Wishing everyone a brilliant, safe, prosperous and peaceful 2024 ... may there be peace in our time, to coin a phrase; let good health visit your home, and happiness infuse life for every one of us.
Happy New Year from South Australia, on this sunny afternoon, New Years Eve, 2023. Out with the old, in the the new!
(A Photoshop painting in honour of the occasion)
'Twas the night after Christmas and Whoville was rocking
With the kind of wild party that brings people flocking.
The noise and the booze, all the singing and dancing ...
The racket and rumpus, the shmoozing and prancing ...
Would drive to the point of starting a riot
Any poor fellow who just fancied quiet.
And you already know who was sane by an inch:
Poised on the brink was the poor old green Grinch.
By nine in the morning even Max was vibrating
With the jackhammer jollity; it’s not overstating
That not even Max could endure so much ‘cheer,’
No matter how snockered one became on Who beer.
And by two in the P.M., oh, Maxie was worried,
For the Grinch looked so manic; the beast who’d been buried
Beneath fudge and tinsel, and the charm of a child
Had clawed back to the surface ... and my, he was wild!
All the popping and bopping, the preening and prancing,
The swinging and zinging, and -- oh, the break-dancing!
Were more than the Grinch could guess how to endure ...
And then, all at once, he envisioned a cure,
For there by the Christmas tree, flat on the floor,
Was one lonely present. A forgotten chainsaw.
And the Grinch had no sooner set eyes on that tool
Then he said to himself, “Grinchie, you’ll been such a fool,
To think you could bear all this ruckus and humbug,
This rumpus and dumpus, this scampus and scumbug,
This noise, noise, noise, noise, that these Whofolk call ‘fun,’
While the stores are all closed and you can’t buy a gun --
There isn’t a fowling piece (nor even a pheasant),
But one of these idiots forgot his best present!”
For under the Christmas tree, left on the floor,
Wrapped up in red ribbons lay a brand new chainsaw:
All shiny and sharpy, all toothy and jagged --
Just begging for gasoline! So, out the Grinch swaggered
With a light, empty gascan and a bag full of quarters,
To the gas station downtown, with a brain full of slaughters ...
There wouldn’t be any Who left to make noise!
They’d be peacefully absent, the Who girls and boys.
The Who-guys and ladies would be quiet as the snow --
And Cindy-Lou Who’d be the first one to go.
For the Grinch could envisage the headlines tomorrow,
When no Who in Whoville survived to feel sorrow --
Here was a task to which the Grinch felt quite equal
(And MGM’s already contracted the sequel):
GRINCH II: WHOVILLE CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
Merry Christmas
to all,
Christmas Eve 2003
Hoping for a wonderful 2024, and --
Peace on Earth
"...and then I dropped my cup of tea, because something magical happened that hasn’t since I was a child, no older than Tommy is now. The living room faded away. Every light shone brighter, and snow began to fall gently, silently, around the tree. I’d promised him, if he was very quiet and still, and watched, and watched, it could happen — a ruse, to get Tommy to take a nap on Christmas Eve, while mom snatched an hour of rest where she could. He’d fallen asleep — always the plan … and I hadn’t believed in magic in so many years."
...knowing he can't face this one alone, he first journeys into the wild highlands of Calhanna, where is recruits his old friend, old comrade, to ride the trail with him. Bremmer is younger by several summers and hasn't seen so many battles; he's actually keen to undertake the quest, which Jirrel thinks is quite mad. But...
For this one, they'll need horses which have strange and magickal powers. Ordinary horses won't get them there, so Jirrel and Bremmer first head into the forests of Alkwood to ask the assistances of great creatures who have befriended them, and fought with them before. The great stallion, North Wind, agrees to help, for the sake of a friend.
Duty done, Jirrel sits on a crag, remembering, and listening to Bremmer's voice in the wind which whips forever over the heaths and mountains of his homeland.
