would be, Ethan, Stuart, Mikhail, even the three young boys who had been repotting plants.

Ethan was happily blathering on about how his attempts to cultivate some plant or other had finally paid off and born fruit — yes, fruit. Holly nodded politely, though she didn’t really listen. Idly, she wondered whether Ethan was aware that all of his blabbering about plants and crops was lost on her, for they all looked the same to her, far too leafy and far too green.

“Could we get to the point, please?” she finally interrupted, because if she hadn’t, Ethan would still have been holding forth about his latest cultivation success a couple of standard hours later, “Cause the big boss wants to see us and I for one don’t want to keep him waiting.”

As if to emphasise Holly’s point, the little girl on Ethan’s arm yawned heartily.

“Arthur Madden wants to see us?” Ethan repeated, “What about?”

“I have no idea. Maybe he’s got a mission for us or maybe he just wants to compliment you on managing to grow… well, whatever it is you’re trying to show me.”

“Actually…” Ethan scratched his head. “…I didn’t tell him what I was trying to do. We didn’t want to tell anybody until we could be sure it worked.”

“Then it probably is a mission,” Holly said. She knew how eager Ethan was to finally do something for the Rebellion, something other than growing plants, that was. “But if you want to find out, I’d suggest you get a move on. Now.”

The perpetually subservient Stuart blanched at her bluntness, though Ethan didn’t. But then, he rarely got offended, unless Holly said something really shocking. Which, to her infinite shame, she sometimes did just to rile him up, if only because he was kind of cute, when he began to blush and stammer. And amusements were few on Pyrs.

“All right, so…” Ethan was about to finally feed her whatever edible plant he wanted to try out on her, only to realise that his hands were full because he was still holding the little girl. “Could you take her for a moment?”

Holly did not want to take the kid. She didn’t understand children, didn’t like them, didn’t know what to do with them. But before Holly could protest or as much as say no, Ethan had already dumped the kid in her arms.

Holly halfway expected the little girl to start wailing at once — that was what children did, wasn’t it? — but to her infinite surprise she didn’t. Instead, the little girl wrapped her little arms around Holly’s neck and settled herself against her shoulder, perfectly content. She was surprisingly heavy, too, for such a little thing.

Ethan, meanwhile, bent down to pluck something from one of his plants. This particular specimen didn’t look like much, just a small plant with green leaves and unremarkable white blossoms, barely twenty centimetres tall. There were certainly more impressive plants to be found in the greenhouse.

Ethan rummaged between the leaves of the plant until he found what he had been looking for. Then he straightened and held out his hand to Holly.

“Look. Isn’t this wonderful?”

The thing in his hand was most definitely not wonderful. It was a small bulb, bright red with small dark spots and what appeared to be tiny hairs. It looked like some kind of malign tumour or maybe the reproductive gland of an unknown alien species. And Holly most certainly didn’t want to put this thing into her mouth.

“Uhm, I…”

“Oh, of course…” Ethan blushed, which was rather sweet to be honest. “…I should wash it first. Sorry, I forget these things sometimes.”

And then he was off to wash his precious fruit. Unfortunately, it didn’t look any more appetising, when he returned.

Holly eyed the strange red fruit warily. “Are you sure this thing is edible?”

“Oh yes, it’s ripe, in case you’re wondering,” Ethan replied, “Now come on, try it. You’ll love it, I promise.”

Holly sincerely doubted that. But since he was so insistent, she allowed him to pop the thing into her mouth, privately vowing that she’d kill him, if he managed to poison her.

The fruit was sweet and sour, soft and tart, succulent and full of crispy bits all at the same time, a riot of flavour exploding in her mouth.

They all looked at her expectantly. “And?”

“Not bad”, Holly said, munching down the last of the fruit, “Not bad at all.” She smiled. “Best damn thing you’ve managed to produce so far.”

Ethan smiled back, inordinately pleased. “See, I told you you’d love it.”

“So what is it?”

“Uhm, a strawberry. Couldn’t you tell? I mean, it’s a bit small, but…”

Strawberry. Holly knew the term. But up to now, she’d always assumed it was a euphemism for sweet and pink and bland.

“Ah, so that’s what they’re supposed to taste like,” she said, “Explains a lot, actually.”

Ethan bent down to his row of plants again and produced a second fruit, a little smaller and paler than the first.

“I’ve got one more,” he announced, “So who wants to try it?”

“Me, me, me,” the young boys yelled seemingly all at once. Stuart looked as if he would have like to yell “Me” as well, but had barely managed to control himself. Mikhail was stoic as ever.

Ethan looked from one to the other. Finally, his gaze settled on the little girl on Holly’s arm.

“Emma. She’s the youngest, so she gets to go first.”

There was a bit of grumbling among the boys, but amazingly they all seemed to accept Ethan’s reasoning that the youngest kid got first dibs on the fruit.

Meanwhile, the little girl — Emma — obediently opened her mouth and let Ethan pop the strawberry inside. She munched and chewed and red juice dripped from her mouth. “Hmm,” she finally said. Then she wiped her mouth with her hands and her hands on Holly’s shirt and exclaimed, “More!”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but that was all we had.” Ethan fondly patted the little girl’s head and turned to the three young boys. He smiled apologetically. “You’ve got first dibs on the next crop, promise. And a Summerton always keeps true to his word.”

The boys nodded solemnly. Apparently, they had already absorbed the long list of things that Summertons did or did not do. Hanging out with Ethan would do that to you.

“Uh, Comrade Ethan…” Mikhail began. Everyone turned to him, if only because it was so rare that he said anything at all. Never mind his irritating habit of addressing everyone as “comrade”, which was apparently how things were done on his homeworld.

“…you forgot the crisps.”

“Oh, of course.” Ethan turned to Holly again. “We’ve been trying out a new process for preparing root vegetables,” he explained, “It was Mikhail’s idea. On his homeworld, they chop up root vegetables and fry them in large open pans…”

As if on cue, Mikhail produced a bag of something and offered it to Holly. Inside the bag, were dry chips, ranging in colour from pale yellow to dark red. Whatever the stuff was, it didn’t even look remotely edible. If anything, it looked as if Mikhail had scratched the insulation off the walls in his quarters and bagged it.

“They’re really quite good,” Ethan said, while Mikhail gave her an expectant look.

Holly looked at the flakes and decided that — polite or not — she really couldn’t bring herself to eat even one. Besides, she figured she’d already done her duty for the day, playing guinea pig for Ethan’s latest agronomic breakthrough.

“Thanks, but I think I’ve had enough experimentation for one day.” She flashed Mikhail an apologetic smile. “Another time, okay?”

If Mikhail was disappointed, he gave no indication of it. He simply nodded and went back to whatever he had been doing before Holly arrived. But then, Mikhail’s face never gave much indication of anything.

“But you must try the crisps,” one of the young boys who’d taken to hanging around the greenhouse insisted.

“Yes, try, try, try,” the other boys chanted.

Because it looked as if the boys were either about to start a riot or burst into tears, both of which would be equally unpleasant, Holly finally gave in. Besides, how much worse than protein sludge and nutri-cakes could it possibly taste?

So she reached into Mikhail’s bag and retrieved one of the chips. It was pale yellow and reminded Holly of those cheap and nasty, dry-as-wall-plaster protein cakes she’d had as rations while working security for a crime syndicate on the planet Kagawa. Those had been pretty bad and yet she’d survived, so how much worse could this stuff be? So she braced herself, closed her eyes and put the chip into her mouth.

The thing was crunchy, slightly salty and slightly earthy, and not at all bad. Probably great for deep space rations, except that the crumbs and the grease — and Holly’s fingers were stained with both — might cause electronics trouble.

Holly opened her eyes and found that everybody was looking at her expectantly.

“And…?”

“Not bad,” Holly said, still munching on her crisp, “Actually…” She wiped her grease and crumb stained hands on her pants. “…this is pretty good.” She turned to Mikhail. “Well done.”

Mikhail beamed. “Thank you, Comrade.”

“Mostly we used potatoes, for traditional reasons…” Ethan explained.

“Gimme,” the little girl on Holly’s arm crowed suddenly, startling Holly so much she almost dropped the kid.

She threw an imploring glance at Ethan, but he was still busily explaining how the crisps were made.

“…though we also tried parsnips, turnips, carrots and…”

“Gimme,” the little girl repeated, more insistently.

“…beetroot — Uhm, I think she wants a crisp,” Ethan pointed out.

Holly looked at Emma who nodded emphatically. And since no one else was volunteering, she reached into Mikhail’s bag again, retrieved yet another crisp and held it out for the little girl, who promptly snatched it and managed to slobber all over Holly’s fingers in the process.

“More,” Emma insisted, so Holly fed her another. And another.

“They would taste even better, if we had paprika…” Mikhail said, completely oblivious to his rapidly dwindling supply of crisps, “…and chilli pepper. Maybe we could grow some.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Ethan exclaimed, “Growing herbs and spices would greatly improve the taste of our food in general…”

Holly felt another endless discussion of plant cultivation coming on, so she quickly interrupted them. “Uhm, sorry, but the big boss is waiting for us.”

“Of course. Sorry, Mikhail, but it seems I have a meeting. Let’s continue this when I get back.”

Mikhail nodded solemnly. “Of course, Comrade Ethan.”

“Let’s go,” Holly said, but then she remembered the little girl who was still nestled against her shoulder. She couldn’t possibly take the child to a briefing. But on the other hand, she wasn’t sure what else to do with her either. “Uhm, what about her?”

“Just put her down,” Ethan said, “She’s better now, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Emma emitted a sound that might have been a “yes”.

“And she’ll be safe here, with Stuart and Mikhail and the boys. Maybe Mikhail even has some more crisps for you.”

So Holly cautiously set Emma back onto the ground and got a surprise, for before she could let go, the little girl suddenly slung her arms around Holly’s neck and planted a slobbering, strawberry-juice and salt dripping kiss on her mouth. Then Emma spotted a chicken and took off after it, whooping with glee.

When Holly straightened up again, she found Ethan smiling at her. “I think she likes you.”

“Which just goes to show that children are dumb,” Holly said and strutted off, not waiting to see if Ethan was following.

***

It was a long walk from the greenhouse back to the command centre. Ethan and Holly spent most of that long walk talking. Or rather, Ethan was talking, nattering on about plants and cultivation methods and soil quality and a dozen other things, while Holly nodded politely at appropriate intervals and pretended to listen, though truth to be told, she had mostly tuned out. Plants and their cultivation were a lot more interesting to Ethan than they would ever be to her.

Absentmindedly, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, still wondering what had possessed that little girl to kiss her. Kids didn’t normally like Holly. They were afraid of her and with good reason, too. And the feeling was mutual.

“Thank you,” she said abruptly, cutting off Ethan in the middle of some doubtlessly fascinating lecture about fertilising agents, “Thank you for being so kind to the little girl.”

Ethan blinked, as if surprised by the sudden interruption. Probably not used to being interrupted, considering that Mikhail never talked and Stuart worshipped every word that fell from his mouth.

“Emma? She doesn’t talk much — apparently whatever the Empire did to her home and her family was really bad. But otherwise she’s a real sweetheart. You simply have to love her.”

“You could have punished her,” Holly pointed out.

“Punished her?” Ethan blinked, as if he didn’t quite follow. “Emma? What in the universe for?”

