Murray > Recent Status Updates

“Good sweet Christ! If I were you, Hong Kong, I'd hate me too. You hate the plan! Well, I tell you, the plan's good, by God. Good, you hear? China needs the world and the world needs China. And you're the key to unlock the gates of China, and you know it and I know it, and that's what I'm going to do, and you're going to help!"

Stop it, he said to himself. You're acting like a madman.

1841 🇭🇰

Perhaps there was truth in the tales whispered by sailormen, tales that Tai-Pan Dirk Struan worshiped the Devil and that in return the Devil had given him power on earth. How else could a man his age look so young and be so strong, with white teeth and all his hair and the reflexes of a youth, when most men would be infirm and used up and near death? The Chinese were terrified of the Old Green-eyed Rat Devil.

Amos Amrani had spent a great deal of time thinking about Tonia Shulman, since the first time he set eyes on her as she climbed off the bus from Jerusalem. Lying in bed on Sabbath afternoons, he thought about the way she moved as she cleared tables in the dining hall. He had once caught a glimpse of her rushing home from work in the orchards, maintaining her grace of movement even in the pouring rain.

“Oh, God in heaven, listen. It’s about the Warsaw Ghetto.” The young man turned up the volume of the radio. “The Nazi bastards have brought in flame-throwers. Since yesterday they have been systemically burning every building, block by block, to the ground. People have reported seeing women with small children in their arms jumping out of windows and off roofs, their clothes on fire.”

Bugaj Ghetto, Poland, 1940
A letter
“The men with the pushcart come to collect bodies. There are always bodies. They shoot people every day. I don't know why. In this place there is no why. They kill us as you swat a fly. I believe it was a mercy that your parents left this world when they did. It becomes worse here every day. You will live and tell the truth of this place. God bless you.”

I posted the first chapters of The Lonely Tree on a writers' workshop run by the London Arts Council. There it received a Book of the Year award and Holland Park Press of London asked to see the complete manuscript. Not long afterwards I received an email from them. "We want to publish your book." Hey, you never know when a fantasy is going to come true.
~ Yael Politis ~

‘I have a wife,’ I told him, 'a child.’

Ragnar the Dane grimaced. 'King Alfred of Wessex has trapped you, Uhtred.'

'No, I said, 'the spinners did that!’

Uror, Verandi and Skuld, the three women who spin our threads at the foot of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, had decided my fate. Destiny is all.

‘I shall go to my woman,’ I said.

'But not yet,’ Ragnar said with a half-smile.

⚔️ 🛡️

[the delicate problem of a drill bit to the head] 🖤

Various demolition methods were proposed by engineers and reviewed by the doctors. Eventually, they concluded there was only one possible way to free Sharyad from the drill bit - but it came with a high risk.

A fifty-fifty chance: either Sharyad would survive with a piece of wall permanently attached to his ear, or his head would be severed from his body.

So far so fascinating, with a distinctive Eugène Ionesco flair permeating the entire work. That is to say, Theater of the Absurd, which I’ve acted in when I was part of a theatrical troupe. In fact, the novella or short story reads like a brilliant play 🙌🏼 🙌🏼

After purchasing 7 drill sets and 137 bits (some I needed anyway) I picked up a copy of this book on Hulu. Excited to read it. Mahtab is definitely deep, articulate and has a great sense of humor. She’s also a bit of a rocket 🚀 and here we go!

We took our plunder back to the ships and that night, as I drank my ale, I thought of myself as a Dane. Not English, not any more ⚔️

I was a Dane and I had been given a perfect childhood, perfect, at least, to the ideas of a boy. I was raised among men, I was free, I ran wild, I was encumbered by no laws, was troubled by no priests, was encouraged to violence, and I was rarely alone ⚔️

'

The West Saxons decided we would do nothing till winter's end and their patrols stopped coming close to our place in Lundene.
‘We're not waiting for spring,' Ragnar told me, 'but for deep winter'
'Why?'
'Because no army marches in winter,’ he said wolfishly, 'so the West Saxons will all be at home, sitting around their fires and praying to their feeble god. By spring, Uhtred, all England will be ours.'

Day 2, Story 10

A young woman, kidnapped by pirates 🏴‍☠️, chooses to remain with ‘Jack Sparrow’, rather than return to her husband.

“I have no intention of ever returning to you. For if you were squeezed till you were dry, they couldn't get a spoonful of sauce out of you.”

For hubs used every excuse not to have sex or whacking (their word) with her while the pirate sought every opportunity.

