Tag: Oy Rodney

Violet Crepuscular’s Mail Bag REPRINT

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From December 5, 2021

Taking a break from the narrative of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular finds time to read and share this year’s fan letter.

“This is from a Mrs. Citronella Jingles in Brushback, New Jersey. I looked it up, and there really is no such places!” impermeates Ms. Crepuscular. (I am not sure about that word.) “And she writes, ‘Why don’t the men persons in your romance go around with no shirts on like the men persons in all the other romances?’

“Well, Citronella,” Violet replies, “if you ever saw my neighbor, Mr. Pitfall, with no shirt on, it’d put you off the whole business for months. Yew! A horrible sight! Yeah, okay, it’d be nice if the men we see had those completely hairless torsos bulging with muscles–but then no one would bother to read romance novels if real life was like that!”

Privately, I don’t think she knows what to do. Having brought in both a hydra and a jackalope, and handed out injuries and conniptions galore, not to mention property damage–all she needs now is Godzilla.

“All I need now is Godzilla!” she confides in the reader. “The don’t call me the Queen of Suspense for nothing! I defy you to name another romance writer who dares to bring monsters into the plot! Like, who can be bothered with men with no shirts when a jackalope is gobbling up your garden?”

I believe she has escaped having to write Chapter CDLVI.

Ye Olde Fox Hunt (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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From May 22, 2022

A letter from reader Ambrose Twidgeon in Babbo Township, Pellucidar, has served as a timely reminder to the Queen of Suspense, Violet Crepuscular.

“Dear Ms. Crepuscular,” the letter reads, “what ever happened to the traditional olde English fox hunt in Scurveyshire? How can you write about English country life without the fox hunt? I am so upset with you, I had to break my model airplanes!”

Ms. Crepuscular’s reply is found in her introduction to Chapter CDLXXXVIII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney.

“As a matter of fact,” she trombolizes, “I was just about to write about the fox hunt when Mr. Twidgeon’s letter arrived. Really, I do not need any guidance in writing romance novels! Let me offer this friendly reminder to Mr. Twidgeon: Get lost!”

The hereditary master of the Scurveyshire Hunt is Lady Margo Cargo, who inherited it from her father along with a persistent halitosis. She can’t ride a horse, so she leads the hunt in a golf cart driven by a condemned prisoner. No fox has been caught since Lady Margo took over.

(What about the Scurveyshire Fair, Violet? And the vicar’s backyard wading pool?)

“If I get any more friendly reminders from ignoramuses who think they know how I should write my novels, I am very much afraid that I shall lose my temper,” Ms. Crepuscular writes. So vanishes all hope of finding out about the fair and the wading pool. She’s in one of her moods.

The chapter ends without the fox hunt actually starting.

Is ‘The Lying Tart’ Haunted? REPRINT

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From March 1, 2020

Forget Chapter CCCXLVII. I already have.

In Chapter CCCXLVIII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crespuscular takes us to Scurveyshire’s favorite tavern, The Lying Tart, which is said to have acquired a resident ghost. It has been seen by many patrons while availing themselves of the tavern’s commodious outdoor facilities (“I cannot bring myself to write the word ‘outhouse,'” Ms. Crepuscular confesses).

The apparition takes the form of a headless lady in a flowing white gown , sometimes accompanied by a huge black dog named Chips. She has been seen walking between the tavern and the stables, parading back and forth along the edge of the roof, or skipping directly toward the observer, carrying her head like a basketball. The game of basketball has not yet been invented. She always vanishes just before getting close enough to grab you.

Constable Chumley investigates. His report is grim. “Thy flivven craiths yon cocksie fairn,” he reports grimly. Lord Jeremy Coldsore, justice of the peace, takes notes.

“What’s he sayin’, ol’ hoss?” wonders the American adventurer, Willis Twombley.

“He says she doesn’t have a coccyx,” Jeremy translates. “That’s bad!” mutters Twombley.