“She damaged your plants,” Holly said, “And you could have punished her for that. But you didn’t. And I wanted to thank you for that.”

Ethan turned on her, eyes blazing with barely suppressed fury, and Holly instinctively shrank back. She’d always known Ethan had a temper. She’d seen him angry, even furious before, had seen him beat some other guy to a pulp until the guards dragged him away. But until today, his anger had never been directed at her.

“You think I’d beat a child? A small child?”

Holly shrugged, willing herself to remain calm in the face of his freak-out. “You could have. Nobody would’ve said anything.”

“She’s a child.”

“And she chased your chickens around and damaged your plants,” Holly said calmly, “You’ve put a lot of work into cultivating those plants and the kid just crushed them because she was careless. You had every right to hit her.”

“It was just lettuce,” Ethan exclaimed, “Okay, batavia lettuce, which is kind of hard to come by, but just lettuce nonetheless. And Emma is a child. A living breathing human child. How… how can you even think I’d ever hurt a child over something as trivial as lettuce?”

He was still outraged, as angry as Holly had ever seen him. Worse, she didn’t even know why. After all, the little girl — Emma — was the one who’d done something wrong, had landed face first in a bed of prized baba-whatever lettuce, not she. All Holly had done was thank Ethan for not punishing the kid, for Emma — dumb as all children were — hadn’t.

“We could have eaten the lettuce,” she pointed out, as calmly as she could, “We can’t eat the kid.”

Though Holly had no doubt that somebody somewhere had done just that, consumed children for nutrition. Nonetheless, eating children was wrong, deeply and thoroughly wrong. Nobody had the right to eat children, not while there was still protein sludge and probably not even when there wasn’t.

“She’s dead weight, useless, too young for any sort of work. You don’t have to put up with her or the other kids hanging round the greenhouse…” Come to think of it, Holly had told him, repeatedly, that he should just throw the kids out, that no one would say anything or mind. “…and you certainly don’t have to tolerate her crushing your valuable lettuce.”

“She’s a child,” Ethan repeated for the third time, as if he was not just unwilling but unable to comprehend her point, “Children are precious, a gift, a privilege.”

“Not where I come from,” Holly said quietly, not looking at him.

“Then it must be a horrible place…” Ethan said, wrapped in his invisible cloak of righteousness as always, “…if they don’t value their own children.”

“It was,” Holly said, eyes fixed on her combat boots and the steel floors of Pyrs.

She felt Ethan’s hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For being a self-righteous prick?” Holly asked, still not looking at him.

“That, too,” he admitted, “I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. Not you of all people.” He took a deep breath. “But most of all, I’m sorry that you were hurt by people who should’ve taken care of you, when you were a kid…”

“Nobody hurt me,” Holly snapped, harsher than she had intended and harsher than Ethan deserved, “At least no worse than many others.”

“I’m still sorry…” Ethan insisted, “…that you had to grow up in such a horrible place.”

Now Holly did look at him. “Whatever for? It’s hardly your fault, isn’t it?”

“No, but… I just think no one should have to grow up that way, that’s all.”

He was right, Holly thought. No one should have to grow up like she had.

“Especially not you,” Ethan continued, absurdly touching in his earnestness, “You deserved better.”

“Yes,” Holly said, “I guess I did. But some things can’t be helped.” She injected some cheerfulness she didn’t feel into her voice, all because she couldn’t stand that sad puppy-dog look on Ethan’s face anymore. “And besides, that’s all in the past. I’m better now.”

Ethan gave her a doubtful smile that suggested her faux cheeriness hadn’t quite worked as well as intended. “You sure?”

“Not really,” Holly admitted, if only because she found she couldn’t lie to him, “But I can’t let my past drag me down. And besides I’m not the only person in the galaxy who grew up in a horrible place.”

“No, but…”

Holly reached out and put a finger, still stained with grease and salt, on his lips to shut him up.

“Pyrs is a pretty awful place to grow up as well. It’s dark and it’s dangerous and it’s depressing and children really, really shouldn’t live here…”

She took her finger away, because she felt rather silly. Besides, she had his full attention now.

“…but they do, cause some things just can’t be changed. But you…”

She looked him straight in the eye, took his hand in hers, squeezed it.

“…you’re making this horrible place a little less horrible for those kids in the greenhouse. That’s a great thing, probably the greatest thing you can do for the Rebellion.”

Ethan shook his head. “It’s not. Anybody would’ve done the same.”

“No, anybody wouldn’t have done the same. Most people would’ve punished the girl or at least yelled at her. But not you. No, you took her in your arms and comforted her when she was crying, which is pretty fucking damn rare…”

Holly looked at him and saw him in a different light for the first time, not as a clueless if well-meaning aristocrat whose life experience was light years from hers, nor as a mission that had been thrust upon her against her will, an annoying tag-along she just couldn’t get rid of, but as a genuinely good person, a man she was proud to call friend.

“…and I just wanted to thank you for that, cause I don’t think anybody else here does.”

She smiled.

“And now let’s go and see Arthur Madden before he sends out a search party. Or worse Alanna Greyskull.” Holly shuddered at the thought of the much feared deputy leader of the Rebellion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ethan countered, “Commander Greyskull is always perfectly civil to me.”

“Yeah, cause you keep addressing her as Commander Greyskull,” Holly replied, giving him a jab to the shoulder.

Ethan grinned at her, their disagreement already forgotten. “Well, it works, doesn’t it?”

Not the end…

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Cat Fight”

It’s time for another Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server.

Like “Held Hostage”, This is another story that features not my usual Masters of the Universe Origins figures, but the larger Masterverse figures, because I got lucky and found the Masterverse She-Ra for a good price. Once again there’s also a slightly different version of this story on Twitter.

“For the Honour of Grayskull, I am She-Ra!”

Of course, I already have a very nice She-Ra figure, but since Mattel never made any of her friends and particularly her three canonical love interests in Origins for reasons best known to themselves (especially since they did make most of the male villains), my She-Ra was a little lonely.

However, a couple of characters from the vintage She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoons did come out in the Masterverse line, such as She-Ra’s friend/rival/enemy/lover (it’s complicated) Catra.

Catra’s feline friend as a Schleich Eldrador Shadow Panther, which works perfectly in scale with her.

So now I have both She-Ra and Catra, let’s see what happens when the two former friends turned enemies meet:

In the Whispering Woods:

“Catra!”

“Adora!”

GRRRR!

“The Whispering Woods are rebel territory. You have no business here. Leave now and no one needs to get hurt.”

“Not a chance, She-Ra. If I’m leaving the Whispering Woods, I’m taking you with me as my prisoner. If I bring you back to the Fright Zone, the Mighty Hordak will reward me richly.”

“Hordak is using you, Catra. You don’t need to work for him anymore. Walk away and join the rebellion, just like me. And then we can be together again, be friends again, just like we used to be.”

“Things will never be like they used to be, Adora. You left me. You joined the rebellion and went back to your birth family and left me all alone.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to take you with me, but…”

“Liar! You forgot all about me the moment that He-Man walked through the door.”

“He’s my brother, Catra! Hordak stole me from my family, when I was a baby and he probably did the same to you. Why do you still work for him?”

“Because Hordak made me Force Captain, once you left.”

“Don’t you see that he’s just making you do terrible things in the name of the Horde?”

“The Horde is only doing what needs to be done. Once upon a time you used to know that. Before you turned traitor.”

“No, Catra, I don’t want to fight you.”

“Then you’ll surrender to me without a fight? Good. That makes it easier for me to bring you in. Hordak will be so pleased.”

“We used to be friends, Catra, blast it! And while I won’t fight you, I will defend myself, if you force me to.”

“Look, I don’t want to fight you either, Adora.”

“Then don’t. Hordak doesn’t own you. You don’t need to do what he wants. You’re your own person, Catra. You can do whatever you want.”

“I…”

“What do you want to do, Catra?”

“I… I just want to kiss you.”

“I want to kiss you, too.”

“Then why don’t we…?”

SMOOCH.

PURR.

“Hordak won’t like this, you know?”

“Screw Hordak!”

“Ugh, I’d rather not.”

“Forget Hordak and kiss me.”

SMOOCH.

***

Yes, She-Ra is canonically bisexual and kisses girls. Live with it.

The fact that Adora likes girls wasn’t invented by the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power cartoon either. In fact, the remarkably good DC Comics Masters of the Universe run from 2012 to 2016 introduces Adora as the Horde enforcer Despara who’s a lot more evil than her counterpart in The Secret of the Sword. As Despara, Adora sports a buzzcut and shows an unusual interest in Teela and zero interest in any of the male characters. In fact, Adora’s two male love interests Bow (who never seemed very straight in the first place) and Sea Hawke don’t appear in those comics at all. Honestly, look at this panel and tell that there are no sapphic vibes here.

So yup, Adora likes girls. Will she end up with Catra or someone else? Only time will tell.

However, that’s it for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story, because there will be more.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for February 2023

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors newly published this month, though some February books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, epic fantasy, portal fantasy, grimdark fantasy, sword and sorcery, fantasy mystery, paranormal mystery, paranormal romance, science fantasy, space opera, military science fiction, dystopian fiction, LitRPG, speculative poetry, starships, space marines, alien empresses, alien invasions, deadly plagues, crime-busting witches, granny gamers, highway angels and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Complete Poems 1965-2020 by Michael Butterworth:

Across Michael Butterworth’s work, elements are reiterated but endlessly transfigured – hitchhiking girlfriends, elm trees, the moon, astronauts, the space race, collage artists, misophonia, marriage, divorce, beached whales, clifftops, the sea, the seasons, mental block, ale houses, the chemical laboratory, ambition, madness, pain, death and impermanence, silver birch trees, suicide, Zazen, riots, train seating indicators, camping, the Welfare State, crows and seagulls, the racist English and Canada geese… are some of his subjects. The subjects of destruction – war, the consumer society, ‘progress’, humanity’s inhumanity, the doings of men (and the necessity of a new woman), galactic war, drug wars, hunting – are never far away, hopefully countered by the tone of optimism found in his later poems inspired by Buddhist philosophy. The effect is at once familiar and yet profound, in language that has the confessional qualities and simplicity of early influences such as Sylvia Plath and the Beats, and the later influence of Zen poets such as Ry?kan. Occasionally the writing is startlingly radical – a reminder of the poet’s beginnings in the New Wave. A collection such as this one from Space Cowboy Books is overdue, and Complete Poems: 1965-2020 brings to more deserving attention a less heard voice in modern poetry.

Tale of the Uncrowned Kings by Steve Dilks:

Sorcery in Uhremon! It is a world of shadows and jewels, forbidden crypts and deathless gods.
A world where science vies for supremacy against blackest necromancy.
In these chaotic times, legends arise…
Erich Von Tormath, exiled prince turned freebooter and mercenary.
Zaran, thief and assassin.
Together, they dare plunder the sanctum of the most powerful necromancer in Uhremon.
Their prize? Gold and glory.
Should they fail… An unspeakable death!

War Head by M.R. Forbes:

When Ben first bought his starship, he expected to spend the rest of his days joyriding through the universe with his best friend.

As the most wanted criminal in a galaxy that’s about to be crushed in the iron fist of an evil tyrant, it’s fair to say things haven’t gone according to plan. Caught up in the middle of a looming intergalactic conflict and rejected by both sides, there’s only one thing left for him to do.

