Ken Preston's Blog, page 13

It’s Not Murder

Okay, so I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to do it today and damn the consequences. Not that I think I am about to say anything controversial or out there. But if you have an opinion on the internet these days, it seems like you’re just getting yourself ready to be shot down in flames.

Because, you know, you disagreed with somebody else’s opinion.

The story of the little boy climbing into the gorilla enclosure in Cincinatti Zoo is an emotionally complex one to deal with. First of all we feel relief that the little boy is safe and in hospital and expected to make a full recovery from his ordeal. Well, you’d think that would be the natural impulse, wouldn’t you?

Thank goodness that poor boy was saved. He could have been savaged by that gorilla. This event could have resulted in life changing injuries, or even death.

And I think for most people that is the natural response.

I really do. I believe in the innate goodness of the human race. That deep down, when you strip away cultural differences, the belief in entitlement, doctrine and power plays, I believe that people are generally good.

But then I look at the reporting of this story, and some of the comments that are on social media, and I can’t help but think that maybe I’m wrong.

Am I seriously supposed to read this story and automatically assume that the parents of this child are ‘murderers’?

That the mother is to blame because she couldn’t look after her child properly, and that we need to start a petition to punish parents who lose a child?

Seriously?

I’m going to be charitable, and assume that all these people who are putting the responsibility of the gorilla’s death onto the parents don’t actually have children. Because anyone who has even one child and has taken them out in a public space will have lost that child at some point. No matter how attentive a parent is, children are independent, adventurous and bloody minded individuals, intent on exploring their surroundings.

All it takes is a moment’s inattention, and they’re gone.

They’re gone.

And sometimes, tragically, some of those children never come back.

But a lot of people don’t seem to be able to think in this way anymore. The killing of Harambe is unmistakably a tragedy. Absolutely. But only an idiot reared on a diet of TV cop shows would realistically expect a 400 pound gorilla to drop to the floor the moment it was hit with a tranquilliser dart. The zoo officials had to act quickly and efficiently to make that child safe, and that is what they did.

It’s not murder.

And the parents aren’t responsible for the death of Harambe.

Maybe as a society we need to start examining our own relationship with the natural world. Because I think that is where a lot of this shit is coming from.

After all, who the hell is responsible for the fact that the silverback gorilla is an endangered species in the first place?

That’s right.

We are.

The post It’s Not Murder appeared first on Ken Preston.

Jonathan Franzen:Ebooks are damaging society

I’ve been thinking about this for a little while now. No, not that ebooks are damaging society (Oh the horror, I must throw my Kindle away right now and transcribe my novels onto parchment using quill and ink, before society is irreparably damaged!) but a tangential subject: the difference in writing technique that the computer age has offered (forced upon?) us as opposed to those days when we wrote on typewriters.

You see, even as I am writing this post, I’m constantly editing it. I’m deleting words, sentences, sometimes whole paragraphs. That’s how I write. That’s how I write everything from short stories to massive length novels. I cannot switch off my inner editor while I am writing. I have tried, oh how I’ve tried. Apparently I’m supposed to vomit up a first draft of words, not caring about spelling, grammar, continuity, or any of the other craft that goes with writing a novel.

I succeeded once, and abandoned my work in progress at the 30,000 word mark, it was so disorganised and dreadful. It still sits on my hard drive, waiting for me to return and fix it.

Fat chance.

But that wasn’t the way back in what I shall now on refer to as ye olden dayes of manual typewriters, before all those zeros and ones began streaming their way into our lives and turning everything digital. No, back then, an author wanted to make corrections, she had to resort to Tippex, or horror of horrors, pull the sheet of typescript out of the typewriter and start again.

Back in those days, editing was nowhere near as easy as it is now.

