Ken Preston's Blog, page 9

Drive Fast! She Said

I know, I know, I missed posting last week. What can I say? I was busy! (I was at a writing retreat, so yes, I was busy writing.)

Anyway, to make up for it this week I have another story for you from my collection of weird and strange tales Population:DEAD! and other weird tales of horror and suspense.

Please to enjoy.

(And don’t forget to scroll to the bottom for your free book if you haven’t picked one up yet.)

DRIVE FAST! SHE SAID

There was a story on the local news this morning about a collision between two cars. It happened sometime in the night, on a stretch of isolated country road. There was a brief shot of the wreckage, the two cars a tangled mass of twisted metal and broken glass, leaking black oil across the road. It looked like they’d smashed into each other head on. There were no survivors.

That got me thinking about some friends of mine from another life, sometime around twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven years ago, and a stupid, dangerous thing we did one night. I was seventeen then, and my life consisted of little more than college, mates and girls. Every Friday and Saturday night me and my best mate Tony went out for a few drinks. The town we lived in was small and provincial and very boring, so Tony would drive us over to Blackburn in his dad’s car.

Tony’s dad was pretty cool. I was never sure what he did, but he was always buying and selling stuff, mainly cars, and this one time he bought an old Ford Capri, and the previous owner had painted it red with white stripes down the sides, just like Starsky and Hutch’s Gran Torino. Tony said his dad was always talking about getting a respray, but he reckoned he never would. We all suspected his dad secretly loved those stripes.

Tony was cocky and confident, just like his dad, and girls were drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. He was everything I wasn’t, but wanted to be.

On this one particular night Tony came to pick me up, he told me he had a new girlfriend, one I’d never met. I had a girlfriend too. Susan and I had been going steady for about six months by then. She was okay, but nothing like Tony’s girls.

We drove over to the next town to pick his new girlfriend up.

Karen was a looker. Long, blond hair, slim figure and the kind of permanent ‘come here’ expression that turned men’s legs to jelly. I remember she had on a pair of tight jeans, long black boots, a close fitting sweater and a leather jacket.

And the scarf. I remember that scarf.

“Wow,” she said, as she climbed in the car. “This is cool. Where are we going?”

Susan and I were sitting in the back. I remember looking too long at Karen, wondering when she was going to turn and say hello to us, or if Tony was going to introduce us. Susan punched me on the leg and frowned at me. I couldn’t help myself, Tony had lucked out in a big way, Karen was a stunner.

On the drive to Blackburn, Tony took the country route. I couldn’t work out why at first. Karen was talking away, waving her hands around and telling us about the films she had seen, and the music she listened to, and the places she was going to go. It was all pretty far out stuff, none of it familiar to our unsophisticated, boring lives. She talked about Mick Jagger in Performance, and David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Vanishing Point. She talked a lot about Vanishing Point.

There’s a long stretch of straight road through the Pendle Forest nicknamed The Broadway by the locals, on account of how wide and long it is. It was late November, and dark already as Tony pushed the Capri’s speed up. I was aware of the dark shapes of the trees chasing past us in a shadowed blur. Tony had the car’s headlights on main beam, the twin lights converging to cut through the darkness and illuminate the road ahead.

“Hey, watch this,” Tony said, and then flicked the lights off.

Susan screamed and grabbed my hand as we hurtled through the darkness. I don’t remember how fast we were driving, but it felt fast enough, maybe forty or fifty miles an hour. Enough to do some serious damage to the car, and us, if we left the road and smashed into the trees.

“Tony, don’t be an idiot,” I said. “Switch the bloody lights back on.”

“What’s wrong, Mark, are you scared?” he said, laughing.

But he switched the lights on.

Susan told him he was being stupid, and not to do it again.

Karen didn’t say anything, but I saw her drape a hand across Tony’s left thigh, and leave it there.

I don’t remember much about the evening, where we went or what we talked about. We all had a few drinks, including Tony. This was just before the drink driving campaign really kicked into gear, and nobody thought too much of sinking a few pints and then getting behind the wheel of a car.

As we walked across the car park at closing time, Tony lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. Smoke billowed from his mouth and clouded his face for a moment.

He offered the pack around. Susan didn’t like me smoking, so I shook my head. Karen took one and Tony lit it for her. She walked over to the Capri, to the driver’s door, and leant against it, looking at Tony through the smoke drifting past her eyes.

“You’re on the wrong side, babe,” Tony said.

“I know,” she said.

I’ll never forget her, standing there like that, her bottom against the car door, her one arm resting across her midriff, the other hand holding her cigarette casually between two fingers in front of her mouth. She looked stunning, like a movie star. Desire and jealousy and guilt twisted like snakes in my stomach. I didn’t like myself for what I felt, but Susan was like a sack of potatoes compared to my best mate’s new girl.

“That thing you did,” she said. “On the drive over here, when you switched the lights off.”

“That stupid thing he did,” Susan said.

“Yeah, what about it?” Tony said, and grinned. “Did it scare you?”

“No,” she said. “I liked it.”

I think that answer threw him a bit. He took another drag on his cigarette.

“Well I didn’t like it,” Susan said, and put her arm through mine. “I thought it was horrible and dangerous. You could have killed us all.”

“Yeah, well, good,” he said, answering Karen, not even glancing at Susan. “I’ve done it before you know, plenty of times. It’s easy really, you just gotta keep driving straight.”

“How about we make it more fun on the way back?” Karen said.

“What do you mean?” Tony said, flicking a glance at me.

“Why don’t we just go home?” I said. “I’m getting cold out here.”

Karen ignored me, just holding Tony steady in that cool gaze of hers.

“Why don’t you do it again on the way back? But this time blind. Really blind.”

Tony flicked ash off his cigarette, the sparks bright against the darkness.

“I already did that. I couldn’t see a bloody thing without the lights on, could I? I was blind as a bat.”

“Why don’t you do it again?” Karen said, smoke billowing from her lips. “Blindfolded?”

“Nah, don’t be stupid,” Tony said.

Karen gazed at him and said nothing.

“You’re having a laugh, right?”

“No, I’m serious,” she said. “I’ll blindfold you, and we’ll see how well you can drive along that road, how fast you can go, truly blind.”

Tony looked at her, his brow furrowed.

“Tony?” Susan said. “You’re not…?”

“No, I’m not,” he said, dropping the cigarette on the tarmac and grinding it out under the heel of his shoe. “It’s a bloody stupid idea.”