Take the biggest risk of his life…

And prepare for war.

Divine Revivification by Rachel Ford:

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but can a lowly junior scribe really be the key to ending a war among the gods?
Retiree and barbarian fighter Barbara Callaghan is building an alliance capable of defeating Odin, king of the Norse gods. At least, she’s trying to. But as the local populations shy from the cause, and even Loki seems to forget about her, she realizes she’s missing something.

Or, someone.

Army veteran Caleb Dunn, meanwhile, didn’t expect his summer job to turn into a new life, and a quest to save humanity from vengeful gods. And yet, with the shadow of Odin’s wrath looming large in the North, that’s the mission.
Fair enough – except that Caleb was tricked into starting The Old Gods as a junior scribe, a glorified writer and tax collector with no martial skills. Now he’s stuck playing a build that taps into none of his strengths, and all of his weaknesses.

Caleb is the key she’s been missing. Unfortunately, he is a noob. Some rapid leveling is required, and the services of a barbarian brawler, to ensure he survives the process.

With Barbara’s brawn and Caleb’s brains, these two fish out of water just might build an alliance powerful enough to put an end to the chaos.

Terra by Chris Fox:

The Birthplace of Mankind Rediscovered

The Ganog have arrived. Their fleets are endless. Their will implacable. They cannot use magic, but that isn’t stopping them from wiping out mages.

Behind them lurks a worse foe, the Gorthians, those holding the Ganog’s leash. They have devoured countless galaxies, harvesting them over and over to create more monstrosities.

If we are to survive, then we need allies. We need powerful magic. I can find both if I’m able to locate Terra, the ancient birthplace of mankind. Assuming we get there first. If not?

Our galaxy burns just like all the others…

Live Like You Were Scrying by Lily Harper Hart:

The weather in Casper Creek has yet to turn and Hannah Hickok is determined to take advantage of her downtime to engage in a bit of romance with her fiancé Cooper Wyatt. Unfortunately for her, the world has other plans.

An eerie howl draws Hannah and Cooper to Main Street during a snowstorm, and what they find confuses them. There’s some sort of monster stalking the downtown area, and a woman has appeared out of nowhere in the creature’s wake only to collapse in front of them.

Before Hannah can call for help, the woman disappears, leaving a mystery and a monster hunt on the menu.

Casper Creek’s history is long and storied. This time, however, the trouble can be traced back to Hannah’s own family. It seems the woman who disappeared has ties to her grandmother…and Abigail doesn’t want to share the details with anybody, including her own family.

Frustrated, Hannah keeps digging, but what she finds is a mystery for the ages. It seems the stories she always heard, the ones about her late grandfather being a saint, might’ve been more fiction than reality. The truth of his past is about to collide with Hannah’s future.

And nobody will ever be the same again.

Shades by A.L. Hawke:

They hunt angels on the highway.

Amanda’s road trip across the USA is a reward for graduating from college—and an opportunity to record her traveler podcast. On her drive, she gets the adventure she’s seeking after nearly being knocked off the highway. There she has a chance encounter with a shadowy man wearing shades.

Danger follows. A devil named Lilith directs her motorcycle gang to crash into Amanda’s car. The stranger in shades saves her. He calls her an angel, destined for ascension to heaven. That doesn’t sound so bad, until he explains that it means she’s going to die on this trip if she stays on the road.

Well, Amanda won’t disappoint her podcast fans. And as she drives in search of adventure, the devils won’t stop pursuing her. Not before they steer her into even more danger. There’s more trouble in store for her, all set as a trap to bring the man she’s falling in love with closer to damnation.

Content warning: This novel contains sexual scenes, adult situations, and profanity.

Tomorrowville by David T. Isaak:

“A cautionary tale of a cruel, authoritarian America of the future that’s leavened by barbed wit and irreverence.” — Kirkus Reviews

Gen-X computer hacker Toby is a classic American: impulsive, irreverent, intelligent, and inventive. And, after a silly accident in 2008, he can add “inanimate” to the list—because Toby is dead.

But only for a while. Eighty years later, medical science has advanced enough to bring Toby back to life.

Welcome to Southern California, 2088. The skies are clean, but the rich-poor social gulf has widened. The biggest industries are entertainment and the prison system. Taxes have been cut — because the main source of government revenue is the confiscation of property. Many new, designer recreational drugs are legal, and many other drugs are mandatory. And while the US leads the world in cosmetic surgery, in most technologies America lags far behind…

America has changed. Toby hasn’t. And in the collision between America 2008 and America 2088, Toby brings the system to its knees—just by being his freedom loving, problem solving self.

Read now and join Toby in Tomorrowville for love, sex, politics, and cyberspace—plus the occasional turbocharged wheelchair and robotic rat.

Ruby Road by B.R. Kingsolver:

It had been thirteen years, but my heart skipped a beat. My brain was bursting with things I wanted to say—many of them contradictory—things I had thought I might say if I ever saw him again. So, I said nothing.

He pulled a leather bag out of an inside pocket of his cloak, opened the drawstrings, and turned it upside down over a display tray on the counter. A flood of rubies—smooth but uncut—poured out. “I need you. There’s probably a whole mountain full of them. But I can’t find the vein myself. Come with me, and we’ll split the take.”

What I had—what he wanted—was a talent for earth magic. I sifted them through my fingers. The quality was extraordinary, the feel of them electric as they touched my magic.

Freaky Crush by Amanda M. Lee:

Poet Parker is living a new reality now that she knows what she is. Unfortunately for her, she still doesn’t know what she can do … and she doesn’t think she’s going to figure it out in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Since her uncle Sidney is in tow, Poet is hopeful for a quiet week. Little Rock has never been a hotbed of activity. Quiet isn’t what she gets, however.

What started as an irritation on the pedestrian bridge turns into a full-blown attack. It seems Little Rock has a seedy underbelly after all, and it’s something Poet was never expecting.

There’s a craven on the loose, a woman who can control actions and emotions … and she’s set her sights on Kade. The craven has a specific type, and Kade fits it to a tee. Unfortunately for him, the craven’s victims all end up dead.

Poet is determined to keep her loved ones safe, but it’s proving to be more difficult than she anticipated. With half her army vulnerable to the craven, Poet has to fight her own people, even as she desperately tries to protect them at the same time.

Poet’s new powers are necessary for the fight, but is she ready to embrace them? When the loas join the party and make things worse—because that’s what they do—things spiral.

It’s up to Poet to fix what’s been broken. That is if she can.

Hultichia by Marshall Ryan Maresca:

A mysterious and disturbing summons brings Aurien Pemmick, an untested deacon of the Church of Druthal, across the border to a peculiar and disquieting kingdom: Kellirac.

Despite being in this antiquated and superstitious place, Pemmick is determined to root out the truth behind the summons. But Kellirac proves to be a place of dangers beyond the natural realm, especially since Pemmick arrives on the eve of Hultichia: a sacred night where the locals claim the dead will walk.

Vibrations by P.E. Padilla:

To go back, he must go forward…

Sam Sharp has never been what people would call sociable. Affected profoundly by his father’s death when Sam was very young, he developed into a solitary and self-sufficient person. When he finds himself transported to Gythe, a world that is completely different from his home, yet strangely familiar, he is forced to seek help. Sam’s nature wars with his need to rely on the strangers he meets—a warrior, a scholar, a monk, and a telepathic creature—to help him find a way back to his own world.

When Sam finds that he has an affinity for the peculiar vibrational energy that exists in Gythe, he realizes it is his only chance for going home. But there is only one person who may have the knowledge to help him: the Gray Man, a tyrannical vibrational energy master with plans to rule the world. Can Sam trust others to aid him and to prepare him for the ultimate confrontation with the Gray Man, to learn the secrets of this mysterious adversary? If so, will he even be capable of using the vibrational energy himself to return home, or will he die in this strange new world?

The Secret Within by Sean Platt and David W. Wright:

Delaney West, a tough-as-nails private investigator who’s not afraid to break the rules, operates out of an apartment she shares with her grumpy orange tabby named Pumpkin. Clients come to Delaney for her unique gifts — talents that helped her put away some of the city’s most dangerous criminals. But when Delaney takes on a case to find the missing Jay Sutherland — a 20-something playboy with a rap sheet and a penchant for beating women — Del realizes this case is much more than it seems.

With the help of her father, who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s, in a nursing home, Del discovers that the truth behind Jay’s disappearance is linked to a group called The Night Society. But they’re no ordinary villains. Anika, Jay’s girlfriend, is the only person who may know his whereabouts, but she harbors a dark secret that could pit Del against an enemy she hasn’t seen since her childhood.

As she delves deeper into this web of mystery and danger, can Del put aside her commitment issues long enough to save Jay and herself?

The Gus Ascendancy by Jack Ravenhhill:

Sympathizin’ with aliens makes about as much sense as government cheese.

When Gus and the other alien sympathizers are granted psionic powers as acolytes of the hive mind, Sam realizes something needs to change – and that something is him. So he gives in to Ronan’s personality, which was imprinted onto him as Ronan died, letting it take over entirely.

Ronan had none of Sam’s people-pleasing tendencies, so the imprint gives Sam a confidence boost. But it also makes him headstrong and foolhardy. He goads Gus into a hasty attack on the hive that results in Gus starting his own break-away faction: The Gus Ascendancy.

Before Sam’s consciousness is completely overwhelmed by Ronan’s personality, Journey finds a way to psionically scour most of Ronan’s imprint away. Sam has just enough confidence left to negotiate a compromise with Gus.

But can Gus be trusted when so much power is almost in his grasp?

Nemesis of Mars by Glynn Stewart:

A failed attempt on the Mage-Queen
An old friend from the gutter
An enemy that should be dead…

When a kidnapping attempt on the Mage-Queen of Mars is thwarted by luck, leaving thousands dead in its wake, Prince-Chancellor Damien Montgomery returns to field operations one more time. The evidence leads to one place: Tau Ceti.
In Tau Ceti, Mage-Commander Roslyn Chambers finds herself without a posting as her teaching tour ends. Before she can take any kind of vacation, an old friend from her pre-Navy days shows up claiming to have information about the attempt on the Queen.

Montgomery is the Mage-Queen’s adoptive father and right hand man. Chambers is one of her few true friends. Neither will let the blood of innocents go unpunished.

Neither believes the traitors called Nemesis are dead – but finding them may cost more than either of them can pay!

The Bridge to Magic by Alex Thornbury:

The Blight. The end of Mankind. The Bridge that may be salvation or the final betrayal.

In this grimdark fantasy, Elika, an orphan on Terren’s streets, hates and fears the bridge that spans the great chasm to the Deadlands. Like everyone else, she clings to the hope that purging every lingering echo of magic from the world can stop the Blight.

Then she discovers that magic is hiding within her, and through her it seeks to enact the will of its own. Everything Elika knew about her past shatters, as long-buried secrets about her true birth emerge. Accused of being a mage, many doubt her loyalties. Her gang turns against her. The one man she thought she could trust and love, abandons her. Elika must soon decide: Either destroy the magic inside her or cross the bridge to her own uncertain end. But what awaits them in the Deadlands where the enemy of mankind roams wild? Her future or her end?

The Bridge to Magic is a story of a life between two deaths and an impossible choice to make. It is a story of finding hope, love and survival in a world where none seems possible.