So, I fail to believe that there was any vomiting of words onto pages going on then, either. Imagine typing up a 80,000 word novel, and then having to go through it to check spelling and grammar (no automated solutions here remember, this is the dark age, before Microsoft Word), plot continuity, character continuity, and all the other things we authors fret about when trying to tell a story in words. After having checked it through and corrected, presumably with a pencil or pen, it would then be time to insert a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter and start the laborious process of typing out the whole damn thing again, taking into account the corrections.

But neither would the author from Ye Olden Dayes be able to edit in the way that I do. I dread to think how much correction fluid I would get through, constantly typing, deleting and typing as I do. My finished sheets of paper would be twice the thickness they started off at.

Crime writer Lawrence Block famously used to buy the most expensive paper he could find, in an attempt to make sure that he never wrote sloppily, or had to resort to any extensive editing. He wanted to get his story down right the first time.

So, today’s lesson is this: Writing a novel? Great. Just try your damnedest to get it down in one draft, okay? No more rewriting.

Here endeth the lesson.

Back to Jonathan Franzen.

Franzen, author of The Corrections and a literary superstar, is worried that ebooks are sending us merrily on our way to the apocalypse.

Don’t believe me?

Here he is, quoted at the Hay Festival, Cartagena, Columbia, comparing the permanence of physical paper books to the apparent ‘impermanence’ of ebooks.

I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.

Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball.

But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.

That’s it, I’m throwing away my Kindle right now. I know what the apocalypse looks like, I watch The Walking Dead.

And if you don’t believe he’s talking about BOOKS, here’s the link.

These literary types are always announcing the death of the novel. (Here’s Will Self predicting it’s demise last year. And guess what? It’s all that pesky Kindle’s fault again.) But this is the first time I have come across a literary type predicting the death of society, due I suppose, to the death of the novel, which has been brought about, obviously, by the advent of the ebook.

I suppose it’s our fault, really.

Because, gosh darn it, us simple folks are just too stupid to be able to read proper, sensible novels, as they don’t exist in digital formats do they?

Except they do.

Here are Jonathan Franzen’s books available for Kindle.

And here are Will Self’s.

Which leads me to one conclusion.

When the apocalypse finally arrives, as it surely must, it will be the fault of those literary superstars.

The post Jonathan Franzen:Ebooks are damaging society appeared first on Ken Preston.

Books that made me cry

I know, I know. This is a post about books that made me cry. It could get embarrassing. I apologise now.

I don’t know about you but there are times when I think that I cry more easily over my imaginery friends than I do over real life. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I live so much inside my head that I am the weird one. Out of touch with reality. Take the moment Dale died in Season Two of The Walking Dead. Boy, I sobbed and sobbed over that one. Couldn’t help myself. I was burning up with a fever at the time, so maybe that had something to do with it. Fever induced emotional overload? But then, I probably would have howled with grief anyway, even if in the perfect bloom of full health.

Poor Dale, his death scene made me cry. Well, actually, it had me sobbing.

Because that’s what I do, I cry over imaginary situations.

The first book I really remember having a good sob over was Black Beauty. Now, I’ve probably remembered this all wrong, as I haven’t read that book in decades, well over four of them I’m sure. But the scene in my mind goes like this: Black Beauty comes across an old friend, but she is being taken to the knacker’s yard where she will be killed. Boy did that upset me.

Floods of tears?

Oh yes.

Was Black Beauty the first book that made me cry?

I suppose I was quite a sensitive little child, so maybe it was inevitable that I would be easily upset. But then the years passed, and I turned into a surly teenager. And I cast the likes of Black Beauty aside, and drawn in by the lurid paperbacks on display in WH Smiths, I graduated on to The Rats! The Fog! Night of the Crabs!

Yeah, I was a proper hard teenager now, and nothing so wet as a book was going to make me cry!

Except, I did cry.

Bucket loads.

And which classic was it this time that had my lips all a quiver and the tears rolling down my cheeks?

Watership Down maybe?

Rabbits!

