Mackenzie Knight. Mark Barry. Interview April 14th

Live and Dangerous in Rapid City South Dakota. Mackenzie Knight talks horror with Mark Barry. April 14th. 3pm Eastern. Yay!

Seriously. I am buzzing about this. Please click the link above for more details

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Interview with the magnificent paranormal DJ Mackenzie Knight

http://greenwizard62.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/mackenzie-knight-queen-of-paranormal.html

Ngaire's Interview with the magnificent paranormal DJ Mackenzie Knight

http://adventuresofceciliaspark.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/welcome-mackenzie-knight-queen-of.html?spref=bl

Wilmslow Tower: South London - an extract from Kid Atomic

Written for 14-25 year olds - the hinterland that literary thinkers are calling New Adult, Kid Atomic is a much underrated book, even by Green Wizardwatchers. Traditionally written in a third person perspective, with very little violence, no sex anywhere, (bar a fumbled, easily despatched attempted rape), very little bad language and set in a quiet suburb of Nottingham (Sherwood, just off Haydn Road), very few people have taken the plunge so far and, to my knowledge, only a few of the target age group have sampled the book. When I first set up GW, I wanted to write at least ONE book from the six which attracted an audience. If a reader didn't like one much, they could drop onto another and they might like that. It's not worked out like that: most readers who take the dive from the 99p cliff tend to buy the lot or they don't bother at all.

And for those who buy the lot, Kid Atomic is the one they talk about least.

The problem may be the beginning. The first two chapters possibly need rewriting. It's a very old fashioned book and it's a real slow burner, with a lot of character introductions and the establishment of the premise. Reading, two years on, I realised that you could get away with that in 1972. but in 2012, it's not something sage Indielit gurus recommend on their Novelwriting 101 blog articles.

Nowadays, it seems to be you have to start with the premise, introduce characters over the first fifty pages so as not to overcrowd the reader's imagination, and, of course, add some bloodshed, violent death, dirty sex and enough curses to make your grandma wince while you are at it.  Hope you enjoy it.

Anyway, here's one of my favourite chapters.  Kevin and Ricky, sent to London by the machiavellian Lance to bring back the crates for the upcoming demonstration, have found themselves in South London, at their destination. There, they meet Verna, the pungent, alluring, strangely attractive Euro-communist who is the link to the crates.

____________________

Here they were. Finally.

The Chadwick Estate.

Peckham in the afternoon.

‘Is this it, Ricky’? Kevin asked.

‘According to the satnav it is. In fact, I think our contact is up there.’ He pointed at a huge tower block and pulled out a folded and printed e-mail. ‘Wilmslow Tower. Flat 247. If that’s Wilmslow Tower, then job’s a good un. We’re nearly there, mate.’

They parked outside a children’s playground.

The entire area was empty. No children frolicked on the monkey climbers or the tiny seesaw horses. No women pushed buggies to the shops on Peckham High Street. No large, forbidding gangs of youths – the thing Ricky expected most – hanging around on BMX bikes in hoods. The area was eerily silent. 

Ricky stepped out of the van, put on his hat and gloves. It was chilly, the beginnings of an evening frost in the air. That explained things. Maybe this was one of those areas where the locals come out at night, like vampires.

‘Kevin zipped up his coat and pulled up his hood. ‘This is a bit scary, Ricky.’

‘It’s no worse than that time we got lost and cycled into Bestwick.’

‘Thanks for reminding me. I really needed that.’

‘What’s up? We got out, didn’t we!’

‘Only just. We were only kids. I still have nightmares.’

‘Mate, there’s no one about, what’s up with you!’

‘They could be anywhere. I want to go home.’

Ricky jabbed Kevin in the shoulder. ‘If anyone comes near us, leave it to me. I’ll deal with it. If it gets nasty, then, do you see that…’ he pointed airily toward the area they had just travelled through. ‘That’s Peckham High Street. Run like the clappers and hide in a shop or something.’

‘Ricky…’

‘I’m only kidding. I won’t leave you and anyway, we’re going to be fine. C’mon, let’s get moving.

The two young men walked through the children’s playground and into an alley bookended by blue tubular barriers. 

Kevin had his fingers crossed. He saw shadows everywhere, moving shadows.

As they passed row after row of sixties Maisonettes, every doorway he saw contained a silhouetted bandit in a hood waiting to cut him to pieces. He heard footsteps behind him and continually looked round. The frigid air, descending gloom, and the eerie unnatural silence, occasionally punctuated by the barking of a frustrated dog, saw his paranoia reach fever pitch. He felt something loosen a little in his belly, but the sight of Ricky strolling about in front of him stopped it from releasing.

Ricky. His friend wandered about as if he owned the place, glancing at the crumpled e-mailed address as if he was Captain Morgan at the head of a band of buccaneers about to sack the Spanish port of Portobello, or better, as if he lived right next door and had traversed the alleys, ginnels and jittys of Peckham all his young life.

