January 31, 2014 by elegsabiff

Confidence, the acquiring of. Discuss.

There’s a joke that used to make me laugh –

From birth to eighteen, a girl needs good parents

From eighteen to thirty, she needs good looks

From thirty to fifty, she needs a good personality

After that, she needs good cash.

Huh, not so funny now.

Tick ‘birth to eighteen’ – lovely nanny, followed by the best schools (which I didn’t appreciate at ALL) and the big house filled with dogs, even the obligatory pony, which I appreciated very much indeed. (The pony didn’t live in the house, BTW. Note to self, may need to reword.)

Tick ‘eighteen to thirty’ – nothing special, but I had bright hair of – for South Africa – a fairly unusual colour, and a fairly sunny temperament, and can’t remember ever languishing over a fellow who wasn’t interested in me, so check that one off the list too.

Thirty came and went and so did forty and nothing changed much on that front. Like Gypsy Rose Lee, I could have said I didn’t have anything I hadn’t had twenty years earlier, just a bit more of it, and a bit lower down.

Then the wheels fell off. I moved to a country which was very cold, and put on weight to keep warm. Well, probably more weight than strictly necessary. No, total honesty here. Definitely more weight than strictly necessary. And my hair colour was no longer even remotely unusual, half the people I met had variations of the same. And a few years went by and suddenly I had got older.

Personality, oh yes, still had one, of sorts, but it rather relied on people noticing I was around in the first place so I could then fascinate them.

Stupid joke stopped being funny.

The reality is, and it took me a while to realize this, which is why I am blogging in case there is any other rather dim person who needs the facts highlighted, put in bold and underlined, there comes a time when you no longer make a strong first impression based on your looks. Invisible happens. Suck it up.

Doesn’t mean you’re ugly. Doesn’t make you dull. But at some point the indefinable something that comes across even in a photograph fades.

So, are you going to fade with it? Allow yourself to be put in the corner, slightly grumpy and resentful, and wishing you had that good cash? I did, and I wasted a couple of years doing it. My Twitter photo is twenty years old, because I like that photo, and I use a caricature on FB, and only reluctantly a current photo on LinkedIn. The world, and the workplace, is filled with people younger than me vigorously getting on with their lives and I sulked, I did. And carped a bit, and was sour about the unfairness of life. My corner got emptier, I carped a bit more and there was more grumpy. It Wasn’t Fair. And damnit, why weren’t my older friends finding the same? They were going from strength to strength, making more friends than ever and having a whale of a time.

So here’s what I finally grasped and am passing on. The good thing about losing an instant first impression is that you now make your own. The first time I openly fanned myself ruefully and admitted that I’d reached the age of private tropical holidays was a breakthrough – colleagues laughed and teased instead of politely ignoring my pink face. In fact the more confidence I have, the more strongly people respond. Flirting, far from being gone for good, is more fun than ever when it is an end in itself. No one CARES what you look like, you know. Why should they? It only matters to you. As long as you don’t actually frighten the horses, people see the basic canvas, the difference is that you now might need to consciously check your painting.

Someone young and nice-looking with a goofy smile and a too-loud laugh, you don’t mind them sitting next to you on the train, am I right? Someone ‘older’ with a goofy smile and a too-loud laugh heads towards you and you’ll change seats if you possibly can. Different perception. Think about it. Those lines round your mouth make you look sullen even when you think you look expressionless. I slowly learned that if I smile (tip: not too goofily) rather than look grumpy, and be alert and open, listen as well as talk, people are more friendly to me now than I think at any stage in my life before. It’s interesting.

I still don’t approve of the way I look. Cameras are not my friends, but everything else, pretty good. After fifty, you need good confidence. (And some cash would be nice)

You probably knew all that already. But just in case.

January 16, 2014 by elegsabiff

January 2014: Decision

Theme: Distance (physical, temporal, emotional)
Required Element: A ship (anything from a dugout canoe to a kilometre-long void carrier)
Required Element: A decision (to be considered, made, or have foisted upon you)

When you know there’s something or someone watching you, but you shoot quick glances out the corners of your eyes and there’s nobody in sight? That.

