Tag: silly romance novels

Violet Crepuscular’s Pulitzer Prize REPRINT

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Masanori Murakami, SF 1964: the first Japanese player in MLB | Baseball, Murakami, Baseball cards

Editor’s Note: We are unable to post our usual Oy, Rodney cover today. This vintage Masonori Murakami baseball card is the closest we can come to it.

From December 27, 2020

We find Violet Crepuscular–author of the epic romance novel, Oy, Rodney–feverishly rubbing a battery-powered camping lantern.

“I would not have it said that I am in any way superstitious,” she writes, “but I found this magic lamp for sale on eBay. All you have to do is rub it feverishly while reciting the correct incantation, and a genie will come out and grant your wish. But I’m having trouble with the incantation–Ia, Cthulhu! Ugthn mgawlwha fhtagn, Cthulu fhtagn! Or something like that–one of those crazy languages they speak in foreign countries, I don’t know how they can even hope to understand each other. But now that my neighbor Mr. Pitfall has nominated me for a Pulitzer Prize, I think I’ll need a genie’s help to seal the deal. It’s just that this incantation is devilish hard to pronounce! And I had two years of Latin in high school, too!”

Meanwhile, in Chapter CCCXCVII of her epic romance novel, Oy, Rodney, Ms. Crepuscular, who seems to have entirely lost her train of thought, has introduced a new character–Johnno the Merry Minstrel’s cousin, Ronno the Not At All Merry Minstrel. Ronno has just returned from spending twelve years as morale officer at a Siberian prison.

As soon as he steps off the train, Constable Chumley arrests him.

“Why in the world did you do that?” cries Johnno. “He only just got off the train!”

“Ay, liddie, but aw’ yon frythers macks a Whithle scray,” the constable explains. Johnno has to be content with that.

“In the next chapter,” promises Ms. Crepuscular, “the reader will be treated to non-stop action and well-nigh unendurable suspense!”

We can hardly wait.

That Woman in Moldy Knickers (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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From May 30, 2021

We join Chapter CDXXVI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, in progress. That means she hasn’t finish writing it. And she has left Chapter CDXXV blank to denote that nothing in particular happened. I hope she’s all right.

As the new chapter opens, we have Constable Chumley, Johnno the Merry Minstrel, and the American adventurer, Willis Twombley, who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad, holding a secret meeting to decide what to do about Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s sudden infatuation with the ghostly Woman in Moldy Knickers. They have been arguing for two solid hours over what to use as a password to open the secret meeting. Nobody wants to fall back on “Our Secret Password”–much too easy for any villain to figure out and use against them.

Finally Johnno comes up with “Mghawlwhg.” “It’s perfect!” he crepusculates. “No one will know how to pronounce it.” But this hope is dashed when the constable pronounces it easily. It turns out he says that all the time.

“Boys, we ain’t getting nowhere without a password,” Twombley says. “If we don’t come up with somethin’, Ol’ Germy’s marriage to Lady Margo will jist go belly-up! And I’ve got a stake in that, bein’ as she still thinks Germy and me are the same buckaroo.”

Eventually they discover that Chumley can’t say “catsup bottle,” so that’s the word they’ll use. The constable accepts it philosophically: “Aye, thurrup’s a frizzin baggy,” he declares. One cannot but agree.

That brings them to wondering if it will do any good to point out to Lord Jeremy that the Woman in Moldy Knickers has been dead for going on 600 years.

“To heighten suspense,” Ms. Crepuscular confides in her readers, “we will take that up in the next exiting chapter!” When she gets around to writing it, of course.

Trouble in Scurveyshire REPRINT

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From February 24, 2018

 

Turn we unto Chapter CXXX of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney.

All is not well in Scurveyshire. The vicar is laid out with conniptions. Jasper the village idiot is in jail with Princess Didi, who, it turns out, is neither a princess nor any relation at all to Queen Victoria, but only an outcast from the nearby village of Plaguesby. Lady Margo Cargo, claiming a touch of leprosy, has gone into seclusion.

Worst of all, various people of questionable morality are whispering that “Black Rodney” has returned from the dead and is “at it again, puttin’ curses on the shire.” No one dares approach the wading pool in the vicar’s back yard.

Meanwhile, desperately trying to raise money to keep Coldsore Hall, Lord Jeremy Coldsore has opened a lemonade stand at the entrance to his palatial drive, selling it for five guineas a glass. As an economy measure, he has dismissed all his servants except for his footman, Sir Reginald Fumfer, who works for whatever food he can scrounge from the larder. Sir Reginald has descended to this lowly estate as a result of an unnamed spot of trouble out in India. Her Majesty’s Government have forbidden him to speak to anyone. But at least Lord Jeremy has enjoyed a brisk business so far.

