Tag: Coldsore Hall

Enter the Cyclops (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

Suddenly the sun was blotted out, and the great horned head, its one eye shining in the fog like a polished spatula before it scoops up any pancakes, slowly rises over the humped back of Pnath Hill… It is the Cyclops.

That quote comes straight out of Chapter 531 (or whatever) of Violet Crepuscular’s immoral classic, Oy, Rodney. If you’re looking for interminable romance with bells attached, pilgrim, you’ve found it!

But back to the Cyclops!

From his perch on the root of Coldsore Hall, the American adventurer Willis Twombley, who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, ostentatiously takes aim at the cyclops’ single eye.

“If there’s anything I hate,” he cackles, “it’s a fake cyclops. Those dang-nab Elamites were always trying to run that scam. Well, here comes payback!”

Lord Jeremy Coldsore interrupts, with an unbecoming belch. “I say! Won’t that gentleman get rather fierce, if you take pot shots at him?”

“You just leave the cyclops to me, Germy!”

He takes careful aim, checks which way the wind is blowing… and shoots.

The bullet pings off the cyclops’ horn and wounds a woolly mammoth who has already been winged once and isn’t happy about it.

With an ear-piercing trumpet, the mammoth bears down on Lord Jeremy’s front door.

“And that’s all you get for now!!” adds Ms. Crepuscular. “There is a point where shilly-shallying must give way to pure suspense, or the reverse will happen and then you have a stupid book.”

Is the woolly mammoth really on the brink of being ...

(An Elamite hoax?)

Chaos at Coldsore Hall! (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

In Chapter DXVIII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular, the Queen of Suspense, told us how Lord Jeremy Coldsore, locked out of his ancestral hall by roistering servants who think it’s still the 18th century, fell off his perch and was gored and trampled by a rhinoceros. All 213 bones in his body were broken. “That will teach him to try and evolve wings,” writes Ms. Crepuscular.

A week later he’s up and around. The American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, has used his six-gun to re-instill decorum in those wild and crazy servants. “Jist leave it to me, Germy,” quoth Willis. He needs to shoot only two of the servants before the others get the message.

This is all told in Chapter DXX. Chapter DXIX is too puerile and improbable to be reproduced here. Even Violet thinks so. “I have written a chapter too puerile and improbable to be reproduced here,” she writes. Send her a check for $3.98 and she’ll send you a summary of the chapter.

Meanwhile the rhinoceros, having laid several clutches of eggs, is now preparing to spin a cocoon in which to spend the winter. It will be a rather large cocoon.

 

Ms. Crepuscular’s Revenge–and a Lesson in Evolution (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Introducing Chapter DXVIII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular writes, “Well, we visited Johnno the Merry Minstrel in the hospital on Wednesday and I need hardly describe the occasion. Let us move on with the story!”

Lord Jeremy is still up a tree, menaced by a rhinoceros below. In yonder Coldsore Hall, they’re having a wild party and no one wants to go out and help the poor sod in the sauerbratten tree. But Jeremy has hit upon a novel solution to his predicament.

“I shall evolve!” he confides in the reader, bypassing the author altogether. “I am not going to do whatever Violet Crepuscular says I should do anymore! I shall evolve a pair of wings and merrily fly off to another tree–and so long, Mr. Rhino!” To get the evolutionary process started, he begins to flap his arms.

Oops!

These exertions cause Jeremy to fall out of the tree. Instantly the rhino jumps on him, then thrusts him through with its horn, tosses him twenty feet into the air (a nasty fall, that!), sits on him, runs over him 15 or 20 times, and then wanders off to lay some more eggs.

Jeremy rises with a groan. It’s no use complaining to me, I didn’t write this schleck. I think Ms. Crepuscular’s intent was to teach her fictional characters a lesson.

Desperately wounded, Lord Jeremy crawls to the front door of Coldsore Hall and tries to whisper through the mail slot…

Trust the Queen of Suspense to leave you hanging there.

 

‘Oy, Rodney’ Wins Literary Prize!

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a gripping page-turner headed for the top of the NY Times bestseller list | Romance novels, Funny romance, Book parody

Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, has won the Pokeweed Township Prize for Literature. The township committee has thanked Ms. Crepuscular for putting up the prize money.