Dan paddled a little faster, and his dugout shot across the water. His best time for crossing the distance between his home island and the one Mira lived on was forty-seven minutes and nineteen seconds, measured on the watch her family had given him when they accepted his request to court her. A man in love with the pretty daughter of a wealthy family paddles fast, but a man who is being watched by somebody in hiding paddles faster. He was pretty damn definitely going to shave a good few minutes off his best time, presuming he got the chance. He half turned his head again, quickly, but nothing, just his crisp wake in the still water. And then he saw the shadow, immense, drifting up the wake as it blotted out the sun.

Mira’s family hadn’t picked a fool, there was nothing wrong with his reflexes. Even as the shadow closed with his dugout he tipped over and came up gasping inside it, treading water. What what what what—he couldn’t even formulate the questions, the reality was so completely outside anything life had sent his way so far, but at least here he was safe, nobody could see him. Just an upturned canoe. Nobody here but us fishes, fly away monster.

Instead there was a strange singing sound in his ears, an odd feeling of pressure, a moment of weightlessness—and he was standing upright, his canoe sliding off his head to clatter to the steel floor.

*A perfect specimen* a voice purred in his head, sounding deeply satisfied. *Look at the depth of that chest! And those thighs and arms! What age is it?*

*Around twenty, I would say* there was a definite touch of smugness in the voice that responded. *Should live for years, this breed has been known to reach eighty or ninety in captivity*

‘Hey!’ he looked about wildly ‘what you talking about, man? I’m no specimen, I’m Daniel! You put me back right now!’

*Good bark, too, I like that. It’s a male, of course. Do you think we can source some females for it? Ideally at least three, but try to get fatter ones this time. The thin ones don’t last well. Anyway, give it some food, see if we can coax it to eat.*

A shutter in the nearest gleaming wall slid back and Dan stalked across, stiff-legged. Hmm. Roasted meat, cold, but—he took a bite—delicious. And roasted roots, not as delicious, but at least the food would be good. Dan rather liked his food. And three females, all the food he could eat, no more paddling to get everywhere and living twenty years at least longer than anyone on his island, in living memory . . . he chewed thoughtfully.

They didn’t understand his voice, but he understood them. Was there an advantage in staying dumb? Or was it in his interests to think-talk to them, tell them about Mira, how pretty and healthy she was, and her best friend Tali, and even Gina, who had made him a man and then refused to teach him any further? One would need to think REALLY clearly, and REALLY loudly, perhaps. He glanced back at the dugout and saw beyond it a big bed, some sculpted furniture. A viewing screen on the wall.

Well, faint heart never won three fair ladies—*ER, HELLO? CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME NOW?*

(see my SciFi tab for the other monthly entries in the friendly microstory competition on LinkedIn)

January 9, 2014 by elegsabiff

Beginnings – a prequel microstory

‘So what’s your news?’ Vivian carefully put coffee down on Edge’s sidetable, and sat with a little ‘oof’ in the opposite chair. ‘You sounded really excited on the phone.’

‘I am, a bit, I got a fantastic offer for the flat, so that’s it, done and dusted. Selling.’

‘But the flat was beautiful! I thought you loved it!’

Edge shook her head. ‘I rattle around in it, much too big for one. I write and eat and practically sleep in one room and the rest just gathers dust. And no garden, and that hellish couple with the screaming baby as neighbours, and I could never just up and go when I felt like it. I’ve got big plans for the future.’

‘You’re not leaving Scotland?’ Vivian looked alarmed and Edge snorted.

‘No, idiot. But I do want to travel a lot more than I have been. And I’m tired of living on my own.’

‘What, you’ve reconsidered and you’ll come share with me?’

‘God, no. I love you like a sister but share a house with you? Never. I can’t think of a way of ending a friendship faster. I decided I want a nice tiny place to myself, interesting neighbours, good security so I can lock up and go whenever I feel like it, and I still want to be near you and near Kirsty and to be able to put people up when they come to visit. And I’ve found it! Just the place. Have you ever heard of the Grasshopper Lawns retirement village?’

‘You’re too young to go into an old age home. Anyway, why on earth would you want to?’

‘It’s not an old age home. They’ve got totally independent apartments, a fabulous garden, and guest accommodation facilities, and they only take people with interesting pasts, I was interviewed by the bursar, the administrator and the smallest and most perfectly groomed woman I’ve ever seen, who used to be a Cold War spy. Patrick recommended the place. And Vivian, I want you to apply too, we can be neighbours.’

Vivian was already shaking her head. ‘Oh, no, Edge. I have to keep the house so the kids can come visit. And I don’t really like meeting lots of strangers, I like the quiet life, you know that.’