Where boundless horizons reach out to the sea --
Like the castles of war gods the mountains rise,
Crowned with ramparts of ice ’near tumultuous skies.
I’d trade easy comforts; I’d trade youth and looks
For a warm, dry cabin, a trunk of books,
And the health and strength to be mates with the vast
Till the winds and the stars call me home at last.
The link to buy Cosmic Muse as an ebook is a little awkward -- it's available in so many formats, the publisher has supplied a "catch all" link which will send you to something called "Books 2 Read," and from there, you can bump on to your store of choice, with something like nine options ... though not without allowing Books 2 Read to set "preference" cookies (which, for myself, I prefer not to do. It's your call).
So I'll give you three links here: this first will take you to the aggregator, Smashwords, where books funnel through to ebook stores galore; the second is to the "Books 2 Read" page, where you can make your own decisions about whether you'll accept cookies; and the third link is to the paperback edition of this anthology, available from Amazon.
Anyone remember the Farside-style cartoon of two monsters chasing each other down a street while a couple of middle-aged ladies look on, and one lady says to the other (!), "It's just one goddamn thing after another." Mmm. That's been life in a nutshell. Don't ask.
But I'm back at last -- with less news that I'd hoped to be able to relay, but at least there's something.
It begins with an update on A Glamour of Toads, which was published in Dragon Gems, Summer 2023 issue ... available as of last month, I believe. As the cover indicates, this is a kind of cute and/or "cracked" fairy-tale fantasy anthology, and I'm sure Glamour fits perfectly...
The story of a young woman who's blessed, or cursed, with enormous courage and physical ugliness (no other way to parse this, so -- grasp it, and weaponize it), and she finds herself born into the era of the witch hunts, what we call the 'burning times.'
The only potential fly in the ointment is that to read Glamour, you'll need a subscription to something called SCRIBD. Now, in and of itself, SRIBD is a marvellous idea. In a nutshell, here is their advertising line: "Enjoy millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more, with a free trial."
You could read Dragon Gems Summer 2023 on the 30-day free trial, course ... but if I had a tablet, and I didn't mind a monthly fee of about AUD$20, I think I'd be subscribing. I'll be brutally honest at this moment: I have things to save for, so my own discretional spending is shackled and bound. But when I've bought the camera and lenses I want (price tag, around two grand -- you get the picture), SRCIBD will be on my list, along with a YouTube subscription (to get rid of those pesky commercials).
So -- Find A Glamour of Toads right here, but be prepared to take them up on the offer of that free trial. You should be able to read on phones ... I certainly could!
I wish there were more to update, but the publishers for whom a whole raft of stories and poems were written have been delayed, and only recently opened back up for reading. Everything is late, so the news is a bit thin on the publishing front.
However, there's more, if the hard, demanding and exacting work of the editor counts in this publishing game -- and it does. I spent some fascinating weeks working on A Tradition of Evil, a Sherlock Holmes novel by Mike Adamson. The job was actually a lot of fun, and the book (which went on sale, from Belanger Books, just a couple of months ago) is a great read that's being very well rated at Amazon. It was also my great pleasure to build Mike's new author website, not least because it gave me the opportunity to flex my illustrator's muscles, and provide all the original artwork...
And when I'd finished construction on that website, I was so envious -- I decided to build one for myself, for my art and photography. I'm halfway through at this moment. And that is how time flew away, even before you add in some bad luck, car troubles, winter, flu, and the usual domestic drivel. Something had to go on the backburner, and the blogs were the unfortunate choice. I've barely kept touch with Facebook in the same span of time!
Hopefully, this can turn around now.
Edgar had heard many times about the gateway -- and according to the locals who lived around Eltenham Forest, several opened into the earth, or into faraway places. He'd always dreamed of finding one, and last summer holiday he spent most of the time investigating old trees and misty dells, with no luck at all. This year, when he'd given up and wasn't even looking anymore, here it was! Maybe the magic worked this way he thought as he ventured closer, and closer ... the harder you looked, the less you were likely to find yourself a gateway to adventure.