Karen smiled and walked away from the driver’s door. Tony unlocked the car and me and Susan climbed in the back. No one said anything.

Tony could have gone the straight way back, but he didn’t. He took the scenic route again. It was cold in the car and Susan cuddled up to me, trying to keep warm. I looked out of the front windscreen, at the headlights hitting the dark, tarmac road, at the white line disappearing beside us.

When we turned onto The Broadway, Karen spoke, breaking the long silence.

“Slow down,” she said. “Pull over.”

Tony glanced at Karen and pulled the car over onto the grass verge. He left the engine running, the lights on highlighting the trees, the road disappearing into the inky blackness.

“What?” he said.

“You know what,” Karen said, her hand on his thigh again.

Tony shifted in his seat, the leather squeaking beneath his weight.

“You’re too scared,” she said, and took her hand off his thigh.

Tony looked at her, both hands still on the steering wheel.

She unwound her scarf and held it to her face, against her mouth and nose, and she breathed in deep and then held it out to Tony.

“You can use this as a blindfold,” she said.

Her hand was on his leg again, but she had moved it up, near his crotch. With her index finger she was tracing a tiny little circle over and over again, round and round on his thigh.

“Tony?” Susan said, stirring beside me. I think she might have dozed off slightly. “You’re not going to do it, are you?”

Tony didn’t answer. He gripped the steering wheel, looking at the scarf hanging from Karen’s hand.

“It’s a stupid idea,” he said, at last.

“Maybe it is,” Karen said. “Or maybe it’s a beautiful idea, a glorious idea. Haven’t you ever wanted to let go, to lose control and live right on the edge? And later, when we get back to mine, we can lose control again, just the two of us.”

Tony glanced at Karen, then back at the scarf. He swallowed, the gulp audible in the silence. I could tell he was thinking about it now, seriously considering it. Nothing had passed us in either direction while we had been idling here. He could pull the car out into the middle of the road, give himself plenty of room.

All he’d have to do was keep straight.

“All right,” he said, looking at Karen. “Let’s do it.”

Karen squealed and clapped her hands. Tony put the car into first gear and pulled out onto the middle of the road, the white line disappearing dead centre under the bonnet. He took a few moments lining the car up as straight as he could, and pulled the handbrake on.

“I don’t believe this,” Susan was saying, shaking her head. “Mark, stop him, you’re his best mate, stop him.”

“I can’t do anything,” I said.

“I’m getting out,” Susan said, pushing at Karen’s seat back, even though she was still sitting there. “Let me out, I’m not staying here for this madness, come on, Mark, we’re getting out.”

Karen climbed out of the car and folded the seat down. Susan got out and stuck her head back inside.

“Come on, Mark,” she said.

I looked at the road ahead of us, still lit up in the Capri’s twin beams. I looked at Tony, still gripping the steering wheel in both hands, staring ahead like a man transfixed. What would it be like, I wondered, to sit here in the back with a blindfolded driver in charge of the car? Would I feel terrified, or perhaps would it be somehow exhilarating?

“I’m staying here,” I said.

“What’s got into you tonight? You’re all cracked,” Susan said and walked away. Karen climbed back into the car.

Without another word she wound her scarf around Tony’s head, over his eyes, and knotted it tight.

“Drive fast,” she whispered into his ear. “Drive as fast as you can.”

Tony shoved the gearstick into first and let the handbrake off and edged the car forward. We drove past Susan, walking in the same direction.

Tony shifted up into second. We were still heading straight down the centre line. Karen sat sideways in her seat, not looking out of the windscreen, but looking at Tony all the time.

He shifted up into third and I started feeling scared. We were only doing twenty-five but it felt faster. I looked around for something to hold onto, and grabbed the seatbacks in front of me.

Tony shifted up into fourth. I caught a glimpse of the speedometer, edging thirty-five, just as Karen leaned across and flicked off the headlights.

Plunged into darkness it seemed to me that the engine’s growl suddenly grew louder, its note continuing to rise as Tony accelerated. I sensed the trees on either side of us flying past, felt the cold air streaming through the open windows, hitting me in the face, whipping my hair back.

And I felt alive. Incredibly, dangerously, wonderfully alive.

Suddenly the car bucked and lurched, and the engine roared. Tony screamed, swore I think, and I hit my head on the roof and landed on my back as the car bounced over the uneven ground and the engine stalled. We came to a sudden, lurching halt, the car tilting to one side.

Apart from the ticking of the cooling engine everything was silent. Tony flicked on the headlights. We had rolled to a halt on the side of the road, in the forest. There were trees either side and in front of us. I took a deep, shaky breath.

“Everyone all right?” Tony said. He looked back at me. He’d already removed the blindfold and it lay curled in his lap. He looked scared.

I nodded, too shocked to speak.

Karen said nothing, but leaned across the gear stick and pulled Tony to her. Her hand grabbed his crotch and she kissed him long and hard. I looked away and folded my arms, jamming my trembling hands under my armpits.

We managed to push the car back onto the road. The bodywork had suffered some scratches and dents, but otherwise seemed fine. We had had a lucky escape.

We drove back and picked Susan up. On the drive home nobody spoke. Tony dropped us off first, and then took Karen back to hers where, he told me later, he spent the night.

We all drifted apart after that. Susan and I split up the next day, she couldn’t forgive me for leaving her by the side of the road in the middle of the night. We had come back for her, but still, she had a point.

Tony and Karen lasted a few intense, tempestuous months before they split up. She left for university, and we never saw her again.

Tony and I went our separate ways too, and lost contact. I heard recently that he died of a heart attack, a couple of years back.

It’s funny, but I haven’t thought of Karen, or that night, in many years. But seeing that story on the news brought it all back. In the wreckage of the one car they found two bodies, a female passenger and a male driver.

The man was wearing a blindfold.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed that. There’s more where that came from in Population:DEAD! and other weird tales of horror and suspense. Just click the link below to get your free book, plus the first season of Joe Coffin in its entirety!

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CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR FREE BOOKS!

The post Drive Fast! She Said appeared first on Ken Preston.

nothing

This week I really wanted to talk about Avengers: Infinity War. There’s a lot we need to talk about, to unpack from that film. Especially those last five minutes.

But talking about Infinity War would involve spoilers, so I’m not going to do that.

Instead, I’m going to talk about Nothing.