‘I do know that. And I don’t approve, and you know that. The kids visit, what, every other year? Vivian, how long have we been friends?’

‘Every time someone says that, it means they want something.’ Vivian sipped gloomily at her tea. ‘You know how long. Since we were eight.’

‘And in all that time, have I led you astray?’

Vivian started to laugh. ‘When have you not! You were the most terrible influence on me!’

‘Nonsense. I got you out of your music room and away from your endless scales, and you hauled me out of reading every play ever written, and the pair of us were very good for each other, we always have been. I have a feeling about Grasshopper Lawns, I think it could be a bit of an adventure, and I have to insist;’ she suddenly faltered, shook her head and sat back. ‘Wow. Flashback. I won’t insist. But I really, really want you to think about it. Come look at the place. Help me move in. Okay? And I’ll tell you what else they have, dogs, in the main house, and they’re divine, they’re Labradors. Any of the residents can take one for a walk whenever they like. In fact the bursar, Hamish, an absolute duck, said there’s such competition sometimes that residents adopt one and then the Lawns gets another from Labrador Rescue.’

Vivian weakened, as Edge knew she would. ‘Oh, I have missed having dogs around. But I don’t have an interesting past, I’d never get in. A Cold War spy, heavens!’

‘And a few writers, and a Russian ballerina, and a mercenary and an actress. Why not an opera singer? I told them about you and they want you to apply. And I want you to apply. And you know me, I always get my way in the end. I’m more stubborn than you are.’

Vivian sipped slowly at her tea while Edge watched her with bright eyes. Finally she said, ‘you really have one of your feelings about this place? That it would suit us?’ Edge nodded and she sighed. ‘Okay. Tell me more about the dogs.’

January 9, 2014 by elegsabiff

Endings (microstory)

Every cell in the human body, doctors say, is replaced within a seven year period. This story is about Vivian and Edge, but it is dated over seven years before the Grasshopper Lawns series starts, so it is also about two totally different people.

Gordon Oliver watched his beautiful wife walk slowly up the stairs under the bougainvillea-vivid trellis and rubbed his chest absently with his right hand before taking a gulp of his whisky. Perhaps, to others, she was no longer as beautiful as the girl he’d married nearly thirty years earlier, but her smile still lit the room. Doctors. What did they know? He rubbed his chest again and as Vivian reached the patio doors and vanished from view, switched his attention back to her best friend who still sat hunched and frozen, staring out to sea. He quickly finished his drink and topped the glass up with orange juice, turning his head to smile as Vivian joined him.

‘Not budging, eh?’

‘I’m worried sick. If she would only cry! She cried after James died, but she hasn’t shed a tear for Alistair. She’s just a polite fading shadow. I’m convinced she’s made her mind up, that the only reason she’s going back to Scotland is so that whatever she’s planning won’t upset her friends here. She can say her mother needs her, and she wants to see more of her niece, but it’s just words to deflect me. I know her.’

‘I’ve never known two people as much in love as they were, but women have been widowed before, darling. They survive.’

‘She’s so intense, though. Usually so vital.’ Vivian sniffed the air, then looked reproachfully at her husband. ‘Oh, Gordon.’

‘Hey, you’re the one with bronchial lungs and don’t tell me you haven’t sneaked a puff or two in the last three years. A wee dram won’t kill me.’

‘I’ll never smoke again, though. And you shouldn’t drink, the doctor said it wasn’t good for you. I couldn’t bear to lose you, not after watching Edge agonizing over Alistair, that’s why I’m so sure she’d going to—well. Could you speak to her?’

Gordon sat down heavily on the bench next at Edge, who didn’t seem to notice. ‘Edge, my love. How long have you and Vivian been friends?’

She stirred, surprised, and finally looked at him sideways through the sweep of her shoulder-length hair. ‘Forever. Since we were eight. You know that.’

‘You’re like sisters, and she knows you better than anyone else on Earth. And she thinks you’re going back to Scotland to kill yourself.’ Edge was shocked into stillness for a moment, then shrugged.

‘You never did flinch at saying what was on your mind. I’m saying goodbye, yes, I doubt I’ll come back to Africa, too many memories. I loved being here, but I love Scotland too. I think it will be easier to live one day at a time there than here, and I’ve family there, real family, not happily-married friends who feel like family but also remind me every day of what I’ve;’ she paused, and finished thinly. ‘What I’ve lost.’

