misery guts

Rewriting The Ooning

2012-02-11T10:28:00.000+01:00

I've decided to rewrite The Ooning from scratch. The entire project's been bothering me since I announced I was going to publish it. Having gone through the pages for a final sub towards the end of last year, it's obvious it's not indicative of my current style; "editing" isn't going to change that. Almost ten years have passed since I first started writing it, and if it's going to be the first public example of what I can do with long form, it has to be in line with me now. And that means I have the bin the existing draft.

Going back over The Ooning's story wasn't the only option. I've been thinking about writing something entirely new for about a year. I do have some solid ideas for the next book, but starting from zero would mean a first draft probably wouldn't emerge until 2013, and it would probably kill The Ooning for good.

I don't want to just consign it to the "failed" pile. I spent a great deal of time and effort making sure the story worked, and I believe it has legs. While the writing itself is naive and there's a swathe of superfluity in both the structure and prose, I'm sure I can rewrite it into a much tighter piece. There's been a good amount of interest in it - certainly enough to make it worthwhile - so to simply can it would be dumb. I'll start again. It's not as if I have anything better to do.

I'm actually excited about it. The current draft is comic book in its vision; the idea at the time was to create something fantastical and over-the-top. Since I wrote it, my general creative direction has become more realistic, and I think it's darkened considerably. As soon as I made the decision to rewrite the entire thing, I started looking back at the characters and imagining how they could be if I stripped away the childishness and "wonder". Grimness is a hobby of mine, so applying it wholesale should give something interesting.

It's also given me the opportunity to re-work the structure. I sketched out the bones of it this week, and it's far leaner than the current draft. A few of the "colour" characters were dropped immediately: I found this liberating. Of course the baker doesn't make sense. And of course there needs to be a longer introductory period to flesh out the protagonist. I thought I'd be fearful of going back to square one, but it's clear now it's a necessary part of my creative process.

As well as trimming away character fat, I've taken out some awkward plot devices. There was some stuff I shoehorned in to make everything "work," but with fresh eyes I can see things that simply aren't needed. I had tendency to "what if" absolutely everything at the time, but I don't think the people in the book would ever be as meticulous. I doubt any of them had a plan b.

The current draft's at about 56,000 words. If I'm diligent I should have a new version at some point in the summer. I'm very busy with work - as ever - but it's only a short book and I don't see any reason why it can't happen quickly. I know the story so well that forming the new chapter structure took less than an hour, and I'm now using my ceiling-in-the-night moments to plan style and instances. It's coming. And it'll be better for the wait.

How to market a crime novel, by Simon Spurrier

2012-01-21T14:22:00.003+01:00

Someone once told me good writing always sells. I haven't read Simon Spurrier's A Serpent Uncoiled, but others believe it's a fine piece. It hasn't sold. See why below. Via Gillen.

Fiddling with Hunter S Thompson's lighthouse after work

2012-01-19T20:01:00.001+01:00

I fiddled about with Misery Guts' design, and even updated my profile shot. We're so pretty.

I've been getting on decently with the short story, but I think I'm going to enter it into a competition rather than posting it here straight away. It's probably the most I've worked at setting a piece of fiction, so it'll worth seeing if it gets anywhere. I'm going to put it into the Bridport Prize. Not really sure why I shouldn't.

I'm writing a lot more at work at the moment, which is pleasing. I looked back at Metro 2033 and Darksiders yesterday, and put in two opinion pieces last week, one on the likelihood on new consoles being announced this year and one on Apple's place in gaming. I'm working on a feature based on a trip I attended just before the Christmas break, which I'm hoping to get completely cleared up next week, and I've started on a much larger VG247 project we're keeping under wraps for the time being.

I also had some exciting news this week about a release we're making in the middle of February; more on that soon. And, finally, I did some freelance for T3 magazine yesterday, talking about Vita's chances. Fiona has to take a new headshot of me for that, hence the picture change.

Randomly, Bloomsbury's started sending me review copies of books. This is incredibly cool. Not a million percent sure how it happened, but a copy of William Stephenson's Gonzo Republic: Hunter S Thompson's America is winging its way over from the UK. It's out on February 20, the seventh anniversary of Thompson's suicide. I'll put a verdict up here soon.

It'll have to wait until I finish Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. I know I'm redefining the term, "Late to the party," but it's just staggering. Such a beautiful book. It's quite something to feel as though you're drowning when you read. Inspirational in absolutely the best way.

All of this isn't helping my fiction production too much, but I get to write for a living and someone's sending me a free book; I doubt I could be luckier.

Short story's back broken, Ooning coming next

2012-01-02T20:59:00.002+01:00

Happy New Year. I've spent the break soldiering on with the female serial killer. I think I've finally got the handle of her, but it's been a pain. There's been more fact involved than in the previous stories and none of it's come easily. Research aside, I was genuinely exhausted when I finished work in December, and that's likely to have played a role in making things difficult. She'll be done in the next week, even so.

I'm laying myself a few ground rules for 2012. I like New Year resolutions. They can help progress a lot if they're put together sensibly and you don't overreach. One of my biggest problems with writing right now is distraction. I'm putting a limit on Twitter and Facebook this year. I spend far too much time browsing status updates about football scores and whether or not Sherlock was any good. There's no future in it. I can't drop social media altogether for obvious reasons, but I'm going to pull back on the personal stuff. Ultimately, it doesn't help.

I'm going to make sure I do half an hour of personal writing work every day, as I said previously. It's achievable. The Ooning's got a way to go and it's not going to fix itself, so that's first on the list. I will get it out this year. I'm going to stick with the short stories, too. But even if the 30 minutes is taken writing blog updates here, it's still a valuable use of time.

I've been reading a lot over the holiday, which I've enjoyed hugely. Since the start of the break I finished a second read of Nausea and I'm nearly done with The Journey Home, an Icelandic novel that's been sitting on my shelf for years. Reading more, clichéd as it is, is another resolution I will keep up. Since we started our family I've read frighteningly little; for the past five years I doubt I've read more than two or three books a year. I stumbled across Goodreads.com in December thanks to lady called Brenna, the author of reading blog LitMusings. Goodreads is a fantastic way to get back into books if you've lapsed. You can catalogue books you've read, rate and review, get recommendations from friends, browse genre lists and all the rest. I'm late to the party here; it has nearly 7 million members. I can see why. I'm addicted to it already. There are some fantastic reference lists on there (check Best French Literature for fun). It seems better to be hooked on reading and books than coma-refreshing Twitter, especially since my goal is to be read and write books. And not coma-refresh Twitter.

Create an account and friend me up, if you like. Here I am.

So. Short story in the next week. Work on Ooning to restart after that. I do have other personal writing plans for this year, but we'll see how progress goes with current work before thinking further.

Grow some balls: stop rotting your children with TV

2011-11-25T20:20:00.001+01:00

I'm reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Meredith at the moment. She's on the verge of tears in parts, so completely is she transported by the vision. It's amazing. This is the first book I've read to her as a "big girl" that's shocked her imagination. I can see it in her eyes. She's now desperate to read English, and tries harder than ever to make out the words. She's only five. It makes my chest feel as though it's bursting.

It's impossible to see the book's messages as a child - all you're thinking of is sugar - but what's surprised me is how heavily it's aimed at parents. We've just finished reading the chapter where Mike Teavee miniaturises himself out of love for the gogglebox. The Oompa-Loompas' finger-wagging song as they drag his parents away to attempt the stretch the brat back to normality is just as relevant now as it was in 1964.

It resonated with me particularly as we're about to remove "television" completely from our family. We've let the kids watch TV up to now, but the boys are nearly three and still at home; they need to be stimulated, not sedated. At the New Year, it's goodbye square nanny.

We're still going to be keeping a screen downstairs so we can watch films and I can play games, but our TV connection will be no more. We're getting rid of it because television is brain-rotting, life-stealing shit, and please don't lie to yourself that it isn't: why don't you make your existence infinitely less stupid by getting rid of the fucking thing? I promise you: you'll miss nothing.

Take heed of the little people, courtesy of RoaldDahlFans.

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set–
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all the shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink–
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK–HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY...USED...TO...READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic takes
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy–Winkle and–
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How The Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole–
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks–
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.
And once they start–oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hears. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
P.S. Regarding Mike Teavee,
We very much regret that we
Shall simply have to wait and see
If we can get him back his height.
But if we can't–it serves him right.

Writing time management, researching female serial killers

2011-11-21T19:58:00.001+01:00

I'm not doing a great deal of work outside of VG247 at the moment, so I've been forced to go back to the "30-minute rule".

I inflicted this on myself when I was writing the Ooning. It's simple: you work for a minimum of 30 minutes a day on your writing project. I'm a chronic procrastinator, so weeks and months can drift passed with no progress unless I impose some daily regulation. Half an hour is enough to write at least 500 words once planning's complete, and it quickly tallies up if you're focused enough to stick to the plan.

I never am, of course. The fail-safe is "the grid". This is a calendar I stick on the wall next to my computer. Every day that passes gets struck out diagonally; if the 500 words are written, the other diagonal's drawn to form a cross. If I get behind - this isn't always my fault; if I travel, or inadvertently spawn three children, or whatever else, sometimes I can't do the work - then I end up with a bunch of half-cross dates I have to make up with 1,000-word days and weekend pushing. If I write 300 words in half an hour, then I stop. If I'm feeling good about it, I write more. Some days I can't stop. Some days I can barely start.

It's sad I have to trick myself with such a stupid system instead of just doing the writing, but, as any flump will tell you, the greatest enemy of production is inertia. The first few words, my brain believes, are the hardest. The 30-minute rule makes me start; you can't continue unless you begin.

I need to get back to daily writing because I've got two projects on the go and I'm determined to get them done. The first is a continuation. The Chair drew a fair amount of attention thanks, I assume, to its level of violence. My mother read it and called me a "nasty boy". The idea was never to shock with that piece, but to explore what is, in fact, a relatively common scenario for male serial killers. Around half of all serial killing by men is sexually motivated, and some perpetrators find it impossible to achieve gratification unless they commit certain acts. The man in the story was doing what he felt compelled to do.