Alien Empress by James David Victor:

Bringing humanity together to face a greater danger should be the easiest of tasks in a war that threatens to exterminate the human race. Or maybe not…

Holly and her team are facing enemies on all fronts, some alien and some not. Their only chance of defeating the Thaal is to cast aside their differences and fight for all of humanity. The only problem: the human factions hate each other as much as they hate the alien invaders. Can they defeat the alien Empress and save mankind?

Alien Empress is the ninth and final book in the Star Breaker series. If you like fast-paced space adventures with interesting characters who battle aliens, evil corporations, and space pirates, Holly Cropper and her team of Marines are ready to share their epic adventure with you.

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for February 2023

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some January books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, animal mysteries, historical mysteries, Roman mysteries, Victorian mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, 1960s mysteries, paranormal mysteries, fantasy mysteries, crime thrillers, adventure thrillers, spy thrillers, historical thrillers, romantic suspense, police officers, FBI agents, amateur sleuths, spies, tabloid photographers, missing persons, serial killers, wrongfully accused suspects on the run, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting alchemists, crime-busting cats, murder and mayhem in London, Little Rock, Arkansas, Maine, the Florida Keys, Wales, Rio de Janeiro, Alexandria and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Murder With Method by Blythe Baker:

When an innocent man goes on the run from police, Sylvia finds herself harboring an accused murderer. Drawn into investigating the violent crime, her search for the truth leads her into the unfamiliar world of betting and horseracing.

As danger closes in around her, Sylvia will need all the help she can get. But new revelations about the past of her butler leave her doubting even the resourceful Miles can come to her rescue this time…

 

A Harmless Lie and a Dangerous Spy by Lori Bond:

A Runaway Victorian Bride. An Heir to a Duke. A Russian Spy. And a steamship bound for America…will two strangers be able to solve the mystery, catch a spy and stop a war, or will their growing romance cost them their lives?

Lady Caroline Stravers, only daughter of the Earl of Wickshire, does not want to marry the crude, older man her parents have chosen for her, so in the early hours of the morning she sneaks out of her fashionable London home to run away for Paris or America or perhaps Australia…

Jerry, Viscount St. David, has been sent to catch a Russian spy who stole plans for a new weapon. If he can keep the Russians from getting the plans, this could very well turn the tide of the Crimean War…

When the two run into each other at Paddington Station, a bargain is struck and Caroline agrees to help Jerry track down the spy in return for her ticket out to New York City.

The next day the two strangers, now partners, board a steamship bound for America to catch a spy. Wars, lives—and hearts—are on the line, but working in such close quarters leads both Caroline and Jerry to discover feelings neither expected. Will their new relationship lead to a stronger bond or jeopardize their mission and their lives?

Pernicious Woman by Beth Byers:

There’s nothing like a woman. Beautiful, saintly, clever, plain. It doesn’t necessarily matter. But a pernicious woman. One who spreads poison, who wrangles, who manipulates, who controls, who looms too large–that is a special kind of beast.

And she’s missing. When Smith and Beatrice go looking for her, they’re faced with the question of whether it isn’t better to fail. Maybe they don’t want to be good at their work. Maybe they don’t want to find her. Maybe they want to save those she torments rather than the missing woman.

Dead To Me by J.M. Dalgliesh:

Let go of your past… or it will be the death of you…

When a man’s body is discovered crammed into the boot of an abandoned car in a remote location, DI Tom Janssen and his team must unpick his life to find out how he came to be there.

The victim was a local man, popular with some although hated by others, and he had a habit of making enemies, enemies that any sane man would seek to avoid. For once, the team do not struggle to find a suspect or a motive for his murder, but with several to choose from, how can they determine who delivered the killing blows? Those who despised the man are unrepentant and as the investigation develops there seems to be more going on than a simple act of vengeance. What did the deceased have to hide and who was so intent on keeping their own secrets that they were prepared to brutally kill to do so?

With a killer at large the public are restless, reassured only by the suggestion that the murder is an act perpetrated by figures within the criminal community against one of their own, but when a troubled teenage girl disappears fear takes hold in the small coastal town. The only potential witness is an eccentric homeless man who comes and goes as he pleases, often disappearing for months at a time. Who did he see? What does he know? Will he be the next to be silenced?

What looked like a simple revenge attack will turn into a race against time for Tom and his team as they try to protect the innocent and reveal the guilty… only no one knows with any certainty who belongs in which camp.

Rio Flash ’62 by Andrew Deutsch:

Brazil. Rio De Janeiro. 1962. A time of dramatic political, social, and cultural clashes. Here, at the nexus of high society and low, style and street, pop music and passionate crime, a young tabloid photographer will do anything to get ahead – even protect a killer.

Beto Santera, raised on the struggling side of Rio, has just wrangled his first press photographer’s card. He has big dreams, small chances, and a chip on his shoulder. Beto is desperate to get ahead as a photographer but is scrambling to make ends meet.

His luck changes when he photos Sergio Fontes von Imperial, an outcast of a powerful Rio family, leaving the crime scene of a murdered popular Brazilian star. Beto makes a dark deal with Sergio, loses the negatives, and he gets access to the exclusive world of fashion, art, music, and nightlife. All the excitement Rio has to offer.

Then more killings occur. Beto is forced to make a choice, keep his career, or help catch the criminal.

A Mark of Imperfection by Rhys Dylan:

Know thine enemy …

Evan Warlow is a man with enemies. As a DCI in the Dyfed Powys force, that comes with the territory. But when two of his most vicious critics are abducted and turn up dead in a macabre tableau, tough questions need to be asked.

The uncomfortable answers lead Evan and the team back to his roots and an old case that has haunted him for years. The deaths in the forest have all the hallmarks of a dangerous killer with no fear of consequences. And when one of Evan’s fellow officers becomes the next target, it’s clear that the murderer isn’t finished yet.

There’s a coppery aroma of vendetta in the air. Unless Evan and the team can get to the root cause of the killer’s twisted anger, there will be more deaths. And guess who’s next on the list?

The Murders in the Mist by Elle Gray:

It seems that supernatural forces have taken a hold of Storyville, Maine… and unfortunately for FBI Agent Cora Pratt, things in town are only getting stranger.

After being led on a cross-country pursuit of one of the most prolific serial killers either one of them had ever seen, FBI Agent Coraline Pratt and her partner, Nolan Rogers, found themselves at the end of the line: Storyville, Maine. And almost immediately, strange things that had nothing to do with the Postcard Killer began happening around Cora. But when a woman she was connected to ended up brutally murdered, it felt like forces were conspiring behind the scenes to keep her there.

Now, Cora is racing against time to find another murderer. As the case takes a series of twists and turns she never expected, she finds herself more mystified than ever before.

Mysterious figures in masks, unexplainable displays of power, disembodied music, spirits of little girls, and abduction victims returning years older than when they were taken.

All the killings aside, things just kept getting weirder, and the questions are mounting — with Cora finding herself in the center of it all.

It’s a race against something otherworldly and for Cora the answers to Storyville’s mysteries will have dire consequences, not just for her and the townspeople but possibly the world…

Live Like You Were Scrying by Lily Harper Hart:

The weather in Casper Creek has yet to turn and Hannah Hickok is determined to take advantage of her downtime to engage in a bit of romance with her fiancé Cooper Wyatt. Unfortunately for her, the world has other plans.

An eerie howl draws Hannah and Cooper to Main Street during a snowstorm, and what they find confuses them. There’s some sort of monster stalking the downtown area, and a woman has appeared out of nowhere in the creature’s wake only to collapse in front of them.

Before Hannah can call for help, the woman disappears, leaving a mystery and a monster hunt on the menu.

Casper Creek’s history is long and storied. This time, however, the trouble can be traced back to Hannah’s own family. It seems the woman who disappeared has ties to her grandmother…and Abigail doesn’t want to share the details with anybody, including her own family.

Frustrated, Hannah keeps digging, but what she finds is a mystery for the ages. It seems the stories she always heard, the ones about her late grandfather being a saint, might’ve been more fiction than reality. The truth of his past is about to collide with Hannah’s future.

And nobody will ever be the same again.

The Curious Case of Emily Lickenson by CeeCee James:

Catnip and cadavers in the care home.

Cat blogger extraordinaire Emily Lickenson falls into a mystery when the head cook at the local care home unexpectedly dies.

As curious as a cat, Emily can’t resist investigating exactly what happened. She recruits her snoopy Aunt Mattie (who herself is half-convinced she used to be a spy) to hunt for clues in the midst of more red herrings than at a fish market..

The clever duo soon discover evidence of murder and a gaggle of suspects, a ditzy sous chef, grumpy cleaner who wanted the less than friendly chef sliced and diced.

Of course, Shakespeare, the cat is along for the ride, both sweet and sassy, and with nine lives!

In this quirky whodunnit you’ll find twists and turns, red herrings served with a slice of puzzle pie, and surprises that’ll have you turning the pages to find the killer before they find Emily. Perfect for those who love cozy animal mysteries with a pinch of humor, lots of clues, and a fun small town feel.

Freaky Crush by Amanda M. Lee:

Poet Parker is living a new reality now that she knows what she is. Unfortunately for her, she still doesn’t know what she can do … and she doesn’t think she’s going to figure it out in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Since her uncle Sidney is in tow, Poet is hopeful for a quiet week. Little Rock has never been a hotbed of activity. Quiet isn’t what she gets, however.

What started as an irritation on the pedestrian bridge turns into a full-blown attack. It seems Little Rock has a seedy underbelly after all, and it’s something Poet was never expecting.

There’s a craven on the loose, a woman who can control actions and emotions … and she’s set her sights on Kade. The craven has a specific type, and Kade fits it to a tee. Unfortunately for him, the craven’s victims all end up dead.

Poet is determined to keep her loved ones safe, but it’s proving to be more difficult than she anticipated. With half her army vulnerable to the craven, Poet has to fight her own people, even as she desperately tries to protect them at the same time.

Poet’s new powers are necessary for the fight, but is she ready to embrace them? When the loas join the party and make things worse—because that’s what they do—things spiral.

It’s up to Poet to fix what’s been broken. That is if she can.

Hultichia by Marshall Ryan Maresca:

A mysterious and disturbing summons brings Aurien Pemmick, an untested deacon of the Church of Druthal, across the border to a peculiar and disquieting kingdom: Kellirac.

Despite being in this antiquated and superstitious place, Pemmick is determined to root out the truth behind the summons. But Kellirac proves to be a place of dangers beyond the natural realm, especially since Pemmick arrives on the eve of Hultichia: a sacred night where the locals claim the dead will walk.

Fish On! by Wayne Stinnett:

Jesse McDermitt is finally ready to retire. But life has other plans. While diving on a remote reef deep in the backcountry of the Florida Keys with his wife, son and two friends, he discovers of all things, a car.

Not just any car, but a 1928 Duesenberg Model J, the most powerful and stylish automobile of its time. The car was once owned by a Saudi prince who was attempting to develop Johnston Key in the heart of Turkey Basin before Henry Flagler even finished the rail line to Key West.

But that’s not all Jesse discovers and what he finds next will make him the target of one of his own. He’s been mentoring a young operative who then decides to go rogue and now it’s up to Jesse to find the man and, if need be, eliminate him before he can hurt anyone else.

