Tag: Violet Crepuscular

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 Crepuscular’s unpublished novels.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!”

Byron the Quokka to the Rescue!

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Imagine my dismay last night, at precisely 2:17 a.m., when my agents informed me that Violet Crepuscular has been arrested for that business with the toothpaste rolls, and her manuscript of Oy, Rodney been impounded by police. Something had to be done before the cops burned the papers.

Byron the Quokka has been sent to rescue Ms. Crepuscular–he’s sure he can get in and out of the police station, and in and out of the holding cell, without anyone seeing or hearing him–and safely retrieve the manuscript. He promises success. It seems a great-aunt of his once sprang H.G. Wells from jail.

Well, if he’s not back in another two hours, I’ll have to presume they did catch him, after all, and then find someone to rescue him.

Any volunteers?

 

A Romantic Romance–‘Oy Rodney’ REPRINT

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silly romance novels – Lee Duigon

 

 

 

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.

Violet Crepuscular’s Cooking Show (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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We are lucky to have Chapter CCCXXX of Violet Crepuscular’s epic romance, Oy, Rodney, as skimpy as it is. For this was the week the local cable TV station aired the first and only episode of Ms. Crepuscular’s cooking show, “Crepuscular Cuisine.” Much of Chapter CCCXXX is devoted to this.

“I could not help being inspired,” she writes, “by all those new ‘Beyond Meat’ products, which are all-vegetable dishes cunningly prepared to taste like meat dishes. This has proved tremendously popular!

“So I thought, ‘What about something for meat-eaters who won’t eat vegetables but nevertheless want meat dishes that taste like vegetables?’ Why not ‘Meatables’? Or ‘Beyond Vegetables’? I mean, I read about this on a chess website, so it must be a terrific idea!”

Here we have part of the transcript of the show. Violet is in her studio kitchen, introducing “Beyond Vegetables.”

VIOLET: In truth, creating meat dishes that taste exactly like vegetarian dishes requires much more skill, labor, and preparation than I, for one, would ever bother with and neither should you! So I will teach you a simple but effective cheat.

I have found that creating a dish whose taste is completely unidentifiable, well, that’s the ticket! If your dinner guest has never heard of the Slovenian radish or ‘that wonderful variety of cauliflower from Kenya,’ called mbumba or something, how is he going to know he’s not eating a meat dish made entirely of vegetable ingredients?

And so we experiment with a wide variety of ingredients–here you see I have peppermint toothpaste, Frothee artificial foam, red pepper, black pepper, salt, Sweet ‘n’ Low, and A-1 Sauce–until we have something that tastes like nothing anyone has ever tasted before. And voila–the cook has a triumph!

*** But her triumph is short-lived. According to local news reports, less than an hour after the show went off the air, a crowd of irate viewers assembled outside the studio and began to pelt it with stones, loudly demanding the immediate cancellation of “Crepuscular Cuisine.” Several of the viewers threatened to sue the network, claiming that family members who had sampled Ms. Crepuscular’s experimental “Beyond Vegetables” were almost instantly smitten with digestive upsets.

As for Chapter CCCXXX of Oy, Rodney, all we have, really, is a mysterious stranger who looks like Broderick Crawford nosing around the grounds of Coldsore Hall until he is chased off by squirrels.

 

Mr. Pudding and His Newts (‘Oy Rodney’) REPRINT

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(Despite current events, I’m trying to do business as usual today. I would not like it said that Far Left Crazy stopped me.)

Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

Violet Crepuscular, The Queen of Suspense, has injected new life into her historical romance, Oy, Rodney, with the addition of a new character whom, she declares, “is guaranteed to please–like where has he been all my life?” Diagram that sentence if you dare.

The new character is one Mr. Pudding, usually spoken of as “Mr. Pudding and his newts.”

Newts – what do they eat? What eats them? | nurturing nature

Here he is with a couple of his newts.

We are not sure what role Mr. Pudding will play in the overall plot. “His role will have to, like, evolve,.” Ms. Crepuscular phonogalates. “I’m leaning toward the ‘mad scientist with a plan to take over the world’ thing, but I’m open to suggestions. Even from you, dear readers! Yes, even from the likes of you.”

As for the characters who’ve been with us all along–Lord Jeremy Coldsore, Constable Chumley, Lady Margo Cargo, Willis Twombley the American adventurer who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad… et al–well, who knows what will become of them? Does Ms. Crepuscular know?

(Waiting for an email or two to come pouring in…)

From July 2024

‘Oy, Rodney’… Stalls on a Dime

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Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

For anyone else, it’d be a mere figure of speech. But for celebrated romance writer Violet Crepuscular, it’s an incident of war.

War against her editor… which is me.

“You will never again horn in on my images of woolly mammoths and the June Taylor Dancers,” she writes, in a letter thrust under my car’s windshield wiper. For a moment there I thought it was a ticket.

“I will never forgive you,” she continues, “for arranging for Mr. Pitfall actually to fall into a pit! You’d better watch yourself, crossing your living room: you won’t know what’s under the rug until you find out the hard way.”

The police chief in our town is a huge (6’11”) Violet Crepuscular fan who just laughs when I seek protection. “Afraid of a cuddly little thing like Violet!” he mocks me. “Well, as the Emperor Honorius told the Britons, ‘Look to your own defenses!'” (He’s a big classics buff.)

Well, I guess I’d better get started.

Now What? (‘Oy, Rodney)

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Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

We were deliriously excited to receive a long-sought email from Violet Crepuscular, the Queen of Suspense. Tension mounted as we worked our way into the contents. After all, we haven’t received any new material from her since March.

“Surely, all this time,” she addresses her legion of ardent fans, “you’ve been wondering about that guy in the goofy costume with the white knee socks, and the woman in the long dress falling for him. Who is he? Who is she? Eh? Eh?”

Violet’s mail man, William Faulkner (not the famous one), has accused her of being a witch. You’d think that would be suspense enough for anyone. “And I dunno about that costume!” he adds, then refuses to elaborate.

The guy who reads the meter, Millard Filmore (not the famous one) pungently disagrees. With a little bad luck the entire town could topple into civil war.

Meanwhile, there are mammoths, leprechauns, and the June Taylor Dancers to sort out (they’ve all invaded Scurveyshire).

Only Violet Crepuscular can do it!

The Return of the Return of ‘Oy, Rodney’

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Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

If you see Violet Crepuscular coming, please let me know so I can try to get away.

The Queen of Suspense naturally blames me for not keeping up with her tempestuous romance novel, Oy, Rodney–like it was my fault she ran off with Mr. Pitfall and didn’t return until he actually fell into a pit! So Violet has 536 chapters written and not much to show for it.

[Violet Crepuscular’s rebuttal]

You landlubbers! You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! I mean, the guy STOPS PUBLISHING my Oy, Rodney chapters and it’s like my fault??? And he won’t get away with hiding in the hospital for five months, either!! I swear, if I have to write my book myself, I’ll ding-dang do it!!! Do you hear me, Mr. Whatsisname? Raise your hand if you didn’t hear me say “Raise your hand!”

[End of rebuttal.]

See what I have to deal with? Note to Ms. Crepuscular: How am I supposed to edit and publish your chapters when you stop writing them? You haven’t submitted a chapter this year! Last we heard, you had the June Taylor Dancers invading Victorian Scurveyshire. Try editing that and see where it gets you!

I will not answer any more of your crude and graceless telegraphs. (Signed) The Editor

(Maybe I’d better take some kung-fu lessons…)