No. Although it was nature related. (Thinking about it now, Watership Down had me blubbing as well.)

It was Night of the Crabs.

Crabs!

Specifically the scene where a tramp gets his arms and legs scissored off by a giant, mutated crab.

Oh dear. Let’s just say that I wasn’t crying out of any kind of empathy for this poor, fictional creation. No, I was simply so freaking terrified and distressed I couldn’t help but burst into tears.

Let’s move on shall we?

The next one is a bit trickier. I remember I saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest before I read the book. And the ending to the film, watched late at night on VHS after my parents had gone to bed, had me sobbing helplessly long after the credits had rolled. It was a couple more years before I got round to reading the book, and I’m sure I cried at that, too. But was I crying because of the skillfulness of Ken Kesey’s prose, or was I simply conjuring up a buried emotional response from watching the film?

Oh hell, who cares? I cried, all right?

Was it the film or the book that made me cry? Both!

Let’s move on to adult life proper, shall we? What was the last book I can remember reading that turned on the waterworks?

To be honest, that’s an easy one.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

To have travelled all that way with the father and his son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, and to finally finish there? You bet I cried. In public, too. The public part wasn’t intentional, it’s not like I’m an exhibitionist or anything, I just happened to be sat in a bar at the time and hadn’t realised my trusty waterworks were about to be maipulated into action. Big time.

So there you go. A lightning fast recount of just some of the books that have made me cry over the years.

How about you? What books have you read that had tears springing from your tear ducts like water from a punctured hosepipe?

Or are you like Oscar Wilde, and you cry with laughter at imaginary tragedies?

The post Books that made me cry appeared first on Ken Preston.

The Black Country by Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Birmingham: grim place. Full of immigrants and idiots. Looks toxic at the best of times, let alone in the winter.

The Black Country is a region of the West Midlands, loosely encompassing the council areas of Dudley, Walsall, Sandwell and Wolverhampton. To traditionalists the Black Country is the area where the coal seam comes to the surface, and the region was described as ‘Black by day and red by night’ by Elihu Burritt, the American Consul to Birmingham in 1862. For writers such as Dickens, the name referred to the effect the industry of the region had on its people and landscape.

The Black Country, the novel by Kerry Hadley-Pryce is set in the Black Country, but the title could just as easily refer to the psyche of our two protagonists, Harry and Maddie. By the end of the their story we will have seen that their hearts are blacker than the coal that powered the region’s industry.

Starting off bleak and growing darker and nastier as it progresses, Kerry Hadley-Pryce’s debut novel is an intimate study of a relationship between two already damaged people as it rapidly self-destructs. The catalyst for this drama is a hit and run accident late at night. Maddie and Harry believe they have killed someone, but when they return to the scene of the accident the following day, the body has disappeared.

As the mystery deepens, Maddie’s and Harry’s own dark secrets are pulled to the surface, much like the coal that powered the Black Country’s industry.

What makes this book even more powerful, with an unusual narrative style I have never come across before, is the way in which it is told.

Even today, if we ask them, if we were able to ask them, their story might change, waver just a little.

With some certainty, both Maddie and Harry will describe the humdrum mechanics of getting ready for the reunion, the one organised by Gerald’s son. It was a Saturday, that’s true. It’s not particularly important, but Maddie recalls agonising over what to wear. Dress or trousers? Dark or bright colours? Harry remembers her wearing a dress, dark red, maroon. He remembers the beginning of an argument before they left, something about his untidy computer desk, but he’s evasive or can’t remember much about it. And the journey: uneventful. Maddie was determined to drive because the act of driving relieved her of the responsibility of conversation. Besides, in truth, she wanted to take her car so that she would have a reason not to drink. Trying to be good, so she says. Harry didn’t argue, and his memory seems equally clear about that, and it’s important. Maddie drove.