To be honest it’s going to be hard work talking about Nothing without spoilers, as the author Janne Teller found when she talked about her own book during a seminar on writing for young adults, at the Read On! Conference I recently attended.

So instead, let me take you through the reception this bleak, chilling, spare young adult book about the meaning of life received when it was first published.

Nothing begins with Pierre Anthon standing up from his desk on the morning of the first day back at school after the summer break and announcing, “Nothing matters. I’ve known that for a long time. So nothing’s worth doing. I just realised that.”

And with that he collects his school bags and leaves. He goes and sits in a plum tree and pelts his school friends with plums, shouting existential statements at them, such as, “It’s all a waste of time! Everything begins only to end!” and “The earth is four billion, six hundred million years old, and you’re going to reach one hundred at the most. It’s not even worth the bother!”

The book’s narrator and her group of friends decide they need to do something about this situation. They can’t stand to listen to Pierre Anthon any more. Maybe because secretly they feel he might be right. So they decide to gather together a collection of things that have meaning in their lives and place them in an old, disused sawmill. When all of the group has contributed something of meaning they will force Pierre Anthon to go and see their heap of meaning, and he will realise that he is wrong.

The game begins innocently enough, with the children bringing old toys and books. But as the pile grows taller they soon realise that nothing they have collected so far means very much.

And so the story takes a darker turn as the children seek to collect those things that do have meaning so that they can prove to Pierre Anthon that he is wrong when he says nothing matters.

On its publication Nothing received a hostile reception and was initially banned in the author’s native Denmark.

Janne Teller was asked about how she felt about this at a Q&A.

Initially it was just a shock to me and I couldn’t understand why ‘Nothing’ was banned. It has no sexual content, no foul language, and compared to computer games, crime novels or vampire fiction, there’s very little violence in the book. It took me a long while to realise that it’s the fear of the questioning of all that we normally take for granted in society that made some adults so uncomfortable with the book that they wanted it banned.

Unfortunately it says a lot about the state of European thinking today that a book could be banned solely for questions it asks!

As I read it I was consistently reminded of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which is curious to me as the last time I read Golding’s book was at school, when I was forced to study it for my GCEs. (Yes, I said GCEs, not GCSEs. I really am that old.)

I didn’t much enjoy Lord of the Flies, but Nothing had such a profound effect on me that I immediately ordered myself a copy of William Golding’s book to read once more when nobody was forcing me too.

Although I strongly disagree with censorship I can understand the Danish authorities’ wish to ban Nothing. The questions it asks, and the lengths that the children go to, to find answers, or at least to turn away from the answer they fear is staring them in the face, is disturbing and bleak. Far more powerful than fictional violence and foul language.

When I heard her speak about the book, Janne Teller said that there is hope at the end of the story, despite how bleak it had become.

Maybe there is, but it is a tenuous, questioning sort of hope.

When I think about the need to ban Nothing, I do wonder if the people who read this book (if they even read it) and then decided to ban it were living with their own fear that nothing matters. Had they stared into the abyss like Pierre Anthon and come to the same conclusion?

But by banning the book what were they trying to achieve? To protect young minds? To keep the status quo? After all, if the young people of Denmark were allowed to ask the questions in Nothing and then make up their own minds about the answers, wouldn’t there be a danger that Danish society might well collapse? Especially if, like Pierre Anthon, they came to the conclusion that if nothing matters, then nothing is worth doing anymore.

When I finished reading Nothing this morning, my own response was a whispered, “Bloody hell.”

And I have been thinking about it all day.

Is it a dangerous book?

Definitely.

Would I let my own boys read it?

Of course.

Will I encourage them to read it?

Maybe.

One day.

The post nothing appeared first on Ken Preston.

The Ritual

Back in the summer of 2014 I went with Thing One, Thing Two and Mrs Preston on a camping holiday in France. We stayed in a large clearing in a forest, at a basic, but absolutely wonderful, campsite called Milin Kerhe.

One morning I decided to go for a solitary run. Mindful that I didn’t know the area well and that I barely speak a word of French I decided I would stick to the roads and not go far. I ran up to the road and along it until I came to a crossroads. A sign indicated Pabu town centre to my left so I thought it reasonable to continue my run up there and have an explore before heading back. Only minutes later, having explored the town centre (it’s tiny) I was heading back when I spotted a sign for a footpath through woodland back to the camp site.

How wonderful, I thought. A lovely finish to my run.

I entered the woodland. It was cooler in here than outside beneath the unforgiving glare of the sun. There was a stream trickling along beside the path, a path that took me downhill and deeper into the forest. The birds were singing. The forest smelt lovely.

Life was good.

Helpfully after a few minutes’ running there was another sign at a junction of footpaths pointing me in the right direction for the campsite and informing me that it was only 3km away.

I took the footpath, enjoying my run through this beautiful forest and secure in the knowledge that I couldn’t get lost.

A few minutes later and I came across another sign at yet another junction of footpaths, again pointing me in the direction of Milin Kerhe.

But this time, according to the sign, the campsite was now 5km away.

I paused, ever so slightly unsettled at the knowledge that the campsite seemed to have grown legs and run away from me.

Well, I was still heading in the right direction, so onwards it was.

The next sign I came across, at yet another junction of footpaths, told me the campsite was once more 3km away. I paused to take a good look around. Was this the previous sign, or another one? Had I doubled back on myself somehow?

I didn’t think so. I didn’t recognise this part of the forest.

I kept going.

Until I got to a sign telling me that Milin Kerhe was now 8km away.

To this day I still don’t know how that worked. Was the local governing body of the town having fun at the expense of its tourists? Was I reading the signs wrong?

Whatever the reason, by this point I was lost.

In the middle of a forest.

In a country where I could not speak the language.

Perhaps this experience heightened the fear and suspense I experienced whilst watching The Ritual, a film about four English backpackers lost in a Scandinavian forest.

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The film is a slow build, the tone rather melancholy, the four main characters sketched in well without being bogged down in back history. The emotional story arc for Luke is fairly predictable, but still feels right. Luke is played by Rafe Spall who gives a solid performance devoid of histrionics or overplaying. Of the four, Robert James-Collier as Hutch was the standout and I loved every minute he was on screen.

As the four men descend deeper into the woods and ever closer to their doom I wanted to shout ‘No, turn around, go back!’ Of course they don’t, and what is impressive about the writing here is that their descent into the horrors to come is totally believable. No moments of stupidity where they decide to ‘check something out’ when the obvious and only choice would be to turn around and run away.

