Bolg may not be everyone’s noir PI hero. He’s not politically correct and not suitably nasty. He’s 4’6″ and vertically challenging. Oh yeah, he’s blue – from tattooing, which back when he was born, was the cultural norm. He’s Pict, and just hasn’t got around to dying, but that’s the only paranormal feature of the man. However his height and color (and centuries of experience) get him involved in paranormal cases. That… and his sidekick, Fintan mac Bochra. Who is either a physicist or a magician and probably both.

If you’re interested in buying it, click on the picture and I get a few extra cents from Amazon associates. I’m saving up to buy a pony, or at least to get enough in my associates account to get paid (I live in furrin parts, where Amazon will only send checks – and only for over 100 dollars. At present rates I should get a nice little 100 dollar nest egg from the associates programme in 2030 )

Also up from Naked Reader are two more of my older shorts

and

here
and here

Are my two very own efforts so far

So I was a bit wary about more demons in the cupboards. You could tell it wasn’t a healthy place. It wasn’t natural for a place to be that clean. Even the cockroaches had died. It must be cursed, or haunted with not even the chitter and skitter of a rat to break the silence.

All right, so it was a good deed. Un-Goblinly. It hadn’t been that good, surely, that I deserved THIS.

Hunger eventually gave me a quite unnatural courage. I opened a cupboard a crack. Ducked back so I could hit whatever lived in it over the head from behind with the ladle I’d taken from the rack. It had never been used. It was all shiny.

Nothing came out of the cupboard. I got clever, and used the shiny ladle as a mirror. I was horrified at what I saw there.

There was nothing there. No monsters. No little raveners. No house-gnomes with cross-bows. No slugs and no bugs. Not even ants. Just… pots.

Empty pots.

And then next thing I knew there was mummy dearest. Thank heavens without the monster cat. “Ah there you are, Forrest Darling. I wondered if you were feeling well, not on your computer. I’m about to have a soy yogurt carrot smoothie. Would you like one? Funny, the ‘fridge light is not working.”

Now we watch humans. They’re really funny on the pot or when they’re bludgeoning auntie. And the annual show where they sing old lamp-shine and hug each other and fall down in their own sick is great. But a lot of human doesn’t translate. I knew what a carrot was. You put them in stew when you’re short of meat. If you cook them long enough they don’t taste too much like carrot. Soys and yogurt and smoothies… what? Some kind of exotic animal made ito meat paste

Mummy dearest has gone called the doctor, and change her pants.
It serves her right. I thought the blender thing was cool, all it needed was some frogs.

And then she gave me RAW carrot.

The book is dead, long live the book.

Once more into breach, dear friends, once more.

Forrest:

They were all standing there laughing at me, when suddenly it all went quiet. Dead quiet. Even the crows in the trees went silent. The vile children all dropped to their knees, looking terrified. Good! I looked around expecting see someone from social services and the police. “They’ve kidnapped and tortured me!” I yelled as I turned. “Arrest them!”

Only it wasn’t the police. It was a horse. A horse with a tall slim rider on its back, and fake Spock ears, dressed as if he was going to a medieval theme party. With furs. We don’t approve of people wearing furs. And he had a huge sword. “It’s illegal to have a blade more than three inches long in public,” I told him.

He got quite upset at this… or maybe he just has anger management problems and needs to see a psychologist. His eyes went all narrow. “Why do you not show proper respect, changeling? Kneel.”

“I have bad knees and I’ve been excused from sport,” I told him, but it didn’t stop him from pulling that sword out. So I knelt down quickly. It might not have been quick enough.

“I think you need some help with learning respect,” he said cruelly, as he put the sword back into the show-off scabbard, and waved a finger at me.

I was suddenly aware of a terrible pain in my… well the seat of my trousers. And then a tearing noise… from the seat of my trousers. I tried to see what cruel trick had been played on me this time. All I could see was a large fluffy pink and chartreuse furry thing behind me. I scrambled up and tried to run away.

It followed me.

Because…
feeling behind me…
It was part of me.