Maddie’s and Harry’s story is being narrated by an unseen third person. This unknown narrator helpfully points out the idiosyncrasies in Harry’s and Maddie’s retelling of their own stories, encouraging us to be sceptical of their accounts. After all, no one wants to come across as the bad guy, do they? In the retelling of our own stories we are always either the hero or the victim, but never the bad guy.

But as we go deeper into the story, it becomes apparent that this unseen narrator hardly seems the most reliable of witnesses either.

The mystery of the unseen narrator becomes clear by the book’s end and yet, perversely, the finale is as black as can be.

The horror in The Black Country is found in the impulses of normal people everywhere: the need for love, for ownership, for power. But here those impulses are twisted so far out of joint they become unrecognisable to us. There is in particular a scene of attempted one-upmanship between pupil and teacher that had me cringing in disbelief and horror.

Reading this book is like going for a dip in the cold, filthy water of the canal into which Maddie crashes her car.

You might get out alive, but you will be chilled to the bone and fearful that you’ve caught something nasty from its fetid embrace.

The post The Black Country by Kerry Hadley-Pryce appeared first on Ken Preston.

Me, Guts, and Breather Betty

I found Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted in a second hand book shop. Of course I’d heard of him long before THAT, ever since watching Edward Norton fight his id in David Fincher’s Fight Club. And I had been intending to pick one of his books up and read it ever since. But you know how it is, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and all that.

I did come quite close many years later when I bought a copy of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives, to which Palahniuk wrote the introduction.

But still, reading his introduction to another author’s work wasn’t exactly what I had intended.

And then I found Haunted.

And boy there are some days when I wish I never had.

I should have known, really.

The book actually comes with a warning sticker. PARENTAL ADVISORY it shouts, and then underneath says READ IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Oh, right, so the parental advisory sticker isn’t saying ‘Contains Explicit Material’, as in, ‘you might not want to let your kids read this because it’s probably not suitable for them.’ No, this one is saying, ‘Hey you, yes you reading this thing right now. I’m telling you DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! And if you do, don’t blame me if it fucks you up forever. Because I warned you. Okay? I warned you.’

Of course for many people that kind of warning is like a sizzling rasher of bacon to a recently lapsed vegetarian. How could I not resist?

Anyone remember the red triangle that Channel Four used to display in the corner of the TV screen late at night, back in the 1980s? It was there to inform casual channel hoppers that they had just come across a film that contained lots of strong language, sex and violence and so may offend. Obviously their late night ratings shot up as people stayed tuned eager to see what all the fuss was about. And then just as quickly dropped when audiences hungry for fat, tasty dollops of sex and violence realised they had been trapped into watching an art-house movie.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes.

Chuck Palahniuk and Haunted.

Haunted is a novel of short stories and poems. The basic premise is this: A group of people who have answered an ad for an artists’ retreat find they are locked in an old theatre with food, heat and power growing increasingly scarce. Whilst degenerating into madness and despair they each tell their own horrific stories.

Right. Let me admit at this point that I never actually finished reading the book. I know, shocking isn’t it? Here I am reviewing a book for you, and I never actually read the damn thing all the way through!

In my defence can I just say, at least I didn’t faint.

Yes, you read that right: At least I didn’t faint.

But lots of people did when Chuck Palahniuk was doing the promotional tour thing, and reading out his short story ‘Guts’.

In all, seventy-three people have fainted while I’ve read ‘Guts’. For a nine page story sometimes it takes thirty minutes to read. In the first half, you’re pausing for so much laughter from your audience. In the second half you’re pausing as your audience is revived.

No, I didn’t faint but I did read it with a kind of shocked amusement at first, and then an appalled sense of disbelief at where the story had gone. ‘Guts’ is the first story in the book. It should have served as a warning that there was worse to come, but if it did I ignored it.

And for a while that was all right. The next few stories were strange but manageable.

But then I read ‘Exodus’.