Trade at The Lying Tart has begun to fall off, threatening the shire’s economy. It is widely believed that The Lady in White is looking for company. No one wants to be that company.

“This is the work of Black Rodney,” opines Johnno the Merry Minstrel, who is somewhat merrier now that his gizzard has grown back. His opinion is confirmed by the discovery of several cuss-bags in the landlord’s stock of ale. The landlord has tried to cut his losses by offering free beer to the first customer who succeeds in having a conversation with the ghost.

Here Ms. Crepuscular breaks in with a recipe for toothpaste-flavored biscuits. It is clear she doesn’t know what to do about the ghost.

 

Coldsore Hall’s New Roof REPRINT

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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.

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“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.

By Popular Demand: The Queen’s Not There Yet OY RODNEY REPRINT

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From December 21. 2017

All right, everybody, you asked for it: another installment of Oy, Rodney by Violet Crepuscular: Chapter CIV.

As Lady Margo tries to find out who is Queen of England at this time, Princess Didi visits Scurveyshire incognito to get the lay of the land. When she approaches the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard, Constable Chumley promptly arrests her. “Ye come alang wi’ me, lass,” he says, “ye’ll not be wilmin’ by yon brawnnick gulsen.”

“You fool, take your hands off the daughter of the Queen!” Her protests are to no avail, and she is deposited in the local lockup.

Meanwhile Lord Jeremy Coldsore, awaiting his marriage to Lady Margo, fobs off his creditors with a promise that the Queen herself will pay his bills. “Her Majesty is to be an honored guest at my wedding, and will spend the night in the Royal Suite of Coldsore Hall.” He does not mention that no one has spent the night in the Royal Suite of Coldsore Hall since 1603, when the Duke of Dobley went in one night and never came out.

Having convinced Lady Margo that he and the American adventurer Willis Twombley are one and the same and that it therefore doesn’t matter which one of them appears at the wedding as the groom, Lord Jeremy’s peace of mind is rattled by Twombley’s off-hand question: “Say, Germy, was you really jist a foundling left on the steps of this here hall? Margo says so.”

This is the first Lord Jeremy has ever heard of it. “I am sure the lady has me confused with someone else,” he replies.

“Someone else besides me?”

“Please, Sargon!” Twombley believes he is Sargon of Akkad. “Please concentrate on the arrangements for the wedding! I’m growing rather concerned about the vicar. Ever since recovering from his conniptions, he skips everywhere instead of walking, and makes cryptic remarks about some writhing tentacles he thinks he saw under the pool. I fear his mind may be unsettled.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right for the wedding,” Twombley says. “Anyhow, it’s your turn to go to Margo’s tonight for supper. Try to be cheerful, ol’ hoss! Soon as the Queen gets here, we’re goin’ to get hitched and all your troubles will be over.”

Given the prodigious length of the rest of the book, we are at liberty to doubt the accuracy of that prediction.

And we still don’t know who the dickens “Rodney” is.

‘Oy, Rodney: the Do-Over REPRINT

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Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

 

From August 10, 2025

The publishing world is agog today over the decision by Violet Crepuscular, the Queen of Suspense, to re-write, from the beginning, her epic romance, Oy, Rodney.

But what about the 500-plus chapters already written? What about the herd of woolly mammoths invading Scurveyshire? And all the other stuff?

“Never mind that!” Ms. Crepuscular says, in an interview by some guy. “Mr. Pitfall has convinced me that there’s nothing like a new beginning, so that’s what we’re going to do. To that end, I am inviting readers–I’ve got a zillion of ’em–to submit ideas for a new Oy, Rodney Chapter One. And then we’ll take it from there.”

Submissions, she adds, must be accompanied by 400 dollars in new Monopoly money.

As Ms. Crepuscular’s long-time editor, I have nothing to say about that.

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No, I have nothing to say at all.