We came to a village and we burned it to the ground. We burned farmsteads, a church, and marched on. We saw a larger village and we hid in a wood, lit no fires, and attacked at dawn.

We came shrieking from the half-light. We were a nightmare in the dawn; men in leather with iron helmets, men with round painted shields, men with axes, swords and spears. The folk in that place were not ready for us. They died ⚔️

He chanted a great epic in praise of Odin. On and on it went, the words as hard and rhythmic as a drum beat - how the great god had made the world from the corpse of the giant Ymir, how he had hurled the sun and moon into the sky, how his spear, Gungnir, was the mightiest weapon in creation, forged by dwarves in the world's deeps, and on the poem went and the men gathered around seemed to sway to the poem’s pulse.

I thought I’d do a reread of an epic 13 volume series set in the Viking/Anglo Saxon era so I can give readers a taste of the storyline and characters. I’ll just do the first book for now.

“My name is Uhtred.”

And so we begin ⚔️ 🛡️

Thomas took off his helmet to find a bowstring, looped one end over a horn tip, then flexed the shaft to fix the other loop in its nock.

He fumbled and had to make three attempts to string the long black weapon. Sweet Jesus, he thought, but they were really coming!

Thomas paused and stared at the clouded sky that was thick with flickering black shafts that were as dense as starlings and deadlier than hawks.

Day 2, Story 9

Two men enter into a wager whether the one, Ambruogiuolo, can seduce the other’s faithful wife. Ambru contrives to get into her bedroom when the husband, Bernabò, is absent, and views her naked body while she sleeps. He later relates to the husband what she looks like sans clothing. Wild with jealousy, Bernabò plans to have his wife murdered. But she survives and the story does not end there.

'Nondum amabam, et amare amabam. I did not love, but yearned to love.

Eleanor gave him a sceptical look. 'A very elaborate way of saying you're lonely'

'Yes, Thomas agreed.

'So what will you do?' she asked.

Father Hobbe, his cassock skirts hitched up to his waist, was fighting with a quarter-staff, ramming the pole into French faces.

'In the name of the Father,’ he shouted, and a Frenchmen reeled back with a purpled eye,

'and of the Son, Father Hobbe snarled as he broke a man's nose,

‘and of the Holy Ghost!'

Catharism had died a hundred years before, scourged and burned out of the land. It was now a figment of the troubadours. But when Thomas looked at Sir Guillaume the man was not mocking the Cathars. He was staring at a crucifix hanging on the wall and mouthing a silent prayer. God help me, Thomas thought, but I am being asked to do what all the great knights of Arthur's round table failed to do: find the Grail.

'Jesus, Thomas said in disgust, 'that man spared you, and you'd not return the favour? You're not a bloody knight, you're just a bully. Go and boil your arse.'

The sword rose and so did Thomas's bow.

Sir Simon looked at the glittering arrow point, its edges feathered white through sharpening and he had just enough wit not to strike with his sword. He sheathed it instead, slamming the blade into the scabbard.

'Protect me!' Jeanette blazed. ‘You are all thieves! How can you protect me? There is a place in hell for thieves like you and it is just like England. You are thieves, every one of you! Go!'

'We're not going,’ Thomas said flatly. ‘And you and us will have to make the best of it. We'll not encroach. Just show me where your private rooms are and I'll make sure no man trespasses.’

'You? Make sure? Ha!'

'I'm bastard born, Thomas insisted.
'Your father was of good birth'
'You know what family?'
Sir Giles shrugged. ‘If I pressed him he would just say that God was his father and his mother was the Church.'
'My mother was a priest's housekeeper and the daughter of a bowyer. I shall go to France as an archer.’
'There's more honour as a man-at-arms.’
But Thomas did not want honour.
He wanted revenge 🏹

💀 🌒 💀 🌒 💀 🌒

Debbie Y would tell you to buckle up if you plan on reading this book.

I’d say double buckle

I never belong to book clubs, I’m simply all over the cosmos when it comes to reading. However a couple of years ago I was invited to join Hot Girls Read Horror 👹👺🔥🔥💀💀 and how could I say no to that? So here we go ………….

⚔️ 🛡️ 🔥

'Coward!' Langier called, trying to provoke Roland.
Roland still said nothing. Instead he held out his left arm. He dropped his shield. He would fight without it.

The gesture seemed to infuriate Langier who, without another word, dug in his spurs so that his destrier leaped forward. Roland responded. The two horsemen closed. They were not far enough apart for either to reach a gallop, but the horses attacked.