No one fainted the first time I read my short story ‘Guts’. . . This was better than the Tuesday before, when my story called ‘Exodus’ sent a friend into my bathroom where she cried behind the locked door for the rest of the evening. Later, her therapist would ask for a copy of that story to help with her psychoanalysis.

‘Exodus’ is where I stopped reading. I can’t ever hear the words ‘Breather Betty’ again without thinking of that story, and the next time I have to do CPR training I am sure I will hesitate, just for a moment, before I connect my lips with the doll’s lips.

There are no monsters or trolls, vampires or werewolves or axe wielding madmen in these stories. Their horror comes from the banal impulses of life lived in the modern world. But, as the Observer noted in their review, it is ‘By turns nauseating, darkly funny and brutally graphic.’

And so yes, I never finished it.

I might pick up Haunted again one day, and tackle the stories I never read. Or maybe not.

I don’t really want to say anymore about this book.

Except for one thing.

PARENTAL ADVISORY: READ IT AT YOUR OWN RISK

 

The post Me, Guts, and Breather Betty appeared first on Ken Preston.

Southcart Valentine’s Day Massacre

Scott and Amy Carter did it again, hosting another fun day at Southcart Bookshop with food, drink and plenty of authors reading tales of love and romance gone wrong.These events are a regular fixture at Southcart Bookshop in Walsall. Perhaps the only true independent bookshop in the West Midlands they are hidden away down a side street just on the edge of the town centre. But really, they are not that difficult to find and once you are inside you are presented with an Aladdin’s cave of treasures.

And coffee.

Oh yes, they serve real coffee.

February’s themed event was the Southcart Valentine’s Day Massacre. You probably get the idea of the theme from the title alone, right? We’re not talking love and flowers, sweetness and light and chocolates.

Our event host was Adam Millard, author and small press publisher, at Crowded Quarantine Press. Looking fearsome with his tattoos, piercings and purple Mohican you honestly couldn’t find a warmer, funnier person to sit down and have a chat with.

Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Kerry Hadley-Pryce kicked off the readings with an excerpt from her novel The Black Country. Named by The Independent as being the Debut Fiction Book of the Year in 2015, we were treated to a tension filled scene of our two protagonist’s hunting for clues to the whereabouts of a friend they think they might have killed in a hit and run accident. The scene is written in an odd, third/first person point of view, as though there is an invisible narrator with them, or the couple are telling their own version of events at a later stage. This is all part of the book’s mystery, part of its tension.

Adam Millard limbering up to read his story.

Adam Millard was up next, reading two twisted stories of love gone wrong. The first, in which a sleazy, self obsessed creep by the name of Adam stalks an innocent young woman called Zoe (Zoe is Adam’s wife) was by turns hilarious and disgusting. I have to confess I will never be able to look at a can of WD40 in the same way again.

Author CL Raven. Do you think they might be twins?

CL Raven took their turn next. Twins (and I still don’t know their actual names yet) they read a series of excerpts from stories of twisted horror and obsession, turning the concepts of love and valentine’s day on their heads and inside out. They took turns in speaking and in reading paragraphs and lines of dialogue, truly becoming the single author they present themselves as.

Jessica Law and her scary Octokittens

Jessica Law wowed us as usual with her blend of kookie songs (accompanying herself on the mandolin) and her asides about her life. I particularly enjoyed her ‘tragic’ story behind the scarves she was trying to sell us. And again she brought her terrifying Octokittens with her.

I was last but one on the list of authors reading and decided at this late stage not to read the nasty tale of a lover’s revenge that I had written especially for the event. It just didn’t sit well with me, and instead I went with Drive Fast She Said!, from my collection Population:DEAD! and other weird tales of horror and suspense. It went down well and I finished with a piece from Joe Coffin Season One, featuring that lovely couple Stump and Corpse.

There was food and conversation and many laughs, and if you’re a book lover and you haven’t been to one of these events yet, you really should.

Support your local book shop!!

Joe Coffin is in good company.