Very close now, he could smell the clean, sharp scents of mountain air and hear the calls of strange birds, unlike any that lived anywhere near Eltenham. A chill breeze wafted from the gate, and tendrils of mist crept cautiously through at his feet. Here at Cricklewood Hall, it was a hot afternoon full of droning beetles and the heavy scent of flowers. But far on the other side of the gate, dawn light cascaded down the east side of a range of dragon-fang mountains, and the smell of pine trees prickled his nose.
He was almost at the gate, dying to step through, when he saw the man on the other side -- and the man has seen him!
 |
| Art by Jen Downes |
But this isn’t any
city. This is Lorentia, the very place where the armistice was negotiated in the days of your great-grandfather’s grandfather. The felix —
descended from the superior race, older than humankind, older even then the
dragonae, and infinitely wiser than both — negotiated the peace and still oversee
it. Some places in this world belong to humans, and dragons may not fly there;
other places are the realms of dragonae, and humans beware. The two races
maintain a healthy distrust of each other, and a grudging respect.
And once a year the
three species, humans, dragonae and the felix come together in the city of
Lorentia for the Fire Festival, a remembrance of the great dead on both sides,
and a celebration of the courage it took to make peace. On this one night, the
dragonae come in to Lorentia. They come in peace, to fly and flame, while
humans photograph, paint, record, converse … and some lucky ones fly with the
massive old dragons who were there in the war years, and who survived.
The Fire Festival is
the high point of the year for all, and every child longs to attend. But until
they’re ten years old, children are banished. Dragons are vastly old, very
large and they remain wild. Their intelligence is keen, their knowledge of the
language of men is deep, but they have no interest in civilization. They treasure their wild life, beyond the mountains, and they’re
not about to change.
Tomas Gaffney is eight
years old, and obsessed with the dragonae. His ancestor fought in the war; the
family home is decorated with relics and images … a painting of the airship
from which his grandmother Alexandrina abseiled with the iron harpoons, which
was the way of the hunting, in the latter days of the war. There are dragonbone
antiques, dragonfang scrimshaw, crossed harpoons over the family’s crest on
Alexandrina’s warshield…
All of which has
filled Tomas’s young head with a desperate need to attend the Festival of Fire
… not two years from now, when he’ll be positively ancient. Now, this year! The
festival is just three days away, when he hatches a plot with his best friend,
Margarette. She has an aunt who lives in Lorentia. Aunt Rosa will let them
stay, if they can only get there. Rosa won’t send them away, because she did
the same thing when she was a child, and attended the festival when she was
eight!
The two hatch plots
and pack bags. They’ll meet in the city, where the Ten Dragon Bridge crosses
the river, and they’ll make their way to Rosa’s house. It’s all decided. Tomas makes it away from their village in the early twilight, under a
full harvest moon … he doesn’t know Margaretta gets caught before she can slip out of the house. Her father grabs her by the scruff of her raincoat and
hauls her back in …
Which means Tomas has
no one to meet at the bridge, and no idea where Rosa lives. He arrives in the
city alone — and lost. He waits for Margaretta for hours, but she doesn’t
arrive, and he guesses what happened. Now it’s late, getting really dark. The
lanterns are lit, people throng to the fairgrounds and the marketplaces, where
the festival will be celebrated. As a child, he’s not supposed to be here, and
as an outsider, he has no idea who he can ask for help.
He thinks about
heading for home, but it’s too late. It’s so dark now, and the way back
leads through woods and wilds that are dangerous at night. Wolves, vagabonds
and highwaymen menace the open road as soon as the sun sets. Tomas has no
choice but to brave the city till dawn.
He’s hungry, but he
has no money, and if he asks the City Guard to help, he’ll be in all kinds of
trouble. They’ll lock him up overnight, so he won’t even see the festival, and
they’ll send for his father in the morning. Tomas can expect to be grounded
for a hundred years, and do twice the study and three times the chores, to make
up for this foolishness. Since he’s going to pay the price, he decides to at
least see the festival first. But it’s dangerous in the city … and the danger
is not just the dragonae.