But to return to the exciting story itself, in Chapter DXVI, Lord Jeremy Coldsore finally plucks up the courage to re-enter his ancestral home, Coldsore Hall, from which he has been absent several days, detained in a dungeon by the Lithping Knight Thir Lanthelot, who is actually Constable Chumley’s mother in disguise. Lord Jeremy has forgotten where he hid the spare key.

Williams the third under-footman answers the door. He has forgotten what his master, Lord Jeremy, looks like. He thinks Lord Jeremy is selling salve. “There is no one home,” he says-shutting off the sounds of frantic revelry within by shutting the door in Lord Jeremy’s face.

At this point Ms. Crepuscular interrupts the story.

“I feel it incumbent upon me to remind readers that today is November 6,” she writes. “I need hardly explain its significance!” So she doesn’t.

Twiddles, the Mud Puppy (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Making fun of romance novels. Genius! | Book humor, Romance novels ...

Introducing Chapter CCCLXIX of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular deplores the actions of a Scurveyshire mob bursting into Coldsore Hall in pursuit of Sir Robin Banks, the aristocratic thief. “I deplore the actions of the mob,” she confides in the reader, “but I have no choice but to tell the story as it unfolds.”

Lord Jeremy Coldsore and his boon companion, Willis Twombley, the American adventurer who think he’s Sargon of Akkad, can only stand helplessly by as the mob rampages throughout luxurious, ancient, legendary Coldsore Hall. By and by they grow weary of standing helplessly by, and begin to visit some of the rooms through which the mob has passed. In doing this, they discover Wet Willy, an aged footman who has been secretly living in the hall for decades.

“Didn’t my father dismiss you some thirty years ago?” demands Jeremy.

“He did,” says Willy, “but I could hardly leave poor Twiddles to fend for himself, could I?”

Jeremy recoils in horror from the sight of Twiddles, a large Canadian mud puppy. WordPress recoils in horror from showing a picture of it. Suffice it to say it’s a very large salamander with external gills, red and bushy, and a ferocious temper which moves it to snap viciously at the nearest hand.

“Ain’t he cute?” says Willis.

“You’ve been here–with this… creature–all this time?” marvels Lord Jeremy. “What have you been eating?”

“Mostly Wheaties,” confesses the aged footman. “I sneak into the kitchen in the dead of night and steal them.”

Just then they are interrupted by a lusty roar from the mob: they have captured the aristocratic thief.

Here the chapter breaks, owing to computer problems.

The misunderstood mudpuppy - MSU Extension

(Got it in after all–I think.)

The Effects of Eating Food Left Over from the Third Crusade (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Longmire does Romance Novels | Book humor, Romance novels, Funny ...

As we plod wearily into Chapter CCCLXVIII of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, we discover that Black Rodney, the medieval sorcerer who vexes all of Scurveyshire, has again been up to mischief.

“Dear reader,” Ms. Crepuscular begins, “you have doubtless been wondering how the aristocratic thief, Sir Robin Banks, has managed to subsist on provisions left over from the Third Crusade. Permit me to elucidate.” We love it when she does that.

Most food left over from the Third Crusade, she explains, is no longer edible some 600 years later. But sorcery can make it so–up to a point. “And we all know Black Rodney’s favorite target for his spells and hoodoos is Coldsore Hall.”

Now that he has escaped from the antique cedar chest which only has three sides, and consumed all the antique victuals  that have been stored in that room since before the Magna Carta was written, Sir Robin has begun to have thoughts that should not occur to any aristocratic thief at any time.

“I shall emerge from this, my hiding place,” Sir Robin cogitates, “and proclaim a new Crusade! Iceland must be liberated from the Saracens!” History has never been his strong suit. He is much more well-versed in gluttony and drunkenness.

He slams open the door to his hiding place and races up and down confusing corridors until at least he finds an open-air balcony overlooking Coldsore Hall’s scenic driveway and beautifully manicured front lawn. To his delight, he finds an audience already waiting for him. He does not know they have assembled to demand a lower price of ale at The Lying Tart.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen–lend me your ears!” he bellows. This succeeds in gaining the crowd’s undivided attention. In fact, there happens to be a genuine Roman in the throng, one Massimo Jidrool, who thinks the speech is meant especially for him.