Nope, these guys spend all their time trying to get away. And every choice they make is completely understandable, and yet still draws them closer to the nightmare that awaits.

There is a lot to enjoy about this film. The cinematography, all muted greens and browns, the sound design and the spare use of dramatic music, the understated acting and the intelligent script. Oh, and then there’s that creature.

I won’t say anything about that.

It’s best if you discover it all by yourself.

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The Ritual is based on the book of the same name by Adam Nevill. I’ll most likely be checking that out next. I’ve previously read Lost Girl by Nevill, and what a bleak nightmare of a novel that is. If there is anyone who could turn it into a film, I would opt for The Ritual team of director David Bruckner and script writer Joe Barton.

And Robert James-Collier in the lead.

The Ritual is available on DVD and Amazon Prime.

I seriously recommend it.

As for me and my adventure in the woods, I surfaced a few hours later with sore feet, aching legs, chaffed nipples and a mild case of sunburn.

I felt pretty sorry for myself at the time, but having seen The Ritual I now realise I had a very lucky escape.

The post The Ritual appeared first on Ken Preston.

READ ON!

Hosted by Festivaletteratura in the beautiful Italian city of Mantova, The Identikit of the Teenage Reader was a weekend of training for professionals and part of the READ ON project.

READ ON, Reading for Enjoyment, Achievement and Development of yOuNg people, is a four year project, begun in June 2017, which aims to support and spread a passion for reading among young Europeans aged between 12 and 19 through their active involvement in redesigning the ways of experiencing, sharing and creating literature.

READ ON is made up of seven international partners, one of which is Writing West Midlands based in Birmingham, UK.

As one of their lead writers for their Spark Young Writers creative writing groups and an author of young adult fiction I was asked by Writing West Midlands to represent them at this training event.

Of course I said yes.

Friday the 20th April rolled around pretty fast and before I knew it I was on a train to Birmingham International to catch a flight to Frankfurt and then a second flight on to Bologna. At Birmingham I met up with Farzana Ahmed, principal of English at Ark Boulton Academy and the other delegate to represent Writing West Midlands. Farzana and I had never met before, but any worries I might have had about what my travelling companion might be like were dispelled immediately. Farzana is lovely and a joy to travel with and we got on great.

We were met at Bologna airport by our driver and taken to our hotel in Mantova.

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No time for resting from our journey though. After a quick freshen up we were driven to the conference centre for introductions and our first session, The Statistical Brain and Reading.

Presented by Davide Crepaldi, a neuroscientist researching language, semantics and reading, this first session was not a promising start to a weekend of seminars and lectures. The subject matter was way beyond my understanding (and that of the interpreters who struggled at times to put the lecture into plain English) and I’m afraid that the consequences of getting up at 5am and travelling for several hours by train, aeroplane and car finally caught up with me and I dozed off.

Oh dear.

After a buffet dinner and a chance to meet delegates from the other European partners we were back down to the lecture hall for our second session, Writing Fiction for the Young: Honest, Honesty, Honesty!

Presented by Danish author Janne Teller this was much better. Her young adult novel Nothing was rejected by her publisher several times on the grounds that it was too bleak until the publishing director’s fifteen year old daughter read the manuscript and demanded that he publish it.

Nothing went on to win several literary awards, is published in twenty-five countries and won much critical acclaim.

A win for the teenage reader there, I think.

Nothing is a novel which asks the existential questions of life: Why are we here? What’s the point?

Janne pointed out that young adult authors should not be afraid to approach these issues. In her opinion entertainment has its place, but good literature can go beyond entertainment and should do. Her approach to writing also chimed with my own, in that when she sits down to write a novel she doesn’t decide to categorise it into young adult or adult. She simply writes the book that she feels needs to be written.

You start with story not with the audience.

She finished by saying something in which I firmly believe: Art is nourishment. Art takes different forms, literature, art and music.

We just happen to be working with words.

That was the final session of the day and I should really have gone back to my hotel and collapsed in bed, but I was eager to sample the Mantovan nightlife. The city centre was buzzing with people, young and old, and cafes and bars were glowing with light and life. I ordered a beer and sat and people watched in one of the town squares.

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And then it was bed!

On Saturday morning we had five seminars to choose from. I went for Reading Through: Cross-Mediality and New Media.

Well, if you know me at all I’m sure it will come as no surprise to find out that I was in seventh heaven. With talk of apps, gaming and fan-fiction my head was soon buzzing with ideas and I was scribbling notes. Looking at those notes now I can see at one point I wrote, ‘I feel like I know a lot of this!!’

That wasn’t me feeling clever and boasting though. And certainly there was a lot talked about in this seminar that I didn’t know. That sentence was more of a reflection of how at home I felt there.

Of particular interest to me was information on the Pubcoder app, a piece of software I have never heard of before. The Pubcoder app is essentially a publishing software but with bells and whistles on. A large part of its appeal is the potential for interactivity on the part of the reader, a useful tool particularly in education.

Couple that with the other panelists who talked about fan fiction and computer gaming and I was busy in my head bringing together all three elements for creative writing workshop purposes and book publishing.

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What particularly struck me was the way in which Paulo, the developer behind Pubcoder, talked about using technology for positive benefits, including helping children with disabilities, with autism and those who do not speak the native language of their host country.

Having just a couple of days previously led a creative writing workshop with a group of adults with learning difficulties and realising that there was quite possibly some great potential with this app, I had to stop myself from jumping up and down in my seat with excitement.

After a buffet lunch we then heard from the chairs of the seminars who reported back on the panel discussions. Again this was rather dry and there were some technical difficulties with the interpretations which did not help.

Finally, Carola Gaede presented her talk, Come on Boys and Girls!, on the work that is done at the International Youth Library in Munich.

Once more I had to restrain myself from leaping up and down.

It’s a library in a castle.

Two of my most very favourite things. Libraries and Castles.

At the International Youth Library they hold creative writing workshops, festivals, fellowships and education programmes. And it holds a collection of 600,000 books in over 130 languages.

I’m having to stop myself from jumping up and down again.

A visit to Blutenberg Castle and the International Youth Library is an absolute must for me. After the lecture I introduced my self to Carola. We made promises to keep in touch but, as there were other people waiting to talk with her, I felt I couldn’t hog her time and cut short our conversation. Fortunately I was able to meet her at breakfast on Sunday morning in our hotel and we had a much longer chat and connected with our shared experiences of literature (and raising teenage sons!).