That's not to say these crimes are defensible, obviously, and it seemed to me that some found it uncomfortable to read because it portrayed violence against a woman. I was talking about it with Brenna, VG247's resident Australian, and she suggested I might look at writing something similar from a female perspective, with a woman as the murderer.

I started researching this a few weeks ago. Female serial killers are rare, and their modi operandi, in general, revolve around poisoning. When we think of serial killers in the main, we tend to summon images of men because their acts can be gruesome, rage-filled events involving rape and butchery; the majority of female serial killers murder for profit, and tend to kill in either the home or in specific, indoor locations such as hospitals or nursing facilities.

The term "serial killer" is actually not especially accurate for most women guilty of multiple murders. Very few female serial murderers kill in the sadistic or sexually-motivated ways associated with their male counterparts, but rather choose relatives or other people they know well as victims in domestic situations. Probably the two most famous types of female serial killers are the "Black Widow" - a woman that secures husbands specifically to kill them for profit - and the nurse.

The idea of a woman murdering people in her care or trust with theoretically undetectable methods such as poison and suffocation has a disquieting element missing from the man hunting strangers on the street. The female serial killer is no less psychopathic than her male equivalent, but her usual methods may mean she's able to maintain a facade of normality, and avoid detection, for far greater time periods. She's also able to kill in situations where other people can be very close by, potentially even in the same room, injecting drugs into drips in hospitals or smothering old people on night shifts. There's no sound, and people die in hospitals and care homes. If there are no suspicious circumstances, why perform an autopsy?

I'll start writing soon. The plan's there, but I still have some stuff to do. I'm a visual writer, in that it helps me a great deal to physically see things and record detail, and I tend to find inspiration in experience. Walking in the woods helps me write about woods. Watching the sea helps me write about the sea. Some people can gloss over smells and colour, but without experience I can find it difficult to describe. There are some locations I need to visit before I get going.

The other project, obviously, is the Ooning. I have to be honest; I'm a little concerned about releasing it at all. It was written a long time ago and it feels naive. Maybe there's an endearing quality to that, but it may just be bad. I'm going to make the rewrites and finish the final edit and I'll see where it stands.

All of this adds up to a fair amount of work. Nothing half an hour a day won't cure, I'm sure.

The Ooning - release delayed

2011-11-20T11:32:00.001+01:00

Inevitable. I finished editing the book, then gave it to a few trusted friends to read. They immediately came back with some fundamental criticism, making it clear it's not finished. I need to rewrite the first two chapters at least, so I'm not planning on releasing it any time soon. I think it's unlikely I'll be putting it out this year.

This is a good thing. I'm under no time pressure, and I've got a good publisher for the non-Kindle version, so releasing it in a rough state would be stupid. I'm sorry if you're waiting to read it, but I'm sure the world will keep turning and I'll look less stupid as a result of delaying.

It was the eighth copy edit this time, but when I reached the end I wasn't happy. I know some chunky rewrites and another proof will either finish it or get close to it. I have to be anal about it: if I'm not, who will be?

To quote Michael Crichton: "Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.”

In other me-writing news, I'm doing the prep work for a second story based on serial killing. I'm hoping to have this out relatively quickly; you'll be able to read it here.

Pushing for the win

2011-11-08T12:46:00.002+01:00

October has been and gone, but I'm over 160 pages into the final edit and down to 206 in total. It's going to happen this week, as I'm on holiday and not back to work until Monday. Determined to get it done before returning. I now understand why everything slips.

Announcing my first novel - The Ooning

2011-10-10T20:57:00.001+02:00

My first novel is called The Ooning. Eurogamer's Martin Taylor has made its promotional site, which includes first details of the plot:

"AFTER A TEENAGE drugs binge ends in disaster, Christopher Coal spends the next decade burying self-hate in fear and drink. Forced to face his past, he finds himself in a Welsh village full of idiots, killers and occultism, struggling to solve a riddle destined to either absolve or destroy him."

I'm well into the final proof now; I've completed nearly 120 pages of just over 200. I will get this through the door this month. You will then buy it for £0.99 on digital platforms, or for a soon-to-be-determined price as a paper copy.You'll be please to hear it involves wanking, so breathe easy. I should have a firm release date soon.

The grind

2011-09-28T22:23:00.000+02:00

I'm now 89 pages through the book's final edit, and fully remembering what a debilitating fucking grind working on a piece this large can be. I'm aiming to get it live in October now, and I'm working on it every night. Between 5-10 pages are completed each day. I have to do it once the kids are in bed, and by 10pm I'm cross-eyed, so there's a limit to what can happen. I'm going to start setting aside time at weekends, or it's going to be tough to get it out before November.

As annoying as it is, though, I've been pleased with the last sections. I feel I'm best when I let myself run, rather than forcing myself into a structure, and I enjoy surrealism. It winds up towards the end, and ensuring the story didn't leak nearly drove me insane at the time; I'm fairly sure it stands up. I'm very much looking forward to people reading it. I'm not worried about it any more, to be honest.

I've reserved a domain, so I need to sort out a site in the next week. As I said in the last post, I'll start talking about the name and premise when I hit 100 pages edited.

The lager demons

2011-09-14T19:43:00.000+02:00

We're halfway through September, and I'm about 70 pages into the final edit. It's odd working back through copy I wrote so long ago. It's not me any more. I'm stripping out line after line, and it's the better for it, but I'd never write this book again. I'll be glad to get it out and move onto a new long project. My mental and practical priorities are so different now it's difficult to believe I could be so self-absorbed. I don't know how I ever found the time.

I think I'm pleased with what's left. It's impossible not to constantly doubt my own ability. Not settling for anything other than your best is very noble, but the elephant in the increasingly small room indicates that perhaps I'll never be "good enough". I read some of it and it excites me. Sometimes it's just shit. Other times it makes me feel self-conscious, embarrassed of "Old Pat". I've been straight for nearly eight years; I can't undo what happened, and nor do I regret anything, but I sometimes look back on that period and struggle to understand why I thought the way I did. Old Pat isn't in these pages, but his death is. Reading this again is like watching a child learn to walk; it's pitiful.

But. Pathetic as it may be, it's solid. And it's hard.I'll announce the name when I hit 100 pages. That should be in the next few days, assuming TGS doesn't turn into something ridiculous overnight, and then I'm going to get Eurogamer Expo out of the way and push on it.

I want it done.

The cover image of my first novel

2011-08-25T12:40:00.000+02:00

MAB cover shown tomorrow

2011-08-24T19:24:00.000+02:00

Correct, MAB fans; I'm going to publish the cover image of My Amazing Book tomorrow morning. Editing is ongoing after being stalled by gamescom, but hopefully this will give you an idea of the story's air. I'm pushing on with it now, but realistically I think I'm looking at an October release because of TGS.

I may offer the first chapter for free in return for Facebook likes, as is apparently "all the go" with my games marketing associates.

In other MAB news, I'm working with an eBook publisher on the non-Kindle stuff, so hopefully that side of things is going to be painless, in that I won't have to do anything. Seems sensible.

Watch at 11.00am UK time tomorrow for MAB's first big reveal. I hope the internet's capable of containing the rush.

Getting there

2011-07-30T23:04:00.000+02:00

Finished the first 50 pages of the final book edit tonight. It's 219 pages long. Not quite sure exactly how long it's going to take, but I'm getting through it. I think "when it's done" is what it has to be. Can't release it before then. That would be stupid.

Also, it's going to be no problem releasing a general version for other e-readers besides Kindle, Mr Tom, so it'll definitely be usable on your Sony device.

The Grief Compass

2011-07-24T14:42:00.001+02:00

Amy Winehouse’s death yesterday and the inevitable Twitter fight that resulted from it kept me awake last night. I think about death and dying a lot. I write about it because I’m obsessed with it. I’m not an especially morbid person, but I’m keenly aware that I’m going to die.

Plenty of people died this weekend, and the social networks were alight. There were two instant Twitter reactions to Winehouse’s passing, as there are when any celebrity dies. Firstly, a barrage of people expressed sadness at the news, about the “waste” of her dying young. This was immediately countered with posters rolling their virtual eyes at the canonisation of celebrities when they die before their time.

Circumstance threw in a third contingent. Winehouse died the day after Anders Behring Breivik murdered some 90 people in Norway, causing many to question the sense of “perspective” in finding sadness at a junkie singer shuffling off her coil.

This raises the question: can we grieve multiple instances of death simultaneously, or should we be checking with some sort of grief compass before we run to our peers to express our oh-so-important personal opinion on which death matters most?

We feel sad about these incidents for different reasons. A great many people were shocked by Winehouse’s death because she affected them on a personal level with her music, and because you could, if you’d chosen to, have indulged yourself in personal detail about her troubles with addiction through the press. This is “celebrity death syndrome”: it’s the result of media-soaking, which generates a feeling of familiarity with famous strangers and creates a natural sense of sorrow when they die. Extreme examples of it are the deaths of Diana Spencer and Jade Goody.

The Norway killings were stunning in another way. We probably don’t know the people that died in the attacks, but the “bomb in a peaceful, western city” scenario will always be shocking for those that live in peaceful, western cities, and the unfolding reality of the island shooting spree provoked real feelings of grief as those removed from the incident struggled to comprehend it. Young, innocent people gunned down on a tiny island by a right wing lunatic: we can imagine being there. And we can imagine our children being there. It’s horrific in a real sense, as were the Twin Towers attacks: the Sun even headlined it as “Norway’s 9/11”.

Assuming, as we were told many times on Twitter last night, that we have to pick and choose, which story is best deserved of our sympathy? Before we can answer that, we logically have to take a look at this weekend’s other deaths to ensure we haven’t got our compass ultimately pointing in the wrong direction. It’s important to know which way is dead north.

It’s easy to find out. Go to Google News and search for “dead”.

When I looked, Winehouse was top. Second was a BBC story about a Scottish teenager that died as a passenger in a Ford Fiesta this morning. There's not much detail. The driver hit some parked cars. This is a guy you don't know dying in a car crash: how do you feel about it?

