Jambalaya Prologue

In 1999, I was made redundant from a job that I had enjoyed and a company that I loved after 20 years employment, following the takeover of that company.  As this was the first time in my life that I had ever been unemployed, I decided to take the opportunity to "write that book I've always meant to write" and, fortunately, my long-suffering wife agreed.  Apart from a few months littering the desks of various publishers and agents, this has remained in a drawer ever since.  This is the Prologue to it, let me know if you would like to see any more...

It is the time of a Civil War. 

This, I should point out, is not a story about a Civil War. 

So, if you’re hoping for the whiff of cordite, gory battle scenes and heaving bosoms, you’re likely to be disappointed. 

Come to that, you’re likely to be disappointed if you weren’t expecting all of those things. 

Of course, this being a book rather than a video or a computer game, it’s all down to your imagination anyway.  So, if you want heaving bosoms, you go ahead and imagine them.  While you’re doing that, we’ll get back to the story.

This Civil War is between the North and the South.

Civil Wars are always between the North and the South. 

That’s just the way it is. 

Scientists have noted that even in puddles no longer than a footprint, transparent jelly-like things, invisible to the human eye, will gather in the North and wave their fronds angrily at other transparent jelly-like things in the South of the puddle.  Years of painstaking analysis of their chemical signals have revealed messages that are remarkably like “If that shower of soft southern nancies think they own the place they’ve got another think coming” and “Oh, just ignore them Justin, they’re nothing but a bunch of black pudding waving proles”.  Which just goes to prove that:-

1.  Black pudding is a far more universally recognised delicacy than was first thought, and

2.  Surprisingly, Justin is quite a common name amongst jelly-like things.
Well, all right, perhaps not so surprisingly[1].
And then a dog comes along, drinks the puddle, urinates casually against a wall, and the whole process starts

again.  Which tends to annoy the scientists (and plays havoc with the dog).

This is not a puddle (of anything), it’s a country. 

You may think you know which country it is, but you would be wrong. 

It’s a country that could be any time, any place, anywhere. 

It happens to be here (wherever that is), now (whenever that is) and just ……….there.

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Now read on Jambalya 1st Excerpt

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[1] So, that’s wiped all of the Justin’s out of the potential audience.  Still, they were probably busy imagining heaving bosoms and never noticed.  Now, who else can I upset?