Shadow’s Force by Mary Stone:

Which is more dangerous…Mother or Human Nature?

Twelve hours earlier, Interim Sheriff Rebecca West was enjoying a casual lunchtime burger. Now she’s preparing for a hurricane headed straight for Shadow Island. While hauling sandbags and calming town officials, the last thing she needs is a stunned man stumbling into the sheriff’s department.

Covered in blood.

Clearly in shock, the man doesn’t know who he is and only mutters about needing help finding a mermaid. Is he distraught because he killed someone or because he witnessed a horrific event?

Rebecca needs to find out—and fast.

Fighting the torrential rain and wind, Rebecca discovers the victim, posed and decorated like a mermaid. Is the catatonic man the killer? Or is something more sinister at work?

With very little support, she has to work quickly before the island is completely cut off from the mainland and any evidence is destroyed by the natural disaster. It’s all hands on deck as Rebecca and the entire department scramble to prepare for a hurricane…and solve a murder.

The Deadliest Deceptions by June Trop:

Enter the world of first-century CE Roman Alexandria and participate in the perilous adventures of Miriam bat Isaac, budding alchemist and sleuth extraordinaire. Join her and her deputy Phoebe as they struggle to solve nine of their most baffling cases beginning with the locked-room murder of a sailor in which Miriam is baffled by not just who killed the sailor but how he could have died and how the killer could have entered and escaped from the room.

But be careful as you accompany them into the city’s malignant underbelly. Whether or not you can help them solve the crimes, your blood will flow faster as you escape to that world of adventure we all long for. Enjoy!

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Held Hostage”

It’s time for another Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server. You can check out all the Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Stories here.

This story features not the usual Masters of the Universe Origins figures, but the larger Masterverse figures (there are several Masters of the Universe toylines, ranging from mini-figures to the seven-inch Masterverse figures).

I primarily collect the Origins figures, because they have the biggest selection of characters as well as as a lot of vehicles and accessories and because they look like an updated and improved version of the vintage toys from the 1980s. Besides, the size is just big enough that you can pose them and do photo stories with them, but small enough that they don’t take up too much space.

However, the larger Masterverse figures also have their advantages. They have more articulation and detail than the Origins figures and they also have characters and character variants that Origins doesn’t have. In particular, Masterverse has more female characters and they look really good. You can also frequently pick up the Masterverse figures at a reduced price, so a few have found their way into my collection.

And since I have Teela and He-Man as well as Skeletor (in his even more powerful Skelegod form) and Evil-Lyn (in her Sorceress outfit from Revelation), I could make a photo story with them. There’s also a somewhat different Twitter version here.

In the Eternian wilderness, at the outer perimeter:

“And you’re sure that you’ll be all right going on patrol all on your own?”

“Oh please, Adam. I’m a trained soldier, Captain of the Royal Guard and your bodyguard. Also, I can kick your arse anytime.”

“Not in this form. Unless I let you. And now kiss me again.”

SMOOCH!

“That was wonderful – as always. But now I’ve got to go. And so do you. Your father is waiting.”

“He can wait a bit longer. After all, he only wants me to stand decoratively next to the throne.”

“Well, you are very handsome.”

“I want to be more than just a decoration. But whenever I try to say something or make a suggestion, it’s always, ‘Adam, you don’t know anything about politics or about the burden of being king.’ And how am I supposed to learn, if Dad never lets me do anything?”

“One day, your Dad will come around and see you for who you really are. And now go or he’ll be angry.”

“Be careful out there, Teela. Skeletor has been stirring up trouble again of late. And he’s gotten a lot more powerful as well.”

“I’m always careful.”

“No, you’re not. You’re reckless and impulsive and then I have to rescue you.”

“Careful there. Or I will kick your arse – whether you’re powered up or not.”

“I’ll take you up on that offer… later. Or Dad will have my arse for being late again.”

***

Later, still in the Eternian wilderness:

“Well, what have we here? The Captain of the Royal Guard and He-Man’s sweetheart. And all alone, too. What a catch!”

“I don’t want to fight you, Lyn. Get out of my way and no one gets hurt.”

“Can’t do that, sorry. Lord Skeletor will be furious, if I don’t bring him a present. And you’ll do nicely.”

“Why are you still hanging out with Skeletor, Lyn? You know what he is, what he did. You don’t need him.”

“Well, your father made it very clear that he’s not interested. And arsehole or not, Skeletor needs me.”

ZAP!

“What?!”

“Foolish girl! Your steel is no match for my magic. And neither is your pitiful magic.”

“What are you talking about? I have no…”

“Stupid girl. You really have no idea, do you? And now come. Lord Skeletor is waiting.”

***

Later, at Snake Mountain:

“Oh, Lynnie, you’re back. And you brought me a present. Nicely tied up, too.”

“I aim to please, Lord Skeletor. Found her wandering along the outer perimeter.”

“Let me go, Skeletor, or…”

“Or you’ll do what, Captain? You’re my prisoner now. Besides, it’s Skelegod or Lord Skeletor. Show some respect. Or I’ll rip your soul out of your body and snuff it out like I did with your loser Uncle Malcolm…”

“You monster! How could you hurt Uncle Malcolm?”

“He just wouldn’t shut up, ever. Ripping out his soul and snuffing it out finally did shut him up.”

“Fiend! When He-Man or my father hear of this, they’ll…”

“Oh, I’m sure they will. In fact, I’m counting on it. And if your boyfriend wants you back in one piece, he’ll have to surrender his Power Sword to me. As for your father, I’ve been wanting to kill him for a long time now. Or maybe I’ll give him to Lyn to play with first.”

“Oh, I’m sure Duncan and I will have so much fun together.”

“Leave my Dad alone, witch, or I swear I will…”

“So defiant, even in the face of death itself. Cute. We’ll see if you’re still that defiant, when I actually do kill you. And make no mistake, I will.”

The Masterverse Teela comes with an extra head with her hair unbound and down, so of course I put it to good use.

CLATTER!

“Lyn, take her headband and send it to He-Man along with a message demanding him to surrender his Power Sword to me or I’ll cut off her head. Or maybe I’ll flay her first or chop her into little pieces or…”

“Forget it, Skeletor. I’m not scared of you. And He-Man will never surrender to you.”

“We’ll see. Lyn, take her to the dungeon and throw her into a particularly uncomfortable cell.”

***

In the Eternian wilderness:

The Eternian wilderness is portrayed by the trees and bushes I crocheted for the Raksura Colony Tree community art project at the 2019 Worldcon in Dublin.

“I should never have let Teela go on patrol alone. Screw Father and his stupid council meeting. If Skeletor has hurt her… No, I mustn’t even think of that. She’ll be fine and I’ll get her back. All right, no one’s watching, so let’s do this…”

The classic shot of He-Man in front of Castle Grayskull. And yes, I’ve set up my Castle Grayskull by now. More photos will be coming soon.

“By the Power of Grayskull, I have the Power!”

***

Later, at Snake Mountain:

“Here I am, Skeletor, as you demanded. And now let Teela go.”

“He-Man, no! It’s a trap.”

“Bwahaha, of course it’s a trap. And besides, it’s Skelegod now or Lord Skeletor. And now hand over the Power Sword and maybe I’ll let you spend some quality time with your sweetheart in the dungeon, before I’ll kill you both.”

“And now be a good boy and give me that sword or I’ll rip off her head. Or maybe I’ll torture her first. Or maybe I’ll rip out her soul and turn her into one of my Skelecons like I did with her supremely annoying Uncle Malcolm…”

“If you hurt her, Skeletor, if you as much as harm a single hair on her head, then I swear that I’ll end you.”

“Oh, tough talk. Where’s all that high and mighty ‘Every life is sacred’ sermonising, when I’m threatening the life of someone you care about? And now hand over the sword, boy.”

“All right, Skeletor, you win.”

“Of course, I always win.”

“Here’s the sword. And now let Teela go.”

“He-Man, no!”

“Don’t worry, Teela, it’s going to be all right. Now!”

HACK! CLATTER!

“Teela, catch!”

“No! I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you both.”

“You’re welcome to try, Skeletor.”

“Lyn, do something!”

“I’ll kill you for this, He-Man. First I’ll kill your sweetheart – slowly and while you watch – and then I’ll kill you!”

“Touch my family and my friends again and I swear I will end you, Skeletor.”

“It’s still Skelegod or Your Supreme Majesty!”

“Not so fast, girl.”

“Get out of my way, Lyn. Or better, ditch Skeletor and come with us. You don’t need to stay with him.”

“And spend the rest of my life in the Royal Dungeon? No thanks.”

“Come on, Teela, time to go. Before reinforcements arrive.”

“No, they’re escaping. Lyn, do something!”

“And what?”

“Blast them, kill them, I don’t care.”

ZAP! CRACKLE! BOOM!

“You missed, Lyn!”

“You missed, too.”

“Did you even try to hit them?!”

“Of course, I tried. But He-Man deflected the bolt with that accursed sword of his and Teela is very athletic.”

“This can’t be happening. I’m thwarted… again. Get out of my sight, Lyn! And tell Beast-Man to summon the steeds.”

“Yes, Lord Skeletor.”

***

Later, in the Eternian wilderness:

“I think they’ve finally given up pursuit. Praised be Zoar, you’re safe. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

“Thank you for the rescue, my hero. And now kiss me.”

SMOOCH!

“And now let’s go home!”

SWOOP.

“You can let me down, Adam. I’m fine. I can walk.”

“Are you sure? I’d better carry you back to the palace, so the royal physician can examine your ankle.”

“Adam, I’m fine, really. Especially when I’m in your arms.”

***

The bit with He-Man carrying Teela is a reference to the Filmation episode “The Problem with Power” (one of the best of that series), where He-Man picks up Teela to rescue her from an explosion and then simply doesn’t put her down again, but carries her all the way back to Eternos. It’s certainly one of the most romantic moments in the original cartoon, so I tried to recreate it. It doesn’t quite work, but it looks good enough. In general, the bigger Masterverse figures are good for both battle scenes and intimate/romantic scenes.

Fisto a.k.a. Malcolm really does get his soul ripped out of his body and snuffed out by Skeletor in the second half of Masters of the Universe Revelation in what is a genuinely shocking scene.

And that’s it for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story, because there will be more.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

 

Semiprozine Spotlight: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine

I have more Fanzine/Fancast Spotlights and Non-Fiction Spotlights lined up, but today I’m running another Semiprozine Spotlight, because the magazine in question is currently running a crowdfunding campaign and could use a boost.

Therefore, I am thrilled to feature New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, who published an article of mine in their issue 0 and will publish more when their Kickstarter funds. So I’m happy to welcome Oliver Brackenbury, editor of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, to my blog today:

A note for Hugo nominators, New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine is not yet eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo, because they’re on their first (well, zeroth) issue and the Hugo rules require a minimum of four. However, they’re still well worth your attention.

Tell us about your magazine.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine debuted in the Fall of 2022, featuring original short stories and in-depth non-fiction, all paired with glorious B&W illustrations and a painted cover. That prototype “issue #0” is free in digital formats and sold at-cost on Amazon PoD in both soft and hardcover formats, making it very easy to try out before committing to our currently-running Kickstarter for issues #1&2.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery takes the genre’s virtues of its outsider protagonists, thrilling energy, wondrous weirdness, and a large body of classic tales, then alloys inclusivity, mutual creator support, a positive fan community, and enthusiastic promotion of new works into the mix.