Third was Norway. Fourth, there was this from the Telegraph: “Two Chinese bullet trains have collided, causing two carriages to fall 60ft from an elevated line and killing at least 33 passengers in the first major accident on the country's high-speed rail network.”

That sounds fairly terrible. That has to be up there with Norway, right? Lots of innocent dead people. It's an accident as opposed to shooting, but there's a large-scale sense of loss. Where does it fit in the weekend dead league?

One more for luck. The next story involving deaths this weekend - as opposed to "dead ducks" or The Walking Dead - was about a man opening fire at a North Texas roller rink last night, killing five people and wounding four others before shooting himself.

That's a contender. Guns, murder, a family celebration gone wrong: it's got it all. That might even be a Winehouse-beater.

Having fun? Now consider this: 6 million children starve to death every year. To any right-minded individual, that's a baffling statistic.

In the 48 hours since the atrocities in Norway on Friday, 33,000 children have died through malnutrition. This is what had me staring at the ceiling last night. Can you imagine what it means to watch your child starve?

Even if you can't, I'm fairly sure you can try. You don't have to know those children, or a teenager killed in an early morning car accident, to feel pain over them. There's a scene at the end of my story The Chair - which details the murder of a woman - in which the victim's parents are waiting for her to arrive in a restaurant. This is supposed to show that, however faceless the woman was to the killer, someone will be ruined by her death. The same is true for virtually all deaths.

There is no "grief compass". You don't have to choose how to feel. People only react to the deaths they see in the news because they're deaths they see in the news, and it's likely most people are happy to remain ignorant of the true scale of global mortality because they're genuine, heartfelt individuals that, deep down, want to shield themselves from grief. There's a world of death surrounding you if want to see it: maybe you just don't.

That's up to you. But I'm certain if someone tells you you're not allowed to feel sorrow when someone dies just because someone else has died, you can tell that person otherwise.

MAB in 66% pre-release slash shock

2011-07-17T12:43:00.008+02:00

Having actually looked at the Kindle Store on Amazon, it appears pretty much every paid novel on there costs less than I thought it would. Pricing My Amazing Book (MAB) at £2.99, then, is probably either very stupid or demonstrates my hilariously over-inflated opinion of my own worth. Potentially both.

That considered, the good news is that MAB's been reduced before it's even come out. It'll cost £0.99. Now I know what Satoru Iwata was talking about at GDC.

Pricing isn't the only revelation I experienced today by bothering to do some research. There's also the matter of categories. MAB's going in "horror" and "literary fiction". It's arguably a crime story as well, but you're only allowed to select two fields.

I have precisely no idea how possible it is to get into the top 100 charts in these channels. My inkling is "not very" but "it can happen," despite there being 11,489 pieces of horror fiction and 10,775 literary books on the UK eStore.

Top of the horror chart is Thirst, a vampire story by Claire Farrell. Farrell's unpublished in paper as far as I can see, but she's put out a string of 50-60,000-word novels in the last two years aimed at the youth horror market. Lesson: write a lot, publish it.

It's worth noting, however, that Thirst is around 700th in the overall Kindle chart.

Second is Once Bitten: a thriller with bite, by Stephen Leather. Yours for £0.86. Leather's sold more than 2 million physical books and is now published by Hodder & Stoughton. His Kindle books exist because Hodder thought they were too short and fell outside his normal military and crime themes.

Beating him should be a doddle. Once Bitten is 54th in the overall top 100.

For some reason, Camus's The Plague is listed as a horror book at 18th. The obvious super-horrors - Dracula, Frankenstein, and all the rest of it - are there too.

To get anywhere near the top of the horror chart, then, I need to beat Camus, Bram Stoker, an established British war novelist who's dominating Kindle for a laugh, and a lady with apparently superhuman fingers and a vampire fetish. Down near the bottom of the top 100 are some wannabe chancers called James Herbert, Stephen King and Peter James.

The literary chart's even tougher. Last Train from Liguria by Irish author Christine Dwyer Hickey is number one. She made her name with Tatty and has been long-listed for the Orange Prize. This is a well-known book published by Atlantic in 2009.

Sarah Winman's When God Was a Rabbit is second. This is a similar deal: it's been reviewed everywhere.

Third is Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. Again, the broadsheets have been all over it since it was published in 2009.

Just for fun, The Great Gatsby's fourth. I do enjoy a challenge. Sebastian Faulks and Dean Koontz clog up the top 100's lower levels.

I could be daunted, but that would be weak. If Claire Farrell can do it, I probably can too.

As stupidly hard as it may seem to be able to get anywhere with any of this, there are things you can do to help.

Firstly, buy the book when I publish it. It's a quid. You spend more when you park your car. Don't not buy it. Do the opposite of that. It's a single pound. You can do it. Buy. The. Book.

Secondly, review it on Amazon. Even this would help: "It was fucking great, but the kidney section made me feel physically sick." The more the merrier.

Doing these two things will help push MAB to further sales. I could make literally dozens of pounds. If I hit £10, I'll write another one. Deal?

Editing and formatting

2011-07-16T20:02:00.002+02:00

I've starting editing the book for release. It's going to take at least a few weeks, I think. Fiona wants to read it before it goes live, and that's sensible. Very excited about getting it out there, and I've received some brilliant notes of support. I'm going to aim to get it done before the end of the month, but it may take longer. Seems silly to rush it after this long.

I've formatted the document for Kindle, and I've designed the cover. Kindle's stupidly easy to work with, from the look of it. Hopefully the publication process itself won't be a pain.

Once it's done I'll finish off the short story I was writing before the AFND and stick it on here.

Releasing my first novel

2011-07-12T20:24:00.004+02:00

Following the Amazing Franchise Novel Disaster, I spent a week sitting on the beach in Argelès-sur-Mer thinking about what to do next. Jörg Tittel suggested I release the book for Kindle, not knowing it hadn't actually been written, but this reminded me I do have a completed novel I could put out now.

I started it eight years ago. It fetched me a handful of stock agency rejections when I tried to sell it before it was finished. The last edit was completed in 2008, the year we launched VG247. Needless to say, I haven't looked at it since.

It's a surreal horror mystery I pushed out in the period immediately after I stopped drinking. I started reading it again this week, and it's fairly unpleasant. Frenzied writing soaked up the new sobriety, and going into it again was like visiting the mad old relatives you pity and love, but sort of wish were dead. I produced screaming pages.

You'll be able to see for yourself soon. I'm going to charge £2.99 for it. That's $4.77, or less than 400 Microsoft Points. It's hundreds of hours of work, so I think I'm entitled. Consider it an "indie release for XBLA," or whatever. You can get a Kindle app for pretty much any screen you own, so don't be a twat: buy my book and one less bottle of wine that week. Afford me closure.

Then with this out of the way I can start prepping for the next attempt at a franchise project and think seriously about writing another full-length original novel.

This is exciting. I might publish it next week. Might not. Try not to splinter the edge of your seat.

Bollocks

2011-06-30T15:49:00.003+02:00

My involvement in a book deal I'd been working on for around two years ended in failure yesterday. I can't talk about specifics as I'm under NDA, but, obviously, it's a difficult turn.

In a way, I feel relieved; it had become obvious something wasn't right with the process, and the resolution means I can move on, at least to a degree.

The editor involved wants to "continue to work" with me, so there is a giant upside, but after so much negotiation, conference-calling, badgering and sample-writing, that this has fallen through hasn't yet sunk in. While a weight's been lifted, there's a numbness it'd be easy to succumb to. I see now why so many aspiring novelists remain just that.

I'm exhausted for every reason. We're going on holiday next week for the first time in nearly four years. I have to stop thinking about this stuff.

But I will not stop. This is not supposed to be easy. If I stop, I lose. I will not stop.

The Yellow Brick Road

2011-06-12T09:21:00.000+02:00

Going to scrap the imaginary thing. It'd be veering from the Yellow Brick Road. Had some inspiring feedback from the last story, so I'm going to make like a postage stamp: stick to it until it gets there.

E3 and Meredith's birthday are over now, so I should be able to find some time for some extra writing over the next month. It's "silly season" at work, and it'll stay very busy until mid-November at the least, but I'm taking a week's holiday (!) at the beginning of July and the general VG247 workload is finally becoming manageable as the team matures. It's better now.

The woods are beyond the luminous spring green and are starting to settle. Going to spend a few nights alone out in the deeper forest over the summer, and I'm sure I'll take some material from that. I want to produce something longer next.

Longer, harder, faster

2011-05-13T22:47:00.000+02:00

I've started work on something bigger. I'm finding it quite difficult to get out into the woods much at the moment because of work and the garden; the vegetables are pretty needy, and it's E3 season now. As a result I'm looking for inspiration elsewhere, and I've taken to inventing completely imaginary worlds. The next story should be departure from pretty much everything I've written away from games so far, but it's coming naturally. Feels good to do something new.

I think this'll take a while, though.