‘Okay, good. One day at a time is fine. You’re a pretty woman, and a strong woman, and in time you’ll realize again that life is sweet, but until then I need you to keep going for Vivian’s sake. Because she’s going to need you.’

She finally turned to look at him, her face pinched and thin with all the weight she’d lost, but a spark of curiosity in her sunken tearless eyes. ‘Why? What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying the doctor said I can smoke and drink as much as I want, now, it can’t make any difference. I’m staying off the fags, for Vivian’s sake, but we’re selling up. Vivian’s always wanted to go back home, and we’ll be following you within the year. She doesn’t know why, and you’re not to even hint at what I just told you. Her parents aren’t in the best health so she’s accepting that as the reason. The kids are staying here, their lives are here, but Vivian and I are returning to Scotland, to spend time with her parents. When they go, and I go, I’m sorry, Edge my love, but I have to insist you be there for her.’

Vivian, watching anxiously from the window, saw Edge put her hands to her face, then lean her head on Gordon’s shoulder and weep in total abandonment, her shoulders shaking with grief. Vivian’s heart swelled with love as she watched her husband put a comforting arm around her best friend’s shoulders and turn his head to stare out at the endless, ever-changing sea.

January 6, 2014 by elegsabiff

So, the trial on Scrivener, part one

So many people were recommending Scrivener that I decided to do the thirty day free trial and see how I got on. One third of the way through, and a little bit of feedback:

The theory is evocative. Scrivener will create a project file where you keep your writing, your research, your concepts, your character notes, all in one place. It creates an automatic card for the corkboard for each section you open, and you can mark the status on each section as first draft, revised, complete, etc. Do a readthrough, then go to the status board and see which bits have been marked for major editing. A section can be blank (because you know something is needed there) or a sentence or a whole chapter. Pull the cards around the corkboard and the sections will obediently drop into their new order.

All of those appealed.

My initial reactions:

Wow, that’s a long tutorial. Bored now, and not halfway finished
Let’s go live and pull in the book I’m currently editing, and learn as I go by looking things up
Okay THIS is clunky.

But, once the process of laboriously pulling in a fifty thousand word document was complete, I was quite enjoying spotting a bit that needed work, isolating it in a section of its own, and pulling a section I wasn’t sure about into delete. It isn’t actually deleted, it just waits. You can pull it back if and when.

Scrivener saves every few seconds. Nothing can get lost.

Still, I found it slowed me down as I bumped along; I wasn’t that impressed, and I thought the Compile was rubbish, eeny weeny screen to see the overview. I still cannot find out how to set the project to UK English, which means lots of distracting spelling alerts because I use more u’s than Scrivener feels necessary. I found out how to set an em-dash (easy enough, – – then space and it appears) but not how to set an ellipsis, and I’m far too prone to both. My word count is only by section and I had about twenty six sections.

As always when I am editing one book, ideas pop into view for the next. Previously I would fix them on a document and file them into the next book’s folder. This time I opened a project and suddenly started getting keen. That’s handy!

So my initial summary: I’ve still not read the whole tutorial. Scrivener, for editing an existing book, for me was a no-no. I’m about to pull the whole book back into Word where I can do a UK spellcheck, get a full overview and start checking my chapters and chapter breaks, and I don’t feel I got any real benefit from the detour.

However, as a drafting and creating tool, I think I may be in love. The new book project is fab. Ideas are jotted down in sections, whole chapters have grown and can be pulled into place as needed, my character notes and photos are right where I need them, and so are the websites that I will be checking again and again as I push through.

Twenty days to go on the trial.

January 1, 2014 by elegsabiff

NYR. Get a life.

I haven’t done an IWSG post for quite a while but wanted to pass on a bit of gentle advice from my cousin, who said she’d been set a story theme at school which their teacher told them was life advice as well. She’d come to realize it, and she thought it was time to remind me. The theme was ‘The Machine That Ran Away With Its Driver’.

I joked that it was too late for that, but was typing away furiously at 03h00 this morning when it suddenly clicked into focus. Oh. Right. Maybe I was becoming just a little obsessive, yes? Blame the new year, if you will, because I published my first book on January 1^st 2013 and wanted to put out a birthday omnibus (which by the way I did, at 02h00, and there’s a clickable link in the side bar), and I also wanted to start pulling all sorts of plans learned from ALLi into place for 2014. So there were more deadlines than there would usually be, on top of finding time for the job that pays the bills, and I’ve been writing until 2 or 3 in the morning for the last couple of weeks. I could have spent Christmas with my family but cried off because of the killer drive, and worked through, only stopping briefly on Boxing Day to see some friends who had flown to Scotland to see the amazing Kelpies.