“Say, Germy ol’ hoss, jist how much debt have you got?” asks his friend, the American adventurer Willis Twombley.

“Roughly one million pounds, old boy.”

“That’s a lot of lemonade!”

“I do what I can, Sargon.” Twombley still thinks he is Sargon of Akkad.

“Well, so do I, Germy. I jist shot another one of those creditors of yours. I put him in that closet in your billiard room. No one’ll ever find him there, as long as they don’t look in the closet.”

“That’s a great comfort to me,” says Lord Jeremy. He has given up trying to dissuade Twombley from murdering the creditors. It does no good.

Now arriving on the scene is a wandering spider collector, Miss Lizzie Snivel, a character left over from one of Ms. Crepuscular’s unpublished novels. “I could not bear to see her go to waste,” Violet confesses to her readers.

Milestone! The 700th Chapter of ‘Oy Rodney’ REPRINT

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Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

From March 3, 2024

This here is the 700th chapter of the epic romance, Oy, Rodney, by The Queen of Suspense, Violet Crepuscular.

“They laughed at me when I began to write this novel,” she flosticates. “Well, where’s the laughter now! Eh? Eh? Even War and Whatchamacallit doesn’t have 700 chapters!”

In the last chapter, you will remember (or not), Picts invaded Scurveyshire and made off with the town’s park bench, unaware that the Royal Millipede Inspector was sleeping on it at the time. Imagine their incredulity when they discovered him! Several Picts plotzed!

“Wot’s yer name, blast yer eyes?” demands the Prime Pict. His accent is almost impenetrable. Fortunately they both speak Classical Swahili.

The inspector, however, does not know his name, it’s been so many years since he’s used it. “Call me Ishmael,” he suggests.

Meanwhile, the good folk of Scurveyshire are blaming Lord Jeremy Coldsore, in his incapacity as Justice of the Peace, for letting the Picts invade and make off with so much of their stuff. (They did not get Lady Margo Cargo’s wooden leg. That was a false alarm: it had simply rolled under her couch.)

“What do I have to do to please you?” he ululates.

“And that,” adds Ms. Crepuscular, “is where Suspense demands a chapter break!”

Ms Crepuscular Declares War (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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From June 6, 2021

Introducing Chapter CDXXVII of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular deviates from her narrative to declare war on Barney Rubble, host of the incredibly popular TV talk show, Great Book by Idiots.

“If it’s the last thing I do,” she crepusculates, “I’ll fix that Barney Rubble! Imagine putting me on a show called Great Books by Idiots, to talk about some silly book called The Great Ghatsby or some such thing! I thought we were there to talk about my training regime for my pet click beetle, Mandrake. Instead, some comic book I never heard of!

“Well, he won’t get away with it! My neighbor, Mr. Pitfall, is going to visit him some night with a horsewhip. But more impotently, he has already lined up for me another television appearance, this time with Mervyn Puncho–a fantastic celebrity who needs no introduction! And then we’ll see who’s the idiot!”

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Mervyn Puncho, a celebrity who needs no introduction

Meanwhile, Chapter CDXXVII has gotten rather short shrift. Seeking a way to nullify Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s unexplained paranormal infatuation with The Woman in Moldy Knickers, who died 600 years ago, Jeremy’s friends continue to discuss a possible solution to the problem. It must be remembered that this ghost, moldy knickers and all, was once laid to rest by a man who looks like Lee J. Cobb.

“What we want,” says Johnno the Merry Minstrel, “is another man who looks like Lee J. Cobb.”

“Who the dickens is Lee J. Cobb?” wonders Willis Twombley, the American adventurer who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad. He has a stake in Lady Margo Cargo’s now-threatened marriage to Lord Jeremy: she is convinced that Willis and Jeremy are the same person.

“Yeen the riffit corblinkin’ shirtlift!” exclaims Constable Chumley. The other two cannot but agree.

The Scourge of the Swamp (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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From January 27, 2019

Mr. Pitfall having been sedated with a certain powder surreptitiously added to his Strawberry Quik, Violet Crespuscular has moved on to Chapter CCLI of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney. “I had to do it,” she confides to her readers. “He was getting altogether too impatient with that length of rubber hose, and I found it distracting.”