There was something about Ricky that gave him confidence. 

Something indestructible about him.

But even so, Kevin thought. We’re in gangster country. Hoodies are scary enough in Nottingham, but here? The home of Hoodies.

They reached the entrance to the giant tower block that seemed to touch the sky. Kevin looked up and instantly felt sick. He sometimes suffered a form of reverse Vertigo, a condition where he is badly affected by mass, height and size, once fainting while standing underneath the Eiffel Tower looking upward.

 ‘Wil slow Towers.

‘Someone’s wabbed the M. Not far now, matey.’ Ricky said. ‘Let’s take the lift.’

They could see the lift up ahead, at the back of the graffiti-covered concourse. Mostly tags, some art. It looked like an open-air modern art gallery run by hyperactive ten year olds. The stench of urine was overpowering and there were several piles of multi-coloured dog excrement next to the staircase entrance. Some of it fresh. There was a defaced guide next to the lift that told Ricky that 247 was one below the top floor and he sighed. As he pressed the Call button, he hoped fervently that the stuff wasn’t heavy: It was going to be a devil to shift from here.

They exited the lift on the second top floor. Kevin realised that there was still no sign of anyone and, curiously, there was little sign of life in the flats, as if everyone had gone out for the day. No screaming rows. No naughty kids. No loud TVs. No loud music…all the politically motivated stereotypes of working class life that middle class BBC documentaries ejaculate nightly into living rooms around the country.

It was still silent – only the cold wind roared past the balconies, its ambience amplified by height and powered by the fading skies. He followed Ricky up the concourse. There wasn’t even a washing line to be seen, strapped between TV aerial and balcony barrier – though maybe it was too high here.

‘This is it…’ Ricky stood in front of a featureless blue door. Frosted, reinforced glass next to it, modesty unburdened by nets or curtains. Still, you couldn’t see through. A buzzer was mounted on the doorframe, a white button the size of a polo on a black base. ‘Here we go…’ Ricky pressed the button twice. In the distance, a buzzer sounded twice. ‘Let’s hope she’s in.’

They waited. And waited. And waited.

Ricky pressed the buzzer again. Still no reply.

‘We’ll have to call Lance.’ Kevin said. ‘We could be here all day.’

‘Let’s wait a bit. She might have gone out for a pint of milk and a paper.’

‘Lance said she’ll be in all day.’

‘That’s a figure of speech, Kev. She’s entitled to go out for a pint of milk and that.’

They waited a little longer, not talking. Kevin kicked distractedly at the lintel below the purple barrier. Then he heard something. The lift…

‘The lift’s coming.’

‘Might be her.’

‘Or…’

‘Kevin…’ Ricky almost wagged his finger at his wavering, spooked friend. ‘Everything’s going to be okay. You’ve got this far.’

It seemed gloomier now.

Two silhouette figures exited the lift. It was difficult to see from this distance. They looked young and, to Kevin, gangsterish.

Blue hooded coats and jeans. They started walking towards them and Kevin tensed.

‘Ricky…’ he tugged on his friend’s jacket, nervously.

‘They probably live on here.’

‘Oh no…they’re staring at us…’

‘No they’re not…’

‘Look, they are.’

Even Ricky was getting nervous. They were about twenty metres away and just about to start trotting. The wind behind them seem to howl loudly and the cold didn’t stop his neck getting warm. ‘I’ll deal with it, get behind me…’

One of the hoodies reached into his pocket as he walked. The other, faster now,  was speaking on a mobile phone. Ricky pulled Kevin back behind him quite roughly and clenched his fists. If they were going to get a kicking, he would take at least one of them with him and protect Kevin as much as possible. As they approached, he could see they were the same age as the two of them, but if they were tooled up, neither stood a chance…

‘Here we go, Kevin. Roll over and protect your head and balls…’

‘I told you we shouldn’t have done this…I told you… I told you…

The hoodies, ten metres away, were close enough for Ricky to see the whites of their eyes, but that’s all. Scarves covered up their mouths, close circuit TV camera-proof. He could see what one of them reached into his pocket for, a flash of silver in the fading gloom. Oh no, no, no, here we go, here we go..

The door opened, finally. A figure even more shadowy than the hoodies appeared, partially obscured by the light behind him. ‘Get IN. Quick. What are you waiting for…’

The two boys needed no further prompting. They jumped like triple jumpers into the flat and the door shut. On the walkway, the shuffling of feet, the breathless sighs of predators foiled, a weird, whispered cockney patois. Ricky’s heart raced and Kevin looked as if he was going to be sick.

She put her finger to his mouth and listened at the door. She whispered. ‘There are cameras out there. They won’t barge in here. I think they’re going anyway.’ She whispered in an Eastern European accent. Neither of them were sophisticated enough to know precisely which country. ‘When you leave, I’ll escort you. They’ll leave me alone. There are some real characters round here. Characters! Hah! Come…follow me.’

The flat hadn’t been painted for years.

