It's Friday - What Can Possibly Go Wrong?
A weekly newsletter from Jodi Taylor
This week we have:
Photos from Jodi
Highlighting The Nothing Girl which is just 99p or 99cents this month on Kindle
A David Sands Writing Competition entry: Tonal Gray by Harry James
This Week in History: Peterloo: The Massacre That Shook Britain
Jodi Taylor Book Recommendation: A Case of Life and Limb by Sally Smith💙📚
A joke from the #SillySunday thread in Jodi’s Fans and Readers Facebook Group
NEW! The Book of the Month is Saving Time by Jodi Taylor
There’s plenty to read this week and you can see everything new on the blog too. CLICK HERE for the blog.
The Nothing Girl - Book One in The Frogmorton Farm series is just 99p/cents this month.
What if the only one who truly saw you… wasn’t human at all?
After losing her parents at a young age, Jenny finds herself silenced—both by a speech impediment and by the overbearing relatives who take her in. Pushed to the margins by her self-important aunt, uncle, and their pretentious children, she grows up isolated, unseen, and unheard.
Until Thomas, a mysterious horse that only Jenny can see, arrives just as she reaches her breaking point. Under his mischievous guidance, Jenny begins to think she might one day become someone. And when the charmingly chaotic Russell Checkland erupts into her life - together with his tumbledown farmhouse - and proposes a marriage that will save them both, Jenny is ready to take a chance.
Told with heart, sensitivity, and a touch of quiet magic, this is a story of second chances, quiet courage, and the unseen forces that guide us home.
Tonal Gray by Harry James
Dejam Threl,
The documents I am sending you via courier were found in the personal effects of a dead Lenarian dealer in Terran artifacts. The Lenarian had come to an untimely end and through a friend of mine in Station Management, I was able to purchase his room’s content.
As soon as I found these documents in amongst his personal papers, and being aware of your interest in the Terran listed in them, I decided to send them to you in hope that they may be used to find a less violent solution to our current, mutual financial disagreement.
You’re Humble Servant
Axilon Drac, Purveyor of Fine Antiques
MSG 109738490Q
TO: Dejam Threl
SUBJECT: Axilon Drac
Axilon Drac and ship reported lost soon after departure from Parker’s Drift.
END MSG
A Dark and Stormy Night in Space
A Dark Matter storm was growing throughout the Terran Ophary Sector. For those who maintain the old Goltaran designations, this would be Shostan’s Willful Spacehold of Truth.
Ships on the edge of the disturbance jumped away, while those closer to the event switched to sub-light engines and made for the nearest space or planetary harbor to wait out the storm.
Down in the cargo hold, I and the rest of the crew of the Foundation’s Fuel found out our destination when the Captain announced our new heading and port. Parker’s Drift. That was where we would wait out the storm and then continue on our way to Laxis and eventually unload our cargo of farming equipment.
Parker’s Drift, at the mention of that name Old Shaik pulled his cap off and hung his face downward. Old Shaik had crewed for years with Captain Thill across the Collusion, through the Namaran Protrusion and claimed to have gone so far as to actually see the Terran Maelstrom that surrounds Terra herself where the Last Emperor sleeps until called to war once more when comes the end of the Universe.
Most took his stories with a grain of salt, but all deferred to his word when shipboard disputes came about. A young tech, Wistas, asked what was so wrong about the Station. Old Shaik settled onto the tread of a farming traction engine and began.
To start with, Parker’s Drift was located near one of the old D’If jump gates. The D’If were the original race that expanded through this part of the galaxy before the arrival of the Terrans. The D’If established a series of matter transmitter gates that could send a ship of any size from one part of the galaxy to another within seconds. The only problem with the D’If gates was that they were installed approximately 500,000 years ago and based on the D’If view of the galaxy.
So by the time the Gates were discovered by other races they tended to send you to what were now considered rather obscure places. The Ophary Gate was a perfect example, when working it sends you to a dead world orbiting an artificial star. If nothing, the D’If and their technology were always interesting, in a scary sort of way.
This Week in History: Peterloo: The Massacre That Shook Britain
On 16 August 1819, a crowd of over 60,000 people gathered peacefully on St Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand political reform. What began as a hopeful call for representation ended in horror when armed cavalry charged the unarmed crowd. At least 15 people were killed and hundreds were injured in what would come to be known as the Peterloo Massacre.
In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was struggling with economic hardship, high unemployment, and growing public unrest. Industrialisation had reshaped the north of England, especially Manchester, which had rapidly grown into a hub of manufacturing but lacked proper political representation.
At the time, only about 11% of men could vote, and entire industrial towns like Manchester had no Members of Parliament. The system was deeply unequal, favouring landowning elites and so-called “rotten boroughs” with barely any inhabitants.
Inspired by revolutionary ideas from France and America, and by the hunger for justice at home, campaigners began organising large public meetings to demand parliamentary reform.
Jodi Taylor Book Recommendation: A Case of Life and Limb by Sally Smith💙📚
I don’t know if anyone remembers me mentioning A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith featuring Sir Gabriel Ward, a middle-aged barrister living in the Inner Temple, London, at the turn of the last century. It’s a lovely story and very cleverly plotted.
The second in the series has just been released – A Case of Life and Limb – easily as good as the first and offering the same fascinating glimpses into legal life. Random body parts start appearing all over the place, to the dismay and consternation of the respectable and ultra-conservative inhabitants. Highly recommended. The author manages to make her characters just modern enough to be appealing without compromising the attitudes of the times which not all authors manage to do.
Have you enjoyed this book too?
A joke from the #SillySunday thread in Jodi’s Fans and Readers Facebook Group
This week’s joke is from Joe Tetsab:
A guy got an infection in his mouth. It caused him unbelievable wind. While in hospital, he trained his sphincter to enunciate names of vehicles.
Abcess makes the fart go 'Honda'
The Book of the Month is Saving Time
