8 September: The Goons

Two of the stars of British Comedy show The Goons were born on this date – Harry Secombe in 1921 and Peter Sellers in 1925. 10 facts about the Goon Show:

1. The show was broadcast by the BBC Home Service from 1951 to 1960. There were 238 episodes in all and 12 specials. There were plans for the Goons to appear in TV in 1952 in a pilot show called Trial Gallop. On the day it was due to broadcast, King George VI died, which meant the show was postponed and later cancelled completely.
2. The first series, in 1951 wasn’t called The Goon Show. It was called Crazy People.
3. Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe first met by accident during the second world war. Milligan was with an artillery unit which had a bit of an accident with a large howitzer gun – it rolled off a cliff. As it happened, there was a small wireless truck under the cliff, which Harry Secombe happened to be sitting in. He later recalled "Suddenly there was a terrible noise as some monstrous object fell from the sky quite close to us. There was considerable confusion, and in the middle of it all the flap of the truck was pushed open and a young, helmeted idiot asked 'Anybody see a gun?'” The young idiot was Spike Milligan. Secombe's answer to his question was "What colour was it?" They met the others through writing and performing in variety shows on theatre and radio after the war.
4. They all used to meet up in a pub called Grafton’s on Sunday nights and in due course started recording their joking around sessions. Peter Sellers was doing seasonal work for the BBC at the time and the BBC wanted to get him on a more permanent contract. Hence a producer called Pat Dixon, who’d heard one of their tapes, pushed for the series. The BBC weren’t keen at first but eventually agreed, somewhat reluctantly, as some of the BBC bosses simply didn’t get the humour. The show, however, was a massive hit.
5. The format was usually comedy sketches separated by musical interludes, since the Home Service’s brief was to provide “light entertainment”. These interludes were provided by the Ray Ellington Quartet – who performed a mixture of jazz, rhythm and blues and calypso songs – and by harmonica virtuoso Max Geldray who performed middle of the road numbers and jazz standards of the 30s and 40s accompanied by a big band. The show would finish with either Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead from Wizard of Oz or a German military march called Alte Kameraden (Old Comrades') followed by Max Geldray and the Ray Ellington Quartet playing Crazy Rhythm, a 1920s swing tune.
6. The Goon show has even added to the English language. One episode was called Lurgi Strikes Britain in which Spike Milligan created a fictional disease called lurgi (or lurgy) the symptoms of which included the uncontrollable urge to cry "Eeeeyack-a-boo". The word is used today to describe any miscellaneous or non-specific illness, often the common cold, often with the adjective “dreaded”.
7. The Goons had some hit records, too. Possibly the best known is The Ying Tong Song, which was a chart hit in the 1970s. Other hits were Bloodnok's Rock and Roll Call and the seasonal I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas. In 2003 300 residents of a town in Australia decided to commemorate the song by walking backwards through the town. However, thanks to the old Health and Safety Gone Mad and litigation culture, their parade couldn’t go ahead as planned. The town council were afraid people would fall and injure themselves while walking backwards and then sue. So participants had to walk forwards while wearing their clothes back to front.
8. Famous fans of the show include the Monty Python Team and Eddie Izzard, who say the Goons were a massive influence on them. The Beatles, and in particular John Lennon, Elton John and Prince Charles were also fans. When a bunch of students at Cambridge challenged Prince Philip to a tiddlywinks match in 1958, he appointed the Goons as his champions to play the match on his behalf. There’s even a reference in the animated film, Shrek – when Donkey and Shrek look up at the stars, Shrek points out the constellation 'Bloodnok the Flatulent', a reference to the character Major Bloodnok, whose digestive system was immortalised as a sound effect using complex editing of sounds (such as burps, whoops from oscillators, water splashes, cork-like pops, and light artillery blasts) on tape.
9. Which brings us to another Goon Show running gag, the raspberry. It was originally used as a comic device to avoid silence on radio, but became a signal from Milligan that he was about to crack up laughing. The Ying Tong Song features a solo of Milligan on a raspberry blower, and later Milligan collaborated with Ronnie Barker on The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town. The credits read, "Raspberries professionally blown by Spike Milligan".
10. Peter Sellers died on 24 July 1980, aged 54. Michael Bentine died on 26 November 1996, aged 74. Harry Secombe died on 11 April 2001, aged 79, Spike Milligan died on 27 February 2002, aged 83. When Secombe died, Milligan claimed to be relieved since it meant Secombe couldn’t sing at his funeral. However, a recording of Secombe singing was played at Milligan’s funeral. Milligan wanted to have the words “I told you I was ill" inscribed on his gravestone, but the church wouldn’t allow it at first. A compromise was reached in the end and the words were written there, but in Irish: Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book