Back to Saturday evening and Farzana and I met up with Kristin Green, author and representative of the Irish partner, West Cork Music, and we ate pizza in the town square and talked literature.

I had brought my running gear with me and was determined that I should get a quick run in before I left. I managed this on Sunday morning before breakfast. Then it was a brief visit to Mantova Cathedral for me before our driver arrived to collect Farzana and myself and take us back to Bologna airport.

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So, what did I get of value from this visit apart from beer and pizza?

Well, although not all of the conference’s sessions were for me, the weekend was still a most valuable experience. Janne Teller’s talk of what young adult fiction could be resonated with and inspired me in my own work. The seminar on cross-mediality and new media was a combination of revelation and reinforcement of some of my established views leaving me with new avenues to explore in my own writing work and my creative writing workshops. Finally the discovery of the International Youth Library and the connection I made with Carola has the potential to lead into new areas of work.

And of course the chance to meet with other writers and literary professionals who are dedicated to promoting reading and creative writing amongst the young was an absolute joy.

Something else I discovered this weekend: Working on a novel on my laptop whilst flying between countries is a great conversation starter, beginning with ‘Excuse me, but are you a writer?’ In this way I met an Italian IT technician who flies around the world delivering IT solutions and a German neuroscientist living in the UK. As writing is essentially a very boring activity to describe (I sit at a desk and type) I was soon able to turn the conversation around and find out all sorts of things about my flying companions.

Thank you Writing West Midlands for sending me on this amazing trip.

The post READ ON! appeared first on Ken Preston.

Lightbulb Moments

Lightbulb moments are cheap. Anyone can have an idea at anytime. It doesn’t take any special kind of skill or being a clever person to come up with ideas.

And ideas can happen without forethought or planning. Which means that sometimes an idea can pop up at the most inconvenient times. In the middle of a busy workday, at a concert or the cinema or worst of all just as you are dropping off to sleep.

This happened to me just the other night. As I was drifting slowly into gentle folds of sleep an idea occurred to me about my latest novel. I’ve been struggling with it for a few weeks and my idea seemed to, if not solve my problems, at least take the story in a refreshing new direction. Unfortunately I felt too tired to sit up and jot down a note. I told myself, I’ll remember it in the morning. I know I will.

Yeah, right.

Always, always, when you have an idea as you are drifting off to sleep, write it down immediately. When you wake up, it will have disappeared like a gossamer thin mist in a morning breeze.

But don’t worry too much about those ideas that go AWOL from your head. There will be another one along soon.

Because that’s the thing. Ideas are easy to come by.

It’s turning the ideas into stories and novels and blog posts that’s the difficult part.

This is the part that requires work. The planting the butt in the chair and writing part.

The frustration, the boredom, the feelings of inadequacy.

I should know, I do it pretty much every day.

You have to work with your ideas, test them and exercise (or even exorcise) them and coax them into life. You have to live with them, add other ideas to them until you’ve got a little family. And of course that family of ideas will squabble with each other, and rub each other the wrong way. And sometimes one or two of them might even pack up and leave, having had enough of all that arguing. Or maybe they just feel they would be better off with another family of ideas. And sometimes new ones will turn up and throw everything into chaos.

And it can be hard work turning an idea into a story or a book or a blog post.

But ideas are easy.

That’s why everybody has them.

It’s the work that is hard.

The post Lightbulb Moments appeared first on Ken Preston.

Hypnotically Suspenseful? I Don’t Think So

It used to be that whenever I started reading a book I always finished it.

Well, that’s not counting the first couple of times I attempted to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I kept stumbling to a halt in The Fellowship of the Ring, at the Council of Elrond. So much talking! But then one day I picked up the book and started reading from the beginning once more and raced through to the end.

But, apart from The Lord of the Rings, I always, always finished reading a book I started. Even if I didn’t like it that much. And it was pretty rare I didn’t like a book back then. When I say back then, I mean the olden days when I was a young teen. You know, when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

Things are different now. And no, I’m not talking about dinosaurs anymore.

Nowadays it’s much more common for me to give up reading a book.

There’s a feeling of guilt there, I must admit. And sometimes I struggle on, reading well past the point where I should have stopped but continuing in the false hope that it will get better. Or that I will become better at reading it, at understanding it.

Take Night Film, by Marisha Pessl for example. On the face of it, it ticks all my boxes (and I do love having my boxes ticked).

It’s a thriller.

It’s about movies.

It features a reclusive film director whose films are very hard to actually track down and see.

It has even got photographs and newspaper clippings and web pages in there, and the ebook has interactive elements to it.

Sounds right up my street.

Well, I dragged it out for a few hundred pages more than I should have done. I had reached about the two thirds mark before I decided, rather guiltily, to give up and read something else. This was a week ago, and still the book is hanging around, my bookmark still in place, and it is gnawing away at my conscience, demanding to be picked up and given one more chance.

But no, I can’t take anymore.

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Hypnotically suspenseful? I don’t think so, Mr Child.

So I turned instead to the Complete stories of Flannery O’Connor.

I’m a fan of Harry Crews and after reading one reviewer describe him as Flannery O’Connor on steroids I had to search out her stories.

I’d bought this book a while back and already read the first few stories.

Here I go again, not completing a book.

But I picked it up once more and continued from where I left off. Her stories are, and I know you are going to roll your eyes at this, but they are strange. I mean, they are just plain weird.

And not weird in a supernatural, ghostly way, or aliens or monsters or whatever. The closest I can come to comparing her with, apart from Harry Crews, is David Lynch. But without the violence and the overt stylism.

Some of the stories might come to a vague conclusion, but often they don’t. Quite often I feel infuriated by the end. Not in a ‘But what happened next?’ kind of way. More of a ‘What the hell was that all about?’ kind of way.

But, the more I read, the more I have started to find them satisfying, in a way that Night Film was never going to feel.

Anyway, I’ve stopped reading Flannery O’Connor now. I can’t binge read her stories. They are too off kilter and laden with, I don’t know, something, for me to just plough on through reading one after another.

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Encoh Emery appears in three stories, and this is the first one. He drove me me mad at first, but then I sort of grew to like him. Sort of.

