Lady Laura, the kids, and I are cat-sitting for my sister while she’s away on vaykay in Mauritius for 10 nights.
(Not jealous at all.)
As part of this arrangement, we’re staying at her house as she lives quite a distance from us. Okay, I’m lying — we didn’t fancy the idea of cat fur getting onto our furniture.
So we packed up our worldly belongings into the car and headed to hers yesterday.
But not before stopping off at the supermarket for some last-minute bits.
A decision I regretted immediately upon reaching the escalators.
Why?
Because standing beside each one were two young, charismatic charity workers singing and dancing along to Last Christmas by George Michael, rattling their buckets, which were heavy with coins.
At first, I acted busy and hoped they’d be distracted by the customers ahead of me.
Of course, that didn’t work.
And, of course, my flakey peers set me up for failure by pulling out their wallets and dropping shrapnel into the bucket, which left me with two options:
1. Cough up some dough
2. Or look like the Grinch who stole Christmas
With a heavy sigh, I approached the escalator and reached for my wallet.
“Just take it.” I dropped a pound into the young chap’s bucket and one into his co-worker’s. “I bet you both are raking it in.”
Their beaming pearly whites told me all I needed to know.
“Have a great day, sir.”
“Yeah… you, too,” I reply, barely concealing my gritted teeth.
For the age it took the escalator to carry my arse up it, I lamented myself for how easy I caved.
I’m the Overlord & Saviour of the Legion.
A writer who commands a cast of characters, including a dark lord and a badass swordsman…
Why did I yield?
I’ll tell you why:
While, yes, I do play Overlord in these emails (a responsibility I take VERY seriously, I might add), beyond the screen, I actually have a hard time saying no to people.
I thought I’d grow out of it once I became an adult, but it appears Life asked God to hold his beer.
Yet, if I had to take a scalpel to ‘the why’ behind this meek trait, it probably has something to do with social rejection and/or not wanting to look a certain way to people.
Deeply annoying, indeed.
And one that made my soul and wallet a little lighter.
Hell, for all I know, I’ve just funded Russia’s war as I paid no heed to the charity nor its cause.
I guess all I can say as I wallow in defeat is well played to those youngsters.
Their positioning was damn-near spotless.
They saw a location that promised riches and went home with heavy buckets as a result.
In a weird, roundabout way…
It sounds a lot like what members of the Thieves’ Guild did at the height of their notoriety.
(Smooth transition, I know.)
Like the charity workers, they had a spooky ability to sniff out the most lucrative of opportunities – in no small part to their ‘sources.’
You see, back then, these sources were reliable, honest, credible.
More importantly than that, though, they were fearful of the consequences should their information be anything less than concrete.
(Ask the many folks who lost their tongues for weak details. Oh wait, they’d be unable to answer.)
But in recent years?
Between a string of failed raids and losing members to death or imprisonment, the guild has become merely a shadow of its former self.
With nobody wanting to join them and few hands capable enough to pull off the big raids, they’ve resorted to scraps.
And nobody has profited more from their downfall than the dealers of information.
Like vultures circling an old, toothless lion, they can get away with packaging up lies as truth — and getting paid for it — because they know nothing will happen to them.
The guild is bankrupt not only of gold and swords, but also of those capable of wielding them.
Chapter 2 of Exiled parachutes you straight into their plight and doesn’t loosen its grip on you until the very last page.
Or so I’ve been told by countless readers.
To read Book #1 of this gritty epic fantasy series, go here:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/Exiled
DJJW