Grey finger marks and dents punctuated the magnolia surface of the corridor. Up ahead, lit by a single, un-shaded bulb, was the living room. Leaning against each wall a component of a beige three piece suite. It had seen better days.

‘Sit.’ She pointed to the two armchairs, while she lay down on the sofa. The TV was on, an old-fashioned box resting on a coffee table, rather than a wall mounted plasma screen. A horse race, ten or so brightly coloured jockeys sailing over huge steeplechase fences. ‘I’ve placed a wager in this race. On the grey horse. That one there, look. See! You British are a silly people, but I thank the stars you gave the world racing horses…’ she said, perhaps wistfully. ‘Let me finish and we shall converse.’

Ricky could see the woman was older then them. Older than Lance. She wore tight, ripped, faded black jeans and a black Greenpeace South Atlantic Mission 2007 tee shirt. Anti-Japanese whaling. A cause he believed in - well, a cause the world believed in except the Japs and the Icelanders. Short, her feet not reaching the far arm of the sofa. Wiry and taut, like an over-tuned guitar string, a military, short back and sides haircut dyed black, parchment grey cheekbones - a sallow complexion that hadn’t seen sun for some years.

Something smelled – Ricky speculated it might have been the Mizami training shoes underneath a bookshelf behind the sofa, or maybe her pink socks that looked inky and nobbly, as if they hadn’t seen the wet bit of a washing machine for a while. 

Then, he realised in a fit of inspiration that the odour came from her. 

The spectre of past cannabis fumes loitered along with the tangy smell of her uncompromised feminine body odour. No air freshener or doilies or anything artificial about. It was definitely her - the pungent emanation of natural woman seemed almost overpowering – and, he was surprised to discover – not unattractive.

Her horse hit a fence and started to fall away from the main body of the horses and she gasped. ‘Gah! Another five pounds wasted on these things!” She switched off the TV and sat up. The muscles connecting her neck to her shoulders seemed cabled and inflated. Her blue eyes shone. ‘If you want tea, make it yourself. In there.’

‘We’ll be alright, won’t we Kevin.’

‘Definitely.’

‘I’m no-one’s bloody servant. How old are you two boys?’

‘Nineteen and twenty.’

‘I thought Lance would send men to do a man’s job, not boys.’

The lads shrugged and said nothing.

‘‘Never mind, you’re here now. I have things for you to take home. Where is your transport?’

‘Over by the children’s playground. Not that I’m complaining or anything, but weren’t we supposed to do the password and response thing?’

‘Hah! Lance playing at Revolutionaries. Who else would be calling unannounced on a winter Saturday afternoon in Peckham? I’ve been here a decade in this country and never been bothered by the Police at all. Now in Gdansk, where my father fought with Solidarnozj, I would never arrange to meet at my flat! I would meet you in a deep forest and even then, you would have to come recommended by family, not acquaintances I’ve met over the internet‘. She laughed. Her accent seemed to Ricky harsh and guttural, almost a growl, but her face was, on second glances, full of humour and gentle sarcasm.  ‘I am Verna, by the way.’

The friends made their introductions.

‘I was just kidding about the tea. I have some Earl Grey that is good for your intestines. I’ll make a pot, seeing as you’re such young boys whose mothers do all the hard work.’

‘Less of the young, Verna.’ Ricky grinned, stood up with the intention of helping her, for the purposes of standing next to her. ‘We’re nearly twenty.’

‘You’re boys to me. Sit.”

The kitchen was behind a wall, with a huge hatch. They could see her as she busied and they could hear her as she talked, animatedly. As she made the tea, chatting away seemingly about nothing at all, Ricky noticed that Verna kept looking at Kevin, who, as was his wont, hadn’t noticed a thing.

He didn’t understand why.

She must have looked at Kevin seven or eight times.

She seemed to be perusing him.

Assessing him.

There must have been a reason for it.

She wasn’t exactly hiding it either. It was just that Kevin was still shaking inside from his near-mugging experience.

As she stirred the liquid in the mugs, she looked at him one final time. Then she came back into the living room.

Craven Cottage. London: Valentines Day

This sample chapter comes from "Hollywood Shakedown" which is the crazy price of 99p and 99c on Kindle, Kindle for PC and IPad etc. 

You can buy it by clicking the title tile to your right. ___________________________>

Many judges consider Hollywood Shakedown to be my best written book. My top friend Clive - a decent judge who reads fifty plus books a year and has a colossal library - definitely considers it so. You can read more about the book here...

http://greenwizardcarla.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-great-unread-classic-hollywood.html

In this Chapter, Buddy and Simon, the threatened manuscript hunters, find themselves in London and are persuaded by a collector to go to watch an FA Cup match. The book is written in real time. This is an actual match which took place on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 between Fulham and Notts County. The collector is a Fulham supporter and the text refers to Notts in the second person, though the author is, in fact, a Notts fan. 

Notts County are currently having a terrible season, and any fan who was there will remember how brilliant a day this was.