Was my machine, is my machine, running away with me? The friends were on a tight deadline and hadn’t originally been coming to mine, but we had to come here after all to cut the padlock off their suitcase. It made me realize, as I hadn’t before, how much of a pigsty the house was becoming. Five half-empty coffee cups around the computer, for starters. Thank goodness the unopened Christmas presents weren’t in the lounge—no Christmas decorations up at all, for that matter. Who had time for Christmas decorations? Or opening presents? Or eating? I lost four pounds over the Christmas break (not complaining, you understand. Just saying.)

Yes time is short, and running out at a terrifying rate, and yes I’m happiest when I’m writing. But it’s supposed to be my bliss, not my controller, so my new year resolution is to chill, just a little. Walk the dog more than once a day. Get a life, if I can find time for it between working and writing. Scratch that, make the time.

Happy New Year, and may 2014 find you always in full control of your machine.

December 31, 2013 by elegsabiff

Happy New Year, and happy birthday to Edge and co.

This blog introduces my new mailing list, and if you sign up you get a free Lawns story as a thank you, and notifications of pre-publication special prices, and other general sweeteners to encourage you to stay subscribed. After this blog, the offers will likely only be on the emails. Go sign up now, I’ll wait, it’s the button at the top of the sidebar. Oh, and there’s a free book offer in the blog too.

This is also happy birthday to Edge, Vivian, Donald and William, who were officially born on the 1^st of January 2013, when I got a New Year resolution sorted in record time and published my first novella on Kindle. The book – which very nearly went out with this cover, don’t laugh – was very nearly a textbook for newbie ineptitude.

I doubt I’ll stop making errors any time soon, but I’m not quite the naïve writer who with much muttering and cursing and referring to help topics, published One Two on Kindle and shyly sat back, thinking the job was done. Such an innocent. But if I had known then what I know now, a year down the line, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Far from job done, it was job barely begun.

The joy of novellas is that they’re a pleasure to write; forty to fifty thousand words is a piece of cake. Writing a thousand words an hour is the easy part. Editing, pruning, tidying and rewriting, updating feedback from beta readers, waking at three in the morning to suddenly realize I hadn’t actually explained a key timing issue (the moon phases in Five Six) is a job. A very badly paid one, and the hours are brutal.

The Lawns books are also now in paperback, and an omnibus Kindle edition of One to Six is coming out tomorrow, January 1^st, to mark the anniversary. It’ll be $5, so, since the books are $2.99 each, there’s a saving of up to $3.97. I should probably have said that earlier. I’m still rubbish at marketing.

2014 is all about getting serious. I want reviews, and the experts (independent publishing may still be in its rebellious spotty teens, but there are experts, and when they are best-selling experts, you listen) say each book needs at least a hundred reviews to make a ripple in the general reading public. A hundred! One Two has around a dozen scattered over the Amazon websites around the world, and the others are trailing behind even that. Readers say they like the books, they tell me on Twitter and Facebook and even on LinkedIn, and they must be telling each other for the sales to carry on trickling in (Five Six sold better in its first week than the first two combined, in their first weeks, and all of them are selling slowly but steadily) but they don’t tell Amazon. I gave away 500 copies of One Two and got a big jump in sales on the other two, but only three reviews out of it. So that didn’t work, I’m not sure I will do it again.

Instead, anyone who emails Elizabeth.Lamprey@yahoo.co.uk with the link to a review they’ve published on one of my books gets their choice of the books listed at the end of this giant blog, or, if you already have every book written to date (thank you!) goes on the list for the next. I’d much rather give away a free book to a reviewer who has already taken the trouble once, and if they enjoy it, might do so again, than in random promotion. I don’t know whether I mentioned it yet but reviews are really, really important. I did? Worth saying again.

I’m having silhouettes drawn of the characters (rough draft at the end of the blog), and eventually there’ll be sketches (why, why did I not spend ten thousand hours drawing as well as writing?) but until then here’s your very rough visual shortcut to the birthday kiddies.