The post Southcart Valentine’s Day Massacre appeared first on Ken Preston.

Southcart Valentine’s Day Massacre

Scott and Amy Carter did it again, hosting another fun day at Southcart Bookshop with food, drink and plenty of authors reading excerpts from their work.

These events are a regular fixture at Southcart Bookshop in Walsall. Perhaps the only true independent bookshop in the West Midlands, they are hidden away down a side street just on the edge of the town centre. But really, they are not that difficult to find and once you are inside you are presented with an Aladdin’s cave of treasures.

And coffee.

Oh yes, they serve real coffee.

February’s themed event was the Southcart Valentine’s Day Massacre. You probably get the idea of the theme from the title alone, right? We’re not talking love and flowers, sweetness and light and chocolates.

Our event host was Adam Millard, author and small press publisher, at Crowded Quarantine Publications. Looking fearsome with his tattoos, piercings and purple Mohican you honestly couldn’t find a warmer, funnier person to sit down and have a chat with.

Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Kerry Hadley-Pryce kicked off the readings with an excerpt from her novel The Black Country. Named by The Independent as being a Debut Fiction Book of the Year in 2015, we were treated to a tension filled scene of our two protagonist’s hunting for clues to the whereabouts of a friend they think they might have killed in a hit and run accident. The scene is written in an odd, third/first person point of view, as though there is an invisible narrator with them, or the couple are telling their own version of events at a later stage. This is all part of the book’s mystery, part of its tension, and I am certainly intrigued enough to want to find out more.

Author C L Raven. I wonder if they are twins?

CL Raven took their turn next. Twins who write under a single author name (and I still don’t know their actual names yet) they read a series of excerpts from stories of twisted horror and obsession, turning the concepts of love and valentine’s day on their heads and inside out. They took turns in speaking and in reading paragraphs and lines of dialogue, truly becoming the single author they present themselves as.

Adam Milllard limbering up for his first reading.

Adam Millard was up next, reading two twisted stories of love gone wrong. The first, in which a sleazy, self obsessed creep by the name of Adam stalks an innocent young woman called Zoe (Zoe is Adam’s wife) was by turns hilarious and disgusting. I have to confess I will never be able to look at a can of WD40 in the same way again. His second story involved an affair, a barbeque, a catfight and robots. Want to know more? You should have been there.

Jessica Law with one of her terrifying Octokittens

Jessica Law wowed us as usual with her blend of kookie songs (accompanying herself on the mandolin) and her asides about her life. I particularly enjoyed her ‘tragic’ story behind the scarves she was trying to sell us. And again she brought her terrifying Octokittens with her.

I was last but one on the list of authors reading and decided at this late stage not to read the nasty tale of a lover’s revenge that I had written especially for the event. It just didn’t sit well with me, and instead I went with Drive Fast She Said!, from my collection Population:DEAD! and other weird tales of horror and suspense. It went down well and I finished with a piece from Joe Coffin Season One, featuring that lovely couple Stump and Corpse.

There was food and conversation and many laughs, and if you’re a book lover and you haven’t been to one of these events yet, you really should.

Support your local bookshop!

Joe Coffin is in good company here.

 

The post Southcart Valentine’s Day Massacre appeared first on Ken Preston.

Look at these fantastic reviews for Joe Coffin!

I know, I know, I really shouldn’t be blowing my own trumpet like this. It goes against every instinct in my body.

And yet . . . oh what the hell, I’m going to do it anyway.

If you haven’t come across Joe Coffin yet, well, here’s what us professionals in the writing business call a ‘blurb’. (Nope, I don’t know why it’s called that either.)

On the day that Joe Coffin, hitman for Birmingham gang The Slaughterhouse Mob, is released from jail he has nothing but murder on his mind. While inside his wife and young son were killed, and now he is out for bloody revenge. The problem is, Coffin’s enemies are circling, and his wife might not be quite as dead as she should be.