Whale

2011-05-07T14:42:00.000+02:00

   I stand on a path in black, my hands dripping with pearls, and I drift. Stars plug my mouth and line the road ahead with diamond vapour. My hair peels from my scalp leaving coal seams, nothing for my eyes to see save glow. A point in space, my fingers gone, my skin gone and my self gone, and everything left on and in the path; it whips, oscillates from snakish languish to beam, brightness absolute, an obliterating light from my centre to nautilus whirls and, eventually, a firmament laced with jewels. I die.
   My right eye’s numb and I spit snow, then drag my knees up under my body and shake my head. I stand and steady myself against a trunk. My left ear rings. Pines army the hill. I look for sharks but find nothing, and hear no sound over the din. Fog mists my head and I sit on a stump, folding a knife from my pocket. I spit on my chin and work my chest until my breathing rests, then stand. Snow shucks from the my boot-tips as they crab through the needles; my hands fly up as I jump to a path visible only through its flatness. Dredge black pine-tops bolster the walkway, prop it over a steep run down into forest. Bald patches in the snow file away back up the slope but the trees refuse to break and I see this path is the only option. My compass points in the wrong direction and I crouch and look straight up, seeing sky. It’s metal, darkening. South west, says the needle, but that’s not in my head. I screw my eyes together and look at the knife. South west, says the needle. I break the knife and clasp it to my pocket, then pat my trousers and my coat.
   Look back through the door into the kitchen. Next to the balloon water heater stands a woman, staring through spiderwebs. Cooling fans in my PC whine through dust. Numbers and brackets and words, but no sense. Bulb blows. Cup eyes with my hand. My phone and keys sharp in a bed of yellowing demands. I take the keys and make some excuse.
   Footprints behind me but not in front, and this isn’t the earlier way. Down into the darkness there’s nothing, no hint of a lower trail, and the snow ahead of me stays on a level and pushes round the side of the mountain. It disappears on a bend. Sky, snow, trees, sky, snow, trees, and no sound save for my boots in the snow and my breath. I pat my pockets and put the knife in my hand again, onward towards the bend. Nothing beyond it but another bend.
   I crouch and eat snow, scanning the trees, then move towards the point in the trunks where the snake vanishes. Gaps have opened in my boot leather, I notice for the first time, but they’ll hold. My feet are warm, but the boots are wettening. The path curls open and turns again, the pines giving way to scrub oak and a lake I’ve never seen. A cross in the paths makes me stop. I wipe my eyes and listen, hearing nothing. No snowfall, or bird call. Nothing. Down. I turn right away from the summit and steeply down, only to be moving back up within five minutes and semi-running. I look down to see red grooves in my palm from gripping the knife handle.
   The oaks drop to the right and open on a long valley. I’m high. Forest smothers the opposing wall like moss, and down the slope runs fallen pine rotting under the snow, crushed underfoot as I run off the edge of the path, small trunks splintering under my soles, down a path never trodden, emptiness crushing my chest, ankles saved by laces, over rocks and logfall and legs buckling at a levelling onto a frozen mudtrack. Stars in my mouth. The hump I’ve descended forms a whale of trees up to the left, and I seem no further down into the valley’s trough. The waves sicken me, light burning colourless. Just white. I am a victim of scale and I hate myself.
   A bluff drops to scree as I run forward. Down straight, using my shoulders as counterweights, vision blurred by comets as I drop over a rock through drifts and skid vertically, plummeting to a snow explosion, wading forward with my mouth hanging open and collapse onto my side, whiteness swallowing me as the clearing shatters with movement.
   A paw cresting the head of the snow in phosphorous showers that hang in the air with no weight, dancing with streams of blood-specked saliva and a mouth flailing for meat. Rivered muscles flow under skin, loosely held and tight; eyes white and rolled, neck choked and old, strangled in the white. A brother births the line of pines, a giant partner in death. Teeth and snow and hate. As their legs eat the powder I push back and gasp, but legs have failed and I find no knife. Dripping green and deadly faces, shaven clean and purple jowled, barrels straight and up as the roar kills the silence and the two threaten to break their leashes.
   “Perdu,” I scream. “Perdu.”

Got one

2011-04-03T12:45:00.000+02:00

Managed an afternoon in the forest with the kids yesterday. Been talking to Fiona a lot about her current story, and it's helped me finalise the plan for my next. I can start writing now.

I'm going to put one of these out a month from now on, just to keep me oiled. Not having time to write is a terrible excuse, like being too busy watching TV to stay fit. Too much Facebook and Twitter. Need to trim the fat. Need to produce.

I'll get it finished next week.

Muse

2011-04-01T11:46:00.000+02:00

Leaving this for six months seems excessive, but I've been too busy to write. Fiona, however, has found time to start putting together a short story for a competition, and this has spurred me back into glacial action. At least I'm thinking about words again.

I was going to post up another book chapter, but I think I'm going to write something new. Spring's forcing optimism at the moment, so I'll get up into the woods and see what happens this weekend. The hunt here's stopped killing deer for the spring, so getting off the paths isn't a matter of shot-avoidance any more. Still hear guns on Sunday, though.

Readers

2010-10-11T10:12:00.000+02:00

Some people appear to have actually read that last story; this makes me happy.

I'm going to sort out links for e-readers for future work, as requested. Should have a new piece up in the next few weeks, so I'll try to get it done for that. The next one's already written, and it's quite black. Sorry about that.

I'll start another story this week as well, which should help solidify ideas for book two. I'm going back to England for the GMAs on Thursday, so I'll get the first stuff down on the trip.