The list of Grasshopper Lawns books by EJ Lamprey (with clickable links where the book is already on sale) which can also be claimed in Kindle format by existing reviewers

One Two Buckle My Shoe unpopular resident Betsy Campbell called the police to report a murder, but was dead when they arrived. The police could do with some inside information, and luckily Sergeant Kirsty Cameron’s aunt is right on the spot.

In Three Four Knock On My Door it’s handsome devoted nephew Simon, and the enigmatic Dallas from Louisiana, who come knocking. And Death, complete with scythe. The amateur sleuths solve murder in between unexpected family, winter picnics, mad dogs and Englishmen.

Five Six Pick Up Sticks Website dating for the over-fifties is definitely a boom industry, but for some it has been a dead end, and the Scottish police want to know why. Sergeant Kirsty Cameron’s aunt Edge is the right age to be the bait in their investigation, and she’ll be monitored at all times, so nothing can go wrong . . .

Seven Eight Play It Straight is due out early in 2014 Edge’s stepdaughter is appearing in a Fringe production during the Edinburgh Festival; but as always when the four friends are around, murder is never far away. Sergeant Kirsty Cameron can’t help much this time, she’s been suspended during the investigation, as her aunt is a suspect . . .

There’s a ghost story called The Passing Of Mrs Parker Woodburn , by EJ Lamprey (the link is to the lovely short story site Alfiedog.com, which at 39p is a better price than Amazon.) Mrs PW was quite put out about being murdered. . .

Science Fiction novelette Time after Time, published under the name Joanna Lamprey. Being different can be hard to live with. Finding out that what makes you different is going to change your life, in ways closed to nearly everyone else on Earth, is pretty heady stuff. You can’t blame a girl for getting a little carried away. This is a story about travelling back through time. And the importance of not acting without thinking, when twenty or thirty thousand years hang in the balance. Oops.

(Be warned, one of my usual beta readers did not like this book, and one, who doesn’t like SF, couldn’t carry on reading. Two refused to even try as they don’t like the genre. The other beta readers for the book don’t read my Lawns books, they are SF only. So, only one beta reader who likes both this and the Lawns books.)

There’s also a handbook, Beta Reader (and how to prepare your book for beta reading) which is on Kindle at 99c and also available in paperback. Most reference books are more convenient in print but frankly, because of the way this one is set up, Kindle works well. If you are using it as an edit guide, you’re working through one task at a time, and that fits with a Kindle screen just fine. If you’re reading it to learn more about beta reading, why pay extra for a paperback? And if you’re beta reading for me, or generally claiming it as a free book, but don’t for whatever reason want the Kindle version, it’s not too big for PDF, I think about 75 pages.

December 27, 2013 by elegsabiff

December 2013: The Red Cloak

THE RED CLOAK
(The theme for December was Midwinter Solstice, and the elements were fear and not here, not now)

Warmth spread to his horn-nailed fingertips with the first gulp and he drank again greedily. Wonderful. Wonderful! Between the firebox walls, even the delicate web of flame flickering overhead, this excellent drink, and the cloak slung around his shoulders, he, who had thought warmth and life lost forever, was alive again. He fingered the cloak wonderingly. It was soft, fine, red, the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. As they brought him in, half-dead with the cold and fear, a young Galan in the startled crowd had pulled it off his own shoulders, and, at a nod from an older man, rushed over to fling it round him. The same youngster stood by him now, attentively waiting to top up his drink, beaming at him as though he were the most wonderful sight in the world. It wasn’t a look the traveller was used to, and he wondered uneasily whether he was being wooed. These primitive Northern folk, one heard strange tales—but on the other hand, one couldn’t be a traveller and turn down new experiences, and the lad was, for a Northerner, very taking. He looked back to the glossy-furred Elders smilingly watching him.

‘The cloak,’ he asked haltingly in Galan, ‘how make?’

‘As our Lady returns, we comb ourselves every day.’ The woman picked words he could understand. ‘The combings are spun, then dyed and woven into cloaks. There is only ever one red cloak, it is sacred to us.’

‘We have no thing like this.’ He marvelled. ‘But our fleece are short.’ By Southern standards he was shaggy, with a winter mane of which he was secretly proud, but he felt positively svelte among these hirsute people. His people thought the Northerners wild, with their flowing pelts, but the cloak was superb. He wondered what he could trade for it. Sacred wasn’t a word he knew, maybe it meant friendly, in which case they might even give it to him. ‘You said your—Lady?’

