Pay Day

Somehow we have made it through the festive gauntlet. An onslaught of food, drink and society mandated family contact. And now we reach the 31st of December. This is the end. Two Thousand and Thirteen lurches drunkenly and broken to its final day. Its passing left a trail of chaos and carnage that would do its forebears proud. In celebration we will leave the safety of our domiciles to roam the high streets and city centres, glasses and tumblers of intoxicant clutched reverentially in our hands. Clustered in groups of friends and acquaintances or folk we have never seen before, together we wait loud in our silence and silent in our loudness. We wait for time to tick its way onward to the edge of our Gregorian precipice, to the beginning of the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Fourteen. Well, you might. I’m going to sit in my front room and drink whisky. If I’m feeling extra fancy I might even turn the lights on.

But whatever the evening may bring and whatever the state of your wallet in the aftermath, just remember: Pay Day is coming. Pay Day is always coming.

As some of you may, or may not, recall the inspiration for this month’s wordascope is a painting by Russian artist Ilya Repin showing the Coassacks writing a very sweary letter to one of the most powerful men of the age, Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire.

The similarities between this month’s wordascopes extend about as far that they have some vaguely cossacky folk in them. But they both do have some kick-ass dialogue. I even enjoyed writing the dialogue for mine, and normally I loathe writing dialogue . Though in retrospect putting eight different, name characters in a single short story might have been a bit too many. But there are an awful lot of folk in the painting.

The Rogue Verbumancer – The Men of Red Platoon

James Clayton – Drawing Up the Final Dagger

Remember to check back tomorrow for the start of January’s Pictonaut Challenge!