So now I am reading Eden, by Tim Smit, a biography if you like of the Eden Project. I bought this book in the Eden Project shop when we were there last week. I love the Eden Project, but that wasn’t particularly the reason I bought the book. No, I am more intrigued by how someone goes from coming up with an idea of something this complicated and grand and amazing and gets to the point where it is done and completed.

And for a book that is full of talk about plants and horticulture, about architecture and town council meetings and the practicalities of Millenium funding, of drainage and clay and regeneration, well, I have to say I’m finding it to be a gripping, exciting read.

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Tim Smit’s positivity and utter conviction shines through the pages.

Much more fun than Night Film.

I reckon I will read this one to the end.

But I’m not going back to Night Film.

No matter how guilty it makes me feel.

The post Hypnotically Suspenseful? I Don’t Think So appeared first on Ken Preston.

Is the Moon in the Correct Phase?

Sometimes it’s tempting to believe that no creative writing can be attempted until all optimum conditions for writing have been met.

Peace and Quiet? Check.

Mug of coffee? (In favourite mug of course.) Check.

A calm and introspective attitude? Check.

Plenty of time available in which to write? Check.

No other jobs that need doing that could be an excuse for procrastination? Hmm, not sure about that one actually.

The moon in its correct phase? Uh, wait . . .

If you are waiting for the perfect conditions for the muse to pay you a visit, well, you’re going to be doing a lot more waiting than actual writing.

This last couple of weeks have been absolutely manic in the Preston household. Mrs Preston has been working every hour of the day and night (at least it felt that way) and I similarly have been rushing from home to work to creative writing groups to school workshops whilst juggling family commitments, organising a social media schedule, taking a course on marketing and keeping from tearing my hair out.

Oh yes, I’ve also been writing a novel.

The writing has had to be squeezed in wherever I can fit it, and has been done at the kitchen table with the full glare of sunlight on the computer screen whilst surrounded by piles of what felt like the contents of our entire house.

You’ve probably already heard the story of our cellar.

The cellar is my writing space. Waterproofed and decorated and carpeted it is an oasis of calm where I have written most of my work.

But in January 2017, kneeling on the carpet to reach for a book on the lowest shelf I realised my knees were wet.

Water was leaking into the cellar.

I won’t bore you with the details but the following fifteen months weren’t pretty, and neither was the cellar.

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I managed to find a dry corner and kept writing, but it wasn’t easy.

Finally, this week, after a long slog in which we identified the source of the water, the leak was fixed, decorating was done and then new carpet laid, I was able to begin the process of moving back in.

On Thursday, still in the kitchen and surrounded by piles of rubbish — nope, sorry, valuable possessions — I started a new short story.

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Today, back in the comfort of the newly restored cellar, I finished it.

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And I don’t think the starting or the finishing of it were better or worse for the conditions under which the writing was done.

An attempt to find the optimum conditions for creative writing is just an excuse to not write.

If you want to write — just write.

It’s never going to be easy, no matter what the conditions.

 

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How to Eat a Car

All right, you’d better buckle up that seatbelt because I have got one hell of a story for you today. In fact, you could say this is less of a story and more of an instruction manual. So, get ready to learn How to Eat a Car! (Oh, and you might want to keep the sick bag handy too. Just saying.)

How to Eat a Car

Step One. You’ve got to plan ahead.

You can’t just wade in there and start eating the damn thing. Think of the smallest car you can. What about one of those new electrical ones, can park sideways in spaces too small to fit a regular car. That’s still a ton of metal and rubber and plastic and glass, and all sorts of synthetic shit that you’ve got to shovel down your mouth and swallow, and then pass through your system. I’m not going to say digest, because you can’t digest none of that shit. It’s just got to pass through, until you crap it out the other end.

And it’s gonna hurt like a fucker.

That’s why you’ve got to plan ahead, and think how you’re going to do it.

Most people don’t realise that.

When Sharkman announced he was going to eat a car, the internet went crazy with speculation on how the hell he was going to do it. Sharkman was famous for eating impossible shit. But this was something else. An entire car, live on a twenty-four hour video feed.

“I always said he was a crazy bastard,” Mel said.

She was lying on the couch in just a pair of panties, smoking a cigarette, one arm draped over her face. I hated it when she did that, just let everything hang out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising her for being fat, we’ve both piled on the pounds the last couple of years, I just don’t see why she has to display it like that. It was hot that day, I know, but she could still have worn a tee, or something. Those rolls of fat, just disgusting, man.

“We should go see him,” I said.

Mel took a drag on her cigarette. “No way. You ask me, the guy’s a loser. He was cool, once, like when he used to eat people’s cell phones. Yeah, that was cool, man.”

That was back in the day when the Sharkman had been at the height of his fame. He had his own TV series, where he used to go out on the street, and grab people, and persuade them to let him eat some of their stuff, the more outrageous the better. Some people thought it was magic, or sleight of hand, but nobody ever got anything back. Once he’d eaten it, that was it, it was gone.

The first few episodes of Sharkman’s Gonna Eat Ya! didn’t make much of an impact. He ate a cheap digital watch, some loose change, an entire copy of the New York Times, shit like that.

It was when the woman challenged him to eat her baby’s diaper that the show really took off. Sharkman was in Central Park, and he’d stopped to talk to these two young girls, and one of them had a kid with her, and they were sitting on a park bench, a buggy parked next to them, and surrounded by bags of baby stuff. Sharkman did his usual thing, explaining to them who he was, that they were on TV, and that he wanted to eat something they owned.

The one girl, she said, like what, I can say, like, eat my panties, and you’d eat them?

You give me your panties, and I’ll eat them, Sharkman said.

The other girl, the one holding the baby, she said, what about my baby’s diaper?

Sharkman didn’t bat an eyelid. He just said, sure, I can eat that.

The two girls looked at each other and squealed, like he’d said the funniest thing. And then the mother, she turned back to Sharkman, and she said, the thing is, he’s just done a crap. You gonna eat that too?

And Sharkman said, sure, why wouldn’t I? I’m the Sharkman, I’ll eat anything.

 

Step Two. You’ve got to break that fucker up into manageable chunks, before you start eating it.

When I get my teeth into something, I can be a stubborn son of a bitch. Once I’d said it aloud, we should go see him, well, that’s what I was going to do. And I was taking Mel with me. She took some persuading, but I can usually talk her around, given enough time. She started in at first bitching about how it was too hot to move, and how she didn’t want go putting clothes on, and heading outside where it was going to be even hotter than in here, even though the apartment was like an oven.