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Chapter XVI

Craven Cottage, London:  Valentine’s Day

The train was packed solid, heading for Putney Bridge.

Three men in winter coats stood balanced – as best they could - by the doors. They were in good spirits, travelling to a football match, an FA Cup fifth round game between Fulham of the English Premier League, and underdogs, Notts County of League Two – English football's bottom tier.  The latter had survived matches against insurmountable odds to arrive at this point, including a tenacious victory away at Premier League Wigan Athletic. 

The newspapers were predicting a close game but the bookmakers – hard-nosed realists one and all – predicted a massacre in the capital. 

So far, the anticipated winter freeze and Baltic snowstorms had held off.  The optimistically named Green and Pleasant Land was covered in a bleak tincture of grey with not a beam of sunlight to be seen penetrating the skies.

In the middle of the magnificent Indian feast at Wingate's house last night, the host had invited Buddy and Simon to a football match. The gesture was connected to the quest. They would be meeting someone at the game who had something they were looking for. 

Last night, Wingate wasn't letting on why, but he revealed that he could only meet his contact at the match. It transpired that he had invited him for dinner on Saturday night but he couldn't make it due to a prior engagement. His contact was, like Wingate, a crazed Fulham supporter and never missed an opportunity to visit Craven Cottage. 

Buddy speculated that a football match was a good place to mix with hundreds of people around where any exchange of documents wouldn't be noticed. Buddy had seen enough episodes of Columbo to know this was standard practice - more hiding in plain sight for Mr. Wingate. Maybe he just wanted to go to the football and wanted to show off the game to his American friends. It was probably as simple as that – the Los Angelinos had nothing else to do that Sunday. 

The men readily agreed. They had enjoyed Wingate's company and he had helped them make a huge breakthrough – in Buddy's case, perhaps, an emotional one - and in a real sense, he had improved their odds of survival. It was clear that he wanted to share his passion for football too. How could they say no?  Indeed, Wingate was confident they would say yes. He had already paid for three tickets and he had said he would come up to Kings Cross to meet them, a mainline station not ten minutes from their hotel. He even paid for their one day travel passes, despite their protestations.

Last night, Wingate had buttonholed Buddy over cognac, a particularly fine vintage.  “Besides, it would be good education for you. You Americans could do with joining in with the sport played by everyone else in the world.  It might win you some friends.”

Though Buddy laughed convivially, Wingate was talking to the wrong man. He had been to just one gridiron match in his life - the Eagles versus the Jets when he was in Philadelphia ten years ago. As far as he was concerned, the world's sport could be yachting and he still wouldn't give a flying shit about whether America joined in or not. 

He didn't mind some sport and followed football on the TV in bars but it wasn't a major passion. He'd hated team sports at college (many considered him a geek, though he was much too hard for them to labour the point), and deliberately found ways to make himself appear less skilled than he actually was so he would be ignored and shunned by phys ed teachers. It worked. By fourteen, he was left out of every team sport at High School and he could not have been happier.  Buddy generally felt that sport was a waste of good reading - and later, drinking time. With the exception of horse racing, which he adored. His dad had taken him to the racetrack when he was a teenager and they'd spent loads of time at Hollywood Park. He didn't once complain about coming today because he was among friends in another country. Besides, this wasn't football. 

This was soccer, a game for Mexicans, crippled kids and little girls, back home. 

Here, they took it seriously. Extremely seriously.

After the curry, back in the hotel room, Simon had told him of a famous quote: 'Football isn't a matter of life and death. It’s more important than that!' 

So much so that his English partner had threatened to refuse to talk to Buddy if he once described the sport as soccer. ('I'll let you get away with it back home, Bud. But not here, mate. Its football. Football. Okay with that?' Its football') 

"I'm not really keen on sports. I prefer something more...interactive," he said to Wingate.

"We might get in a scrap. That will be an interactive experience, Bud. You'll enjoy that."

"A scrap?"

"A punch up. A bingo. An 'off' I hear the kids at the Cottage call it. A fight."  Wingate said.

Buddy guessed that Wingate was kidding. He was at least sixty five. "Well, we'll have to avoid that then," he commented..

"Hope not. Other week I whacked a Pompey fan over the head with my umbrella. Being my age, he can't hit me back."

Simon looked up from his phone. "County got any fighting lads, Wingate?”

Wingate gave a sharp intake of breath. "Hundreds. All police leave cancelled today. Hundreds of the barbarians, mate. They've wrecked pubs, service stations, cafes, football grounds all over the country. They're marauding over Watford Gap in their hundreds. We're going to have to summon the spirit of Boadicea to stop them!"

Buddy had heard about violence at British football matches and part of him was looking forward to seeing it go off.

It sounded fun, rather than the intense, ultra-violent death antics of the LA gangs; the Baseball Furies, the Uzimeisters, the Dalton pickets, the Monsters, the Thai Town Thugees, the Compton Ninjas, the Crips and the Bloods.