7 September: The Blitz

80 years ago today, in 1940, The Blitz began as German bombers began an all-night raid on London. It lasted from 7 September 1940 (which came to be known as “Black Saturday”) until 21 May 1941 when Nazi Germany targeted 16 British cities for bombing raids. Birmingham, Liverpool, and Plymouth were hit 8 times, Bristol 6, Glasgow 5, Southampton 4, Portsmouth and Hull 3, and nearly every other major city at least once. The worst hit was London, which suffered 71 attacks, including, at one point, 57 nights in a row. 10 things you might not know about the Blitz.

1. The word blitz comes from the German language, a shortened form of the word “blitzkrieg” which translates as “lightning war”. It was the word for the German style of military action at the time – move in fast with a lot of force so the opponents will surrender.
2. As soon as Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, the British people expected something like this and preparations were made as people built bomb shelters. However, Hitler waited over a year before attacking British cities. Why was that? Two reasons. Firstly, Hitler was busy shoring up his efforts on mainland Europe and wasn’t ready to take on the British. Secondly, he thought an attack on London would bring a counter attack on Berlin. However, lack of success with military targets frustrated Hitler to the extent that he decided to start bombing cities. He hoped that the British people would get tired of the war. Only they didn’t.
3. Coventry was another city which was heavily bombed and virtually destroyed. On 14 November 1940 Coventry not only suffered massive loss of life but its entire infrastructure was destroyed, including its Medieval cathedral. The Germans even invented a new word – Koventrieren, meaning a city razed to the ground and destroyed.
4. One common image of the Blitz is of people camping out in London Underground stations overnight to shelter from the bombs. The government advised against this, in fact. They were concerned about people falling onto the lines, not wanting to leave the stations at all, and the spread of disease. Underground staff were told to lock the gates once the trains stopped running at night to stop people getting in. People did it anyway, and the government’s fears proved unfounded. That didn’t mean it was completely safe. If a station suffered a direct hit, people were killed. In 1943 173 people died in a panic at Bethnal Green station after a woman fell down the stairs. 68 people died in Balham in October 1940 when bombs destroyed water pipes and the tube station was flooded.
5. One statistic I came across was that only one in seven Londoners used air raid shelters at all. Whether that was because they didn’t want to, or didn’t have access to one I don’t know – but it was certainly common for people to end up trapped in the rubble of their homes. Special Constable Brandon Moss, who rescued one person after seven hours of digging, was one of many who received a George Cross, an award introduced during the Blitz, the highest gallantry award for civilians. Dogs played a part, too, sniffing out people who were buried under rubble. One little terrier named Rip saved 100 lives in this way and was awarded the Dickin Medal.
6. It was feared that the Germans might use chemical weapons – namely gas, as part of their offensive and so 40 million people were issued with gas masks. There was also the blackout, to ensure no lights were shining to help the German planes navigate and find their targets at night. Thousands of women and children were evacuated to rural areas to keep them safe.
7. Around 40,000 civilians lost their lives in the Blitz and two million homes were destroyed. 750 people in bomb disposal teams died while trying to defuse unexploded bombs (one in ten didn’t go off when they were dropped). There were animal casualties too, as 750,000 domestic pets were put down amid the fears of bombing. London Zoo, afraid bomb damage might lead to animals escaping, killed all its venomous Snakes and Spiders.
8. Why did it stop? In order to avoid getting shot down the Luftwaffe tended to attack at night, and come May, there were less hours of darkness. Plus Hitler had learned that when the Brits said, “We can take it” they weren’t kidding. So Hitler gave up and turned his attention to invading Russia instead.
9. British people were said to have a “Blitz spirit” characterised by the “Keep calm and carry on” attitude. It was expected that there would be a lot of traumatised people in need of psychiatric help and psychiatric clinics were opened especially for people suffering from Blitz related shock, but closed due to lack of demand. Suicides and drunkenness declined; women hung out their washing amid the rubble, people found new routes to work and kids played on bomb sites. This was interpreted by the government as high morale, although one researcher has said that studies of the letters and diaries written by people at the time told a different story. People carried on with their lives because they basically had no other choice. I wonder, too, if the demand for psychiatric clinics was low because people were even less inclined then to talk about their mental health than we are today.
10. 750,000 tons of rubble from the bomb sites was transported to make runways for RAF bases. After that, some of the sites were turned into vegetable gardens to help ease the food shortages. These areas were called Victory Gardens.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book