Joe Coffin is a vampire horror story and a gritty gangster thriller, written TV style in episodes and seasons. If you liked Breaking Bad and Dexter, and if you prefer your vampires bloody and brutal, then you will love Joe Coffin. With a fast paced, multi character storyline, smart dialogue and great characters, the Joe Coffin books are written to be binge consumed, just like those TV shows you love.

Now here’s the thing: although us writerly types like to sit in our writing caves and blather on about how we do it for the love of writing and we only write the book that matters to us and we really seriously absolutely do not care what anybody else’s opinion is about our masterpiece, can I let you into a little secret?

We’re lying.

We actually care very much about what our readers think.

So, here are a sprinkling of snippets from some of the reviews I have been seeing on Amazon for Joe Coffin, Season One:

The writing is tight, and the transitions between scenes are as smooth as they are on TV. Preston writes action in a way that you can easily imagine, and his characters are complex and well-drawn. There are some really nasty creations in here. Stump and Corpse come immediately to mind as two of the most imaginative creations I’ve seen outside of a Clive Barker novel.

Loved, loved, LOVED IT! This book was fantastic, lots of action, suspense and adventure. I couldn’t put it down.

Ken is a wonderful writer. He does such a descriptive story, that it’s like a movie in your head! Some other reviewers said

it should be made into a TV show and I agree. Joe is my new favorite character. A killer with a heart. I did so much gasping

out loud and shouting ” Kill him Joe!” that my husband had to find out what I was reading. Now you know an author is good

when that happens. I have already recommended this book to my friends, and now I recommend it to you.

ABSOLUTE KICKASS THRILLER!! Think Romero with a better twist or twisted mind! Not for everyone but it sure fed the need for speed and Gore! Fast paced horror thriller…Joe Cotton’s just out of jail and he wants revenge for the rampage murder of his wife and young son. Joe’s big as a house, stronger than a horse, can take a beating and keep on kicking. Vampire rumors, missing persons, violence, blood soaked rooms, gore and more: check!! WAITING FOR KEN PRESTON TO ROCK HIS ROLL WITH MORE JOE COFFIN and BLOODBATH & FANG DRIPPING GORE!!

Very thrilling with interesting characters, some funny dialogue and serious gore. Awesomeness at it’s best.

And, just in case you haven’t got the message yet, here are some snippets from reviews for Joe Coffin, Season Two.

Preston’s story and writing are top-notch. Interspersed among the sex, violence, and gore, are moments of humor and buffoonery. The old gangsters joining forces to take back the vampire-infested club is a scene to make Joe Pesci proud. Even though, in this case, the aged mob henchmen are more akin to HOME ALONE Joe Pesci than CASINO Joe.

I need Season Three now, immediately.

Loved it! I couldn’t wait for this book to come out, and it definitely didn’t disappoint.

It’s as good as, maybe even better, than Season 1. Joe,(who is my new favorite character), is back and badder than ever.

Vampires, blood, revenge, murder, non-stop action and nail biting suspense. JOE COFFIN Season 2 left me breathless.

I am becoming a big fan of Joe Coffin. Just like season one, I tore through this book. I want season 3 right now. I’m not even much of a Vampire fan. Very highly recommended.

So yeah, wow. And if you are one of those people who have read and reviewed Joe Coffin, thank you. And if you have read it, but not reviewed it, well, thank you!

I love you all.

If you haven’t read Joe Coffin yet, you need to get reading right now because I am hard at work on Season Three and you don’t want to get left behind, right?

But also, you’re in luck, because I am giving away the ebook copy of Season One ABSOLUTELY FREE! (That’s right, I just shouted. I don’t care.)

Just follow the link below and within seconds you can have Joe Coffin on your Kindle, your Kobo, your Nook, or whatever the heck you read ebooks on. What the hell, you can even have it as a PDF if you want.

So what are you waiting for?