He didn't want any part of it though. He was still wound up after Monique's non-appearance on the phone this morning. Valentine’s Day too. He was afraid that he would take it out on someone and sometimes he didn't know his own strength. That scared him. All things considered, he hoped that the match would pass off peaceably.

"Let’s hope we all have a quiet day, huh."

"I went to see the Giants once," Wingate continued. "Everyone mingling, tailgate parties, great atmosphere. Loved it, even if the game was a bit slow. Soon after I got home, I went to see Fulham play a team of tossers called Stoke City. Got my head kicked in near Hammersmith tube station. I played dead under an A-board and when they'd had enough of me, they started on some blacks on the corner going home from church. Hundreds of them. Don't like Stoke City. They’re the Darth Vader of British football. I'll never forget the contrast between that day, and the day I had at the Giants. Incredible. Still, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye..."

"I got my head kicked in at the football too, up in Sheffield," contributed Simon. "Mind you, that was only through chatting up the wrong woman in a wine bar after the match.”

The tube train reached Putney Bridge and the carriage emptied. Buddy tensed.

This is it!  Hundreds and hundreds of people milled around the platforms all in black and white scarves. Both teams played in black and white and it was difficult to know who was who without listening to them speak. Cockneys and northerners, the ancient English division. Hawk and drake. They passed through the turnstiles and into bedlam. Outside, spivs and hawkers were in their faces like a cold wind. "Scarves, a fiver, just a fiver, anniversary scarves, woolly hats, come on, come on, get your scarves here, just a fiver...” several men were weaving and bobbing like boxers in and out of the heaving crowds.

"Fancy wearing a scarf, you guys?" Wingate reached for his wallet and grabbed hold of a young beefy with a bonehead and a denim jacket. 'Three Fulham scarves, chief.'

"Fifteen quid, squire."

He handed over a ten and a five and passed a scarf to each man.

“Three Benny hats too..."

Bonehead signaled to a bespectacled pal who rushed over through the scrumming crowds. “These'll keep you warm, chaps,” the tout said cheerfully. “Any tickets for today?”

When Wingate shook his head, the wiry tout walked off into the crowd. Ticket touting was big business in London with a thriving black market for every event. The sky above was a dark accumulation, an upside-down carpet of pregnant grey, ready to burst. "Take these back over to the States, Buddy. Tell the landlord of your bar that you've been to see the mighty Cottagers!"

They tried to get in the Eight Bells on the corner but couldn't. The pub was heaving with Notts County supporters. They were singing loudly and bouncers were having trouble with the snake-like queues outside. The trio had no chance of a pre-match drink and it was two thirty - the match kicked off at three. Buddy had come prepared though. "Here, try some of this." The recently purchased silver hip flask appeared as if by magic. Vodka.

The three took hefty, warming sips as they wrapped the scarves around their necks and mounted the black and white hats.

Putney Bridge is fundamentally an extensive park by the river and Buddy was fascinated as to how green it was. Trees in neat order like tin soldiers. Neatly sculptured hedges and lawns. Flowers dormant, the wildlife hibernating, waiting for the winter to pass (and they had experienced a bad one, the moths and foxes and badgers and voles and dormice of Putney Bridge). 

Somehow, the biting wind made it seem greener, earthier.

The trio integrated with the rubberneckers along the River Thames. There were thousands of them but Wingate's warlike portrayal of the visitors couldn't have been further from the truth. A pleasure cruiser ambled along the centre of the river, the guests on the balcony waving to those on the shore. The water was as murky as the winter sky. Just down the way was the HMS Belfast, the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament, the Eye and all the great heritage of this maritime nation. Buddy felt a sense of place. Simon tapped him on the shoulder as if detecting his thoughts: "Cook started out here on his way to the South Seas. And the Golden Hind too -  I love the Thames..."

Soon, they arrived at Craven Cottage, the home of Fulham football club.

They had to walk past the hordes of County fans waiting to get in their enclosure surrounded by yellow-jacketed Police. Wingate deliberately bumped into a County fan. "Oh sorry mate," he said, though he was nothing of the sort.

The fan glared, but said nothing. His girlfriend sneered.

Simon grinned. "You'll get our ears clipped."

"We've got Buddy with us, what's the problem. Northern cants."

There were some meaty looking blokes hanging around among the throng, blokes who looked as if they could handle themselves in a fight. One of them looked over and Buddy wasn't sure whether he was looking at Wingate or not. They had mentioned that this was an important Cup game and County were in a different division, the very bottom division and Fulham were at the top. 

They were expecting nearly six thousand County fans to make the journey here from the north and here, amongst them, there seemed double that on the streets of Putney Bridge. A mob of County fans started to sing something and all around them, everyone joined in. A song about a wheelbarrow. Buddy figured it was about their nickname, The Wheelbarrows. He made a note to ask Wingate why they had been saddled with such a nickname.