That Business with the Mob of Peasants (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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From June 2, 2019

 

Introducing Chapter CCXCIV of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular confides in her readers, “Let me confide in you, dear readers! I do wish Mr. Duigon had not said I was ‘in jail’! I was merely helping the police with their inquiries. They are trying to discover who, if anyone, poisoned Mr. Pitfall, and they now suspect everyone in the neighborhood–he is that unpopular. I hope they realize now that my toothpaste rolls couldn’t make anybody that sick!” She is a little miffed that none of the police officers was willing to try one himself.

Moving on to the chapter, she describes the grief and horror that overwhelmed all Scurvyshire when Mr. Percy Puce, F.R.S., the shire’s Resident Genius, disappeared below the vicar’s backyard wading pool as the result of a fall from a clandestine sliding board. Don’t ask me if that’s a suitable adjective for a sliding board. I just work here.

Provoked beyond measure, a mob of peasants armed with torches and pitchforks assembles at The Lying Tart. Why they should want torches in broad daylight is mystifying. Maybe it’s just a thing that mobs of peasants do.

“We’ll destroy the vicar’s wading pool if it’s the last thing we do!” vows the mob’s ringleader, button collecter Oswald Backdraft, Official Ringleader of the Peasants Benevolent Association. The mob rushes off to the vicar’s back yard and that’s the last anybody sees of them.

Hours later, word of the incident reaches Lord Jeremy Coldsore at Coldsore Hall, where they have just put the Marquess of Grone to bed.

“We’re going to run out of peasants at this rate!” ejaculates Lord Jeremy. (“It’s a perfectly permissible use of that verb!” insists Ms. Crepuscular. I just work here.) “Constable Chumley, you ought to have prevented this disaster!”

“Huish, M’lord, I deagle fair maundery this fleethin’,” parries the constable. He rushes off to The Lying Tart to see if he can find any clues at the bottom of a tankard of ale.

This still leaves five chapters, I think, to be written before catching up to Chapter CCC, which Ms. Crepuscular has written out of order. “I pledge myself to accomplish this,” she writes in a chapter-ending footnote, “provided I am left in peace!”

Lord Jeremy’s Wooing, Part 2 REPRINT

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From November 15, 2017

Once again we turn to Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Chapter LXXVI. Willis Twombley, the American adventurer who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad, has sworn eternal friendship to Lord Jeremy Coldsore, who in an absent-minded moment, distracted by his own troubles, was the first to call him Sargon.

Mr. Twombley is now in Lady Margo Cargo’s parlor, to plead with her to marry Lord Jeremy.

Lady Margo takes out her glass eye, polishes it with the hem of her dress, pops it back into the socket. “Really, Mr. Twombley, doesn’t Miss Crepuscular know this scene has already been done, in The Courtship of Miles Standish?”

“Who, ma’am?”

“Also, sir, you talk funny.”

Twombley crosses his eyes. “Why, ma’am, that there’s jist my Akkadian accent comin’ out. Ah cain’t help it, thass how we talk. You just close yore ahs and make believe it ain’t me but Lord Germy who’s a-talkin’ to you.” Lady Margo closes the only eye that needs closing. Twombley finds the effect unnerving, but proceeds.

“Dear Lady Margo, Ah declare yo’re jist about the purttiest filly in all this land of England or wherever we are, and Ah would be the happiest man on earth if you and me could mosey on down to the parson and git hitched.”

Lord Jeremy is crouched under the bay window, listening from the outside. This is his last chance to stave off ruin and bankruptcy. Marriage to Lady Margo will save Coldsore Hall. And Twombley seems to be doing very well.

“Why, Mr. Twombley, no one has ever spoken such words to me before!” Lady Margo gushes. She makes a coquettish gesture that causes her wig to be crooked. “Very well, my dear man, if you insist! We shall visit the pastor and get hitched, as you put it, this very afternoon! At my time of life, I can’t afford to shilly-shally.”

Twombley does not know what to say. Lord Jeremy shrieks, then faints.

“Don’t be alarmed, dear, it’s just a screech owl in the garden,” Lady Margo coos.