Who are the people behind your magazine?

I’m the editor and main person behind the project, however it would be impossible for me to do this without the magnificent Nat Webb on Layout & Design, Jordan Douglas Smith as Copyeditor, Kevin Beckett handling social media, and Tania Morrison-Moxham on Transcription.

We’ve also benefitted from some very kind volunteers who’ve helped with promotional outreach, and from Gonzalo Baeza’s Spanish translation skills.

Why did you decide to start your magazine?

After having some very exciting discussions last Spring, on the Whetstone Tavern discord, about how to make the S&S scene larger and more inclusive, someone suggested to me that I try to express ideas from that discussion in an anthology. I decided I’d rather do a magazine, but only if there were others who wanted to work with me on it.

There were!

So I set about creating the magazine I wanted to see in the world, made with love for the classics and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling, a gorgeous vessel for high quality writing & art, that would be a delight for Sword & Sorcery fans as well as draw in people from outside the community.

What format do you use for your magazine (print zine, PDF zine, e-mail zine, online zine, podcast, etc…) and why did you choose this format?

We produce digital (ePub & PDF), softcover, and hardcover formats. Digital because that’s how some people prefer to read, and it’s more accessible, both financially and for those who use text-to-speech software.

Softcover is your classic magazine format, and the more affordable physical one. Hardcover is something for the great lovers of books as long-lasting, beautiful physical objects. As far as I know we’re the only S&S magazine currently offering hardcover issues of our publication, and I’ve been gratified to see they’re very popular!

Science fiction, fantasy and horror were born in the pulps and short fiction has long been the beating heart of the genre. However, the focus of attention is increasingly moving towards novels and series. So why do you think SFF short fiction is important and worthy of attention?

Funny enough I’ve just recorded a short video on this, which I plan to release as an update on our Kickstarter.

Short fiction is a lower stakes environment where authors can more easily experiment, so you may find some really wild stuff that’d be less likely to be explored in the much larger investment that is a novel or series. SFF short fiction is also a great place to check out new, or new-to-you, talent without blowing up your “to be read” pile

Furthermore, it’s a great way to sort of “try before you buy”. For example, in 2020 I read “The Second Death of Hunuvar” by Howard Andrew Jones, discovering both the author and the titular character. I went on to enjoy a few more Hanuvar stories in the pages of SFF magazines, and now that Baen has announced a five book Hunuvar series of collected tales, you better believe I know I want to get them! If I hadn’t been able to check out Jones’ work and his Hanuvar stories the way I had, I’d be a lot less sure about committing to, say, a hardcover pre-order.

Those who really enjoy series can still get their kicks through serialized characters in short SFF fiction, getting a comic book collector kinda thrill by tracking down which publications feature stories with your favorite protagonists or shared settings. Often the authors are careful to craft their tales so that new readers can leap in with any story, but those who read them all are rewarded with little easter eggs and signs of character progression.

Finally, depending on the publication, you may get to enjoy more art than you’ll see in almost any novel. This is certainly the case with New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine, which pairs every story and some of its non-fiction with an original B&W illustration – with two illustrations per piece if we make our first Kickstarter stretch goal!

One big problem for SFF magazines is monetarization. Readers are happy to consume short fiction, but they’re often unwilling to pay for it. What are your strategies for financing your magazine and paying your writers and staff?

Well, first up is the Kickstarter itself. That will cover semi-pro rates, or better if we hit our pay raise stretch goals, for authors & artists, along with an honorarium for staff other than myself. Afterward we’ll have stock to sell, with the profits being invested back into growing the magazine to a place where contributors and staff can be better paid. Ideally we could even connect with a distributor to get the magazine in stores. But yes, crowdfunding will continue to be our pre-order model going forward.

As a Canuck I plan to look into publishing grants from the government as well. Things like a Patreon or merchandise I only want to do if I think of some truly compelling ideas – you can always tell when people throw those up just for the sake of it, which isn’t very appealing. I may do a poll with our readers, as I did to ultimately decide our Kickstarter’s first day backer exclusive would be a bookmark featuring exclusive, original art.

I really want to treat this like a business, as opposed to a hobby, because only as a business will it be sustainable in the long run. Doing that lets me devote more time to making the magazine awesome, paying and promoting more creators as I do so! Treating creators the way I prefer to be treated as a writer really is a great pleasure for me in this venture.

The format of fiction magazines has changed a lot in the past twenty years. Print magazines still exist, but are no longer as dominant. Online and PDF zines are now the dominant form of short fiction delivery and fiction podcasts are becoming ever more popular. So where do you think magazines will go next?

Honestly I think less about format changes and more about outreach. I’d love to see magazines connecting with schools to help get the newest generations into reading short fiction for pleasure, for example. We all know it’s limiting to only preach to the choir, but I think it’s all too easy to not go far enough, to not preach outside the parish, so to speak. Easy for me, the new guy, to say of course…but I do think “beyond SFF readers, or even regular readers in general” is where short fiction magazines should go.

Whether that involves free-giveaway ‘zines at schools, plugging into forms of social media not yet invented, or what…I dare not say.

Are there any other great magazines, podcasts, editors, stories, etc… you’d like to recommend?

Oh yes. Within the S&S realm I can quite happily recommend Tales from the Magician’s Skull (where I found Hanuvar & Howard Andrew Jones), Old Moon Quarterly, and Whetstone magazine.

Great S&S podcasts include Rogues in the House, The Cromcast, and, well, So I’m Writing a Novel… is my own creature, a mix of interviews and following me behind the scenes as I write a Sword & Sorcery novel. I’m also a big fan of The Appendix N Podcast, which has a broader remit.

There’s lots of authors and stories to recommend, so I’ll just focus on one I read recently that made me reach out to the author for the magazine – “RAKSHASA IN A POT” by Prashanth Srivatsa. You can read it for free online.

Where can people find you?

www.newedgeswordandsorcery.com has links to all formats of issue #0, our socials, and our Kickstarter!

If people want to find me in particular, there’s www.oliverbrackenbury.com, and I’m on Twitter as @obrackenbury.

Thank you, Oliver, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Check out issue 0 of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine and then head over to back their Kickstarter.

***

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A Link and Two Kickstarters Worth Your Attention

I know I haven’t blogged a lot in recent weeks, but I’ve been very busy with work and family stuff. However, I have a couple of posts planned, including more Fanzine/Fancast and Non-Fiction Spotlights. And since I’ve had several new arrivals recently, there will be more Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo stories, too.

Star Trek Picard started up again as well, but I don’t think I will be doing episode by episode reviews this time around, because I’m all Star-Trekked out. There’s simply too much Star Trek right now and the last batch of Discovery and Picard reviews often felt more like a chore than fun. And I am doing this to have fun, after all.

But for now I want to share a link as well as two Kickstarters worth your attention. First of all, I was at Galactic Journey again, where I talk about some of the largest protests my hometown of Bremen has ever seen, which happened in January of 1968. The cause for the protests was not the war in Vietnam or the proposed West German state of emergency laws, both of which generated massive protests in the second half of the 1960s, but a (by contemporary measures very moderate) increase in tram and bus fares. This wasn’t even that uncommon, Cologne experienced massive protests against public transport fare increases a few months before Bremen. In Bremen, the protesters were mostly high school students – Bremen university did not open until 1970, though the technical college and arts college were already operating – as well as a handful of college students and apprentices who relied on public transport to get around. They were joined – and this is something we frequently saw in 1968, but almost never afterwards – by workers from the AG Weser shipyard and the Klöckner steel mill, then the biggest employers in town. Of course, a lot of workers relied on public transport, too, so this was one case where the interests of students and workers were aligned. BTW, the protesters eventually won and the fare increase was dropped.

And since I had to shove my protest report into a Galactoscope book review column, I also review a 1968 SFF book, namely The Swords of Lankmar, the only novel-length Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story by Fritz Leiber. In the same article, you also get another review (courtesy of Kris Vyas-Myall) of a 1968 sword and sorcery novel, namely Picnic on Paradise, the only novel Joanna Russ (yes, the author of The Female Man and How To Suppress Women’s Writing), ever wrote about her character Alyx the picklock. Alyx and Fafhrd and Gray Mouser actually do cross over, too.

In general, it is notable that the New Wave and the second sword and sorcery boom not only occurred at the exact same time – slowly gaining steam in the early 1960s before exploding in the mid to late 1960s – but that both were often written by the same authors and published in the same magazines, too. Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny and Joanna Russ were important contributors to both the New Wave and the 1960s sword and sorcery boom. Fritz Leiber, who actually coined the term “sword and sorcery”, was never really a New Wave author, though he did contribute to the Dangerous Visions anthologies. The many, many interconnections between the New Wave and the second sword and sorcery boom are not something I was really aware of, nor is it discussed very much, but it’s very obvious when following events in real time via Galactic Journey.

And while we’re on the subject of sword and sorcery, I also have two Kickstarters to announce for two new sword and sorcery projects, in which I will have articles, if they fund.

The first of these is the Kickstarter for issues 1 and 2 of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, edited by Oliver Brackenbury. So what is New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine? Basically, it’s a sword and sorcery magazine that offers all the excitement, adventure and weirdness traditionally associated with the genre without the regressive attitudes that mar some past work in the genre.

Here’s how Oliver explains it:

WHAT IS SWORD & SORCERY?

A unique fantasy sub-genre known for short, episodic tales with historical inspiration and horror elements, featuring outsider protagonists with personal motivations, often facing dark and dangerous magic!

WHAT IS NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY?

A brand new magazine featuring over 45,000 words per issue of exciting stories paired with original art, essays, in-depth interviews, literary profiles, and book reviews. Made with love for the classics, and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling!

In the summer of 2022 we made a prototype “Issue #0”, an unpaid passion project for all involved. We put it out in the world and…people liked it! People want more! So this Kickstarter will fund the print publication of issues #1 & #2, paying contributors as much as possible this time.

Available in gorgeous electronic, softcover, and highly collectible hardcover formats.

MAGAZINE FORMAT, BOOK-LEVEL QUALITY

Our magazine pages are a spacious 8 1/2 x 11 inches, printed like a book, using quality, cream paper that is thicker and more durable than standard, floppy magazine paper. When taken care of, our perfect-bound softcovers–and especially our sewn-stitched hardcovers!–will be beautiful objects you can enjoy for years to come.

Several of our stretch goals will provide enhancements such as doubling our number of interior illustrations and, for our hardcovers, adding a pair of bookmark ribbons – each a different color – or foil-embossing our cover text and logo.

CONTRIBUTORS

In these issues you will find new, original stories by the legendary Michael Moorcock, Margaret Killjoy, Gemma Files, Bryn Hammond, Kirk A. Johnson, Prashanth Srivatsa, Jon Olfert, Sarah Macklin, David C. Smith, T. K. Rex, Dariel Quiogue, JM Clarke, Jacqueline Kawaja, and a translated story by Spanish language author Jesús Montalvo.

There will also be stimulating non-fiction by Hugo award-winner Cora Buhlert, Jon Olfert, Milton Davis, Brian Murphy, Robin Marx, and Oliver Brackenbury.