The three of them reached the Fulham West Stand. “I've got the tickets.” Wingate assured them and they followed him through a small turnstile. They queued up to get themselves three – very expensive – beers and because Buddy hadn't been searched, they followed the beers up with three warming sips from his trusty hip-flask.

Before long, the tannoy announced the arrival of the teams. Wingate led them down to a row of empty seats and he sat next to a man in a smart coat, a long blue coat and a yellow and red scarf. No hooligan he, more like a banker or an architect. The man was talking to someone on a cell phone, which must have been difficult because the noise was deafening, particularly from the end full of Northerners.

Of the four sides of the ground, only one was full – the away stand, and they were in good voice. Wingate applauded the Fulham side in white and acknowledged the man in the coat who put his phone down.

“Excuse me a bit, chaps. I need to have a chat with young Harold here.”

Harold acknowledged the Los Angelinos. “How do.”

The two Londoners went back upstairs leaving Simon and Buddy to the game. 

Buddy had never seen a soccer game before, even on TV, and the speed and intensity of it was a marvel. Crunching tackles, lightning passing, the ball sailing through the air and heading - not something American sport contained much of. 

Three match officials tried to keep a lid on the passion. The organised torrent of singing from the County end was something he hadn't heard before. The Wheelbarrow song, baiting the opposition's lack of vocal support (“Shall we sing a song for YOU!”), abject derision, (“Premiership, you're having a LAFF!”), and more of the wheelbarrow song. 

Clearly, this was their favourite song – a weapon of psychological warfare – to which the West London locals had no answer. The six thousand presented a deafening cacophony of noise. A spectator in glasses and a red wool hat was clearly getting irritated. He stood up behind Buddy. “CAMON, FULHAM – DO THESE NORTHERN FACKERS!! HIT THE CANTS! ON THE BREAK, ON THE BREAK. TO THE BYLINE, THE BYLINE. CANTS, CANTS!” and others joined in with his tirade. 

Seemingly as if responding to the man's taunts of encouragement, Fulham scored, a long range shot into the corner leaving the County keeper no chance. Silence from the away end and pandemonium from the home side. The man in the wool hat jumped on Buddy and tried to hug him. Buddy was filled with the essence of humanity and joy without fully understanding why. 

Ten minutes later, Fulham scored again, the gulf in class obvious between the two sides, one assembled at great expense, the other put together for less than the price of one Fulham player: The British football experience encapsulated in one sentence, 'an allegory of medieval feudalism', Simon said in the hotel last night. 'The rich stealing from the poor to feather their own nests. The British game needs the US draft system...'  Watching the inequalities underpinning this game of football, it was not hard to agree with that assessment.

There was no sign of Wingate. “I'll go and see where he is...” Simon said, leaving Buddy there sitting there watching the game. A wrinkled old man with a grey, wispy beard and wearing a black coat and two Fulham scarves turned to Buddy. “You a Yank, then?”

“Sure,” Buddy said.

“What do you reckon to this caper?”

“It’s great fun,” Buddy replied.

“Fun? Bunch of Northern cants. Glad to shut them up with the brace. Faccers!”

“I'll bet.” Buddy said to the second angry old man he'd met today - something which disconcerted him. The old man wiped his nose and continued.

“I ain't kidding, mate. I faccin hate them Northern cants. Coming down 'ere taking faccin liberties. I wish I was ten years younger.”

“Sure...”

“I'd see em outside on the High Street, I would. Cants...I'll give em faccin Wheelbarrows.”

“Hey, listen, I'm just going to watch the game, pal, okay?”

The old man sniffed and turned back to the game. Stood up and berated the Notts County full back who carried on regardless. 

Simon came and sat back down. “No sign. And he's got all the stuff in that bag of his.”

“You think he's crossed us?” Buddy asked

“I hope not. Mind you, let’s be right. There are a thousand sixty year old blokes in black wool caps here. Wingate could be anywhere... “The referee blew the whistle for half time. “Let’s go get a Bovril.” Simon said.

“What's a Bovril?” Buddy asked.

Simon grinned. “You'll love it. It’s a national institution.”

As they reached the top of the stairs, Wingate reappeared, this time on his own. He'd clearly enjoyed another drink. “Alright chaps. We having another pint?”

Simon put his arm round him as they queued up at the refreshment booth below for half time Bovrils. “Where'd you get to. We thought you'd been kidnapped!”

“Business.” He opened his satchel and showed them a brown envelope. “We'll open this later. I've been in the Directors box with Harold.”

“To do with the manuscript?”

Wingate nodded. “You're not having a Bovril are you?” He asked.

Buddy pulled out the hipflask. “I'd rather have a beer to cool this down.”

Simon, who was next in the queue to be served, assured them both. “You pair of piss heads. I'll get both then, shall I - beer and bloody Bovril.”

“Beer and Bovril, huh. A lethal combination.”

“What is Bovril?” Buddy asked once more, passing over the hipflask.

“You'll see. It’s a national institution.”

“So folks keep saying.”

