The Rushford Times - A weekly newsletter from Jodi Taylor

Sent on Wednesdays to paid subscribers and Fridays to free subscribers

This week we have:

• Jodi Taylor - I nearly died the other night.

• Jodi Taylor answers - Which historical era has been your favourite to write about, and why?

• Jodi Taylor’s Book recommendation: Wolf Worm by T Kingfisher💙📚

• The winner from the Time Police Writing Competition - Regulation 847.6 Has Been Breached entries is …

• MAY - GUESS THE BOOK COMPETITION

• Short Story of the Month: My Name Is Markham

  There’s plenty to read this week and you can see everything on the blog too. CLICK HERE for the blog.

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I nearly died the other night.

Yes – honestly.

I’ve always been a little bit critical of people who have serious accidents in the home – I don’t know why – it’s not as if I haven’t had more than my fair share of domestic disasters, but the other night I very nearly died.

It began, as these things so frequently do, with a moth. Our building is infested with clothes moths. I do my bit with sticky moth paper, but if that fails – as it sometimes does – I hunt the buggers down manually. Believe me – I am relentless. A woman on a mission.

Anyway, I’d stayed up late to watch The Martian. As always, Matt Damon had worked his magic, and I was feeling relatively benign and relaxed. (I try not to go to bed after the ten o’clock news, the watching of which, believe me, leaves me anything but benign or relaxed.) Matt had been safely returned to his home planet, the world rejoiced, Sean Bean went off to play golf with his offspring, and I went to bed.

I have an armchair – on which, ironically, Inflatable Matt rests while we have our evening chat. He’s very sound on any number of subjects, agreeing with my every word, especially on that night’s topic du jour - the benefits of a coloured background in pastel painting. Who’d have thought? Anyway, it was as I was laying my neatly-folded clothes across the armchair – who am I kidding, I just tossed them any old how – but as I did so I glanced casually upwards.

AND THERE WAS A MOTH.

Bold as brass, happily ensconced in the angle between wall and ceiling.

But not for long.

Admittedly, I could have left it until morning – except that with my luck, the little bugger would swarm overnight – or whatever it is that moths do to reproduce – and lay a million eggs in my favourite wool coat – and then I’d never be rid of them. In fact, I’d probably have to emigrate to Canada to escape them. Canada, incidentally, still emails me regularly about emigration. How do I make them stop?

Back to the soon-to-be ex-moth. And the fact that I was very nearly an ex-author – poor Matt would have been an orphan. I climbed onto the armchair, swayed a little, discovered I was three inches too short – a recurring theme in my life – and balanced, somewhat precariously, on the arm of the chair. Think Angelina Jolie doing the curtains in that scene from Mr and Mrs Smith.

In a movement of unsurpassed agility, I lunged gracefully forward and upwards at the moth, the chair tilted, I overbalanced, and put out a hand to save myself. Which would have been a brilliant move if I hadn’t grabbed for the curtain instead of the wall. The curtain, you won’t be surprised to hear, was no support whatsoever. My arm went straight through the central gap between the two curtains, and I found myself falling forward.

And the window was open. Wide open.

The curtain and I were literally falling through the open window.

I live on the second floor.

I had choices. According to my trajectory, I would either impact on the sloping roof one floor down, roll heavily off the other end and impale myself on the rather sharp railing separating the flats from the street, or I’d overshoot the railings to splat heavily onto the probably very unforgiving pavement.

To be honest, neither had any great appeal.

By now, fifty percent of me was reaching the point of no return. Instinct took over. Which was just as well because the rest of me had nothing valuable to contribute to the situation. I grabbed at the curtain.

Which came off the curtain rail. These things are very fragile, aren’t they? However, it did slow me down fractionally. I grabbed at something with my other hand. Turned out to be the central upright in the window frame and for one really nasty moment I thought I was going to pull the whole frame out of its … its … window hole, or whatever the correct term is, and it was coming with me and if I didn’t survive the fall then I’d be featuring in the Afterlife’s Accident Book as Cause of Death – Cut to ribbons by glass in own bedroom window.

However, the curtain slowed my descent, and the window frame altered the angle of my trajectory. I fell heavily sideways, landing on the linen basket, which did nothing to break my fall but did gift me an interesting wicker pattern on one thigh. I hit the floor with a bit of a thud and, somewhat entangled in the curtain because I’d forgotten to let go, it came down with me.

To be honest, the whole thing happened so quickly, I was on the floor before I realised I was falling out of the window. If that makes sense.

Oh – and Inflatable Matt followed me down, so I can honestly claim, however briefly, to have been underneath Matt Damon. Probably not something he’d want widely known.

For anyone still interested – while I lived to fight another day, the moth did not.

Take care.

Jodi x

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Jodi Taylor answers - Which historical era has been your favourite to write about, and why?

Recorded at Stevenage Library

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Wolf Worm by T Kingfisher💙📚

This is another of T Kingfisher’s belting gothic horror stories.

The year is 1899 and this is the story of Sonia Wilson, a young scientific illustrator, desperate for a job – any job – after her father’s death leaves her penniless.

Arriving in North Carolina, she takes up a position with the slightly sinister Dr Halder, who hires her to illustrate his enormous collection of, quite frankly, even more sinister insects.

This is a T Kingfisher book, so obviously, it’s not long before strange things begin to happen. A sinister squirrel watches her through a window. An apparently insane possum that knows how to open doors. What horror is affecting the animals around this remote part of the state?

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The winner from the Time Police Writing Competition - Regulation 847.6 Has Been Breached entries is…

Congratulations to Elaine Perkins who was voted, by readers, to be the winner. She has won a £50 gift voucher from Bookshop.org. CLICK HERE to read her entry.

Many thanks to everyone who entered. The next competition is a biggie - a play with the winning entry being performed at Jodiworld 2027. Details are to be announced in June.

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MAY - GUESS THE AUDIO BOOK COMPETITION

Guess the book and characters speaking for your chance to win a signed copy of Out of Time

Put your knowledge of Jodi’s books to the test with our audio clip competition. Listen carefully to a short extract and see if you can identify the book and the characters speaking for a chance to win a signed copy of Out of Time.

Audiobooks are hugely popular among Jodi Taylor fans, bringing her stories to life through distinctive voices, character-driven performances, and immersive narration. For many readers, audiobooks offer the perfect way to enjoy a favourite series while commuting, walking, or relaxing. They make stories more accessible, flexible, and engaging than ever.

Tune in, trust your ears, and see if you can name the book and the characters behind the voices.

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My Name is Markham - available in Kindle and Audiobook formats - also included in The Long and Short of It anthology

Christmas is coming to St Mary’s; as always, chaos is not far behind. With preparations underway for the first-ever Children’s Christmas Party, Mr Markham—security officer, reluctant participant, and long-suffering observer of historians—is pulled into the madness. Between questionable reindeer routines and unexpected “poo-dropping” incidents, the festivities are shaping up to be anything but ordinary.

But when Markham, Peterson, and Maxwell are dispatched on a mission to Anglo-Saxon England in 878 AD, things go from chaotic to catastrophic. Their objective? To observe King Alfred the Great burning the cakes and uncover the truth behind one of history’s most enduring legends. However, this is St Mary’s, where no mission is ever simple, and disaster lurks around every corner.

Told entirely from Markham’s perspective, this short story provides a refreshingly wry and sarcastic insight into life at St Mary’s, where security officers remain highly suspicious of historians, time travel is never predictable, and History refuses to behave.

Jodi Taylor says…

‘This is the one told by Markham himself. I wanted to give a tiny but tantalising glimpse of his background.’

Buy now from Bookshop.org - UK USA

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