Cover art will be Caterina Gerbasi on issue #1 and Gilead on issue #2. For interior illustrations, as stories are written artists will be assigned from a pool that includes: Sapro, Daniel Vega, Saprophial, Remco van Straten, Ursa Doom, David White, Simon Underwood, Hardeep Aujla, Morgan King, Gary McClusky, Damiano Di Marco, Aldo Ojeda, Carlos Castilho, Trevor Ngwenya, Shih Shin Chuah and Sara Frazetta.

If the Kickstarter funds, I will contribute an article about an unsung heroine of the second sword and sorcery boom (and coincidentally the New Wave), editor Cele Goldsmith Lalli, to issue No. 1.

The New Edge Sword and Sorcery Kickstarter is currently at 75% funded and still has eleven days to go, so what are you waiting for? Pledge and support a great new magazine and give me the chance to share a TOC with Michael Moorcock.

And if you want an idea of what you’re getting first, issue 0 of New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine (with an article by me about C.L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry) is available to download for free and to buy in paperback or hardcover for cheap.

The second sword and sorcery related Kickstarter is for the anthology Swords & Heroes, edited by Lyndon Perry.

Again, here’s what the anthology is about in Lyndon’s own words:

New Stories, Fresh Blades

Be the first to experience Swords & Heroes, an S&S anthology featuring 12 epic tales of heroic adventure, monsters and mayhem, beasts and bravery. Antho is ready to ship!

What can you expect? Tales of undead kings facing off against evil necromancers, cursed warriors reluctantly fulfilling their quests, back-stabbing rogues and unlikely duos battling otherworldly abominations, and so much more.

Want a choice of covers? So be it, by Crom!

That’s right! After the campaign, when you fill out your survey, you’ll get to pick what cover you want for your e-book, paperback, and/or hardcover. You like the pulp fiction feel of a battle horse and courageous rider? You got it! Or are you partial to the gritty Viking vibe of our shieldmaiden cover? The choice is yours!

Same stories inside, of course. Here’s the ToC. Names we think you’ll recognize. Established writers and some fresh voices as well. We’re also excited to feature a brand new Crimson Warrior tale by Adrian Cole, the award winning author of the War on Rome saga published by DMR Books.

The anthology will also contain a roundtable discussion about the state of the sword and sorcery genre and where it’s going. I contributed to that roundtable.

Swords & Heroes has already funded, but it still has three days to go, so if you want even more modern sword and sorcery in your life, get over there and pledge.

First Monday Free Fiction: Outlaw Love

Welcome to the February 2023 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

February is the month of love, so here is a romance in the shadow of the gallows in the Old West.

So follow Lola Laverne, singer and dancer extraordinaire, as she faces the gallows and falls into…

Outlaw Love

Lola Laverne paced the tiny cell. Outside the walls of the prison, the workmen were building the gallows, the thudding of their hammers in tune with the frantic beating of Lola’s own heart. In less than ten hours she would die.

Many had flocked to Silver Dollar City to witness Lola’s execution. Seeing a woman hang was a rare occurrence, even in the lawless West. And Lola wasn’t just any woman. She was Lola Laverne, the celebrated dancer and one of the greatest beauties of the age, who had once appeared on the foremost stages in Europe and whose performance had so dazzled the King of Prussia that he would have made her his queen, had he not been married already. But all that was in the past. Now Lola was a convicted murderess, spending her final hours in a filthy cell in a nowhere mining town, waiting to perform her last dance at the end of a rope.

There was the turn of a key and the door to the cellblock opened. Lola’s heart leaped to her throat. Was it time yet? Were they coming for her already? No, it couldn’t be. The carpenters hadn’t finished the gallows yet.

An moment later, the freckled face of Deputy Stubbs peeked into the dim hallway leading to the cells. Lola relaxed a little. She quite liked Deputy Stubbs. At least, he treated her like a lady, regardless of the circumstances. That was more than could be said for most others.

“Miss Laverne,” the deputy said, “Visitors for you.”

Probably newspapermen, hoping to catch a glimpse of the infamous Lola Laverne before she was hanged. Or just ordinary gawkers who had slipped the sheriff a silver dollar or two for the privilege of staring at her.

But the two figures entering the cellblock were not the usual gawkers. For starters, they were women. Two women, both carrying wicker baskets. Everything about them was grey. Their dresses, their bonnets, even their faces. The two women tiptoed along the corridor and stopped in front of the cell, maintaining a respectful distance as if Lola’s predicament was somehow contagious.

“Miss Laverne…” One of the women pulled a small booklet about the size of a Beadle dime novel from her basket and passed it through the bars. “We bring you sustenance for the soul.”

Lola glanced at the plain cover of the booklet and saw that it was a religious tract. “Thank you,” she said politely and put it down on the narrow cot which had been her bed for the past five days. Lola had no intention of reading the tract, but she need not tell the women that. Besides, it might come in handy as toilet paper.

The women pulled something else from their basket. It was a folded piece of black woollen cloth. “We also brought you a dress,” one of them said, “A modest dress, so you need not step before Our Lord attired quite so shamelessly.”

Lola glanced at the plain black garment. It was even more unbecoming than what the women themselves were wearing, if that was possible. Then she looked down at herself, at the elegant gown of emerald taffeta and black Chantilly lace, fashioned after the latest Parisian styles. The choice was clear.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said, “This gown was good enough for dancing at the Paris opera house, so it will certainly be good enough for dancing on the gallows.”

The women folded up the plain black dress again, stuffed it back into the basket and walked away, clearly disappointed. Just before they reached the door, one of them turned around. “We nonetheless believe that Our Lord will find it in his heart to forgive you,” she said. Her companion nodded emphatically. “We too suffered the carnal attentions of Mr Morrison more than once.”

In that case the bastard had been even more desperate than Lola would have thought.

She sat down on the narrow cot, carefully arranging her petticoats. It was very doubtful that God would forgive her. For she felt no remorse about killing Lash Morrison. No remorse at all.

The women had scarcely been gone a minute when the door opened once more. Lola thought that the women had returned, probably to give her more tracts or try to press that hideous dress on her one more time. But the person that appeared in front of her cell was a man. A dour-faced man with a lanky grey beard, dressed in a dusty black suit with a priest’s collar. His eyes were pale grey and there was a hint of madness gleaming there.

“Are you prepared to repent your misdeeds, sinner?,” the man thundered, “Are you prepared to receive Our Lord Jesus as your saviour? For the law of man has already damned you to the gallows, sinner, and before the morrow you will be consigned to the fiery pit of eternal damnation. But repent sincerely and your soul may yet be saved.”

A preacher. One of the fire and brimstone variety, by the sound of it. He would probably keep on droning about the hell and damnation until the sheriff came for her. And Lola was not in the mood for that. Not at all. So she hurled the religious tract the women had given her through the iron bars at the preacher. “Go to hell.”

“So you reject Our Lord? Then you are damned, wanton. Your sinful soul shall burn in the fires of hell for all eternity.”

Lola sighed. “Yes, yes, I’ve heard that before. Now get lost.”

Through the bars of her cell, she watched the enraged preacher leave, still muttering to himself about hell and damnation. Maybe she should not have mocked him. When the sun rose over the prairie tomorrow, she would need all the heavenly intercession she could get. Nevertheless, an eternity in the fires of hell held less terrors to Lola than the wooden structure in the prison yard. All her life, she had been told that she would go to hell and she had long reconciled herself to that prospect. “If I’m going to hell anyway,” she had always told herself, “then by God, I’ll go in style. And on the way there, I will commit every sin I can.”

That was why she had run away from convent school, away from the gaunt-faced Sisters of the Holy Cross, the very embodiment of asceticism, at the age of fifteen. That was why she had married a wealthy merchant thirty-two years her senior, when he promised her a life of leisure and luxury. That was why — after the death of her husband — she had changed her name, her clothes, her very identity — and began touring the music halls and opera houses of Europe with her infamous Dance of the Black Widow. She had performed before the old aristocracy and the nouveau riche, she had dazzled kings and bandits. And when Europe got too hot for her, when debtors, suitors and rivals came too close for comfort, she had left the continent of her birth behind for the New World. She felt at home here, in this land of opportunity. She enjoyed the attentions of goldminers and cattle barons. Coarse and uncultured they might be, yet Lola felt a kinship to them. Because like her, they had forged their own destinies.

Oh yes, Lola had lived. But at sunrise tomorrow, that life would be cut short by the hangman’;s rope.

That night, which would be the last of her life, Lola’s sleep was restless and filled with uneasy dreams. She was on stage again, dancing. Dancing for princes who showered her with roses and for miners who showered her with golden nuggets, dancing for the Merciful Sisters of the Holy Cross and for the King of Prussia and for Lash Morrison, blood still seeping from the wound in his chest. She danced and danced, petticoats swirling, as hands grabbed her, tearing at her clothes and groping her flesh, dragging her up the steps to the scaffold towards her doom. Lola saw the gallows looming before her, felt the noose encircling her neck like the diamond and ruby necklace the King of Prussia had given her. And then the floor beneath her feet suddenly fell away and Lola was dancing on empty air. She screamed.

“Good morning, Miss Laverne.”

Lola blinked and saw the grinning face of Duke Morrison outside her cell. There was a carnation in his lapel. A silver sheriff’s star was gleaming on his chest. “It’s a lovely day for a hanging, wouldn’t you agree, Miss Laverne?”

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you, sheriff?”

Duke Morrison’s rough features twisted into a cruel smile. “I always enjoy seeing a killer brought to justice. And you, Miss Laverne, are no ordinary killer. You’re the woman who murdered my brother. My only brother.” He sniffed theatrically and pressed a gaudy handkerchief to his face, though Lola was sure that he no more mourned the late Lash Morrison than anybody else in Silver Dollar City did.

“It was self-defence and you know it,” Lola said, though she knew it was futile. Duke Morrison had not listened to her during the impromptu trial held in the backroom of Cody’s Saloon. He certainly wouldn’t listen now.

Five days before, when the stagecoach had brought Lola to Silver Dollar City, the town had struck her as nothing special. Just another ramshackle collection of tents and cabins which never quite managed to show off the wealth that the townspeople tore from the ground with their bare hands. That night, Lola had danced at Cody’s Saloon. A rough stage, an audience of drunken miners, a performance like a hundred others she had given since coming to America.

Lash Morrison did not quite fit the tawdry surroundings. He wore a fine suit and a silken waistcoat. His hair was oily, his moustache neatly clipped, he smelled of English lavender water. At first, Lola had taken him for a professional gambler lured west of the Mississippi by the promises of gold and silver and riches. He had money, at any rate. He ordered champagne — or what passed for champagne out here in the West — and Lola had politely shared a drink with him. But he did not leave it at that. Later that evening, he showed up in her makeshift dressing room. Lola had been dressed in nothing but her corset and a single petticoat of fine, almost transparent organdy, so she’d told him to leave. But Lash Morrison didn’t leave. His intentions were all too clear. “I pay a whore,” he said, his voice pregnant with brandy, “and by God I swear I’ll get my money’s worth.”

It wasn’t the first time Lola had been taken for a whore. Many had made that mistake. Men mostly. Arrogant men who believed that money could buy them everything. They’d read the papers, the sensational accounts about the scores of lovers Lola had supposedly had. They’d read about her dalliance with the King of Prussia and they’d think that what had been good enough for a king would be good enough for them. And then they’d come to her dressing room with flowers in their hands and alcohol on their breath, while their virginal brides waited at home.