6 September: Pet Rock Day

The first Sunday in September is Pet Rock Day: the perfect opportunity to pamper and spoil the special stone in your life. 10 things you might not know about pet rocks.

1. Pet rocks were the brainchild of an advertising executive called Gary Dahl.
2. The rocks are smooth stones from a beach in Rosarito, Mexico, about 10 miles/16km south of the US border. The resort is a popular holiday destination for young Americans on holiday weekends.
3. The idea started as a joke. Gary was out drinking with his friends in April 1975 and listened to them complaining about pets which had destroyed things at home. He joked that he had the perfect pet which never destroyed anything and never had to be walked, groomed, or taken to the vet – a rock.
4. Gary decided there might be something in this, and so he sourced the rocks for a cent each, had boxes made, complete with air holes and packed with straw, and an instruction manual about how to care for a pet rock.
5. He sold the stones for two dollars each and became a millionaire.
6. The craze didn’t last long – after Christmas of 1975 sales plummeted and Dahl found himself giving unsold stones away to charity – but the short lived craze had made him enough money to retire and buy himself a bar in Los Gatos, California, which he called Carry Nations (a reference to temperance activist Carrie Nation).
7. According to the instructions, pet rocks can be taught to obey simple commands. “Sit” and “stay” are easy. They’d need some help with “Roll over”, however, and they’d never get the hang of "come," "stand" or "shake hands". “Attack” was also possible, with some help from the owner!
8. The manual also tells you what to do if your pet rock gets too excited – place it on a pile of Newspaper, because “The rock will know what the paper is for and will require no further instruction. It will remain on the paper until you remove it.”
9. All pet rocks came with a pedigree which suggested that many of them had been part of The Pyramids in Egypt or the Great Wall of China.
10. Dahl called his company “Rock Bottom” so he could have another joke with anyone who called in – the receptionist was instructed to answer the phone with “You’ve reached Rock Bottom”.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book

5 September: John Cage

Born on this date in 1912 was John Cage, experimental artist, composer, poet and philosopher. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. In one of his best known compositions, 4’33”, the musicians do nothing. It has been described as 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence, but in fact what Cage intended was for the audience to listen to the other sounds all around them. One of the reasons he wrote it was because he hated “muzak”, the tunes piped into elevators and shops, drowning out the natural sounds.
2. Another thing he is famous for is the “prepared piano” in which objects are placed on and between the Piano strings to alter the sound which is made. This arose from a commission he had to write primitive African music for a dance concert.
3. John Milton Cage was born in Los Angeles. His family go back a long way. He once claimed in an interview that one of his ancestors, also called John Cage, helped George Washington survey the Virginia Colony.
4. He learned to play the piano in school and liked music, but as a young man it was writing, rather than music that he was looking at as a future career.
5. He started studying Theology in college but dropped out after deciding a trip to Europe would be more helpful to a budding writer than staying in college. He was there for 18 months and during that time, studied art and architecture and started composing.
6. In 1935 he married Xenia Andreyevna Kashevaroff, an artist from Alaska who was the daughter of a Russian priest. They’d met while Cage was working in his mother’s arts and crafts shop. The marriage ended in divorce 10 years later and he started a relationship with a choreographer called Merce Cunningham, who was his partner for the rest of his life.
7. One of the tools he used for composing Music was the I Ching, an old Chinese text used for divination. Cage believed that music should reflect life, and life is full of chance and randomness. He started off tossing coins as traditional I Ching readers would do but in the 1950s started using a computer programme to generate random numbers. Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radio receivers, and Music of Changes for piano are examples of Cage’s works produced in this manner.
8. He also believed anything that made a sound could be a musical instrument. He composed pieces for pots and pans, drum brakes, cacti, Bathtubs and even Rubber ducks.
9. He was one of the first musicians to create electronic music on tape.
10. He died of a stroke in 1992, aged 79.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book

