Storm Dancer by Rayne Hall
Merida is a magician who can change the weather with her dance. She has travelled to a far-away, drought-parched country to bring succour with rain. But the local ruler doesn’t honour the agreement, and conditions aren’t right for working magic. He has changed the date, so astrological alignments are wrong. the orchestra members are frightened of foreign magic and refuse to play for her, and on top of that, her ritual is presented as a public entertainment in the arena.
Nobody takes her seriously, because they don’t believe she can bring rain. Angrily, she resolves to show them by calling more rain than they have ever seen. Since the music and astronomical conditions are lacking, she overcompensates in other ways, and enters into a much higher level of trance than is safe. The rain comes… but the effort leaves her exhausted mentally, physically and magically. Now she is weak and vulnerable… and she is in a foreign country, in the power of a sadist, with no one to turn to for help. If only she had assessed the risks before she supercharged her magic!
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Calico Jack in your Garden by Karl Wiggins
It Just Happened so Quickly
So here was a funny thing. I’m on the platform at King’s Cross waiting for the semi-fast Watford when an Uxbridge train pulls into the station. The doors open and this little Indian bloke in a cheap suit goes to get off, except as the door opens it catches the strap of his bag, although initially he didn’t notice. He must have been leaning with his back to the side bit; you know the bit I mean.
So the door opens, catches the strap of his bag and he goes to step across the ‘Mind the Gap,’ but with one foot up in the air he’s suddenly whipped back into the train again, landing with a THUMP on his arse with the bag hanging at shoulder height from the door above him. He fucking noticed then alright.
It was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time because it happened so quickly. One minute I’m bored watching the Uxbridge train’s doors open and the next this little Indian bloke in a suit is sitting on the floor of the train with his legs spread out in front of him.
I just stood there smirking as he picked himself up and tried to free his bag. He heaves and jerks and schlepps and strains but the door’s not giving up the bag without a fight. And this little bloke hasn’t got much fight in him at all. Of course it’s even funnier because he’s looking bewildered and perplexed and embarrassed and, let’s be honest, getting himself into a bit of a tiz-waz.
Oh, and by the way, what do you think all the other good citizens of London are doing while this is going on? Well, they’re looking at him with interest, of course. No one offers to help. They’re all engrossed to see what’s going to happen next.
I was cracking up!
Eventually the doors start to close, the little Indian carries on tugging, and as the doors close they release his bag, with the effect that he’s catapulted across the carriage into another bloke who was standing there watching. He keeps his feet this time, but he’s missed his chance and the doors have now closed, trapping him inside. He’s missed his stop. As the train pulls away I can see him sheepishly looking at his fellow passengers, realising they’re all chuckling away on the inside but avoiding his look.
He’s made a complete twat out of himself and he knows it, but he can’t work out how it all happened so quickly when just 60 seconds earlier he was comfortably humming sitar music to himself and looking forward to the vindaloo his wife’s no doubt knocking up for him at home, yet two seconds later he’s sat on his arse on the floor of a crowded train.
You never know when these comedy moments are going to strike next, do you?
Runny Nose on the Tube
Disaster struck last night on the tube. I’ve picked up a cold from somewhere, and at the same time Sue’s got the flu, so between the pair of us we’re not much use. We couldn’t take Monday off because you can’t really can you? Everyone thinks you’ve been out on the piss all weekend.
Anyway, mine’s a runny nose kind of cold. You know the type. Keeps waking you up at night by spontaneously streaming without warning. And it’s the same during the day. You can be sitting at work, reviewing a scaffolder’s Risk Assessment, when you have a fraction of second warning that your nose is going to leak. It’s only liquid, nothing too disastrous, but given the chance you’d prefer to catch it in a tissue rather than have it drip onto your keyboard.
You push your chair back, lean your head forward to protect your shirt and reach for the tissues, but it’s all too late.
So I’m standing in a crowded tube carriage facing these four people who are sitting side-on to me and keeping an eye on the three behind me in the reflection in case any of them gives up their seat, when without any warning whatsoever my nose spontaneously starts to drip. Instinctively I know I can’t reach my tissues in time so I kind of take half a step backwards, lean my head forward and liquid from my nose plops onto this bloke’s knee.
He’s a kind of Asian type Greek type Arab kind of bloke, if you know the sort I mean, bald head, neatly trimmed grey beard, and I’ve just deposited a couple of drips of clear fluid from my nose onto his trousers. Now I know it’s harmless, it’s just my body’s way of getting rid of toxins, but I must say he doesn’t look too impressed at all.
As for me, I don’t often get flustered but I’m now embarrassed to the point of humiliation. I give him one of those ‘What’s a guy to do?’ kind of looks and shrug my shoulders apologetically.
He made an effort to clean it off with his Evening Standard, but he did look a bit pissed off.
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Flawed Gods, the first book in the Flawed Gods series by Angela B. Mortimer
Carnos
His silliest move was asking Doella to marry him. His reasoning was sound, after all they would get caught and then they would be reconditioned and forget all they meant to each other. He was sure that if they were married in the full Varan sense, then they would never forget the feelings they had for each other. Doella. under duress, agreed, but of course she was far too young to settle down.
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Hyclos, the second book in the Flawed Gods series by Angela B. Mortimer
Doella
Doella needs information to save lives, and she’s had a lot of fun shape-shifting as her powers grow, so of course she reasons the best way to find what she needs is to go in disguise and find a bar and she will get the data she needs by either listening. or if she has to, read minds – the latter banned by Varan Law. It works but she is repulsed too, suddenly her life and what she must do takes on a more serious turn.
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ANTics (for ages 7+) by Dakota Douglas
The most foolish thing my characters have ever done: One of my characters, called HesitANT, is a timid, young ant. When fleeing for his life, he dives into what he thinks is a cave for safety. It turns out to be a soda can and he is antennae deep in trouble. A human (I call them Two Legs) picks up the can and puts it in a trash can. HesitANT finds himself trapped inside a strange world of darkness and strange smells. The upside is – the bin is full of rotting food, so he won’t go hungry.
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Addune: Part I: The Vampire’s Game by Wendy Potocki
Undoubtedly, the most foolish thing a character has ever done in one of my novels is fall in love with a vampire. Of course, it would be ever-the-optimist Miranda Perry that engaged in such lunacy. Ignoring all the good counsel from friends, family, and trusted advisors, she chose to see the good—where there was none! There was actually only a deep hole where a soul should be. It was the misstep that stated her rolling down the mountain and into the fiery pit waiting below.
While I thoroughly understand her reasoning, I, too, would never have believed that someone was literally a vampire. Figuratively, sure! I’ve met plenty of those energy drainers. But actually? In reality? A living and breathing one? Nope! Some have called her ditzy for ignoring the warnings, but I found it perfectly reasonable, but no more! Intimately acquainted with the sad tale, if someone even whispers the word “vampire,” I am officially outta there!
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A Witch Without Magic by Larisa Walk
Her witchcraft name is Belladonna and she prefers most people to know her by that name, because when she still went by her birth name, Elise Teaguewell, she made a mistake of falling in love with a wrong man. He was a radical environmentalist who thought that the way to save trees and animals was by blowing up slaughterhouses, putting spikes into trees scheduled for cutting down and sending letter bombs to scientists that used animals for testing new drugs. To prove her loyalty to him, Belladonna participated in blowing up a slaughterhouse, for which she was caught and jailed for 5 years. At least those years weren’t a total waste of time, since while in prison she learned to wield magic, found Goddess and learned how to make beautiful toilet paper roses.
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