‘Our Lady of Summer. While she reigns, we grow our food, hunt, and raise our young. As the Winter Lord’s dark shadow grows we turn to learning and inventing. Every year, a day comes when there is no daylight at all, and on that day we light the fires, because fire is their link. We spend this day in worship, we sacrifice to him, and he lets the Lady take us back, day by day, to the summer. We do this also on the day there is no dark, because we crave the knowledge the Lord brings us.’

‘We had hear you superstitious!’ He was delighted to get the stories confirmed.

‘What else do Shorthairs—Southerners—say of us?’ one of the men asked with interest, and he felt a warm rush of affection for these friendly, lovely people.

‘We say,’ he confided, ‘that you primitive. Hostile. Must not to visit in winter.’ He shivered. ‘Now I know why. So cold!’

The Galan looked puzzled. ‘Are you cold?’

‘No, no, not now! I ready to die for cold when you find me. Now warm. I not ever see fire like this.’ He pointed a claw at the delicate tracery of flame above. ‘Beautiful. This drink, you call moonshine? I never taste drink like this. Make me warm, happy. Is good.’

‘We learn much during the reign of the Winter Lord,’ the old woman repeated. ‘Fire is precious, for two days a year only, for the rest of the cold time we use the heat that we stored during the months of the Lady.’

He was puzzled, but his Galan wasn’t up to pursuing an explanation and he returned to an earlier comment. ‘You say sac-ri-fice,’ he used the barely familiar word carefully. ‘That is to kill a beast, yes?’

‘No, for the Lord we draw lots. One must burn so the rest can live. This time, it was to be Gered.’ She gestured at the handsome lad who was so attentively caring for him, and he felt a shock of protest. This promising and charming young man? Barbaric!

‘Was to be, not now?’ He looked up and Gered bent forward eagerly, tilting the jug invitingly. Flame reflected, dancing, in his eyes.

December 27, 2013 by elegsabiff

November 2013: The Worst Time To Travel

THE WORST TIME TO TRAVEL
(The theme for November was The Unwanted Gift, and there were two elements , Travel, and Forgetfulness)

‘You look, if you don’t mind me saying so, absolutely fed up.’ The fat man, having thanked her for lifting her bag off the seat next to hers in the crowded waiting room, now seemed to want to make conversation and Carol sighed inwardly. But if it passed this interminable waiting time …

‘I hate travelling at any time. But most of all at this time of year.’

‘So why are you?’ He unwrapped a burger, his obvious anticipation undimmed by the soggy bun, flabby burger patty, and wisps of tired vegetable matter being revealed by the process, and she averted her eyes.

‘Oh – my daughter. She sent a note and a gift saying I had to open it immediately, and join them for Christmas. I’ve not been able to reach her, so there was nothing for it but to book. I don’t want it to be an emergency, but I’ll be a little cross if it isn’t. She knows how I hate to fly!’

‘Did you bring the gift?’ He lowered the sad limp burger, and looked interested. ‘What is it?’

‘You tell me.’ She produced what looked like a steel powder compact. ‘It does open, but there’s nothing inside. And anyway, who needs a powder compact these days? I’ve got a powder spray. She gave me that, too, last year, so she knows I don’t need a compact.’

‘Well, now,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And those powder sprays – last year, you said? But they only came on the market a few months ago.’

‘Yes, I know, but she works with new inventions. Did you ever watch that TV show, a Town Called Eureka? A bit like that. No direct contact with the outside world, that’s why I couldn’t reach her.’

‘And that’s where you’re going?’

‘Yes.’ She eyed him warily, suddenly aware she’d said more to this total stranger than she should. Holly had asked her never to discuss anything about the Centre.

He gave the compact back and took a bite of his burger, and she blinked. Just for a second, as he bit into it, the patty had looked thick and delicious, topped with crisp lettuce, juicy tomato and a generous supply of fried onion rings – the sort of burgers she’d made for Holly and Nicholas, when they were young. The impression was so vivid she could actually smell it, and her mouth watered automatically – then he was chewing, and for all his obvious enjoyment, the portion left in his hand looked as tired and limp as it had before. She looked away politely and focused on the tired, irritable and fretful passengers around them, staring with dulled eyes at the departures board which flickered again. ALL FLIGHTS DELAYED.

‘Not much Christmas spirit, is there?’ He really was a very rosy man, against that snow-white hair and tidy beard. ‘Tell me, did you ever ask her for anything in particular?’

