Dog and Dragon ARC reviews :-)

here
and here

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Cuttlefish is up on Amazon


Please tell me what you think of Paul Young’s artwork

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The Leprechaun and the Bootlace

Well, yet another part of the slow learning curve done – next is Bolg (as soon as I have the art) and then novels. This is complicated by moving house, trying to grow and forage enough to feed ourselves, and writing various contracted books. The reality is that an author is a small one person business, with a real life dragging along. This is not our strength, which is why publishers and agents (and any other ‘services’ – house-cleaners, cooks, childcare) are so attractive, because they’d let you write and not spend your life coping with things you’re inexperienced at/not interested in. The key of course is that that these ‘services’ are not free or necessarily as good as you can make them with lots of effort. And many of them can crimp your writing just as badly – traditional publishing for example by shaping your direction and paying pretty badly (so you worry about money and cannot afford help with the other aspects). So… well, that is why I am trying for some independent aspects.

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E-book shorts

I’m busy putting up some of mine on Smashwords and Kindle

Are my two very own efforts so far

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the evil of raw carrot smoothies

Slub:

So I was a bit wary about more demons in the cupboards. You could tell it wasn’t a healthy place. It wasn’t natural for a place to be that clean. Even the cockroaches had died. It must be cursed, or haunted with not even the chitter and skitter of a rat to break the silence.

All right, so it was a good deed. Un-Goblinly. It hadn’t been that good, surely, that I deserved THIS.

Hunger eventually gave me a quite unnatural courage. I opened a cupboard a crack. Ducked back so I could hit whatever lived in it over the head from behind with the ladle I’d taken from the rack. It had never been used. It was all shiny.

Nothing came out of the cupboard. I got clever, and used the shiny ladle as a mirror. I was horrified at what I saw there.

There was nothing there. No monsters. No little raveners. No house-gnomes with cross-bows. No slugs and no bugs. Not even ants. Just… pots.

Empty pots.

And then next thing I knew there was mummy dearest. Thank heavens without the monster cat. “Ah there you are, Forrest Darling. I wondered if you were feeling well, not on your computer. I’m about to have a soy yogurt carrot smoothie. Would you like one? Funny, the ‘fridge light is not working.”

Now we watch humans. They’re really funny on the pot or when they’re bludgeoning auntie. And the annual show where they sing old lamp-shine and hug each other and fall down in their own sick is great. But a lot of human doesn’t translate. I knew what a carrot was. You put them in stew when you’re short of meat. If you cook them long enough they don’t taste too much like carrot. Soys and yogurt and smoothies… what? Some kind of exotic animal made ito meat paste

Mummy dearest has gone called the doctor, and change her pants.
It serves her right. I thought the blender thing was cool, all it needed was some frogs.

And then she gave me RAW carrot.

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Don’t judge a book by its cover…

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Cuttlefish turned in

The edited draft of Cuttlefish has been turned in.

The book is dead, long live the book.

Once more into breach, dear friends, once more.

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Retail therapy

The latest update. Full tail… tale at Changlinomicon.

Forrest:

They were all standing there laughing at me, when suddenly it all went quiet. Dead quiet. Even the crows in the trees went silent. The vile children all dropped to their knees, looking terrified. Good! I looked around expecting see someone from social services and the police. “They’ve kidnapped and tortured me!” I yelled as I turned. “Arrest them!”

Only it wasn’t the police. It was a horse. A horse with a tall slim rider on its back, and fake Spock ears, dressed as if he was going to a medieval theme party. With furs. We don’t approve of people wearing furs. And he had a huge sword. “It’s illegal to have a blade more than three inches long in public,” I told him.

He got quite upset at this… or maybe he just has anger management problems and needs to see a psychologist. His eyes went all narrow. “Why do you not show proper respect, changeling? Kneel.”

“I have bad knees and I’ve been excused from sport,” I told him, but it didn’t stop him from pulling that sword out. So I knelt down quickly. It might not have been quick enough.

“I think you need some help with learning respect,” he said cruelly, as he put the sword back into the show-off scabbard, and waved a finger at me.

I was suddenly aware of a terrible pain in my… well the seat of my trousers. And then a tearing noise… from the seat of my trousers. I tried to see what cruel trick had been played on me this time. All I could see was a large fluffy pink and chartreuse furry thing behind me. I scrambled up and tried to run away.

It followed me.

Because…
feeling behind me…
It was part of me.

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Chill, Goblin

I’ll post the updates here, and tag them onto the whole story.
Slub: Seeing as ‘Mummy’ (I thought the kind with frightful moaning and trailing bandages killing people was more like what was required for the good raising of humans, but they don’t really understand what is needed for child welfare) had left cuddling the demon-cat, I thought I’d better investigate my new home. The kitchen was a place that naturally fascinated me as I’m a growing goblin. You could often steal something to eat there, if you were quick.

So I slipped in there. Well, that’s what looking at the orb had me believing it was. But it barely even had a proper smell of garbage, let alone the smell of good nine day old stew. It was all granite surfaces and not even a crumb. Very unhealthy. No wonder these humans are so pallid and weak. I picked on the biggest cupboard as a likely place for a nice slab of fatty bacon to stashed away, seeing as it wasn’t hung up properly.

A cold-spell knocked me backwards, with the icy breath of winter spilling out onto the floor in cold clouds. I slammed it shut on the the demon and muttered a curse against it and all its workings even before it occurred to me I was doing good again. Too late! I heard it gasp and rattle and die in its lair behind the white cupboard.

Categories: serial story | Tags: | 5 Comments

Changelinomicon. Viler and vilerest

More sweet little goblin children for you.

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