“I have come to proclaim the liberation of Iceland from the Saracens! And I–” here he has just enough sanity left to remember that he is wanted for a whole cornucopia of poorly executed crimes: he needs an alias, big-time–“I, Lord Henry de Swivenham, shall lead you!”

Immediately someone down below shouts, “It’s Sir Robin Banks, the aristocratic thief! Get him!”

With a roar like fifty locomotives giving birth to sixty marching bands, the crowd streams into Coldsore Hall, brandishing pitchforks and torches–

“And here, dear reader, I must break off the chapter,” Ms. Crepuscular writes. “I tried a bowl of Mrs. Skinnard’s Baseball Innards, and it has disagreed with me.”

The Whole Thing Freaks Out (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Image result for images of english country houses

This is not Coldsore Hall, but it will have to do.

You will have noticed that there is no picture here. Ms. Crepuscular’s computer doesn’t work either. It must be related to mine.

Anyhow, introducing Chapter CCCLXVII–no, I have no idea what happened to Chapter CCCLXVI–of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular seems to be as confused as I am.

“What a mess those literary critics made of my front yard!” she writes. “I was all day picking up the stones and brickbats. But if they think they can stop me from producing the rest of my epic romance–well, fap! to them. Literature marches on!”

The chapter opens with Sir Robin Banks, the aristocratic thief, back on his feet in the middle of his hideout in an unused wing of Coldsore Hall. How did he get out of the cedar chest, after he’d locked himself in? “I am not going to write Chapter CCCLXVI all over again,” Ms. Crepuscular declares. “Suffice it to say there was a side missing from the chest. The fifth Earl Coldsore, Lord Pratt, acquired this chest from a shady antiques dealer in Cyprus when he went on the Third Crusade and brought it back to Scurveyshire with him when Richard the Lionheart kicked him out of the army for persistent cowardice. Lord Pratt carried the massive chest all the way across medieval Europe–only to discover, upon his return after an incredibly hazardous Channel crossing, that he had somehow lost one of the chest’s four sides. As a consequence, his health deteriorated. His last act was to stow the chest away in that room that no one ever used.”

Reader Thelma Potstock of Double Trouble, New Jersey, wants to know what Sir Robin has been eating, all this time he’s been hiding out in Coldsore Hall. This is a detail which had never crossed Ms. Crepuscular’s mind.

“The room is stocked with provisions left over from the Third Crusade,” she explains.

That will have to do for now. There is some doubt as to whether this installment of the saga can be successfully posted.

A Visit to Coldsore Hall (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Photographs of English Castles and Manor Houses

Introducing Chapter CCCLXII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular pauses to inform us that the repairs on Coldsore Hall–new roof, in particular–have been completed.

“As you can see by the picture, dear reader,” she writes, “Coldsore Hall is a very impressive-looking building! Several hundred people could live in it quite comfortably. Indeed, I am afraid there are a number of people living in it that Lord Jeremy doesn’t know are there.”

One of those persons, unbeknownst to Lord Jeremy, is Sir Robin Banks, the aristocratic thief, younger (and disinherited) son of the Earl of Fapley. This is awkward: excited by promises of a fabulous reward, every man, woman, and child in Scurveyshire is looking for Sir Robin, who is suspected of having stolen Lady Margo Cargo’s priceless family jewels and world-famous collection of glass eyes.

But we have been told that only Crusty, Lady Margo’s crusty old butler, knows what really happened to the jewels.

“I will now reveal what Crusty knows,” declares Ms. Crepuscular, and then embarks on a recipe for homemade Twinkies filled with Pepsodent. On we go to Chapter CCCLXIII.

“I do not appreciate the threats made against me,” she writes, “to force me to divulge Crusty’s secret. A reader in Namibia has even threatened to mail me a boomslang if I don’t come across. So here it is! Here’s what happened to the jewels.”