I told her she was being a lazy skank, and it was no wonder she was piling on all that lard, sitting around on her fat ass all day, and eating crap. That got her moving, sitting up at least, and she pointed her finger at me, and told me I was mean, and how come I’d got so mean, when I’d been so sweet when we first met.

Maybe that’s because you were about sixty pounds lighter back then, I thought. But I kept that thought to myself. I’d already riled her enough with talk about her weight, and it had worked, it had got her up. But if I took it too far, it would backfire, and she’d go into a sulk, and lie back down again.

Anyway, it wasn’t like we had to walk all the way across town to see him. Sharkman was eating the car in Central Park, scene of the diaper eating moment.

That was the turning point for Sharkman. That episode went viral, and the following week, it seemed like the whole country had tuned in to Sharkman’s Gonna Eat Ya!, just to see what he was going to eat next.

Because, when the mom took the baby’s diaper off and showed it to the camera, yeah the baby had crapped all right. I don’t know what she was feeding her kid, but that baby’s shit looked radioactive. If it had been night-time, and not the middle of the day, I swear it would have glowed.

So, Sharkman, he took the diaper, and he held it close to his face, and had a good look at the contents, and a good whiff, too. He liked to play this part up, whatever it was he’d been challenged to eat, like maybe he’d finally met his match, like maybe this time he might actually fail. Or even worse, he might flat out refuse to do it.

It was all just an act, and everybody knew it. He went through the same routine every week, but he always rose to the challenge.

Never once failed.

Only this week, yeah, this was maybe the one where he took the bullet, man.

I mean, this was a diaper full of baby shit. Fucking neon coloured, glow in the dark, toxic baby shit. But finally he hunkered down on the ground, and he got out some scissors, and he started cutting that diaper up into bite sized chunks, and he popped them in his mouth, one by one. Didn’t chew on them much, just swallowed each one down. And when he’d finished, his fingers were all covered in baby shit, so what did he do? He licked his fingers clean, that’s what.

The following week, the ratings for Sharkman’s Gonna Eat Ya! shot through the roof, and Sharkman was a national hero.

 

Step Three. Believe in yourself.

I know, I sound like one of those crappy life coaches, promising you three steps to permanent health, wealth and happiness.

It’s all bullshit if you ask me.

But if you’re going to do some crazy ass shit like eat a car, you’re gonna get some people who’ll try and dissuade you of the notion. All right, it’s not a Hummer, or a stretch Limo, you’ve gone the sensible route, and chosen yourself the smallest car you can find.

But still, at the end of the day, the fact remains, my man, it’s a fucking car.

Now’s the moment when you’ve got to believe in yourself.

A lot of people will point out the exact moment where it all went wrong for Sharkman, and they could be right. It’s important to discuss that, and I’ll cover it in Number Four.

But me? Nah, I think it all went wrong right here, at point Number Three.

Sharkman just didn’t believe in himself anymore.

Mel finally got dressed, a strappy top and shorts, and a pair of sandals. The top didn’t reach her shorts, and so you could still see her flabby belly hanging out, and the stretch marks.

It was fucking baking outside. You could’ve cracked an egg on the sidewalk and you’d have had it fried in a minute straight, I’m not shitting you.

So we took it easy, heading west, down 54th Street. Before we’d got very far, Mel’s hair was plastered to her scalp, and her face was red and blotchy, and the sweat was dripping off the end of her nose.

We had to stop halfway there so she could get herself a Dr Pepper, a two litre bottle for fuck’s sake, and one of those humongous bags of Doritos, could feed a family of four for a week.

“We could have a picnic at the park,” she said.

Fucking Mel, that’s all she ever thought about, was eating.

When we got to Central Park we had no trouble finding Sharkman, he was surrounded by a huge crowd of onlookers.

What they’d done, the TV show producers, they’d had a massive, oblong box built, out of steel and glass, and stuck it in the middle of the park. Sharkman had been locked inside with the car, an old VW Golf.

Today was a Sunday, and Sharkman had been in the box just over a week. Another couple of weeks, tops, and he was supposed to make his grand exit from his glass prison with no sign that he had ever been sharing it with a car. His first couple days in the box had started off well. He’d got the tyres off and scarfed them down, and then he’d made decent work of the upholstery and the roof lining.

But when he got to the rigid plastic, and the metal and the glass, he had started slowing down.

Me and Mel, we managed to push through the crowd and get to the front. To be honest, Mel’s my secret weapon here. She just doesn’t give a fuck, and the size of her, you’re gonna get out of the way, or you’re gonna get squashed. So Mel did the pushing, and I just did the following.

At the height of his fame they ran five seasons of Sharkman’s Gonna Eat Ya!, and they could have run five more, he was so popular.

But then came the episode with the crying boy.

Sharkman’s doing his thing, out on the streets, asking people to challenge him to eat something impossible. To be honest, this is starting to get difficult now, as most people know he can eat just about anything you can name. He still gets the occasional bad ass challenge, though. Like the old guy, who said Sharkman could eat his dead wife’s ashes. That one had to go through the court before they let him, but he did it, even though he had to drink, like, two gallons of water to get that old boy’s dead wife down.

So he stops a mother and her boy, and the kid’s crying, and the mother’s shouting at him, and she offers up the boy for Sharkman.

“Eat the kid,” she says. “I’ve had enough of him, eat the little bastard.”

Of course, Sharkman didn’t eat the boy. But he made a big deal of pretending to, really put on an act, you know, and the kid starts screaming and wailing, and getting so upset, one of the crew stepped in to put a stop to it.

But it was too late.

Seemed like the entire fucking country turned on Sharkman, said he’d gone too far, accused him of terrorising that poor kid. Hell, there were celebrities going on TV saying it was child abuse. Can you believe that?

Ratings plummeted, and then the show got cancelled, and Sharkman disappeared out of the limelight.

Eating the car was meant to be his big comeback.

So there he is, my hero, the Sharkman.

The dude looked like shit.

Sharkman, he was standing by the car, wearing nothing but a stained pair of boxers, and his flabby body was running with sweat and blood. Yeah, Sharkman, he’d put on the weight in the years since his show got cancelled, looked fatter than Mel, which I hadn’t thought possible. His eyes were bugging out and he was shouting, flecks of blood flying from his mouth and hitting the plexiglass wall.