Recovery and integration

2010-10-07T18:37:00.001+02:00

   Coal put his hand to the back of the laminated yellow door. It shook. Shit jetted into the bowl. He raised an eye and dug in fingernails. Another wave forced itself free. He grinned. Stench and dull colour encased him. Dropping his face, he pulled his hand back and tucked it under his chest, then wrapped his fingers around his sopping forehead and stared at the sparkling flooring until the air on the surface of his eyeballs dried. Liquid dripped as his arsehole chewed itself. Somewhere outside the locked cubicle a man took steps, looking for an acceptable place to hide.
   Vents moaned. Coal pulled a wrap from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, fumbling with its edge. He took a breath. One of the other cubicle doors shut and locked. A drop of sweat reached his lip and he took it away with his tongue. Blinking, he opened the paper, exposed compact powder and rested it on the towel dispenser. He bent forward, putting his hand in his trouser pocket, pulling the cloth away from a small pool of piss as an afterthought.
   Bank, he thought. No, Egg. The green plastic made furrows in the powder as he did mental arithmetic. He paused as the other man flushed, sucking his lip. The card pushed half the powder onto the paper-housing, then carved out lines after the wrap was stored. He surveyed his work. Three perfect rows aside from a small rock in the one furthest from his face. A nice bit of bite, he thought, pushing out loose faeces.
   He opened his wallet and pulled out a train ticket, tore it, dropped one half and used both hands to form a tube with the other. He took all three lines in the left nostril, large, silent exhales between each, then dropped the tube into the puddle on the floor where it unrolled. Brighton, said the dotted text on pale pink. One way.
   Coal looked forwards towards the door, his mouth set circular, his eyes laughing, creased at the corners. He pulled his lips back and blew. He closed his eyes hard, then stood, grabbed his semi-turgid penis with one hand and yanked hard down on his balls with the other. Yellow liquid trailed down his leg. Humour left his face and he tugged down and forward, gritting his teeth. He wrenched his scrotum in an effort to find an erection through the drugs and yelped, then tilted his head back, a flush of red splashing his glans. He clamped the head between the inside of his thumb and the crook of his forefinger, tasted chemical, rubbed his testicles hard together than sprayed semen over the back of the door and onto his trousers. A second spurt looped from the tip of his dick into the urine on the floor. His head stuttered.
   His breath rattled and he stooped, pulling paper from the dispenser and wiping the back of the door in smearing motions. He pulled the dry side of the towel over the back of his grubby hands and cleaned away the lumps, then crouched and made an effort to clean his trousers. He pulled them up, zipped up, fastened the belt, threw the tissue in the bowl and unlocked the door, tossing back his hair and sniffing hard as he walked into the room.
   The other man had gone. All the other doors stood at various angles other than closed. He walked to the sinks in jerky steps and hit a stubby metal tap. Water flew from the nozzle and soaked the top of his trousers. He cantered to the end of the line of mirrors to grab a fistful of paper from the box on the yellow wall. This toilet will be inspected in nine minutes, he read as he mopped at his flies with the blue towelling. The number nine was lit in red neon and, he assumed, was counting down.
   This toilet is inspected by a woman, said the sign.
   Coal patted himself with the paper for six minutes, until his trousers were no longer obviously wet and the slug trails were gone. He threw the towels into the bin and leant forwards to the mirror. His pupils had opened wide and the muscles in his legs and arms were warm and full of comfort. He saw that his chin was chiselled and his cheekbones more defined than he remembered. The puffiness was gone from the base of his eyes. He drew wet fingers through his hair and turned, striding towards the door. A woman entered as he made to leave, a small person with her black hair tied in a bun, her dark face set in disgust.
   "Cheers," said Coal. The woman cast a glance at the man and stooped over her orange bucket.
   Outside the toilet the lobby was tungsten bright. A tall man in a blue sports jacket stood looking at mobile phone accessories while an attendant waited behind a counter, his eyes fixed on a spot in space. Coal turned his head and strode passed, the plastic soles of his shoes slapping on the tile mosaic. A woman waddled past him dressed in towelling trousers and a white t-shirt. Fat fuck, thought Coal, sniffing. He rounded a corner and entered the main part of the service station.
   A newsagent and a Burger King sat side by side, the former empty aside from a two blond men and two members of staff. Free-standing signs promoted Redbull. He walked to the front of the Burger King and stood alone. A fryer hissed and Coal ignored the smell of old fat, scanning the signs covered in meat. The corner of the left-hand menu panel was broken and showed white light next to the yellows, reds and block black lettering spelling out prices for chips and sandwiches. Coal breathed and chewed his bottom lip, leaning forward over the counter to look around the side of an empty metal rack. The buttons and zip on his trousers clacked on the counter. A thin man appeared.
   He was dressed in a t-shirt and wore a cap. When he stood in front of Coal, he turned himself in exact profile, his teeth showing under a hooked nose and only one eye visible.
   "Next please," he said in a Midland drone.
   Coal furrowed his brow in confusion, then spoke. He leant forwards again as he did so. When sound came from his lips they were no more than a foot from the ear of the man in the hat.
   "XL Double Whopper with cheese meal," he said.
   "In or out," said the man in the hat.
   "In," said Coal.
   "Regular or large," said the man in the hat.
   "Regular," said Coal.
   "Drink?"
   "Diet Coke."
   "One XL Double Whopper with cheese, Barry," said the drone, his voice raised slightly. The one eye dropped as if sleeping and the fat buzz was supplemented by small chimes from the till. "Five pounds forty nine, please."
   Coal sniffed, ran his tongue over teeth inside his closed lips and pressed a note into the man's hand. Striplights arced in the eye's amber white. The attendant took the change from the till drawer without looking away from Coal, who shifted weight from one leg to the other and looked again at the signs above the man's head.
   "Mate?" said the man in the hat.
   "Oh, yes," said Coal. The coins dropped into his palm. He pocketed the money and went back to the signs. The man set him with a hateful half-face and remained motionless. Coal shook his shoulders in his suit and looked down at his fingers, then up again at the eye. Then he went back to the signs and moved his weight to the other foot. Coal put his hand on the counter. The fryer hissed.
   Malevolence radiated from the eye. Coal stared into it and his index finger twitched.
   "XL Double Whopper with cheese," said a voice from the rear of the shop. A hand emerged through a rack, its back covered in black hair, and dropped a package onto a metal chute. The fingers vanished as if slipping under water. The eye blinked and the man behind the counter moved away, shuffling, to get chips. He scooped them into a funnel and grabbed a cardboard packet. He popped it into existence. The one eye stared at the brushed metal hood of the fryer directly before it. He rested the peak of the cap against it as he slid the chips into the container. He tipped some out of the top, dropped the funnel, picked up a metal shaker with his free hand and added some salt. Coal fancied he saw dribble emerging from the open mouth before looking back at the signs.
   The one-eye brought the food back to the counter and placed it centrally. He turned away again to get the drink, pressing a button and looking through the burger rack as a pale, foamy tube limped into a cardboard cup. He turned and put it on the tray. Coal sniffed and wrinkled his nose. No ice, he thought. And no lid. He looked at the one-eye.
   "Thanks," said Coal. The one-eye moved his lip slightly showing teeth. Glare from the aluminium counter caused Coal to squint, and the cocaine dipped, letting him smell grease. He picked up the plastic tray and moved away.
   At the side of the shop front was a separate room with a doorless opening. Red metal tables and cream plastic chairs were arranged in rows. The walls were all glass aside from one painted white, upon which were two posters for Burger King products. A large man in jeans and a tight t-shirt stared at Coal as he passed, his hands thick with sauce. Coal sat as far away from him as possible. His palms faced each other over the tray, shaking, as he looked out of the darkened glass. It was raining. A lorry passed, red lights a blur on the night's mud. Coal glanced at the other man, who was now looking at the posters. Nearer the entrance, a table had been left dirty, a drink and greasy paper still in the station's motionless air. Yellow light poured from the ceiling. A bulb flickered. Coal hunched over his food and sniffed.
   There was a solid piece of semen on his right hand. He wiped it on his trousers. He looked down to see the piece of jelly hanging to his leg by a hair. He ignored it. He picked up the burger and turned it over, the paper unfolding, the flat, sweet bun showing in the light. The man was looking at him again. He could feel it. There was no sound but the distant hiss of fryers. Coal pushed his hands into the paper and pulled out the burger, blowing away a pubic hair. He ate half with one bite, meat and yellow salad pouring into the paper. The drugs made swallowing a chore, but he managed it, gagging slightly. A combination of mayonnaise and spit oozed from the side of his mouth, and he dragged the back of his hand over his face to stem the flow. The man on the other side of the room had finished eating, Coal thought: when he looked there was no one there, just another set of empty wrappers and the tray. He dropped the burger into the paper where it slid apart. The rain had stopped but the windows were wet, and he sat, alone, staring into space, hands either side of the tray, chewing gristle. Three trays on three tables and a man with his food in a triangle of red and yellow. Two cars went past, blade into corpse. Coal wiped his mouth again. He took a drink, put the cardboard cup back on the table and cast a suspicious eye over its top.
   Coal hung his head and let his hands drop to his sides in his seat. His breath was shallow. Sweat bunched in the furrows of his skin and ran along his cheeks. He sighed, his eyes shut tight, nothing but patterns behind the lids and he breathed in and out for a while and fell asleep. He opened his eyes and the room was exactly as he'd left it. The meat was becoming cold, he found when he picked the remains of the patty from the limp pieces of bread. He ate it, ignoring the taste. He tried a chip, wiping it in the sauce from the burger, which had now spread over the paper and onto the tray.
   "Fucking hell," he said.
   The carpark was orange in a night black from storm clouds. Coal stumbled from the station doors, passed a man selling RAC membership in a waterproof yellow jacket. He ignored Coal, staring forward into the building. Coal nearly hit him, falling towards the sliding doors. The RAC man didn't move.
   Outside the rain was falling again, and was cold enough to drag Coal back alert. The white stripes of crossings were mirrored in the rain and asphalt. Coal's black suit hid him and he relaxed somewhat. Tall metal arms heaved down cones of orange light, but it was dark enough for Coal. He moved between the rows of cars, stopping occasionally to look around, his face an oval fringed with blur. The clopping from his shoes halted as he found the car's door, to be replaced by the click of a key. The rain redoubled. White light washed over his shoes as he opened the door and he turned himself into the driver's seat with effort. He leant out of the grey Audi and vomited, rain falling over the back of his ears. He pulled himself back into the car and spat, the mucus half-hitting the window. Then he slammed the door.
   Darkness followed some ten seconds later, by which point he had the wrap out of his pocket. He flicked the light back on and pulled lines over a Haynes manual, dropping the empty paper to the space under the car's pedals. A piece of thicker card from the glovebox was used a a tube, and he picked vomit from his teeth when he'd finished snorting. He licked the manual. He put the manual back in the glovebox. He turned off the light and sank back into his seat.
   Coal stared at the rain as his heart pounded. He immediately wanted more drugs and started the car. He sniffed as the engine spluttered, breathing through his mouth, coughing. He lit a cigarette, and he was thankful of that, inhaling heavily, then inhaling again. He slid the window open a crack and blew out of the side of his mouth. His teeth grinned, smoke spiralling through the gaps, but the top half of his face remained unchanged. He pushed the gear stick towards first, but it slipped out of his hand. He did so again and the car leapt forwards. He stopped and turned the headlights on, the grin gone, then pulled on his seatbelt with slimy fingers. The tires complained as he pushed the engine too hard to escape the car park and moved past the signs for fuel, buses and exit, the spongy wheel turning easily for him, his face straining to see through shortsightedness and old glasses.
   He imagined a pistol in the air at the side of his wet head and the final moment before his skull collapsed. No hand held the stock. He told himself to put the gun away, but the action was illogical as he wasn't in possession of it in the first place. Come on Chris, come on Chris, come on Chris, Come on Chris then he shot himself in the face, in the face and no one could believe it. No one could believe it. He shot himself in the fucking face and no one could believe it. Fucking cut me up you cunt, he said, as an Avensis moved inside him after several miles on the M23. He sniffed. He didn't shoot himself in the face. He was a nice lad. A good man. I can't believe he's gone. I'm not going to shoot myself in the face. Put the fucking gun away.
   Brake lights across the black road. The moment when the last remnants of his brain moved through the expanding shards of skull, the smoking casing leaving the ejection port, the twisted look of shock, skin blackened by muzzle flash, the stench of exhaust fumes and eight minutes and forty three seconds at a standstill in the shitting weather. The lust for lines. He fumbled in a compartment for an iPod. Might as well try to fucking enjoy it. The white tape stayed permanently in the stereo, its crimped lead ending in a jack. He fitted it to the top of the player and found some drum and bass after squinting at the screen. He smoked as the music started, all numbness gone from his throat. Fuck it. The track's sample was a girl whispering that the Devil was in exile. Coal gripped the steering wheel. The car in front moved and he slipped off the clutch, the Audi jumping straight into the bumper. Sound shook his face. His expression registered disbelief.
   The driver of the car, a Mondeo, got out and stood in the dark and rain. Coal stared forward through the windscreen. He turned off the music at the stereo, leaving the iPod playing. He ran his hands over his head and panted. Then he opened the car door and got out.
   Coal's foot moved through the air, finding the ground after his shoe was coated evenly with rain-drops. His suit trousers moulded around his ankle in the wet, as he pushed his weight onto his right foot and grabbed the top of the door-frame with his left hand. He arched his chest, lifting himself clear from the seat. I will fucking do you. You fucking cunt. I will fucking kill you. You fucking cunt.
   A coated silhouette haloed by red and white light, spray glancing from car metal, trousers and groin visible in Coal's headlight. The shape crouched, examining the back of the Mondeo. Coal advanced, his hands set like claws, shuffling forwards, water spilling up around his shoes. The man was staring at him now, the collar bunched up against his face failing to disguise the shock at seeing Coal.
   “There's no damage,” he said.
   Fucking kill you.
   “Good,” said Coal. He shook the charlie from his shoulders and straightened his back, aware of his appearance. He blinked rain out of his eyes. ”That's good,” he said.
   The other man said nothing. Coal could see half a face in dirty white, an eye squinting. Coal attempted a smile. The man's face up-turned into a snarl as his coat billowed round his ankles in the wet, and he turned away, vanished into the pounding rain and slammed the door.
   Ahead of Coal, past his messy headlight beams, red taillights began to limp away, the Mondeo's bumper sinking under the storm's surface. A horn whined behind him. His head turned away from the crash, now soaked down to the skull, his black eyes picking through the glare of the abuser's headlights, halos confusing his vision. He stepped back. Then thought better of it and got back into the car.
   The drugs came back to him once the rain was gone. A rigidity set into his muscles that hadn't been there earlier, and he relished the near-pain. The horn sounded again, angrier. Coal put the car into gear, the starry light of the orange dials nestled against the fractured white and rain on the windscreen, and he moved slowly away. Drums, he thought, and bass. He slammed the Audi into second gear and screamed away from the person behind as the music rendered him deaf, too loud for thoughts of death.
   Towers by the roadside and the sign for Worthing. A roundabout. He nearly lost the car in the wet. Fucking care. He pounded away from Patcham up onto the A27, the cocaine vastly subsided, his hair lank in the car's smoky interior, tears pricking his eyes. A tunnel, the music off through irritation, Shoreham's lights drab against a welt of grey sea as he descended over the Downs, the port's redly lit tower a bloody thorn in a muscle of cargo and crates. Into Worthing at over a hundred, dribble coating his lower lip, a near miss on the straight into Lancing, the first signs of true fatigue as he turned past the Half Brick and up into the estate past East Worthing station. He parked his car at an angle and got out, barely remembering to lock it. He slammed the house door and put the night at his back.
   Coal climbed the worn green carpet, passed the door of the downstairs flat, and shook his keys away from the suit jacket. The door had been painted white, but not recently. Little light was afforded this part of the house from the hallway's forty-watt bulb, and the dimness gave the impression of the lock being smeared in oil or mud. Glass set in the door's front, wired with a grid and dimpled blind. Behind it Coal could make out the dirty curtain and the black gaps of the tiny landing. He caught his breath on the inward pull and his wide eye ticked in the silence after the rain. Water traced down his cheek and across his nostril. He pursed his lips together and eased the key into the lock, pushed it firmly up the the hilt. Deep green coloured his hand, grain blackening the wall. He turned the key and the door hushed open. The door ticked closed. Coal shook himself dry in the hallway and flicked on the light.
   Walls were magnolia once, but showed dirt from kicks and stains from years of cigarettes. The carpet was a sturdy blue. All doors away from the hall were open. Coal moved into the kitchen, lighting another bulb. White tightened his gut, but he ignored the sensation and yanked on the fridge door, magicking Stella. His shirt was glued to his chest. Half the beer was gone by the time he'd turned on the light in his bedroom, and was finished before he'd cut lines on the back of a CD case. He did three, quickly. He went back for another beer, turned, turned back and pulled a bottle of vodka off a shelf. He left the kitchen and turned out the light.
   Television blared before he'd hit the sofa. The Bill. He flicked. Sky News, and a bombing. Corpses on a road. He drank straight from the vodka bottle when the Stella had gone. More lines, finishing his last. He rummaged through discs on the floor in the front of the TV, nearly falling from his position on all fours, looking for porn. He found 101 Cumshots and managed to get the disc out of the yellow plastic case. He paused and took some more vodka, grimacing and nearly vomiting. Come on, he thought. Porn. The disc slid into the machine and he writhed around on the floor, wrestling with his belt as the film came to life. He spat vodka over his shirt as he dragged his cock free of his pants. Cumshot number one came. And went. The vodka tipped over a crunched newspaper as a weak erection began to fight its way through the alcohol. He arched his back and grunted and a teenager was glazed by three men on the screen. A black man fucked a white woman then put glue on her teeth. Coal turned his face to the carpet and spat bile, picking bits of dirt from his wet lips with his free hand. He threw up as a man with an exceptionally large penis jetted semen over the lip of a gaping anus. He spat again. The exceptionally large penis had been re-inserted into the anus and another, darker man was humping the girl's mouth. Coal grunted and looked down, moving his head into the pile of sick he'd just made. He opened his mouth in disgust, hissing through the stinking liquid, arching his back then bunching forwards into a ball, moving his head back before ejaculating up his nose. A primal groan was followed by spitting as he attempted to free regurgitated lumps from the sides of his lips. He wiped his hand on the carpet, his cock twitching. On the screen, a blond teenage wearing eyeliner and pop-socks pretended to enjoy herself as a fourth man wanked in her eyes while another fucked her arse.
   Coal struggled to his feet, blowing his nose, one eye closed against the vomit, his glasses lying in the puddle on the carpet. The porn pumped the room. He stepped out of his jeans and washed himself in the dark bathroom using a cold shower head. He shivered, but was numb to it. His gut felt concave. The sound of splashing water was confusing, but he made a conscious effort not to fall. He pulled a towel across his face, and his head sang. Harder, fuck me, breathed a woman from the other room. Coal put his hand against the airtexed wall and took control of his erratic breathing. His heart crunched in his bulky chest. Looking down he found his feet bathed in a greenish light from the living room bulb bouncing off the hall's blue carpet. He looked up and pulled the hair from his eyes. He looked down again and pushed his weight away from the wall.
   Vodka remains vanished through his red lips and he collapsed on the sofa, barely able to focus on the screen. The screeching in his ears tried valiantly to drown out the yeahs of the beefcake jocks and the rain on the window. Cars and a woman shouting about the Co-Op closing. Coal dropped the empty vodka bottle to the floor and heaved his weight upright. Teetering, he moved around a splintered coffee table, skirting the pile of sick, and punched at the power switch on the television. He steadied himself on the top of the box, his face close to the screen, some brunette milking two cocks onto her face. Moving himself around the front of the TV, he sat on the floor on the wet newspaper and began to masturbate again, one hand on the screen. His erection failed to materialise for some time, his penis becoming raw as his nails raked its head. Full concentration was needed to succeed, the vodka stinging his scrotum, the smell of undigested burgers mingled with the noise of women. He eventually came on his upper leg, the watery semen flecked with blood. Coal reached forwards and pressed a button on the DVD player, accidentally pausing the film. The image left on the screen as he hauled himself back to his feet was of a large, erect cock.
   He kicked the newspaper into the table and fell against the door, slamming it shut. Pushing himself backwards, he tipped over the edge of the table and into the sofa, his weight dead and his arms moving little as he went over. Onto the edge of the cushions, he spilled onto the carpet. He settled and was asleep in seconds, pressed between the bits around the sofa legs and the rough edges of the Formica table. His naked form rose and fell, oranges and apples, while the room's electronics hummed and the space in front of the television twitched to the fixed image of an eternal penis.