The post Look at these fantastic reviews for Joe Coffin! appeared first on Ken Preston.

Real Life Vampire Stories

Have you ever wondered if there might be a real life vampire out there, waiting for you in the dark? Well, if you’re anything like me, probably not. Except for maybe a brief period in your life when you were fifteen years old, and anything was possible. Especially if it was bizarre, and flew in the face of everything your parents believed in.

But now you’re all grown up, and you know creatures such as vampires, and witches and werewolves don’t actually exist.

Do they?

Let’s pretend we’re all teenagers again.

And let’s take a look at the evidence.

(Oh, if only I’d had the internet when I was a teenager.)

Because I’m feeling highbrow right now, and maybe thinking that if I go with one of the broadsheets for my first link you might actually think there’s some credibility to all this, let’s take a look at a recent article by the Daily Telegraph.

I know if I used the term ‘bloodsucking politician’ you would hardly raise an eyebrow.

“Bloodsucking politicians? Yeah, so what’s new?” you’d most likely say.

Except, the city of Sydney really does have a bloodsucking politician. And he doesn’t care who knows about it.

Jason de Marco is not only a sanguinarian, but also a — Wait! What? — a sanguinarian, or, more familiarly to us normal dudes, a vampire. Anyway, as I was saying, de Marco is also a member of the Liberal Party. Which makes him a genuine bloodsucking politician.

David Cameron, you’re an amateur.

You can read the whole story here.

Anyway, enough of all that highbrow nonsense. Let’s go and search that pillar of truth and noble investigative journalism, the Daily Mail. Surely if vampires exist, they will have found them?

Ah yes, here we go.

Vanian, 53, and Ethereal Dark, 27, both from Manchester.

Here’s a picture.

Hang on a minute! They’re outside! In daylight! And they eat garlic, don’t sleep in coffins and are happy to hang around churches! What’s going on? Surely these two are having us on, and they’re not vampires at all.

Oh, wait a minute. Apparently, according to Vanian, many of the myths associated with vampires are completely wrong. And while they do like True Blood, they say Twilight is well wide of the mark.

That’s settled then. Vampires live amongst us. Vanian says so.

But no need to worry, as Vanian will only take blood from you after asking nicely.

And yes, you can read the whole story here.

That’s enough of that nonsense. Let’s get onto the meaty stuff, shall we?

In 2012, the municipal council of the Serbian village of Zarozje issued a public health warning to residents, instructing them to place garlic on windowsills and door frames and to put holy crosses in their homes. The reason for the warning? Sava Savanovic, Serbia’s most notorious vampire, was thought to be on the loose.

How about that for the opening of an article on real life vampires? No wishy washy ‘all the myths are wrong and we only drink your blood if you agree to it and give us a certificate of good health’ nonsense. Now we’re back to garlic, and proper, scary vampires.

Legend says that local man named Savanovic was killed after murdering the woman who spurned his hand in marriage. Savanovic’s ghost then took refuge in a watermill, where unsuspecting victims were preyed upon by the vampire. Despite this the mill remained in operation until the 1950s, when it was finally closed and left to fall apart and rot. It finally collapsed in 2012, thus releasing, so the villagers believed, the ghostly vampire. Homeless, he swept across the land, drinking the blood of anyone foolhardy to be out after midnight.

Except . . . that’s not what happened.

Garlic sales spiked for a brief period, though.

Yes, you can read the whole story here.

It’s sort of a shame in a way. Still, if you feel in need of a vampire fix, you can always read my series novel, Joe Coffin. It’s got vampires, it’s got sex, it’s got violence, it’s got plenty of blood, and it’s got a gangster called Joe Coffin who might just be the hottest thing on two legs since Jack Reacher.

And yes, I know that was a shameless plug, but you can bag yourself the first novel for free by clicking the link below.

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Look Behind You!

The post Look Behind You! appeared first on Ken Preston.