It turns out that Crusty himself has taken all the jewels, plus the box of glass eyes, wrapped them all up in a duffel bag… and concealed them in an unused bedroom inside Coldsore Hall! He does not know that Sir Robin Banks the aristocratic jewel thief is hiding in the unused room across the hall. No one else is using any of the rooms in the hall’s East Wing, because legend has it that a vampire has parked his coffin there.

“Further revelations will be made in the next chapter,” Violet concludes. “If you really just can’t wait, I suggest a cold shower.”

Where’s the Lost City? (‘Oy, Rodney’)

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Big Brother and also Big Sister and Big Father | Book humor ...

By now most people in Scurveyshire realize that the only place they haven’t looked for the Lost City of Driphdrash is under Coldsore Hall–a serious problem which very nearly caused author Violet Crepuscular to throw in the towel on her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, somewhere back around Chapter CCCLV. Now we’re on Chapter CCCLVIII, which she introduces thus:

“Welcome, dear reader, to Chapter CCCLVIII of my epic romance novel, Oy, Rodney.” She’s off to a good start, don’t you think? “With the entire shire afire with Driphdrash fever, it looks like Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s ancestral home is about to be torn up by the roots. How can he possibly save it?”

A mob of peasants has camped out on the grounds of the hall, clamoring for it to be pulled down so they can get at the lost city.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone but the author herself–this is entirely her fault–Britain’s most wanted aristocratic criminal, Sir Robin Banks, has gone into hiding somewhere in Scurveyshire. He is markedly similar to another aristocratic criminal, Raffles the Gentleman Thief, only ignorant, functionally illiterate, slovenly, and really quite ugly by anybody’s standards. Why Scotland Yard can’t catch him is one for Mensa to chew over some dark night when they have nothing else to do.

There is no bank in Scurveyshire, so what can he be plotting to steal? “I know you will be upset to hear this,” writes Ms. Crepuscular, laboring under the delusion that most people like to read Oy, Rodney aloud to their families (“Because I have written it chock-full of otherwise unnoticed moral lessons!”), “but Sir Robin’s target is none other than Lady Margo Cargo–that is, her priceless collection of glass eyes and other family jewels. It gives me the vapors just to think of it.”

It ought to be rather easy to commit a crime in Scurveyshire just now, with practically the entire population demonstrating in front of Coldsore Hall and no one but Constable Chumley to maintain law and order. Wrapping up the chapter, Ms. Crepuscular lets the constable have the last word:

“Rill thee mear no brocken bree! I kinna theer yon yerkin tree!”

Coldsore Hall’s New Roof

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Invoking a little-known law enacted in the year 636 by the Saxon warlord Bobby the Nit, Lord Jeremy Coldsore has drafted Professor Saltinus Facehead’s Egyptian diggers to put a new roof on Coldsore Hall. So begins Chapter CCCXLVI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney.

Constable Chumley explains the law to Prof. Facehead.

“In yon fillid wi’ King Bobby,” he says, “we fraith the bowyers aw’ mickle groith.” The professor nods sagely, although the constable’s quaint rural dialect eludes his best efforts to understand what has been said. He replies in archaic Portuguese. It is the constable’s turn to nod sagely.

Although the diggers speak no English, and their Arabic is not that hot, either, they throw themselves enthusiastically into their work and in a mere two days, Coldsore Hall has a new roof. The entire population of Scurveyshire assembles to admire it.

See the source image

“It’s a miracle!” gushes Lady Margo Cargo. “I wish they’d do my roof like that!”

But when a moderate breeze springs up, the new roof seems to take wing and fly off toward the sunset. It will take some doing to get it back.

Here Ms. Crepuscular breaks in to report on the status of her Pulitzer Prize nomination, filed by her excitable neighbor, Mr. Pitfall.

“I am afraid Mr. Pitfall made an error and submitted the nomination to something called the Patzer Prize Committee,” she writes. “This group hands out prizes for poorly-played chess games. I cannot explain why they have decided to award a special prize to my epic romance, Oy, Rodney.”

The prize awarded is a rusty wheelbarrow. “I’ll have to find space for it on my mantle, somehow,” Ms. Crepuscular says. “It’s going to change the whole look of my living room. Given Mr. Pitfall’s current state of excitement, I dare do nothing else.”

Here the chapter breaks off for want, she admits, of inspiration.