Marie-Pierre

2010-10-02T13:21:00.000+02:00

   While the doorframe had succeeded in holding back the brambles, its step had lost the siege. Leaves swelled in the sun, granite face-up in thorns. Darkness swallowed light inside, over the threshold and the open door; paint outstretched from oak, motionless in its suicide. A mouse sat next to a trap baited with honey bread, its chest crushed, an eye staring at blood on the earth floor.
   Shadow dulled a Ricard bottle on Marie-Pierre’s thin table, all outside light vertically down, errant rays trapped in dirty nets. Back from the window, in gloom, was a stove driven by gas bottles. Opposite, a shelf covered in flower-printed plastic supported a rusted coffee tin. Cobwebs and plaster shrouded a bulb hanging by a cloth flex.
   Ants worked on the soil and up the walls, taking advantage of crumbled lime between the stone. Corrugated iron rusted and threatened to collapse into the house’s main room, struggling under the sun’s weight. Flies and ants provided the only sound; birds hid.
   The lane had burst. Its banks were convex, flecked with blackberry flowers and green fruit heads. A throat-high field was jailed behind the house, imprisoned with grass and damsons. Hydrangea pom-poms signalled a failed garden border, blue and pink petals near-invisible against fried sky. Ash and oak tops along the path were crowned with white and, higher, leeched cobalt. The moon lay on its back and looked away, one eye closed.
   Around the track stood a gate whose tubular frame refused to close, its surround eaten by rust and greenery. Gravel provided a weed-hold beyond, leading forward through hay fodder to a fruit garden. Marie-Pierre lay in the grass at the corner of her strawberry bed.
   She was wearing a brown skirt, which had hitched up over her knee, and her black shoes had created dimples in the blades. A fly sat on her eyeball, licking it, and ants played in her hat. The myrtille bushes behind the strawberry plants bounced under the weight of two jackdaws. Marie-Pierre’s chair stood under a cherry tree. Its legs were bleaching.
   Hard pears peaked through leaves and apple stems had begun to brown. Marie-Pierre’s raspberry bushes were still clean, and would manage no crop this year thanks to the birds. Thickets, now free, pushed forward and tested toes in slug traps. Purple flecks betrayed positions of fox glove holes.
   Down the hill and perpendicular to the lane, a line of laurels masked pasture from the garden. Oaks stood behind them, annoying the field. EDF had carved a hole in the foliage for power lines, which cut shadows over the fruit.
   A tractor started. It came closer.

The Chair

2010-01-02T20:59:00.001+01:00

   Light clicked on the wife's walls. Tumbling squares lit her pupils. Cooling marbled her tea, unnoticed on the sofa's arm. The television sat on a wooden stool, the only piece of furniture in the room apart from her seat. A chandelier lit three of five bulbs. The husband opened the door.
   'Moff,' he said.
   'Where you going?' she said.
   'See Bim in pub. Back later.'
   'When?'
   'Dunno. Bit. Shouldn't be that late.'
   The squares vanished and reappeared.
   'Alright, love. See you later.'
   'Bye.'
   He shut the door. She waited till she heard him leave the house, then stood in front of the television. She looked at the curtains, at their pattern of large green leaves on a white background. A strip of night wedged them open. She sat back down, picking up the tea and drawing its skin across its surface with her upper lip. She put the cup down and covered her face with a hand.