Hopping along on one foot and often falling face-first into the soupy mud, Lady Margo Cargo has finally made her way out of the terrible Scurveyshire Fens, emerging near the village of Plaguesby covered with mud from head to toe. As she approaches a band of jolly milkmaids, the girls flee, screaming: “Swamp fiend! Monster of the Fens!” In no time at all, Constable Chumley’s counterpart in Plaguesby, Constable Flumley, arrests her and locks her in a holding cell. He has one eye much larger than the other, and the way he leers at her is most unsettling. “Y’iv sharred a mickle millen!” he growls, in his quaint rural dialect.

Technically under Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s jurisdiction as Scurveyshire’s justice of the peace, Plaguesby has a unique form of government that would not be allowed if anyone were noticing. A rat-catcher named Tom Squim rules the village as its Great Conquering Khan, assisted by a Council of Nimrods who have no power and are expected to refrain from speaking. In return, they get free melons when those become available.

Lady Margo is disquieted when her eyes adjust to the dark and she finds a mouldering skeleton chained to the wall of her cell. Is this to be her fate?

The next two pages of the book are blank. It seems to be an error on the part of the publisher. Ms. Crepuscular opens Chapter CCLII by blaming the publisher for the oversight. “I will provide the missing material in another chapter later on,” she writes, “after the ambulance comes for Mr. Pitfall. I fear I may have overdosed him.”

 

Lord Jeremy’s Love Triangle REPRINT

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From February 11, 2018

This is supposedly Chapter CXXXI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, but I couldn’t swear to it.

The wandering spider collector, Miss Lizzie Snivel, has taken to hanging around Lord Jeremy Coldsore’s driveway lemonade stand and frightening the customers by trying to give them spiders.

“Want me to shoot her for you, Germy?” asks Willis Twombley, the American adventurer. He has been methodically picking off Lord Jeremy’s creditors, one by one. The most recent victim, this morning, he has concealed in Coldsore Hall’s infamous Haunted Bedroom.

“Rather you didn’t, old boy.”

The problem here is that Miss Lizzie is dazzlingly beautiful, except for the unsightly ruin of her nose, where she was once bitten by an Australian Venomous Horror Spider named Jeff. She has fallen in love with Lord Jeremy and can’t bear to be away from him. He finds it very flattering.

The Japanese ambassador makes another cameo appearance here, but no one wants him.

“Lady Margo ain’t gonna like yer flirtin’ with that spider gal,” Twombley warns. “If’n she gits word of it, she might not marry us. There ain’t nothin’ as jealous as a woman with a wooden leg. Believe me, I know!”

“If only she wouldn’t keep trying to sneak into Coldsore Hall at night!” cries Jeremy. Against his will, her persistence is beginning to win her over. Unknown to everyone, Miss Lizzie has amassed a colossal fortune by collecting spiders. She has not yet mentioned this.

“Lady Margo been tryin’ to sneak in? What’s wrong with that?” wonders Twombley.

“Not Lady Margo, old boy! It’s that spider girl. She won’t take no for an answer.”

Meanwhile a loud brawl breaks out in the taproom of the Lying Tart that night between villagers who believe Black Rodney is a dangerous sorcerer returned from the dead to put curses on the shire, and those who are convinced he is a kind of catfish. Constable Chumley restores order with a speech that no one understands. It is not reproduced here. “I am afraid his language is not what it should be,” Ms. Crepuscular confides in her readers.

A Romantic Romance–‘Oy Rodney’ REPRINT

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From December 12, 2021

Ah, at long last! Chapter CDLVI of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, ‘Oy, Rodney.’

Let’s see, where were we? Um… something about a hydra terrorizing the town of Scurveyshire, and a jackalope eating up the vicar’s kitchen garden…

And yet when we turn the page and finally get to Chapter CDLVI, what do we see, what do we read about, but a whole bunch of… kissing? Smooching? Making whoopee? Say it ain’t so, Joe!

Ms. Crepuscular explains. “I have been inundated with tadpoles–or rather, comments by readers–demanding to know when there’s going to be some romance in my romance. I really don’t know why I said ‘tadpoles.’ Do you? So what’s wrong with opening a chapter with Lord Jeremy and Lady Margo kissing as they dance?” She pronounces it “donce.”

Well, the last time we saw them, just a page or two ago, Lady Margo’s wig was on fire and her upholstered wooden leg had fallen off, and Lord Jeremy was trying to tap-dance with his two left feet and making a hash of it; and in the same little room we had a cowboy stretched out on the floor, dead to the world, and the vicar’s conniptions. And now it’s dancing and kissing?