All his life, Tomas
has listened to whispers about “them city folks,” who can’t be trusted.
They’ll rob you blind and leave you for dead — so the neighbours say, and
Tomas’s father agreed with them. So he’s distrustful of every face that turns
toward him, and when someone tries to speak to him ... “Here, you, kid, you
shouldn’t be out on your own!” ... he takes to his heels and runs, losing himself in
the crush of people headed to the fairgrounds.
He sees the festival
from a distance, at last witnessing the terrible magnificence of the immense old
dragons and the playful cuteness of the young … but long past midnight it’s
cold and beginning to rain. He’s hungry and tired, and feels threatened by
every glance.
Starting to panic, he
runs into an alley, huddles against the wall and talks to himself, calling
himself all kinds of fool for doing this. He never expected an answer, but when
he looks up, it’s one of the felix, with beautiful golden eyes and
midnight-black fur, soft paws and an even softer voice.
The young cat can
guess Tomas’s problem … this happens every year, and sometimes foolish
children do get themselves into all kinds of trouble. This cat is called Tyree,
and though he doesn’t have to help Tomas, he has nothing better to do tonight,
now the dragons have gone up to Mount Garam to the Council of Elders. There’ll
be no more fireworks and flying till next festival, but if this human boy needs
to find his friend’s aunt, well, let’s see what the felix can do about that.
He takes Tomas to his
grandmother, the venerable and beautiful Zalana, who holds court where the
lanterns nod in the night wind and the scent of the river rises, strong and
salty, up the steep old streets. Zalana first takes Tomas to shelter — a
veranda belonging to a café that’s closed now, out of the wind and rain. She
petitions the little daughter of a baker across the lane, who tosses a couple
of the day’s leftover chocolate muffins out to Tomas, for his supper. Then Tomas takes a
nap, while the felix pass the word among their kind … where does a lady called Rosa
live?
All Tomas knows is
what Margaretta told him: her aunt lives beside one of the marketplaces, where
she smells the eel pies baking before dawn, and haggles with the cheesemonger
on her own doorstep, as he goes by to his shop, laden with great wheels of red
cheese. Tomas eats his supper, and is too tired to worry much before he slips
into dreams full of dragons and fabulous cats…
It’s dawn twilight
when Tyree wakes him. The felix think they've discovered Rosa’s house:
there’s a bakery opposite, a cheesemonger next door, right beside the
marketplace where the best eels are sold, and the name painted on the letterbox
is “R.M.I Visconti.” R for Rosa. Is Visconti the last name of Margaretta’s aunt? Tomas doesn’t
know, but he follows Tyree across the city … over the bridge, through alleyways
and tiny streets, where the two are swept up in adventures, with daring escapes
They dodge a big and
bad-tempered constable from the City Guard, and Tomas is certain he’s become a desperate fugitive from the law. They flee from an innkeeper who thinks they’re up to no
good, and about to steal the milk bottles off her doorstep. And, skidding around
a corner to escape a laundryman carrying a huge wicker hamper — he looks exactly
like a pirate, out kidnap a young boy and a young felix and hold them to ransom —
they run face-first into a dragonling called Shimui.
Shimui is still
growing into her wings, and is waiting for her mother to give her a ride
home beyond the mountains. While they get their breath back, Tomas and Tyree
listen to the dragonling’s stories of her home. Her mother is the biggest of
the dragons, Shimandara, whom Tomas saw at the fairground the night before. Shimandara
thrilled the crowd with displays like fireworks, before flying off to the roost
atop Mount Garam, where she and the dragonae elders sat in council with the human
elders till dawn.