“They should end it,” a woman said next to me. “The poor man’s gone crazy, they should let him out.”

“No way,” her husband said. “I wanna see him eat the car.”

 

Step Four. You must never give up.

My dad always said, you tell someone you’re gonna do something, you’d best follow on through and do that shit, no matter how unpleasant it gets.

Sharkman said he was gonna eat a car.

He should have eaten the fucking car.

Me and Mel, we sat in the park for maybe an hour or two, Mel stuffing her face with Doritos, and watched Sharkman pacing up and down, shouting and spitting flecks of red.

Someone must have called the paramedics when he sank to his knees and started coughing up great dollops of scarlet blood. He coughed up so much he ended up kneeling in a pool of it.

Then the paramedics arrived, and took Sharkman away, and that was the end of that. There was some moaning and bitching about how he never ate the car, but really, what did people have to complain about, it was a free show, right?

Me and Mel, we headed back to the apartment, and Mel bitched all the way about what a waste of an afternoon that had been, and what a loser Sharkman was.

And I looked at her waddling along 54th Street, and I thought about that red patch she got between her thighs whenever she walked anywhere, because her legs were so fat they just rubbed together all the time. And I thought, what a fucking mountain of lard you are, and I thought, not even Sharkman could eat you.

That’s what I’m thinking now, as I look at Mel lying in the bath, that big, ugly bruise on her forehead where I smacked her one with the crow bar.

Not even Sharkman could eat you.

But I think maybe I could.

If you enjoyed that story and you want more like it, well I have got you covered.

Just hit the button below to go to the signup page for my subscriber newsletter and you will get my collection of short stories Population:DEAD! and other Weird Tales of Horror and Suspense in which How to Eat a Car appears. You will also get The Man Who Murdered Himself, Population:DEAD!, Drive Fast! She Said and others. Plus you will get two more free books, the first in my Joe Coffin series and my dark story of a pair of failed rock stars, Speaking in Tongues.

And it’s free, just for you!

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The post How to Eat a Car appeared first on Ken Preston.

Black Lightning

It seems I can’t even sit down to watch some escapist TV these days without questioning my motives, and contextualising what I am watching within my own life.

Always a sucker for superhero stories, and then quite often disappointed with the results, I decided to give the new Netflix show, Black Lightning a try. The concept at first bore a striking similarity to Pixar’s The Incredibles. A former superhero is now attempting to live out his days as a normal person, and hides his superpowers.

Where The Incredibles is sunny and bright, Black Lightning is dark in mood and action.

Jefferson Pierce has been denying his identity as Black Lightning for the past two years and is the principal of a high school and a community leader who claims to be able to save more lives working in the community leading young lives in positive directions, rather than zapping them with bolts of electricity from his fists when they are offending.

He also has two daughters who live with him, and an ex-wife who he is trying to reconcile with.

As a drama this works really well. I love the scenes in the school and around the family dinner table. The scene where the youngest daughter announces at the dinner table that her and her boyfriend are planning on having sex for the first time that weekend is brilliant, funny and uncomfortable.

But then of course Jefferson Pierce is forced into suiting up as Black Lightning and fighting the bad guys once more.

The first inciting incident is when he gets pulled over in his car by two racist, white cops, basically for being black. His power and rage shimmer behind his eyes, crackling with blue electricity.

Later, as Black Lightning, he is ordered to get his ‘black ass on the ground’ by another cop.

Race relations are very much at the front of this superhero series. The entire cast is black, apart from who plays Gambl, Alfred to Black Lightning’s Batman. I love this, that we now have a TV series where a middle aged white guy is now playing second fiddle to a black lead.

And this is where I find myself asking questions.

Am I only enjoying this because I deem it to be ‘worthy’?

Am I feeling uncomfortable because whenever I watch it I can only ever see a parade of black faces?

No.

This is game changing entertainment. We are conditioned as we grow up to recognise the ‘normal’ as being straight, white and male. But as Annisa, Jefferson’s daughter, begins to discover her own powers we are soon going to have a superhero who is gay, black and female.

And no, it’s not PC box ticking.

It’s liberating, mature storytelling, mixing superhero tropes with a complex drama about social issues, race, and family values.

At last, a superhero story for grownups.

The post Black Lightning appeared first on Ken Preston.

I Finally Watched Deadpool, and Now I Wish I hadn’t Bothered

I finally did it. I watched Deadpool last night. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to. Thing One had wanted to go see it when it came out at the cinema in 2016, but he was twelve at the time and the film is rated fifteen. I’m a little on the relaxed side with the BBFC film certification system at times, but after hearing about Deadpool (the language, the ultra violence, the snark and cynicism, the sex) I decided against letting him see it.

At least until I had watched it.

So, here we are two years later, Thing One is now fourteen and Deadpool is still a fifteen certificate. After watching the film last night, I’m still not sure I would want him to see it.

I kind of wish I hadn’t seen it, too.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit.

Oh wait, did you see what I did there? Probably not.

I went all meta on you by referencing a line from another genre film, Lethal Weapon

That’s what Deadpool is all about. Being meta. And self-referential.

Take the post credits sequence for example.

We know what we are in for right from the beginning, as the film starts with a credits sequence that lists ‘Gratuitous Love Interest’ as one of the stars and ‘Over-Paid Ass-Hat’ as director.

Which is funny.

It made me laugh anyway.

The problem is there are another 108 minutes of this.

Forget story, character development, or any kind of emotional engagement in the narrative. And with Ryan Reynolds constantly breaking the Fourth Wall, (“A fourth wall break inside a fourth wall break? That’s like… sixteen walls!”) I wound up feeling exhausted, as though I had just watched Moonlighting in its entirety in one sitting, except it had all been edited down to the bits where Bruce Willis broke the fourth wall.

Despite all the cynicism and going all meta on us, despite the constant self-referential humour and the utter silliness, I still had to sit through an obligatory CGI scene of mass destruction at the finish.

So, yes, it still winds up being just like every other superhero franchise out there.

Blah.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen Deadpool and you are curious about it, I recommend you watch this trailer for Deadpool 2 instead. It’s funny, it’s meta, it’s cynical, it’s ironic and it even has a Stan Lee cameo.

Oh, and it’s only three minutes forty-one seconds long.

The post I Finally Watched Deadpool, and Now I Wish I hadn’t Bothered appeared first on Ken Preston.