4 September: Peter Rabbit's Birthday

Beatrix Potter first told the story of Peter Rabbit on this date. Here are 10 things you might not know about her most famous character:

1. Peter rabbit lives with his widowed mother, Josephine and his three sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail. He has an uncle called Mr. Bouncer Bunny, and a cousin, Benjamin Bunny. Later on, Flopsy marries Benjamin and they have six little ones – the Flopsy Bunnies.
2. In The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Peter is a naughty Rabbit who disobeys his mother’s orders to sneak into Mr. McGregor’s garden and eat his vegetables. As Mr. McGregor chases him away, he loses his jacket and shoes which McGregor uses to dress a scarecrow. He returns to get his clothes back in The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, along with his cousin. This time they get captured by Mr McGregor’s Cat and have to be rescued by Bouncer, from whom they get a good telling off and a whipping.
3. Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit was based on her real life pet, a Belgian buck rabbit whose full name was Peter Piper. She described him as a very clever rabbit who was good at learning tricks and liked to lie in front of the fire, just like a cat. Potter even dedicated one of her personal editions of The Tale of Peter Rabbit to him. The inscription read "to poor old Peter Rabbit, who died on the 26th of January 1901. … An affectionate companion and a quiet friend.”
4. The story was first told in a letter to a five year old boy who was ill. His name was Noel Moore and he was the son of Annie Carter Moore, Potter’s friend and former governess. She wrote two more letters featuring stories about Squirrel Nutkin and Jeremy Fisher the Frog. It was Annie who suggested turning them in to children’s books.
5. Potter wanted the books to be small and easy for children to hold, but publishers wanted them to be bigger (so they could charge more for them). This was a deal breaker for Potter and led to rejections from six publishers. So she published it herself, ordering 250 copies which sold out within a few months.
6. One of Potter’s friends, Canon Rawnsley, tried to get publishers interested by re-writing the story in verse and submitting it with Potter’s drawings. It worked. Frederick Warne and Co agreed to publish the book, and what’s more, preferred Potter’s own text to the rhyming one.
7. Peter Rabbit was the first character to have a bunch of licensed products based on him – starting with a doll made by Potter for her editor’s niece. There were also games, figurines, wallpaper, blankets, and tea sets featuring him.
8. Potter drew the line at letting Disney make him into a movie, though. Whether this was because she wanted to control the rights or because she didn’t think her drawings were good enough for the big screen, nobody knows for sure.
9. That doesn’t mean Peter Rabbit never got to be a movie star. In 1971 he appeared in a ballet film, The Tales of Beatrix Potter. There have been several TV series, a stage play and an animated film in which peter is voiced by James Corden.
10. There is a series of UK 50p pieces that feature Peter and other Potter characters.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book

3 September: St Gregory the Great

Today is the feast day of St Gregory the Great. Here are ten facts about him.

1. His name is Greek and means “watchful”.
2. He is thought to have been born in Rome around the year 540.
3. His family were well off – his father was a senator and also held a high position in the church. His mother and two of his aunts were also saints and his great-great grandfather was Pope Felix III.
4. He was being prepared for a career in public life and so had a good education. He was especially good at grammar, rhetoric, science, literature and law. As expected, he followed his father into government and became prefect of Rome when he was just 33.
5. After his father died, he converted the family villa into a monastery and took a vow of poverty. He ruled his monks harshly. A dying monk who stole three Gold coins was condemned to die alone and his body thrown onto a manure heap rather then getting a decent burial. Gregory threw the gold onto the manure heap as well, saying, “Take your money with you to perdition”. That said, he later relented somewhat and had 30 masses said for the man’s soul.
6. A particular style of liturgical chanting, the Gregorian chant, is attributed to him.
7. What did he look like? John the Deacon described him from a portrait he saw in a monastery, as balding with a tawny Beard. He had a high forehead, a long, straight nose, thick Lips and beautiful hands. He is usually pictured in Papal regalia although it’s thought he preferred to dress more plainly. He is often pictured holding a book and with a square halo (used at that time to signify a holy person who was still alive). His attribute is a dove.
8. At one point Gregory set out to become a missionary in England. When he had been travelling for four days he stopped for lunch and a locust landed on his Bible. He took that as a sign from God that he shouldn’t go (because the word locus sounds like the Latin “loco sta” meaning stay in place) especially since not long after an emissary from the Pope arrived to tell him to go back.
9. He became Pope in 590. He was a supporter of the contemplative life and also of missionary work in Northern Europe.
10. St Gregory the Great is patron of musicians, singers, teachers and students.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book

2 September: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

On this date in 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame premièred. The film starred Lon Chaney and was based on the French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo. Here are 10 things you might not know about the novel and some of its various adaptations.