   Full moon struggled against hurricane black. Storm clouds fought for dominance, arms spiralling toward the light. Over crested stones, sea dumped itself in sand beyond the gurneys. Foam fingers cut the surf. The shape of the man's head glitched in the storm. The path between the prom-front and beach shimmered orange aside from a gap where he'd broken two wall-mounted sodium lights an hour earlier. He watched from above, crouching behind a wall next to a white observation rail, down towards a wider section of sea-front a hundred metres away. One couple had been and gone. Only the top of his face and head was visible, his body wrapped in a walking waterproof and his hands pocketed. He kept his eyes on the distant corner.
   Two men rounded the end of the prom. He stopped breathing, pupils knocking down in clicks as the figures moved towards him. Cloud ate the moon and mist appeared, haloing every light. He clenched fists in pockets as the men drifted forwards into the unlit space. At around twenty metres he heard them laughing, both drunk. Rain fell hard and the wind peaked, killing all sound and banishing the fog. The men stopped talking and put their heads down, shrieking. The man shrank and let them pass, looking up and behind him; the rain zoetroped, converging on security lights protecting a crazy golf compound set back from the beach. Hunched, hands in the puddles, he turned back to his watch then pulled up his hood. Weather bullied the beach. Distant moonlight galvanised the far-sea cloudscape. Wind flailed the sea, washed water round his fingers, shortened his breath and she looked up, grabbing at her fringe to clear her vision and looked back down under a scowl. The wind gusted against her mid-step, and she pushed hands into pockets, her foot hovering before landing on the path. The man crawled on all fours across the top of the observation deck then semi-stood in the mud of a downward slope. He slid to standing in a park, righted himself in the sheltered position and walked forwards, moving in the opposite direction to the woman. Ahead, a block of orange light signified an throughway in the beach huts. Out of the worst of the wind, he could hear water in his shoes. The rain intensified. He watched her pass, keeping himself hidden in the park. Once she'd disappeared from view, he adjusted his hood and walked into the orange.
   She was entering the blackest part of the path when he emerged, facing the sea, the silhouette of her Van de Graaf hair tearing the town's glow apart. He waited, watching her. He looked back towards the other end of the beach. He took a ball-peen hammer out of his coat and walked towards the woman's back.
   He closed twenty metres then hit her on the back of the head. She stepped forward and raised her arms, but remained on her feet. He hit her harder. She turned over on her right ankle and fell to the floor, the motion slinging her hair upwards and downwards like a whip. When he grabbed hold of her collar, he could feel her body shaking. Her shoes slapped against the path. Grunting, he knelt and gathered the two sides of her coat together, then pulled her over to show a pale impression of her face. He pushed down on her neck with one hand and hopped into a crouching position, putting his soles to the path. He turned the peen down, the hammer vibrating while he aimed, then hit her in the left eye. He hit her again, this time on the forehead. The peen sank in. Her body stopped twitching rapidly and began steadier jerks. The hammer resisted as he pulled it back. He tucked a foot under his backside to kneel on one leg, keeping hold of her throat with one hand. A rumbling sound left her mouth as her heels ticked on the tarmac. He pushed the hammer back into his coat and fastened the zip. Rain smashed them. He pulled back his hood, panting. Wind-drawn tears ran into the water on his face.
   He took his hand off her neck and she began to move with the spasms. Looping an arm underneath her back, he raised her shoulders. He put his left hand underneath her left armpit and raised her into a fireman's lift, then took steps forward along the path. He stopped and turned, then returned and bent, keeping her body level across his shoulders as he picked up her bag. It was soaked. He turned back to the town's lights and walked again. The sea appeared to be fitting. He turned off the path when he reached a brick rotunda to his left, which was brightly lit with sodium bulbs. Her booted legs bounced in front of his eyes. The inside space stank of urine. A broken pushchair stood in a puddle next to the exit doorway. The fabric surrounding the handles was torn and flapped in the wind. He moved passed the pushchair and out onto a muddy path. As soon as he was clear of the rotunda's yellow light, he stooped and turned the woman over his shoulder and onto her back on the grass. The rain eased. A white glow from the crazy golf enclosure lit her face.
   He stood over her, looking down. Two small patches of skin remained visible around her right eye; the rest of her face was covered in blood. Bone structure around her left eye had collapsed, the entire area reduced to a red mass. Her hair lay on the grass, soaked in blood. The man turned to look at the yellow space in the base of the rotunda, black liquid striping its centre. He turned back to the woman. He stood and looked at her. The rain picked up again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Stanley knife. He pushed the blade forward and unzipped his trousers. His hands were shaking. He pulled out his flaccid penis with his left hand, pulling at it as he sniffed up rainwater. He struggled to remain upright, then knelt in the mud. He put the knife down in an area of light and used both hands to turn the woman over to be face-down against the wet ground. Bubbles formed at the corner of her mouth. With his left hand on his penis, he lifted up the woman's knee-high skirt with his right hand. Her legs were bent, so he straightened them. He pushed her skirt up over her backside. She was wearing thick tights; he grabbed the elastic at the waist and pulled them down, then left his penis alone and used both hands to roll them down to knee level. The process took over a minute. Water welled between her thighs. The woman coughed. He pulled her knickers down, again using both hands, to show a stripe of faeces raised in peaks across her buttocks. He pushed her knees as wide as he was able against both the knickers and tights. He could see the woman's vaginal lips and a smudge of pubic hair below her anus. He picked up the Stanley knife in his right hand and cut the woman's left buttock, and then cut it again, deep enough to see the muscle beneath the skin and diarrhoea. The woman's hand flapped in the mud. He pushed the blade into her anus and cut down, joining it to her vagina. His penis became erect, and he began to masturbate with his left hand. The skin at the base of his penis rubbed against the zip of his trousers. While continuing to masturbate he stabbed repeatedly at the woman's groin, slashing the woman's vulva and anal area several dozen times. He stopped masturbating and sliced off one of the vaginal lips, then put it in his mouth and began to chew. He dropped the Stanley knife next to the woman's body and moved his right leg forward so his foot rested outside the woman's knee. He repeated the action with his left foot, assuming a squatting position over the woman's rear, then tipped forward and pushed his penis into the top of her rectum. He simultaneously ejaculated and spat the skin from his mouth.
   The man stood and made a mooing sound before putting his penis away. He bent to retrieve the knife. Mud dropped from his shoes as he walked onto a path that led onto the perimeter of the crazy golf compound and onwards to a public toilet across another park.

   'I'm not entirely sure that's the best option, Mark.'
   A waitress passed with two plates.
   Mark moved a fork forwards on the wooden table, then back to its original position. He sucked the insides of his cheeks as he watched a candle flame on the fork's curved surface.
   'Mark.'
   'What you haven't explained to me, though, is why. Surely this leaves us all at the best advantage.'
   'That depends on what you mean by "advantage," doesn't it?'
   Mark looked up at the woman, dodging her eyes and focusing on the Christmas tree. Various colours reflected off its plastic branches.
   'Are you ready to order?'
   The seated woman spread the fingers of her left hand and looked down at the table.
   'No, not quite,' said the man, indicating the empty chair. 'We'll wait.'

Also...

2009-10-24T10:57:00.000+02:00

I'm going to post up one of the work-in-progress book chapters. I think I'm going to back-burner the whole thing for the time being and complete the new synopsis. Got a small amount to finish on it, but it should be live next week.

The story I started on the ferry to France is about a third done. Hopefully that'll be up the week after.

Book plot coming together

2009-10-24T10:49:00.001+02:00

Bit of a mental breakthrough on second book plot. Starting to feel I've got something worth writing. I wish my brain worked faster.

442 miles

2009-10-17T15:37:00.001+02:00

   Off the A24 past the blue sign, grinding down into red jam. Triple slip-roads standing still. Dirty Fords and Toyotas rutting between junctions, eyes ticking over numbers on the dash. Blackberry checks show nothing. Sun not long from dawn blanked by cloud. Seamless exhaust fumes and sky. A new road and the same. Long-term parking terminals one two three, and a shift in noise through an orange tunnel. Back to grey, crawl through constricted lanes: green barrier, park in C. Lot soaked in aircraft undercarriage. Outside the air smells of diesel.
   A broken wheel on my suitcase clicks down a line of cars. Bus stop two, a glass shed, is blocked by kerbs, and I’m forced to walk double the distance of my line of sight. A bus arrives and leaves before I reach the stop. A suited man arrives just after me, then a family wearing best clothes at six o'clock in the morning. The bald father stares at everything. I can smell lacquer on the mother’s hair over several feet.
   Reconcile now. Nothing. Twitter. Just Americans posting nothing. A bus arrives and an expressionless man in a black turban flicks open a door, his pupils aquaplaning on pink seas. For the entire journey, some minutes through a series of grey blocks and morgued faces hidden behind windscreens, the father looks me dead in the eye while I check my inbox.

   It’s so stupid. Why do they make you check in then wait in line? It takes just as long as checking in.
   I know.
   If they had more people on the counters we’d get there twice as fast.
   Yes.
    My eyes widen and my lips part. I move forward a few steps, reload the same emails and look at the back of my passport. We pass each other in the zigzag queue. I can’t hear them anymore.

   Where are you flying to today, sir?
   Los Angeles.
   She taps some keys. A fleck of mascara rests on her shirt collar. She’s wearing too much blusher.
   Window or aisle?
   Aisle, please. In the rows of two at the side. Not the row of five in the centre.
   I’ll see what I can do, sir.
   She makes eye contact and smiles. She stops smiling and reserves my seat. She asks me the questions about whether or not I packed my own luggage. My passport.
   Enjoy your flight, sir.
   Thanks, I say.
   I walk away.

   Customs is clogged with hundreds of people. Sheep in a run. A pretty woman in front of me keeps patting her thigh. My right upper eyelid is lower than its partner. Blinking becomes a matter of convulsion as opposed to an act. The lids don’t meet. Just twitch. One foot forward. Slap thigh. Child behind a barrier. Tracksuits and gold earrings.
   Shoes as well?
   Please. And the belt.
   I drop both into the tray behind my laptop. A man in front wrestles with boots.
   Come forward.
   The detector sounds. My arms raise and I stand aside as the guard advances. His hands are on my ass. He rubs me for a while then stops, flicking his fingers, his eyes fixed down and away from me.
   I redress and walk into a shopping area.

    My cappuccino was pre-made, a warm cup of milk containing a small amount of coffee. Holiday-makers clutch new passports and converse loudly about kwasonts. I sit at a blue table and open my laptop while drinking the coffee so fast I nearly vomit. I boot up, then take several minutes to find a line using a 3G modem. It clicks blue. The emails are the same I've viewed a dozen times on my Blackberry. I shut the computer down. Then close the lid.
    Black-blue streaks. Drunk men with top-pocket documents. Flashing wait on the departure television. I check my Blackberry then lock it.

   Dixons is inhabited by four attendants wearing blue shirts. The power adaptor I need is in a bank of power adaptors facing the tills. SLRs and camcorders stand behind the counter. I put the adaptor on the glass.
    Can I have your boarding card, please?
   I give it to him.<
   He types away. He seems enthusiastic.
   Would you like a bag for that, sir?
    No, I say. Thank you. I've got room in here. I point to my rucksack.
   OK, he says, handing me a folded receipt, the boarding pass and my scratched credit card. He holds up the adaptor. Light flares around his ears and right eye. I take the plastic case with a grunt and move toward the front of the shop. The racks of packets become a decipherable mess. The situation remains constant as I pass through the barcode detectors and back into the arcade's atrium; it's just louder and has more feet.

