Jack Binding's Blog, page 2

Clowns

It’s been a while, dear friends. It’s been too long.
And while I probably should explain my absence, fill in the blanks… whatever, I’m not going to do that today. Today, I’m going to chat about Terrifier 3.

I’m 44 years old now, and I live in Sydney (which is in Australia, for those of you who vote for the orange man). One of my indulgent pleasures is going to the cinema on my own in the evening and watching a scary movie while eating some chocolates. Yes, my days of cocaine and dive bars are over. I have joined the ranks of regular society. Relegated? Perhaps. Promoted? Possibly.

So here I am, in Bondi Junction Event Cinema, chowing down on some sweets while I watch Art the Clown butcher people in various ways. There were two pricks talking throughout the movie, and I considered throwing a Jaffa or two at them, but being a respectable man now, I did not succumb to this violent urge. Plus, it’d probably earn me some sort of assault charge, and getting arrested for chucking a few spherical orange chocolates at some teenagers isn’t really something I aspire to. When the chainsaw buzzes, the blood splatters, and the victims scream, it drowns out the inane chatter of a couple of inconsiderate bastards.

The movie. Was it good? Well, if you like that kind of stuff, yes. I’m not a gorehound. I was having a conversation with a good friend about the Terrifier movies recently and what separates them from torture porn. Apart from the first movie, the Saw films did nothing for me, and their clones even less so. All those miserable noughties films with people suffering and then dying—I found them dull and pointless. So why are the Terrifier movies different? Well, there are two reasons: firstly, they are funny. Terrifier 3 has a bunch of gags with a bicycle horn. Art will reach into his bag, and you’re dreading what horrible instrument of death he’ll pull out, but every now and then, it’s a bicycle horn. In that respect, the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The second reason is that it harks back to that ’80s fun and simplicity. There’s a bad guy who cannot be killed and a bunch of mythology surrounding him. Like Nightmare On Elm Street 3, where we discover there are kids who can fight Freddy in their dreams. Great. That’s the shit I grew up on, not some sort of social lesson taught to spoiled kids, which was essentially the crux of the Saw movies (or at least it was by the time I stopped watching, which was about halfway through part 3).

But there are two other reasons I particularly liked Terrifier 3: it’s disruptive. Fuck all budget. No studio interference. Pure vision. Could it have done with an edit here and there? Probably. But who cares? In a world of endless superhero movies and bullshit cash grabs (Dial of Destiny, anyone?), it was refreshing to see something made from passion rather than target dollar value.

And, most satisfyingly, it’s made a laughingstock out of the recent incel spunkrag Joker movie. I watched the first one. Fuck me. It’s like it was made specifically for Andrew Tate’s Twitter follower list. I will not watch the sequel—and it seems not many people will, which is a good thing.

TL;DR: Terrifier 3 is great.

Anyway, I’m back now. I’ll blog more. I’m writing. There’s something in the works. And it’s really heartening to me that people have started reading Pills again. I’ve had many great reviews recently, and it’s climbing the Amazon charts, so that little piece of work I threw out into the world over seven years ago is finally growing some legs. Better late than never.

‘Til next time.

Nice

Well, it’s been quite some time.

I’d love to tell you I’m about to release something new, but quite frankly, most of my time has been spent teaching a baby human to do things like eat and roll and be a nice person.  Unsure if it’s some strange parenthood side effect, but I’ve become nicer. My heart’s kind of defrosted and while it may not yet be room temperature, it’s no longer sub-zero.

I love being a father. Should’ve done it earlier.

Unfortunately, the hedonistic part of my life has had to take an extended leave of absence. The other day a few friends came over (they have a baby, too, so it was convenient for both parties) and I drank an entire bottle of wine. The next day I was bed-ridden with a hangover that could’ve taken down Shane MacGowan. Fuck. I used to drink a bottle of wine before going out a few years back. And in my prime, I’d drink two.

Other than my pathetic, although, probably quite healthy intolerance for booze, what’s the news?

Well I have been reading Len Deighton’s Game/Set/Match trilogy. There just ain’t enough cold war shit on the news right now, so I have to get it through fiction, too.

I can almost drive. A scary thought for anyone who remotely knows me.

I am still in Sydney. It’s dropped below 20 degrees C in the evening now, and the locals can’t handle it. All rugged up with their faux-Burberry scarfs and their Lulu Lemon beanies. But I love it, all short sleeves and it-ain’t-cold snark. While I miss home an awful lot, I turn on the news or read an English paper and it’s still the same old bullshit.

My friends have all but left London and are now scattered around the country. It’d be a very lonely place if I moved back there right now. And the thought of negotiating a pram on the Tube fills me with more dread than the first time I watched Event Horizon.

People have been reading Pills, according to my Amazon reports. Every now and then a review with trickle through on that or Goodreads. Mostly good, occasionally bad. It’s nice that I’ve reached people considering my promotion at the moment is virtually zero.

To say I have done no writing would be remiss. I have a little project. It’s sketched out quite nicely, but it’s so dark and it’s the one subject that really scares me, so it’s going to be a slog to write. But all the best things involve a little sweat, right?

Anyway, see you in six months.

 

 

219 Days

Pills has been out for 219 days now.