He didn't have long to wait. A steaming hot plastic cup was passed to him along with a plastic pot of lager. Before he could handle both, he had to put away his hip flask, which was getting toward empty anyway. He had to admit, he was curious to find out about the Bovril.

“Go on then, Budster. Give it a shot,” said Simon. He sipped his and so did Wingate.

“In for a penny...” Buddy said and took a sip. Spat it out spontaneously, reflexively...

“Wow, that's disgusting.” Half a lager went down his throat in an attempt to wash away the taste. “What the hell is that?”

The Englishmen laughed, as did several bystanders. “Bovril. A gravy based drink.”

“It tastes like warmed up piss and shit!”

Simon and Wingate shrugged their shoulders. “You're not far wrong there, Bud. Bovril made our Island the nation it is...it built an Empire to last a thousand years! Here's to Empire building drinks which taste of piss and shit.” The former said, raising his Bovril pot.

“It’s true what we say about you guys after all...gravy, Jeez...”

“Bovril and football go together like Morecambe and Wise, “Wingate commented, sagely.

“Morec....oh don't worry about it.”

“Jellied eels tonight, Bud. Straight from the docks.” Wingate said.

“Jellied eels are a national institution, Buddy.” Simon added.

Buddy put the full cup on a stanchion. “You know what you can do with your national institutions.”

The hipflask made another lightning appearance and the three men emptied it of Vodka. The boys were merry and in good humour when they took their places for the second half.

The County supporters to their left had yet to stop singing and encouraging their team who were patently outclassed in a horrible mismatch.

Soon, the West Londoners found themselves three up.

Rather than pack up and go home in the face of an embarrassing massacre, even as the Fulham team returned the ball to the halfway line, the six thousand strong County army in the away stand stood up as one, raised their arms in the air and started singing...

“I had a wheelBARROW, but the wheel fell off...”

“I had a wheelBARRow, but the wheel fell off...”

...and the sound was deafening. 

Wingate had to admit it was an impressive display of sheer bloody minded defiance in the face of adversity. The Fulham crowd could only applaud their goal in comparative silence unsure at how to respond to this reversal of crowd protocol. 

This pattern was repeated after Fulham scored the fourth and then mercifully, the referee called time on proceedings and blew the whistle.

The three men stood and applauded a cracking afternoon's sport. Buddy had experienced enough on and off the pitch for him to enjoy the afternoon too and he was radiating a warm glow. As they left through the open gates behind the stand, they blended into the crowd. All around the ground fans swarmed, aiming for car, coach, bus and tube.  It was near dark and no-one knew who was who, made worse by the fact both sides played in the same coloured strip. Twin black and white armies pouring through the residential Putney streets. “Let's head to Hammersmith. I know a good pub there called The Night Owl. They serve a good pint of Ruddles that will keep us warm while we talk a final bit of business. Up for it?”

The two men nodded. Buddy whispered: “Borrow your phone, Si?”

Simon flipped over the cell and watched as Buddy called Los Angeles.

Three young men walked past them looking as if they were ready for a punch up and they didn't care who with. Snowflakes began to fall over Putney Bridge and the wind chill began to sharpen. It was dark and the further they walked from the ground, the thinner the crowd became as it dissipated this way and that.

Buddy waited, the cell phone clamped to his ear. When he got through, he discovered that her cell phone had been disconnected. “This number has not been recognized.”

All of a sudden, his warm glow froze in the winter night.

What had happened to Monique?

Ninety Nine

All the Green Wizard e-books on KINDLE, IPAD  and your laptop KINDLE software, are now, for a limited time only...

!!!!!!!!!99p!!!!!!!!!

and

!!!!!!99c!!!!!!

Carla 

Kid Atomic

The Ritual

Hollywood Shakedown

Ultra Violence

The Illustrated Woman

UK Link

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-Barry/e/B008479RWI/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

US Link

http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Barry/e/B008479RWI/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1343569938&sr=8-1

Download the Mini-Green Wizard catalogue or the Independent Paperback Gift Shop Catalogue - to your right for more information. 

Sample chapters of each coming up in the next few days.

Carla - Reprise

Green Wizard 5: Carla (Reprise)

I wrote Carla after coming back from a family holiday in Tenerife and shortly before the launch of Green Wizard. I wasn't in the best frame of mind. My depression was at its very worst - post holiday blues, but also life's reflections - and I needed to write to get it all out.

The idea for Carla came to me two years ago in a pub called the Old Coach House in Southwell, the prosperous English town fourteen miles north of Nottingham where the book is set.

I saw a beautiful barmaid in there. Well out of my league and worse, at least twenty years younger than me. I got talking to her and discovered she was a student at Brackenhurst College. She was extremely friendly and had that wonderful, bland, middle class accent most girls seem to have round here, with plenty of likes, oh my gods, stuffs and the other fashionably irrelevant connectives which you either love or hate. I'm the former.

On a site called Tumblr, student girls sell pictures of their feet, panty photograph sets, old flip flips, shoes, bras, panties and other items for a tenner or so in order to help their education.

