Chapter III Extract, The Ironwood Staff

On my Subscribestar page is an extract from Chapter 3 of The Ironwood Staff. This is a subscriber-only post. It includes something I always thought would be pretty cool, a domesticated lourie, or turaco. These particular ones are native to forests and woodlands in summer-rainfall regions, and are a lot less colourful than the ones found in the temperate rainforests on the south coast of South Africa. They're called 'Go-Away Birds' because of their distinctive nasal call, which sounds a bit like 'Go 'way!' in English.

Spear-sword!

YouTuber Skallagrim has a demonstration of an extremely cool weapon, the Spit, from Zombie Tools. It's essentially a short-handled spear, apparently inspired by the King Chaka's Nklwa, but it also just happens to be very close to the weapon of Thengon Breakspear, from my second book, The Retribution of Thengon.

In the story, Thengon is issued a standard spear, but gets its handle hacked in its first outing. Because he's too hard-up to afford a new one, he makes do with the damaged one, and decides he likes it. He then becomes known as the Breakspear.

Said book is still in production, stuck near the end. I am still working on it, I promise.

New Free short story!

Over at my Subscribestar page, I have a gothic little piece I wrote in the early 00s (as well!), which came to me on a stormy autumn afternoon, when I saw a raven on a lamp-post while driving to Sainsbury's.

A note on something in the story: Velth Powder is based mostly on the ashes of blessed palm leaves left over from Palm Sunday. The name is something I just sucked out of my thumb. I just thought something like that would be useful against undead and/or monsters.

Parler social network

I'm now on Parler, a social network (allowing >140 char) where no-one's going to have you disemployed for a joke you told 20 years ago! It's growing fast, but needs more Brits. 😊

Chapter I Extract from The Ironwood Staff

At my Subscribestar page, I've put up an extract from Chapter I of The Ironwood Staff. This is for subscribers only!

The natural progression of censorship is tyranny

Zerohedge once again showing why they were banned by Google: