A fantastic and mouth-watering, 136,000 word, time-travel comedy that takes the Grandfather paradox and plays footsie with it before wringing its neck and throwing its carcass on a heap!
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Alien Queens-Being the narration of Miss Molly Flaguline, is a farcical, profoundly irreverent, madcap comedy primarily intended for the older teenager and those in their twenties. Commencing in 2019, it is a gentle, tongue-in-cheek, fantasy comedy that never takes itself seriously. It concerns the activities of an ancient alien and his female sidekick as they attempt to procure the DNA of two of England’s most famous Queens; Anne Boleyn and her daughter, Elizabeth the First. Without this fresh supply of cells, which they intend to genetically modify for their own use, they risk infection from the modern world.
Assimilated into the unnecessarily elaborate and complicated events are two effeminate and bitchy gay men who are unwittingly drawn into the alien's scheme. Using a genetically altered life-form whose natural habitat is time travel, the aliens and the gay men chase each other back and forth along thirty-five different periods from 6000BC to an unknown time in the future until one of the queens is restored to her time and the alien receives an appropriate and very fitting punishment. However...this unique yarn then pushes further into the realms of absurdity by introducing luminaries such as John Fowles, Oscar Wilde, Douglas Adams, Agatha Christie (which is why she disappeared for eleven days in 1926 of course), Brooklyn Beckham who is Prime Minister in 2030, Shakespeare and myself, (not a luminary) a humble beggar with aspirations who once worked the streets of London in 1805. Joining this merry eclectic mix is The Spice Girls and HG Wells.
"Three hundred years ago, you betrayed me and I am not a forgiving man!"
Lord Glayva the Seventh
Please see below for Molly's uncensored opinion on this novel!
Here are three passages.
"I have been charged with telling this cuckoo story! A tale never morose or dull. I trust it will be to your liking. Each event and gentlemanly character are as true as those who hastened me to tell it, will testify.
Little remains of my former existence of poverty, now lost in the swirl of what has departed. I keep the dress I once wore, a silly notion, in a bottom drawer in case fate deems me to return. Although torn and ragged, it is pressed and protected with herbs and a soft talisman.
An unknown quantity of full moons has come and gone. And that is good. God be praised, that is good. I am antiquated and unimpeded no more. A used pauper. My destination is complete. Where I was once a prejudiced sulk, scowling and grumbling, a shadow and of no cheer, now, I hold the merriment of a shining clock-face. Where once I was the dweller on the threshold of time, cleaning boots and roasting the oldest and blackest of crows and rooks for my nourishment, now I wear scarlet off Cornwall and pocket the sovereigns I earn. Beggars I see no more.
How fair that I had been chosen? What angelic dust was sprinkled upon me that day in lamentable plenty? Rosy and guilt. Aye! Good names for my two new chancy friends in my new London Town! And none ragged or perverse but one whiskered like a catfish and t'other Godless and a stranger to the barber! Unholy imps they are but better friends I will not find.
My name is Miss Molly Flaguline and I am here, with you, by what means I do not know how. I still sometimes think I am moonstruck, that I am cuckoo but it is the whole cracked story that is cuckoo.
It did not take long, looking back, over two hundred years to April 1st 1800 and my old stamping ground, Seven Dials and St Giles, a corrupt and deprived area situated between the Old City of London and the new populous suburbs, to see that it had been a cold and unholy place to live. Summer or winter.
For the cold of which I mention had nothing in common with temperature. And unholy? God had forgotten about this place. The ambitious and eager developers wishing to make their mark spectacularly ignored our living conditions, our houses, and our slums"
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Stewart reached forward and turned off the television.
"Well?
"My blood held true?"
Frankie, his face deeply suspicious, held out a sheet of official-looking paper, a report, to Stewart who took it with a mixture of surprise and revulsion.
"Raggy was very interested in where we got the blood from. He said it was vulnerable but unlike any sample he had ever measured. He said the person who owned this must have an extraordinary immune system. And there's no trace of illegal or legal drugs including alcohol."
"'Tis by God's will I am here."
"As simple as that?" asked Stewart.
"Trusting men ask few questions. I am alive sir when once I thought to be dead within an hour. I am grateful however it was done."
"We didn't save you Anne. We found you in a toilet."
"Yet your physician tells you I am she. I should like to meet this man. Send for him."
"Raggy is a Rastafarian and not someone you can order about."
Frankie stood again, more than mystified by his encounter with science. He had expected Raggy to examine the tiny sample Anne had freely offered and, once analysed, expected the computerized report to state that it was jam-packed full of drugs, alcohol, sperm, dust mites, dog poo or whatever...
What he did not expect was Raggy excitedly pumping him for information and insisting that he must know whom it came from because it was so wonderfully unexpected to come across a sample of western blood that was seemingly so untainted with the usual garbage that he was forever finding in his line of work. However, given even that, Frankie was guarded in what he was prepared to believe unlike Stewart who spoke as if Anne was not even in the room.
"What are we going to do with her? How did she get here?"
Frankie glanced at his lover hopelessly. "Oh, I think the answer is simple Stewart. We come to our bloody senses! This is not Anne Boleyn. She has not time travelled five hundred years just to sit here and watch MTV!"
"Which is goodly entertainment! Every soul exists for pleasure only. Your bed companion is convinced. Why do you doubt?"
"Bed companion? Me and Stewart are...well it doesn't matter what we are. What matters is what you are."
"This costume?" asked Anne lightly and coyly. "It is yours?"
Frankie huffed himself up in indignation. "No it isn't! It was his mothers!"
"Anne found it in the spare room Frankie. The shoes fitted perfectly too."
"It is of the finest weave and almost luminous. So light. It gives me much pleasure, yet it is the most guilt inducing garment I have seen outside of any bedchamber."
Anne stood and gaily twirled but seriousness flooded across her face.
"If I dare leave the safety of this abode, I can propose a proof sirs of my identity."
Stewart and Frankie glanced at each other.
"What sort of proof?" They nearly said it in unison.
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Highcross castle was a strange place at this time. (At this time?) Although Glayva employed over two hundred servants, very few were visible for any length of time. Their remit was to do the job they were employed to do and in the meantime and preferentially, even while they were doing their job, to be as invisible as possible. This partly explained the numerous narrow passageways and stairwells worm-holed throughout the structure so the underlings could go about their business without being seen by those who employed them.
For its time, it was a modern innovation and the architect of Highcross castle could have taken the idea, no doubt supplied by Glayva, far further than he did. The designers on early twentieth century steamers like the Titanic did. Its servants were practically ethereal and vaporous.
So in effect, even though the place was teaming with staff, there was hardly anybody about and as they headed out after Anne, no one questioned them. Entering the beech wood, the air became cold and dewy the world suddenly drenched in a green-like quietness. They jogged on down the single path for perhaps a minute until Stewart, who was leading them, stopped and held up his hand.
"Listen."
Perhaps a hundred feet away several bushes were waving back and forth and Velvet thought it was either two small animals going at it or Anne was fighting for her life. They were there within thirty seconds but when they reached a small nature clearing, what they saw perfectly shocked them. Even Velvet.
For Anne was astride a boy of about ten, her knees digging into his arms, her hands squeezing the life out of his throat. Blood was smeared across his nose from an obvious blow and his tongue protruded in a silent scream. Anne was demonic, her full weight on him. This was not much but to a child it was enough to keep him pinned to the dirt.
In one swoop, Stewart swept her away to an agonizing scream and then a gush of foul insults. The boy flopped back choking as his neck was released. He was a proper little Tudor boy as if they needed any confirmation on when they were but his very fine clothes, in resplendent bright colours were now smudged with forest muck and ripped in several places.
Agatha brought her soft nature to the fore and immediately went to sooth the child but her offer of help was rejected just as fast by, first a wave of his hand as if that were enough, and then, by a swift blow to her arm accompanied by a grunt deep enough to sound unlikely to have come from the voice box of one so young.
Whilst Anne remained in the air, her legs kicking, arms flailing and her mouth uttering so many expletives that even Frankie was impressed in a negative sort of way, Velvet stood over the boy.
"Oh my God! Anne! Just what the hell are you doing?"
The struggling ceased and she reverted back into the vernacular.
"Thou knowest who this is?"
"That doesn't give you the right to kill him."
"Aye it does because I am here and according to your magical science, I can prevent the happenings of the future."
"Just because you can, doesn't mean its right to."
"Excuse me? Who is this then?"
"Oh, thou knowest not the foul bastard?
"If I did Anne," Frankie cocked his head to one side, "I wouldn't be asking."
"Lower me Stewart."
"Okay. I'm keeping hold of you though."
"My father will see you dead you foul wench," the boy managed to sit up a little and croaked, "he will have you flailed alive for assaulting my royal personage."
"Velvet? Who the hell is this kid?"
"This Frankie is, Henry."
"And why does Anne want to...oh! Oh my God! Henry? Not...?"
"The same!"
"If I do him now then he will not hurt others."
"Anne, Anne? Think. He may not but what may replace him? A less vicious murderer?"
"None can be less than his monstrous acts."
"I am never far from help. If I cry out, the King's men will find me and that will be the last for you all."
"Hey! Nobody is going to cry out okay. Shut your mouth and sit there."
"You dare speak to me as so!"
"Henry?" Velvet rounded on him, "be glad we came along when we did. This woman does not like you and quite frankly, either do I and never have done. I'm thinking of an incident in the kitchen one Sunday morning after Mass but I'll have to let that go because you don't know...anyway, the fact that you're a spoilt kid whose just a bully is enough for me. What are you doing here? Where is your master? Why are you on your own?"
"You ask questions madam as if I am deemed to answer them but when my father's men catch you it is you who will be answering the questions."
"Feisty little guy isn't he? I can kinda see where he's going."
"Anne? You can't hurt this boy. I can understand how you feel but..."
"Thou canst not understand at all! How knowest you to be so betrayed by a husband?"
"Anne?" Stewart turned her around. "English we know honey? You're talking too fast."
"He is an evil brat and deserves to die! How many thousands will perish under him illegally?"
"Be that as it may Anne, we cannot do anything to this child...how will your Elizabeth be born?"
This question had a remarkable effect on Anne and she palpably relaxed. So much so that Stewart let her sink to her knees where she relapsed into a string of Latin. For a brief moment, her voice and Henry's hard breathing were the only sounds.
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Molly's uncensored opinion!
This was a terrible book to write! My hardest ever in terms of sheer complexity. Taking a full six years to complete, the logic of the story-line tested my pea-size brain-power to its limits. To keep track of all the characters and where they were in both space and time, I had a length of plain wallpaper, some fifteen feet long, tacked around three walls of my living room and divided into all the time zones that the characters would occupy. And from it, hung ribbons, each colour representing one person.
The ribbons hung down and across, snaking their way from wall to wall turning my room into a complicated bad Monday wash day. Just to look at it gave me a headache! And the mistakes I found! Endless, endless errors where a character was where he or she should not have been. Rewrites? I know about rewrites!
Eventually, I came to my senses and tore the migraine-inducing kaleidoscope down, replacing it with a huge sheet of paper some six feet high by four feet wide upon which was divided again, the time zones. This time I replaced the ribbons with coloured pencils which at least proved to be more hand-able. However, upon going through the story for the umpteenth time, the result looked like a chimp had been let loose on it. It was at that point that I began to feel sorry for the poor souls who were going to pay to read it! Was I subconsciously getting my own back?
Parts of the story, even I didn't know what was going on! But that's the nature of time for you. Beware the grandfather paradox! I remember, in the fifth year of its development, a third attempt at simplification was made with the help of a high-tech solution; my Apple Mac. Now let me tell you something important. There does not exist a computer that can handle that sort of data without it crashing and burning every minute, no matter how much RAM memory it has! Microsoft Excel? The Leopard operating system? Huh! No match for the complexity of my Alien Queens!
But, damn it! I've been thinking of a sequel now. Perhaps I'm subconsciously getting my own back on myself?