When I was growing up, this was unheard of.

It borders on prostitution and it would be seriously frowned upon.

Don't believe me? Type in Ilsealcorta into your Google and have a look.

How times have changed in just twenty years. You would have to be a seriously immoral old scrubber to sell your knickers through the post and here we have beautiful young girls doing the same thing through a Donate button to pay for their education. It's a headscratcher

So, being aware of this,half way through the conversation, I had this idea:

I wonder if she would sleep with me once per week if I paid her student loan.

Say, £200 per week.

A debt free education in return to fulfilling a middle aged man's fantasies.

I thought it an intriguing proposition. Naturally, I did nothing about it and walked home alone as usual and then, because I was on the sick from my then employer and living hand to mouth on ESA and the generosity of my family and friends, I shelved the idea as it was too far fetched.

I may as well have been writing about fifty games of hungry twilight thrones off Bixby Bridge or something for how realistic the idea was.

But the idea wouldn't go away. It kept hanging around in my head.

That first weekend back from Tenerife this year, I dug out my notes and the ten thousand words I had already written. Salvaged about a thousand of them and came up with an intriguing premise.

What if the barmaid fell in love with the older man?

Free.

And what if the man was a nutcase with some non-specific mental illness who had just been released from an asylum?

And how good would it be if I wrote it from a first person perspective. Of the lunatic himself?

To get context, I reread Jim Thompson, the master of the deranged anti-hero. Specifically, A Swell Looking Babe, which is just madness, utter madness from the maestro himself.

The idea had serious weight. I haven't read anything like it and I might have been onto something.

So I started to write. On Thursday April 19th. 

By Monday, I had written 42,000 words of Carla. I finished it a month or so later. 

I think its my best book.

Other Wizardwatchers disagree. Its my most personal book at least. Stuff happens in there which has happened in real life, if not to me, but to my friends and acquaintances. It draws on my experience as a lecturer in Criminal Profiling in the late nineties. It draws on my time on The Nook in America, dealing with the break up my relationship with a sufferer of Borderline Personality Disorder/Psychopathy, which left me a wreck. It deals - quite openly and non judgmentally - with mental health and it deals with love. It's written in a funky, eclectic, in and out, interactive style which involves the reader - makes the reader complicit in the relationship. I experimented with the technique in my football hooligan novel UV (not altogether successfully), but every experiment needs its trial and error and I think it works here. 

"It was extremely hard to write, coming at a totally miserable time in my life and yet, readers have noticed a deep strain of black humour all the way through the book."

If you read any Thompson - and I hope you do - all his books are flecked with an absurd, surreal sense of humour. You shouldn't laugh but you can't help it.

At heart, I'm an optimistic sort of bloke, but I suffer from sporadic bouts of hardcore Clinical Depression and that kind of vacuums the jokes out of a man.

It is without doubt my most female friendly book. Its a romance, pure and simple. A love story, a bleak love story.

I'll talk about it some more later, but here's what my good friend, avid reader and Wizardwatcher Carolyn had to say. She couldn't get the review onto Amazon, so I put it on the back of the book.

I downloaded this book to my phone using the Kindle App and really enjoyed it.  It tells the story of John Dexter, a complex character who has a history of ill mental health (to put it mildly) and his never ending struggle with everyday life, and in particular his intense feelings for a local barmaid named Carla.  The story is written from his perspective, and with the exception of his time with Carla is very much about the internal dialogue he has to endure on a minute by minute basis.  There is also some reference to life in institutions and the episodes that have lead him there, as well as his dealings with his mother and father. 

The book is intense and sinewy as it weaves its way through a few months of John’s life.  You find yourself fearing for him and fearing for Carla. I was torn between feeling a great deal of sympathy for him but on the other hand I was also angry at his clumsy and dangerous interactions with the world around him, especially as his feelings for Carla grew and other characters became more involved in the storyline. 

The writer’s take on a character like Dexter appeared to be very informed, respectful, and sensitive whilst peppered with a brutal honesty that at times was difficult to read.  I particularly enjoyed being spoken to directly by the central character especially when I was directed to do a personality disorder test myself, the results of which I found fascinating!!

I would recommend this book to anybody who has an interest in the human psyche, anybody who knows how love can consume the soul and is in itself a form of mental torture, people who live locally to Nottingham and in particular Southwell; might be an interesting insight in to such a place and also this book would appeal to people who aren’t afraid to read material that is not all hearts and flowers but instead is pulsating with a chronic and unrelenting narrative about the inevitability of the central character’s fate.

Hope you enjoy it. You can buy it here. The paperback is pricey at £9.99 which I apologise for, but the Kindle download is £3.08 and you can get free apps for your phone and laptop which translate. You don't need a Kindle.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0086Q7VM0

All the best,

Mark Barry

PS: Apologies for the bit in the middle above. I did something and no matter how I try, I can't get rid of that pesky HTML! Grrrrr....