Elin Gregory

 It’s Sunday!!

Time for another bunch of sixes from authors near and far. Just go here and read your socks off. There are erotic romances, sweet romances, action adventure military gritty distopian futures, sweet YA comedies and some stuff that is, to my taste, compellingly wierd 🙂 just love it.

So – last week in my six we left Cynfal with a warm armful and his nose in Gwion’s ear. Gwion seemed to be getting a little tense. Again I’m going to put it under a cut just because I quite like doing that. It might make people think it’s naughtier than it is!

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  Time for the usual again! Six Sunday is a chance for writers to showcase their work and for readers to sample lots of different styles and genres. Click on the link to find a list of websites, then knock yourself out reading all the different bits and pieces on offer. Some will have you coming back week after week, desperate to see what happens next.

As usual my six come from my work in progress A Fierce Reaping, the true [ish] story of a Romano-Celtic warband who challenged the advance of incoming Anglo-Saxons sometime around the year 600 AD.  It didn’t go according to plan! However, my lads haven’t set off yet and, as often happens, men who have been trained to the peak of fighting trim need someone to spar with. Between friends it’s not so bad but when other people get involved it can get serious.

“Five coppers to the man who kills the other,” someone shouted and Cynfal snarled as he recognised Moried’s voice.
That shout must have reached other’s ears too because Cynfal heard other yells and crashing in the undergrowth. It also brought a look of shock to Aeddan’s face. He removed his arm from Cynfal’s neck and his knee from his balls and gave him one last sharp punch. “That’s for calling me a thief,” he whispered as he levered himself up.
“And that,” Cynfal whipped up a foot and kicked Aeddan hard in the thigh, taking his leg out from under him, “is for calling me a whore.”

I had a request last week for some clarification on pronouncing character names so here goes. Emphasis is placed on the second to last syllable in most cases :

Cynfal – K’n-vawl

Gwion – Gwee-on

Aeddan – Aye-than

Cynon – Kunnan

March – Markh [the final hard K sound slightly aspirated like the ch on the end of loch]

Ceredig – Kare-edig

Aneurin- Ann-eye-rin

Tudfwlch – Tid-voolkh [oo to rhyme with look]

Rhufawn – Rolled R-vorn

Hyfaidd – H-vaydd [the th as in this]

Llif – almost impossible to describe. Sort of like trying to say cliff only you keep the tip of your tongue against your gum behind your top front teeth and say the ‘cl’ sound out of the corner of your mouth. For those who worry abut such things it doesn’t matter which corner but, statistically speaking, 80% of Welshman ‘cl’ to the left.

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This week’s Six Sentence Sunday offering:

6 sentences from WIP, A Fierce Reaping, set in Scotland and Northumbria in the late 7th century AD. Cynfal has joined a warband and is being given the induction course by an old friend.

Aeddan gave him a rough one armed hug and flicked his bowl so the mead spilled down his shirt. “We’ll have to cheer you up, then. Find you a girl so you don’t forget what it’s for, as long as you’re not too fussy, or a lad unless you’ve gone all Christian on us.”
“What do you mean?” Cynfal asked.
“We’ve got monks,” Aeddan growled. “They say we mustn’t curse, gamble or whore and we certainly mustn’t ‘make do’” he held his hands at hip level and pumped them, “with each other – on pain of ever lasting purgatory.”

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This is my first attempt at Six Sentence Sunday. 🙂  I have no idea if I’m doing it right but there are six sentences. I counted ’em.

 6 sentences from WIP, A Fierce Reaping, set in Scotland and Northumbria in the late 7th century AD. Cynfal wishes to join a war band but has been challenged to wrestle a champion for his place. 

Cynfal met his eyes and they held each others gaze for a long minute before both leaped to grab and hold. Chest to chest they heaved and twisted, feet scrabbled in the rushes, hands slid across skin just beginning to sheen with sweat. Around them the men of the hall howled. Cynfal rammed a shoulder into Aeddan’s armpit and grabbed a handful of his breeks to lift. The fabric tore. There was a shriek of laughter.

[The photo is nothing to do with Scotland or Northumbria but a very lovely image of a terrific sport – Oil wrestling where combatants wear leather capris and douse themselves in extra virgin before they start. An ancient sport with time-honoured traditions. Yes, his hand is down the other guys pants. ]

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