   Forward toward a glass wall. Then a right angle. Toward a wall covered in HSBC adverts, red slashes on white paint. Another turn and facing a travelator. To the left is carpet, and the back of a few people stomping forwards to numbers along the corridor. To the right is the moving walkway, clustered with people standing still. I walk onto the metal. Keeping time with me to the left is a man dragging a small suitcase on wheels. He is athletic, purposeful. He's wearing a suit and a brand of glasses, something like Armani. I can't see from here. I check my Blackberry. Delete some spam. Click to and from the apps panel. I step off the travelator and move towards my gate. The man in the suit heads the same way. I lock and unlock my Blackberry as I walk.

   It's always the same. My knees against the carpeted seat in front, the back of which came fully back the moment the seatbelt sign went off. Scratched perspex covers a film about a woman played by Jennifer Aniston. My eyes are filled with tears, my peripheral vision a cone of gradiated black to the more expensive seats at the front of the plane. Sometimes it's a .357 Magnum; sometimes it's a .45 Glock, but mainly it's the Magnum. Occasionally there's a 9mm Beretta, but that transforms to a 9mm Glock which instantly becomes a .45 model thanks to the larger bore. Turbulence brings my hand to the tray across my knees. The film's climaxing and I'm trying not to cry. There's a hair on my supposedly sterile plastic cup of water.
    Whether or not the pistol's barrel touches my temple depends on my mood. The gun is now floating in the air some inches from the right of my head. It's in the front of the face of a Middle Eastern man who's incapable of understanding that I don't want to talk to him. He likes coffee, he tells me, and has lived in San Diego for twenty seven years. In a few hours he will have been travelling for a full twenty four, having joined the London flight from an Iranian connection. I murmur responses and replace my headset. He stares at the screen's map, the invisible gun before his eyes. More turbulence. The plane rattles a tear free from my left eye.
    I allow my hand to hold the gun. Mostly I refuse the experience and dismiss the weapon, but now I put the stock in my palm. I stand on a firing range in Los Angeles. It's a Model 30 Glock; a .45. I've shown the staff I can operate a handgun by firing a 9mm Beretta and a Police Special, so now they don't care what they give me. The magazine is an oversized single-row block capable of holding ten rounds. I've filled the entire thing. The pad of my right index finger flicks the outer edge of the trigger's split design, the gun's only attempt at safety. It won't fire unless the finger is placed across the trigger's entire width. Light is bright, and I have a paper target out over the floor around five metres away.
    I look at the target. I'm deaf in the ear protectors. I raise the muzzle to my right temple, a little higher than I'd like thanks to the headset.
    The Middle Eastern man is asleep. Tears streak my cheeks. I pull the trigger. The gun is firmly against the side of my head in the centre of the depression just above my cheekbone. The tip of the gun's barrel is warm. I frame-spot my head exploding. There's a sleeping child sitting to my left. Muzzle flash is bloomed around the whole right side of my head. Above the shot, the moulded stations holding reading and call lights are lit white, as if flashed by a camera. At close range, the .45 ACP hollowpoint causes absolute damage. A halo of orange flame cushions my right ear. To the left of my eyes, bone, blood and other matter is sprayed across the aisle as if from a hosepipe. In the picture no one has yet reacted. Then my head flaps to the side and there's the first scream.

    At the back of the aircraft is a space in front of a toilet. If I bend forward, I can look out of a window onto a white sea. I don't understand the North. I can see the curvature of the earth from here, but all I can see on the ground is featureless ice. Sea shows through its cracks as black lines. For a time the ice preoccupied me so much I looked up the distance you can see from 35,000 feet. Taking the equation h*2R = d^2, where h is height, R is the radius of the Earth, and d is the distance to the horizon, d becomes roughly 221 miles at this height. I could walk to the other side of the plane and see the same thing. Just ice. I could look, but I don't. I've done it before. From the two windows I can see nearly 450 miles, and yet all I see is ice. Nothing of interest. Not a mountain or a variation in colour. I can't believe that this aircraft is the only thing in this landscape containing colour, anything other than frigid eternity. It's illogical. When the white stings my eyes I look back down the aisle towards my seat and see a black well. There's the impression of movement. Nothing else.

    I arch my back. To the right of my space is a staff station. Attendants are eating microwave meals. I step into the toilet and shut the door. There's piss on the floor. I can smell groin sweat. The bent mirror and low light artificially widen the pores in my skin. I remove a box from my pocket and sit down. Inside is a hypodermic syringe, a Q-tip, a spoon and a lighter. I remove a small plastic bag from from my sock, open it and remove a paper wrap. I put the plastic bag back in my sock. I open the wrap and look at the gram of brown powder. I half-fill the spoon with water from the tap and add all the powder. The lighter cracks on and I tap the spoon over its flame. A few bubbles break at the liquid's surface. I put down the lighter and fix on keeping the liquid in the spoon level while I pull off a piece of cotton wool from the Q-tip. The plastic stick drops to the floor while I roll the fibres between my right thumb and forefinger. My eyes don't leave the liquid level. The surface ripples as the plane trips through the air. The cotton wool in the liquid, I pick up the needle and fix it against the mass in the spoon, point straight down. I pull all the liquid into the syringe. Then I drop the spoon into the sink.
    Shadow coats the bottom of my jaw in the mirror, hiding the fat. I am not the man my wife married. I slap up a vein, the noise masked by the outside air-rush. I look like a dog. The light from above pushes down on my dog face like amber. Glacially. I'm an ant. I'm already dead. I push the pin into my arm, draw back a good amount of blood and inject the whole dose. Gouge instantly. Even the confetti was self-conscious. Suits from some tailor and a four-figure dress with a three in front of it. My mother in tears and my father proud. Her parents dead. Cocaine in the toilet. A hundred pounds for each meal and stupid women in high heels. The table candles had shaved scrolls. We had six bridesmaids. I loved her. Ambition kept children from our marriage. Something happens to my heart. I nod forwards, falling off the seat to push my face against the cubicle's wall. Not sure about anything now. The London flat was beyond us but we did it anyway. A sound investment. I'm not breathing because my body's mechanically incapable of doing so. I am about to suffocate to death. My cat was killed. I was distraught. The work and sex suited us for around three years before we both got bored. The chill turned to frost then to featureless ice. Last moments. The only reason we're still married is because of a shared cowardice in the face of divorce. Kicking on the door. Far too late.

    My mouth is downturned; my head nods as the engines whine. The other passengers fidget and tuck hair behind ears. Sunlight rolls across seat-backs as the plane levels and the brown mountains surrounding LA rise on the right. The Middle Eastern man is talking again, but I'm ignoring him now. Some British people ahead of me are panicking, trying to find a pen to fill in their green forms. I close my eyes, a snore pushing at the back of my throat. The Middle Eastern man will not stop talking. My Blackberry is digging into the top of my leg. When I open my eyes again, a sludge of colour's pouring passed the window and the wheels hit the ground. A cheer goes up and there's some clapping. As the plane's engines pull back, pressure forces me forwards. My eyebrows knot. The Middle Eastern man is still talking. Something happy. Something about how happy he is to be here. To be home. I open my eyes and turn to him. He's smiling.
    I'm happy for you, I say. I really am.
    The skin around his eyes pulls tighter and his smile flattens.
    I won't be going home for a little while, I say.
    Why not? he asks. Are you working here?
    Yes, I say. For a little while.
    He goes to looking out of the window, out at the heat signatures sitting over the terminals. I sniff and twist my back up, pull my Blackberry from my pocket and turn it on. The plane taxis and people around me sigh and grimace.
   Searching, says the phone.

    Hi.
    Hello.
    How are you?
    Not very good. You?
    I'm fine.
    How was the flight?
    It was all right.
    I've had a bad day. I know you don't like me talking about this.
    It's fine.
    I don't know what to say.
    Look, I've just landed. I'm still standing on the plane. I'll call once I'm through customs.
    I might be in bed by then.
    I'll try anyway.
    OK.
    Hey.
    What?
    It's OK.
    OK.
    I'll speak to you later.
    OK.
    I love you.
    I love you too.

    The Middle Eastern man alternates between looking at his knees and looking out of the window. I stand in the aisle with my head bent to one side, one hand under my rucksack's strap. I close my eyes and watch the light through their lids, then walk down towards the door.
    Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.
    Hot in the metal corridor, and round to the right in front of a glass wall. My Blackberry picks up AT&T. I receive a text detailing charges. I almost walk into a wall as I read it.
    The sheep run in front of customs is a windowless yellow room half-filled with a snaking red tape and metal pillars. Posters on the wall tell us we'll be treated politely. I fiddle with my Blackberry. People around me talk nothing. I send a text that says I love you xxx. The purposeful man from Heathrow is in the queue ahead of me. As he turns the end of one of the zigzag rows, I'm given time to look at his face. He has red eyes.

    What business are you here on?
    I'm here to see a film. I'm a producer.
    He's about fifty. Shaved well. A grey hair pokes through the gap between the buttons at the top of his blue shirt.
    What film are you here to see?
    It's an independent film I'm doing a little work on. It's called The Thaw.
    Is it good? I like movies.
    He's leafing through my passport, stapling the green visa waiver form into the central pages.
    It's going to be good, I think. I hope.
    He smiles and stamps twice.
    Have a good day.
    Thanks, I say.
   I walk away.

   Through the terminal's sliding doors stands a band of blue sky penetrated by palm trees. White and yellow cabs roll along under the concrete over-pass as officials look on. I walk to the right and find a patch of bare sidewalk on which to smoke. I don't remember lighting a cigarette, and yet I find myself smoking one when I'm approached by a man with a shaved head and a bag.
    Hi, he says, stretching out his hand. I shake it.
    Hello.
    Where are you from?
    The UK.
    Great. Would you like one of these? It's a book about you.
    No thank you.
    It's only fifteen dollars.
    No thank you.
    He stands in front of me holding the book. The cover bears a picture of a god and some text.
    No thank you, I say.