We don’t know if the wedding comes off. I peeked into the next chapter and it’s not in there. That chapter is mostly Miss Crepuscular complaining about certain deficiencies in her diet.

The Queen Will Visit Scurveyshire REPRINT

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From December 14, 2017

The news today is just awful, as usual, so turn we unto something a little less awful…

In Chapter CII of Oy, Rodney by Violet Crepuscular, everything has been disrupted by the startling news that the Queen plans to visit Scurveyshire.

“What queen?” wonders Lady Margo Cargo.

“It don’t matter–a queen’s a queen,” replies her fiancee, the American adventurer Willis Twombley, who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad.

“But this is wonderful, Sargon! If we have her as a guest at our wedding, she may help you get your empire back!”

“Well, maybe. But listen, l’il gal, I got to tell you a secret, and you got to keep it. Okay?”

“I can keep a secret, my dear. I always forget secrets before I can tell them.”

Twombley takes a deep breath. “L’il gal, it’s like this. You know Lord Germy Coldsore?”

“I’ve known Lord Jeremy all his life,” says Lady Margo, “ever since he was a foundling left on the doorstep of Coldsore Hall.” Anyone else would be floored by this shocking revelation, but Twombley lets it slide right past him.

“Here’s the secret: me and Lord Germy, we’re the same guy. So when you marry me, you’ll be marrying him, too.”

“Oh, Sargon, how can that be? You don’t even look like him.”

“That’s on account of my secret Akkadian powers of illusion,” Twombley explains. “I can look like me and him standin’ side by side at the same time. Been doin’ in for years. I had to learn it because, you know, bein’ king of Akkad, I got a lot of enemies. Especially them Babylonians–they’re always tryin’ to do me in. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind what?”

“Me bein’ Germy, too, and you marryin’ him and sayin’ it’s me. That’s okay with you, ain’t it?”

“Whatever you say, Sargon dear.” At this point she has to pause and rearrange her wig.

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Sargon of Akkad: add a cowboy hat, and his resemblance to Willis Twombley is easily detectable.

Meanwhile Constable Chumley, guarding the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard, reports that “I seen a perby divvil of a throll peekin’ out from under yon pool, and it skeered the limmins out of us!” No one is quite sure what he means.

Scurveyshire’s Reddle Craze REPRINT

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From November 29, 2020

Introducing Chapter CCCXCIII (Chapter CCCXCII seemed to be missing) of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular writes, “Olaf Skraeling’s diabolical plan to win the hand of Lady Margo Cargo by disguising himself as a reddleman has worked too well! All of Scurveyshire has gone absolutely mad for reddle-ing (or should it be ‘reddling’?), and he suddenly has so much business that he has no time to woo the rich widow!”

She takes the opportunity to soliloquize about the pitfalls of crime, adding certain lewd comments about her neighbor, Mr. Pitfall. We will spare the reader. Feel free to tear out those two dozen pages.

Suddenly everyone in Scurveyshire wants everything reddled–doors and windows, dogs, children, tools, underclothes… “They’ve all gone mad!” cries Lord Jeremy Coldsore. They have even reddled the bearded barmaid at The Lying Tart. Desperate to curb the craze, Lord Jeremy summons Constable Chumley and orders him to arrest the reddleman.

“Withy me aw’ yon firthin mizzle, m’lord,” demurs the constable. His keen police instincts aroused, he already knows the reddleman is none other than Mr. Skraeling, and therefor that worst of all malefactors–a fraudulent reddleman.

“Just do it!” sighs Lord Jeremy.

As for Lady Margo, now that her upholstered wooden leg has been duly reddled, she has attempted to play hop-scotch with some of the reddled children. Hopping awkwardly from one box to the next, her glass eye falls out and shatters on the slate. The children, horrified, run away screaming.

“I must now interject my recipe for cat-food turnovers with a dab of toothpaste on the crust,” Violet interjects. It plays hob with the novel’s continuity.