1. Victor Hugo’s original French title was Notre-Dame de Paris.
2. Who is the main character in the story? Was it Quasimodo? Esmerelda? Dom Frollo? If you’d asked Victor Hugo, he would say none of the above. To his mind, the main character in the story was the cathedral of Notre Dame, which is why the book contains so many descriptions of the building. Hugo wrote the story to raise awareness of the value of the Gothic architecture, which was being neglected and even destroyed at the time. Hence Hugo strongly disapproved of the English title of his book, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
3. What’s the plot? (spoiler alert) Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, finds a deformed baby abandoned in the cathedral and brings him up to be the cathedral’s bell ringer. Some years later, Frollo takes a fancy to a beautiful gypsy girl called Esmerelda, and sets out to kidnap her, enlisting Quasimodo’s help. It’s Quasimodo who gets the blame for the crime and he’s sentenced to be flogged. Esmerelda takes pity on him and brings him a glass of Water, and he falls hopelessly in love with her.
4. Frollo tries to murder someone and pin the blame on Esmerelda since she spurned his advances. Quasimodo saves her from hanging by sliding down to the execution site on a rope and whisking Esmerelda away into the cathedral, claiming sanctuary. She is terrified of him at first, but soon realises he has a kind heart.
5. Quasimodo does his best to protect Esmerelda from the mob outside and Frollo’s sexual advances inside. Frollo, however, manages to outwit Quasimodo and lure Esmerelda outside, so she can be arrested and hanged. Needless to say, this doesn’t go down well with Quasimodo, who throws Frollo to this death from the balcony. He then goes off to find Esmerelda’s corpse and lays down beside it until he died himself. Their entwined skeletons are found later by excavators and when they try to separate them, the bones crumble to dust.
6. Quasimodo was so named by Frollo because he was found on Quasimodo Sunday. Quasimodo Sunday is the Sunday after Easter and is so called because a Latin prayer for the day begins with the words Quasi modo. The intended meaning is “similar to” but the literal translation is ”almost standard”. As the book says, “whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly molded the poor little creature was. Indeed, Quasimodo, one-eyed, hunchbacked, and bow-legged, could hardly be considered as anything more than an almost.” Quasimodo Sunday is also known as White Sunday, Low Sunday or Thomas Sunday.
7. Esmerelda was about 16 years old in the novel, and was really called Agnes. In fact, she and Quasimodo had a history dating back to when they were born. Quasimodo’s mother swapped him for Agnes, and her parents, thinking their own baby had been eaten and a changeling left in her place, disposed of him by dumping him at the cathedral.
8. The two best known live action film adaptations were made in 1923 and 1939 starring Lon Chaney and Charles Laughton respectively. Transforming a normal actor into Quasimodo was no mean feat. It took make up artists two and a half hours to do it with Laughton. Chaney’s make up was also pretty extreme even by his standards. It it is sometimes said that the hump he had to wear left him with permanent back problems, but that isn’t true. It was the braces he had to wear on his legs and the contact lenses he wore in his eyes that caused him problems.
9. Then, in 1996 the story became the unlikely subject of a Disney cartoon. Disney bosses wanted to tone down its religious content, so as not to offend people. Not an easy task, as one animator commented, “seeing as a lot of it takes place in a big church”. Frollo became a judge rather than a deacon, for example. Even so, the film contained more references to the words “Lord” and “God” than all 33 of Disney's previous films put together. And they still managed to offend some people – Victor Hugo’s descendants, who described it as “vulgar commercialization by unscrupulous men” and were particularly upset that their great-great grandfather’s name did not appear on the publicity posters.
10. The Disney film features three talking gargoyles (Victor, Hugo, and Laverne). While Disney is known for giving inanimate objects voices and personalities, there was some justification for doing so in this case – in the novel, Quasimodo, a lonely soul, would spend hours talking to the cathedral’s gargoyles.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

Available on Amazon:

Paperback

E-book