‘No. Well.’ She laughed despite herself at the memory. ‘I asked her not to expect me to travel ever again until they invented a teleporter! I’d forgotten that. So did she, obviously.’

‘She didn’t.’ His eyes lit with laughter. ‘Carol, for security reasons she sent the instructions separately, and they got stolen. You go find a private corner, open the compact, and tell it to take you to Holly.’

She stared at him and he twinkled merrily.

‘I’m by way of being in the Christmas business, Carol. And I love the way your family names reflect my traditions. Now off you go and have a wonderful holiday with your family.’ With that he started to laugh, an old-fashioned belly laugh. ‘I’ve got some planes to sort out! Ho ho ho!’

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I know, I know, cheesy. But it was the winning entry for that month so go ahead, laugh.

December 27, 2013 by elegsabiff

October 2013: Back to Basics (William’s in this one)

BACK TO BASICS
(The theme for October was Deception, and the element was Fire.)

The brief, three years ago, had been electrifying. Interstellar travel was a reality, with the first exploration ship due to launch in five years. Nick Taylor had been one of three thousand experts pulled onto the project, and the years since had been the most exciting, exhausting, alarming, and thrilling years of his young life.

His section covered crew wellbeing—even at interstellar speed, the closest promising-looking planet was four years away. The ship would transport a team of experts, spend a year on the planet—all going well, of course—and return. Most of the passengers would travel in stasis, since it wasn’t logistically possible to provision up to ten years for so many people, but the minimum crew of nine—three at a time on duty, twenty-four /seven—was their main worry. How could nine people be kept from going stark staring mad in eight years, during the hours they were neither working nor sleeping?

The section personnel were gathered today for an update on that vital issue, rehashing the many suggestions that had been tabled—revolving all the personnel in and out of stasis, or choosing only crew who shared a single language; loading ship databanks with thousands of films and books; hurriedly inventing a Voyager-style holodeck. That one never drew many laughs; it was so obviously what was needed. Entertaining a crew, even a multilingual one, wasn’t the impossibility; relaxing them, however—the five volunteer teams living in trial conditions were all stressed almost to incoherence within months.

Overall coordinator Tom Burkett tapped a pen against his glass for attention, and the heated conversations died. ‘You’ll remember at the original brief we invited some SF writers, in the hope they could think outside the box on this? We’ve got a presentation from William Robertson coming up next. We’ll go through now.’

William Robertson! Nick had been a fan all his teens, still was if he had time to read, and craned eagerly over the heads of the people walking in front of him for his first close-up glimpse of the author.

Robertson was taller, heavier, and older than anyone in the room; he nodded unsmiling greetings as they entered the room, where nineteen chairs were grouped around a steel fire bowl. Fire? Nick took his place with the others, and Robertson, leaning on one of his trademark sticks, bent to touch a lighter to the bowl.

Flames leapt and Burkett spoke up. ‘No talking. Relax and watch.’

This was stupid—there couldn’t be an open fire on a spaceship!—but Nick watched obediently. His frayed nerves eased; he could smell wood burning, and an elusive faint trace of something else. Someone, presumably Robertson, threw a chunk of rock salt on the fire, which sparked and burned blue. There was something else . . . people, shadows against shadows, and the plaintive strains of a harmonica. Horses snorted nearby, and stars burned huge in the night sky. One of the men threw a log on the fire in a flurry of sparks—

Nick flinched, and was back in his seat.

‘How the hell did you do that?’ he exclaimed involuntarily. The others were looking equally startled, and Robertson grinned into his tidy beard.

‘Since we first learned to summon fire,’ he rumbled, unexpectedly Scots, ‘it has been our comfort, our safety, our dreamy pleasure, triggering our most primal feelings of wellbeing. I released a permitted narcotic—milder than a wee dram—to prime you. The crew will have the same narcotic. Imagination—memory—you’ll have all experienced summat different. And will, every time you look into the flames, no matter how often you look. Our trial team use it a few times a week, and their stress levels have dropped back well below concern levels.’

He swung his stick at the fire pot, which flickered as the stick went straight through the image.

‘It’s not real?’ Ann Moore wasn’t the only one to gasp, but she was the only one to speak.

‘Och, it’s real, burning right now, and it will for the next two years. Every flicker, every added log, all captured on holographic film for the journey. Smoke and mirrors, ken? Smoke and mirrors.’