On the High Street of Scurveyshire, Ms. Crepuscular informs us, the hydra is now eating people. Johnno the Merry Minstrel is horse de combat (“That’s Frentch, you peasants!” she interbreeds) after trying to cut off one of the hydra’s nine heads–the wrong one, as luck would have it.

Join us next week for more drivel from the Queen of Suspense!

The Lovers’ Quarrel, and the Art of Dowsing

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From February 14 2021

Introducing Chapter CDIV (what happened to CDIII?) of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, Violet Crepuscular cites a fan letter she has received from Geoffrey the Dowser, of Ginseng Corners, Australia.

“Dear Mrs. Cripustuler,” he writes, “I have been reading your epic romance novel Oy Rodney for sevrul years and I could not help notcing youve got nothing in it about the ancient and Romantic art of dowsing. Please correct this, or i will stop reading!!”

In a confidential aside to the reader, Ms. Crepuscular rises to the challenge. “It’s as if Geoffrey has read my mind!” she ululates. “I can think of no better way to resolve a lovers’ quarrel than for the offending lover to appease the injured party by presenting her with an Acme Official Dowsing Kit! I had a lovers’ quarrel once, some 30 years ago, and when my boyfriend gave me a dowsing kit, I was off to the races!”

She has quite forgotten that today is Valentine’s Day. Oh, well.

With his author’s example to inspire him, Lord Jeremy has bought Lady Margo Cargo a fully-equipped dowsing kit, complete with Y-shaped willow dowsing rod and an instruction pamphlet.

“Oh, Jeremy!” she gushes. “I’m going to go out right away and find underground water, oil, treasure, and gold!”

Neither of them has thought of what perils might accrue to anyone dowsing in the vicinity of the vicar’s backyard wading pool: follow the flexing dowsing rod to an indescribably horrible doom.

Lady Margo’s crusty old butler, Crusty, has to accompany her with pick and shovel to dig wherever the dowsing rod points to. It has put him in a bad mood. Neither of them notices that the rod’s gyrations are leading them closer and closer to the fateful wading pool–which, when last heard of, sucked down a locomotive and several cars full of passengers.

“And here,” writes Violet, “in the interests of suspense, I must break the chapter. Think of it, dear reader! Will Margo and Crusty be sucked down under the wading pool? Or will they first uncover buried treasure–perhaps a hoard of gold coins deposited by a prehistoric king?” What this really means is that she doesn’t know what happens next.

Scurveyshire’s Shakespeare Festival REPRINT

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Violet Crepuscular introduces Chapter CCCIX of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney, thus:

“I would be remiss, dear readers, if I made no mention of Scurveyshire’s annual Shakespeare Festival–a great tradition of English village life.”

Tradition has it that William Shakespeare once spent the night in Scurveyshire on his way to Oxford to buy candy, and rented a room at the shire’s most famous pub, The Lying Tart. Unable to get to sleep, he stayed up all that night to write his little-known tragicomedy, Two Damn Fools. “And one of them,” Christopher Marlowe reportedly said after reading the play, “is you.”

A special stage has been erected on the common for the annual performance of this play, which, these days, is only performed once a year, here in Scurveyshire. It is believed that Shakespeare himself disowned the play and always claimed that Marlowe wrote it. This year Two Damn Fools will be performed by an amateur cast selected by Lady Margo Cargo and directed by Reginal Tosspot, the town drunk.

The plot involves a case of mistaken identity resulting in two damned fools inadvertently marrying each other’s fiancees. That’s really all there is to the plot. Had it been written today, it would have been a low-rated BBC sitcom. But during the festival in Scurveyshire, anyone caught attending the play is treated to as much free ale as he or she can drink. This leads to great merriment, and a high crime rate.

Lord Jeremy Coldsore, as current justice of the peace, busily makes his preparations, whatever they may be. “This,” he confides in his friend, the American adventurer Willis Twombley, who thinks he is Sargon of Akkad, “is an unsurpassed opportunity for Black Rodney to plunge the entire community into catastrophic chaos. I have instructed Constable Chumley to hire two dozen special constables.”

“Does he think they’ll be enough?” asks Twombley.

“What he said was,” answers Jeremy, “‘Aye frithin’ mickle dorbies an’ speed yon thores.'”

Twombley nods sagely. “Sounds like he’s got it under control,” he remarks.

[Note: My allergies are killing me today. If there is any fault to find with this installment of Oy, Rodney, it’s still Ms. Crepuscular to blame.]

From August 4, 2019