Chapter 1 of The Twilight Toxin – Reveal

I retrench. Now, the top rung of paid-for image banks is arguably Shutterstock, Getty Images and Dreamstime. However, the next one down is DepositPhotos. I was fortunate enough, some time ago. to stumble upon a special offer for an image bundle of 100 images for about £40, which, believe me, is an absolute steal, and lasts forever.

There, I took up my search for a plain mug of builder’s tea (English Breakfast Tea, as it is also known) with milk pouring into it.

No joy.

The issue is that, despite your basic cuppa being drunk across entire continents such as Australia and the width of Canada, as well as islands of the North Atlantic, to wit, Ireland and the UK, no one has seen fit to photograph our favourite beverage in the receptacle of choice for imbibing it. I speak, of course, not of the delicate bone china beloved of afternoon tea during past centuries, but of your basic, every day, common or garden … mug.

And builder’s tea. Not lapsang souchong, not oolong, not ginger, acai, and lemongrass, not fennel and liquorice. Just Tetley, Yorkshire Gold, Barry’s Tea. Sitting in a mug, tea bagging into a watercolour mahogany of the desired strength before adding milk of choice. Not cream. Milk. Dairy or non-dairy, but … yes, you said it: milk.

Nevertheless, with grim determination to offer you the image that would surely best accompany that part of the chapter with our beloved Detective Inspector Thomas Trelawney concocts his daily empowering brew, I soldiered on. Because there remained to me one … last … option.

I call her MJ. Not Mary Jane of Batman fame (although possibly art is one of her heretofore hidden talents), but one who I imagine as a 4-year-old with a genius for art and a gift for misunderstanding. Better known as Midjourney, an image creation AI available on the Discord app, in case you are curious. Others use Bing (DALL-E – another little favourite robot, less imaginative than MJ, but at least he knows his letters and numbers. Most of the time) or ChatGPT, and there are more.

Like small children, MJ and her ‘siblings’, more than anything else, require patience. And lots of it. They create images, inspired by all of the they have been trained , in response to what are called ‘prompts’. For example: an image of an apple tree at sunset.

However, if you want something specific, it has to be very carefully worded. Just for fun, a few weeks ago, I asked for ‘a country lane with a fork in the road.’ Yes, you can guess what that got me!

First Shot

But I digress. Again, just for fun, because I had a pretty shrewd idea of what I’d get, I asked MJ for ‘milk pouring into a mug of English tea. Photorealistic ‘

As I say, just for fun, for I was furnished as you see with a bone china, floral-patterned, delicate cup and saucer in a freeze frame from a science experiment as milk bounces energetically off the surface of the tea, the image including, of course, the predictable dried flowers. After all, what tea-drinker would be without them? Really?

Oh yes, this is straight out of the playbook for all photobanks. MJ would have, in a flash, flicked through her memories of the likes of Pixabay, Canva and learned, ‘Aha! Milk pouring into a mug: it’s this!’

So, in the manner of Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, I tried, ‘Let’s start at the very beginning.’

Being Julie Andrews

‘A white mug,’ I requested MJ. A few minutes later, and out of 4 images, one astonishingly was indeed a completely white mug, not crackle-patterned, not with a wooden base, not with dried flowers on it: white. And. A mug. Excellent progress.

The next step: ‘a white mug with milk gently pouring into it‘. By the way, like small children, MJ does not respond to ‘no’, ‘not’ or ‘never’. Say ‘no flowers’, and you will get a cup in the midst of a tulip field. So I decided to be specific about this pouring business as anti cascade measure. With the word ‘gently’, Niagara Falls was avoided. And yes, I got a gentle stream of milk from above, into a simple white mug.

Let’s Be Daring

But the task was not yet accomplished. Now: a white mug with milk gently pouring into it. The mug has English tea in it’

Ok, I got the tea and kept the milk, but the mug was shortening with the magnetic pull towards the longed-for china cup. But one of the four images was still muggy enough. I hastily zoned in on that. Phew! Done?

One More Step

However, MJ’s images are square, and for the landscape version of the video, I would require a broader image. I asked MJ to keep that winner and zoom out.

And sure enough, there they were: the folded piece of unbleached linen, the rustic tea towel, the toast (with linen) and, of course, who could forget the bunch of dried flowers? Nevertheless, there was a single image in which we were spared these unlikely items.

On the other hand, the milk was issuing forth, not from a jug but a teapot. No matter, as most of it could be cropped out, just leaving the spout. Then again, had I asked for a milk jug? I reminded myself that MJ’s was no place for assumptions.

Getting There?

MJ has no experience of milk or tea, or jugs or teapots. What is a spout after all? Tea comes out of it. Wikimedia could have told her that, but which end? Couldn’t it come out of the end connected to the teapot? Has anyone ever said it couldn’t?

And so here we had an image innocent of all but mug, milk and teapot, but not only was milk pouring from the usual end of the spout, but a faint lake of tea was gathered around its root.

At this point, I decided to take the wins, as MJ had now grasped the concepts of mug, English tea, milk, and gently pouring. I started again with a fresh canvas, as it were. I boldly requested (from scratch): a white mug with milk gently pouring into it from the spout of a plain white jug. The mug has English tea in it.

My wish was granted. Well done, MJ. I clicked the heart beneath the best image.

Just one more zoom out for luck, just for width.

And she offered me this:

Her heart is in the right place. This tea business is, after all, a complicated one, what with different sorts of tea, and the various things that can be added, pots and jugs and brewings and accompaniments in every setting you can imagine.

And so I was able to bring you Thomas’s tea. Wasn’t that worth it? Indeed, no trouble is too great to entertain you, my dear readers.

Launch Day, Sunday, 3rd May

I do hope you enjoyed Chapter 1 of the new book and the visuals. Please let me know. On Launch Day you’ll be able to see the text of the first chapter too.

Thus, we arrive at the last stop before Launch Day of Amanda Cadabra and The Twilight Toxin.

The Free Book to Celebrate the Launch, and Mor

Drum roll, please … Amanda Cadabra and The Nightstairs, This is Book 8, the one that comes before the new book. It will be scheduled as free to download on Amazon, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Barnes & Noble and others from Sunday, 3rd May for 72 hours. If you are a subscriber to BookBub, FreeBooksy, Fussy Librarian or Robin Reads, then you will also see it in an email from them.

Next time, I shall be back with the direct links to download your free book so you can find your favoured option on The Nightstairs book Page.

There will also be a new Twilight Toxin book page. There you can find links to your choice of places to get the new book, and to catch up with the trailer and chapter 1 video.

And to top it all off, there will be unique little video to mark the day for you to enjoy here. If you have enjoyed the journey to this stage of the launch journey, and would like to help spread the word, it would mean so very much if you could like, share, or comment if you come across one of my posts about the cover, trailer, launch or free book on social media. Nothing beats a recommendation from an enthusiastic reader! Meanwhile …

Happy viewing, reading and anticipating,

Holly