Men like that made Lola sick. Oh, how they made her sick! Luckily, she had found an excellent deterrent against unwanted admirers. A small Derringer, holstered in her garter and concealed beneath the folds of her petticoat. Normally, it was sufficient to simply draw the gun and aim it at the annoying suitor. Lola never had to actually use it. Until that night. For Lash Morrison had been not the least bit intimidated by the pistol in her hand. He just laughed and grabbed her petticoat, ripping the wispy organdy with his bare hands. Lola had screamed. She had slapped him. And then, feeling his grubby hands all over her body, greasy fingers poking at her private parts, she had fired. Lash Morrison had gasped in surprise at the blood that stained his fine silk waistcoat. Then he had fallen to the floor, quite dead.

It was self-defence. Everybody knew it was self-defence. And in any other town, Lola would have gone free, even though she had killed a man. But Silver Dollar City wasn’t any other town. And Lash Morrison wasn’t any other man. He was the younger brother of Duke Morrison. And in Silver Dollar City, Duke Morrison was the law. Sheriff, judge, jury and executioner in one. And from the moment, he stormed into the room to find his brother lying on the floor in a pool of blood, Lola had been doomed.

She stumbled twice as she mounted the steps to the scaffold. Her hands were bound behind her back far tighter than it was necessary and the rope cut deep into her wrists. The sheriff manoeuvred her onto the trap door and Lola stood on her last stage, looking down on her final audience. She saw their leering faces, the wolfish look in the eyes of the men as they pressed closer to the scaffold. A gold-toothed miner thrust his hand into the fly of his breeches and Lola suddenly felt sick. She knew what they wanted. They hoped for a look under her petticoat, a glimpse of the nether regions between her legs. That was why they came to see her dance, that was why they came to see her hang. To gawk at what respectable women didn’t let them see.

Damn, she should have worn drawers. Except that she never wore drawers, not after she had been fined in Vienna because some fat old constable had caught a glimpse of the lace-edged pantaloons beneath her gown. And in Vienna, the public display of undergarments was considered immoral. So Lola had sworn she’d never again wear any. And her audience had tripled. Occasionally, they had disgusted her, the men with the hungry eyes. But never more than on that final morning of her life. It took all her will power to keep her from throwing up her last meal.

Mercifully, Deputy Stubbs draped a black lace shawl over her face, so she did not have to look into the jeering faces of the men come to see her die. She could still hear their laboured breathing, though, and the obscenities they hurled at her. She felt the noose placed around her neck, the rough hemp caressing her tender flesh like the hands of a coarse lover. Despite the heat, Lola shivered. Beneath the gown of emerald green silk, her breasts strained against her corset.

She heard the sheriff step forward and launch into a lengthy sermon detailing her crimes and why she deserved to die. Why keep her waiting, the noose already around her neck? Why, oh why did they have to torture her like this? Why couldn’t they just get on with it?

“And so, Lola Laverne,” the sheriff intoned, “you shall be hanged by that pretty white neck of yours until you are utterly and completely dead. Let justice be done!”

Every muscle in Lola’s body tightened. This was it. He would pull the lever and she would fall for an endless second, until the rope yanked her back up, slowly tightening around her neck, strangling the life out of her body. Her legs would kick in grotesque spasms, her bowels would loosen and pee would run down her legs into the petticoats made of the finest Lyonese silk.

The shouts of the gawkers grew louder, in anticipation of the hanging. The crowd was so noisy that Lola didn’t even hear the shots at first. Or rather, she did not pay much attention to them. Shooting was an everyday occurrence in the towns of the American West and Lola had long learned to ignore it. It was only when a bullet whizzed past her head, tugging at the lace shawl covering her face, that Lola took notice. Instinctively, she tried to dive for cover, but the noose round her neck made ducking impossible. One second, the noose tugged like a yoke round her neck, keeping Lola standing upright in the line of fire. The next instant, the tug was gone and the end of the rope was dangling down her back. Lola struggled to get rid of the veil covering her face, but her hands were tied and so she could not. There was shooting and shouting all around her now, like a premature taste of hell. Suddenly, a gust of hot prairie wind blew the black veil from her face and Lola could finally see. The scaffold was surrounded by black-clad, black-masked bandits on horseback. Sheriff Morrison and Deputy Stubbs were crouched behind the gallows beam, exchanging fire with the horsemen. All of a sudden, one of the riders turned directly to Lola. Their eyes met for the fracture of a heartbeat. The horseman pointed at the back of his horse. “Come on, what are you waiting for?,” he cried in a voice that was unusually high-pitched.

Without a second thought, Lola ran across the scaffold. Her skirt caught on a protruding nail, tearing the fine French silk. But Lola didn’t care. She jumped off the scaffold, aiming for one of the horses, and landed right behind the rider. Her tied hands desperately tried to hold on to the saddle as the bandits galloped away.

***

It seemed to Lola as if they rode for hours. Any pursuers had long given up the chase, but still the bandits did not stop or even slow down. Lola was not used to riding on horseback for long periods. The rope was cutting into her wrists and she was thrust against the back of a stranger. Her legs, her back, her bum were all hurting like hell and the many petticoats beneath her dress made sitting extremely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, Lola did not dare ask for a pause. After all, she owed her life to these horsemen.

They rode in silence until they reached a narrow canyon sheltering a cluster of small tents and the smoking remnants of a camp fire. Here, the riders dismounted, letting their horses graze freely in the thin grass around the camp. Lola struggled to dismount as well, but with her many skirts not to mention her bound hands it was impossible. The rider against whose back Lola had been pressed for several hours finally took pity and helped her down. A knife flashed in the late morning sun and for the space of a heartbeat, Lola feared that she had fallen from one desperate situation into the next. But the knife only slashed through the ropes binding her hands. Once free, Lola immediately pulled the remains of the hangman’s noose from her neck. She stretched out her hand to her saviour. “I do not know to what I owe this rescue, but please allow me to thank you.”

The black-clad stranger said nothing. He pulled down the handkerchief from his nose and mouth, revealing a freckled face and a chin with not the slightest hint of a stubble. Next the stranger pulled off the black Stetson and tresses of fiery red hair fell down to her shoulders. All around her, the other bandits were removing their masks and hats as well. And suddenly Lola understood. These horsemen were not men at all. They were all women.

“No need to thank us,” a gaunt woman with plain brown hair and small round glasses said, “And don’t think for a minute that we did it for you. We only interrupted the hanging to stop Duke Morrison from having his way with yet another woman.”

Lola turned to the bespectacled woman. “Then I still owe you thanks, for you certainly stopped Duke Morrison from having his way with me.”

“Pah!” The woman spat out a quid of snuff which landed right in front of Lola’s feet. “Women like you are part of the problem. Oh, we know who you are, Miss Lola Laverne. Teasing the men with your lascivious dances and suggestive clothing and then complaining when they want more. True, you did womanhood a great service when you sent that bastard Lash Morrison straight to hell. But you did us an even greater disservice with your Dance of the Black Widow.”

“So you think I should hide my body and my talent, just because certain men cannot control their desire?”

“You should certainly not use those assets to encourage male beastliness. I&’ve heard all the tales about your affairs with kings and princes and millionaires. Tales which are utterly revolting to a devoted follower of Sappho such as myself. But despite your excesses, you are still a woman, therefore you may spend the night at our camp. But tomorrow you should leave.”

An angry reply was already on Lola’s tongue, but before she could ever let it out, the bespectacled woman had already turned away. So these were Sapphists. Lola had heard of them of course, had heard that the sin they committed was almost as great as the sin of sodomy and just as unnatural. But until today, she had never actually met a Sapphist. Face to face, they did not seem like the depraved creatures described in sensational literature. They seemed just like any other women, even though the attitude of the leaderess was rather belligerent.

There was a tug on her sleeve. “You must not mind Prudence,” a voice behind her said. Lola turned around and found herself face to face with the red-haired girl with whom she had shared a horse these past hours. “She discovered Sappho earlier than most of us and is a little impatient with those who have not yet learned to appreciate the delights only a woman can give.” The girl smiled. “I’m Caitlin, by the way. Come with me.”

The girl led Lola into one of the small tents. “Sit down,” she said, pointing at a blanket on the floor.

Lola did as she was bid. She watched Caitlin unbutton her black shirt, revealing firm breasts unconstrained by a corset.

“You must be tired,” Caitlin said. Without warning, she moved behind Lola, reached out and pulled the pins from her hair. Lola’s already dishevelled chignon uncoiled, loose tresses falling down her back. Gently, Caitlin brushed aside Lola’s hair and began to undo the lacing on the back of her gown. “You’ll need a change of clothes,” she said. “I have a spare pair of slacks lying around.”

“Thank you,” Lola said, though to be honest she did not much fancy wearing slacks.

The girl”s fingers were skilled, opening ribbons and buttons and laces. A few moments and the torn remnants of Lola’s fine Parisian gown landed in a corner of the tent, while Lola sat before Caitlin, dressed only in a corset of black silk and petticoats of fine white organdy.

“Are you really Lola Laverne, the world famous dancer?” Caitlin wanted to know.

“The same.”

“I saw you dancing once,” Caitlin said. She placed her fingers onto the silken bow between Lola’s breasts and began to unlace her corset, “In Abilene. My parents didn’t want me to go. They said it was improper for a young girl. I went anyway.”

“Did you like it?” Lola asked. She took a deep breath, grateful to be finally free of the corset and still able to draw breath.

Caitlin nodded. “I thought you had beautiful legs.” Lola’s petticoats fell to the ground one by one. “You do have beautiful legs,” Caitlin said. In appreciation, her hand stroked Lola’s thigh, the girl’s touch sending a pleasant shudder running up Lola’s leg all the way to her stomach.

“Did you really have two hundred lovers like the papers say?” Caitlin wanted to know. Her hand lingered on Lola’s thigh, though there really was no necessity for it.

“The papers lie.”

“How many then?” Caitlin’s emerald eyes were sparkling with curiosity. “Fifty? Twenty? Come on, you can tell me.”

“Fewer than ten,” Lola replied. With a woman — and a Sapphic one at that — keeping up appearances was not necessary.

“I see. And the King of Prussia…”

“…was eighty-six and quite unable to act on any desires he might have felt.”

Lola shifted, settling down next to Caitlin. She was naked, but for some reason she did not feel awkward about it. Quite the contrary, being naked and in close proximity with another woman even seemed natural.

“Truth to be told, I’m just not lucky with men,” she said, “I know I should enjoy their attentions, their caresses, but for some reason I just cannot.”

“And a woman,” Caitlin asked. She moved gradually closer to Lola, skin touching skin. “Have you ever been with a woman?”

“In the way of Sappho you mean? No.” Catching the look of disappointment in Caitlin”s eyes, she added, “I’m not judging you. It’s just… the opportunity never presented itself, I guess.”

Caitlin moved even closer. “Would you like to?” she whispered.

Would she? It was a question that Lola had never asked herself until now. She had always assumed that she was attracted to men like a normal, healthy woman should be. She had even been married, for heaven’s sake. But now, with Caitlin’s vibrant young body so close beside her, feeling the girl’s breath on her skin and her scent in her nose, Lola realized that the answer to the question had been there all her life.

“Very much,” she whispered and pressed her lips onto Caitlin’s in a hot passionate kiss.

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.