Both Tomas and Tyree
would dearly love to cross the mountains and see the homeland of the dragonae,
but it’s still forbidden. Perhaps things might change in the future, if the felix
can negotiate a festival in which humans travel north to the Land of Fire, just
as the dragonae come to Lorentia for this festival. They’ve been trying to strike a deal, and Tyree
hopes it will happen ... but Shimandara’s people are still wary. The biggest, oldest dragons still
remember the airships, the hunters, the harpoons. The peace between humans and
dragonae is still fragile.
Shimui hears her
people calling, and flaps off to join them. Tomas watches wistfully as the young
dragon vanishes into the clouds on the shoulder of Mount Garam. Hurrying on, he
and Tyree soon find themselves at Rosa’s backdoor … it creaks open … but who should be standing there but Tomas’s father.
In fact, Margaretta
told him everything, and Tomas’s dad knew they’d intended to make for Rosa’s
house. This would be Tomas’s plan, if only he knew where the lady lived! Tomas’s father
is Sebastian Gaffney. He's just as proud of the family heritage as Tomas is, just as
enchanted by dragons, and very understanding.
Which is not to say
Tomas won’t have to do the study and the chores to make up for this
foolishness. He knows now, the city is no place for children to be running
around alone, especially at “fire time,” when all manner of rogues come in to
“do business” along the river. Sebastian spent the whole night searching for
Tomas, but the first hint of him came from a felix called Ninoushka, who’d heard
the story of a lost boy from another felix, and another, back along all the
alleyways to Grandmother Zalana’s court.
Aunt Rosa just cackles
in amusement, remembering when she did this herself. A lot of children do! And
after breakfast, Tomas and his father set off for the village, in the family’s
pony cart. Tyree rides up on the pony’s shoulder to the edge of the city and then
turns for home, while Tomas shouts an invitation to come to the village and visit.
Tired, relieved, not unhappy and resigned to the extra lessons and chores, Tomas leans over the back of the art, watching the city disappear behind, and breathing in the strange, sharp smell on the morning air that to him will always mean dragons.
Dreams of Spring
The leaves are falling.
The woodland blazes, gold and flame,
More beauteous at the death
Than in those days when
Blossom turned to greet spring's sun
Without a thought of summer,
Much less of fall.
But every breeze steals gold and fire,
And only bones endure beneath...
So brief is autumn: winter snows
Begin to fall before the final leaves,
And those enduring bones --
Strong yet beak, bare, stark --
Merely drowse, and wait, and dream
Of days when blossom crowned their brows
And strewed their feet. They dream, I think,
Of youth and yesteryear.
(Originally published in Sylvia Magazine)
Good news! A Glamour of Toads has been optioned by Water Dragon Publishing, for their mid-year anthology, Dragon Gems. Look for it around summer, or end-of-summer -- which is winter or early spring down under, of course. "Toads" is a mediaeval fantasy, juuuust a little bit on the dark side, about magic and mortal fear, and a lot more. (The artwork here wasn't actually done for the story, but I'm about to post an announcement to my writing blog, and I thought, "Hey, that almost fits it to a tee, I just need to do a bit of repainting...!") I'll let you know when the anthology is published ...
Also, Collateral Damage is in the March issue of ANALOG Science Fiction. If it isn't on the magazine racks now, it soon will be. That's another story set on Mars, in the same world-building project as The Way Back, which was in the February ANALOG last year, and Happy Hour, which was in Mythic #17. This is wonderful for me ... it gives me some real inspiration to write more in this universe. I've done a couple of others -- Welcome to Mars, (which is archived here), Home Soil (which is waiting for a home), Dust Gets in Your Eyes (likewise), and so forth. There's enough to get me thinking about an anthology...
Lastly, the fantasy, The Gates of Petheris, has been available from Four Star Stories for some time -- this came out in my hiatus, when I vanished off social media for about four months and didn't post anywhere, about anything. I'll be archiving it very soon, with a new suite of art.
First Published in Shorelines of Infinity #11; Reprinted in Lockdown SciFi #3. Tom Mallory watched fear twist the rookies’ faces for an i...