It drifted for a little while in KDP purgatory, but now it’s starting to pick up some momentum. People are actually reading the thing.

Of course, I missed a few tricks re: publicity due to MASSIVE FUCKING LIFE EVENTS TAKING PRECEDENCE, but now things are starting to settle down, I can spend more of my life writing, blogging and tweeting (woooo), and less of it freaking out.

I suppose looking at the last 18 months and what’s been happening around the world, it has been hard to promote anything other than political agendas. Writing ‘Buy my indie book on Amazon’ seems a little trite when the leader of the free world is threatening nuclear war, defending Nazis and paying porn stars hush money. It’s almost as though real life is so fucking weird that it’s tough for fiction to trump it (see what I did there?).

But perhaps it’s in times like these that fiction is most needed. I’ve never been one for burying his head in the sand, but after all the crap that’s going on, it’s quite nice to escape for an hour into an imaginary world (even if that world is full of its own horrors).

Anyway, I’ve been writing again. Considering the turn my life has taken, I thought my new stuff might be a little softer – at one point, I even considered working on a kids’ book – but, nope, it’s just as mean and dark as ever. The only change is that I’m more confident with it now. I know the process. I know it takes fucking ages. I know you can edit the bullshit. I know my voice and how I like things to scan.

I think I’ll have something new out later this year. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with my back-catalogue, this blog and tweets about Brexit and spiders.

 

Brilliant Bloggers & Recommendations

KIND WORDS

Fem Feelings

I love that noise, the WordPress notification chime. It is going off in the background as I type. I am casually chatting to Jake from irrecollections trying not to inhale his blog in one sitting, yet thinking there nothing better to do on this freeze-balls saturday – oh wait I just remembered my team are playing … oh F*ck Yeah! .. we’ve beaten Chelsea whoop whoop! We’re still pretty shitty but hey-ho, enjoy the small wins in life. Which takes me nicely onto my review of a fellow bloggers collection of dark short stories Pills.

If you are not already following Jack Binding feel free to leave this page and press the Follow button, please do come back though!! Having come across Jack I think on Mindfump, if I’m shamelessly plugging then let me include my lil Bro who also wrote a book that is available on Amazon…

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Point

Last week, like a little belated Christmas present, I received my first bad review.  I read it with a touch internal schadenfreude and kind of wished the author had been a slightly more scathing. As Sophie Ellis Bextor once told the NME in the last nineties, ‘I’d rather be Marmite than butter.’

There were a few things I disagreed with throughout the review, which I won’t list here – people are entitled to their own opinion (even if it is complete bullshit). And I must admit, it was quite fun having discovered I’d irritated someone I’d never met. But within it, I found a bigger issue, an issue that bugs me when I certain reviews – the reviewer trying to figure out the point of the piece, as though that validates it.

It’s art, dude, there is no point.

You take away from it what you will. If it makes you angry, great, if it makes you happy, even better. At least it elicited some sort of emotional response. But there was no conceited game plan when writing Pills, it was something that I had to write. And if you don’t understand shit like that, you don’t understand art.

Anyway, that’s your fill. Baby well, dog well. I’m still living in Australia. Was asked how I was liking Sydney after a year. I replied, ‘It’s a place, I suppose.’

But yeah, I’ve been writing again. Not with any particular point in mind. Just because I needed to. Maybe I’ll give you something new soon.

See ya.

 

Adulting

I haven’t posted on this blog since 19th September, which is pretty bloody slack. But I have reasons …

I’ve been an immigrant in Australia for a little over a year now. Quite frankly, I hated it when I first arrived. Nanny state with the lockout laws and the squat, angry policemen booking people for crossing the road before the little green man was lit up. And it was too fucking hot.

Getting a job was a struggle because I didn’t go to the correct school. The fact I can spell, add up and have a reasonable grasp of grammar seemed to count for nothing.

Anyway, I persevered and found myself something a little different. Things started to settle down and I realised that despite its glaring faults, Sydney ain’t so bad. So I decided to stay.

In June I released Pills, a short story collection.

There have been a few great reviews of it – most recently by the wonderful Liz Scanlon here: https://liisthinks.blog/2017/12/20/pills-by-jack-binding-shortstories-horror/

And I intended to carry on with this novel I’d been working on that made Pills read like Beatrix Potter, but in October I became a father, and since my life has been pretty damn busy.

It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I love the little guy so much. Babies have an innocence about them, which was something my life was sorely lacking. He has given me a little humanity back.

So in between the sleepless nights and the nappies and the juggling a job where I have to fly interstate, there hasn’t been a lot of time for Jack Binding’s morbid fiction.

But next year. 2018.

I’ll be back. Don’t you worry.

Anyway, as a little post-Christmas gift, Pills will be free between 26th and 30th December.

(In lieu of a relevant title picture, please enjoy the picture of my toy poodle trying to mount my brother-in-law’s mini schnauzer.)

 

Underneath: Sleeping Pills

Shit. Where to start with this one …

The seventh story in Pills.

There are two things that inspired this one.

ONE: Insomnia

I’m sure I’ve written about it before, but I’ll go through it again. I have suffered from insomnia for years. I have been there at 5am, with bags under my eyes, not being able to decipher reality from dreams. I have experienced hows the cumulative effects of a few nights of bad sleep can take a relatively normal, sane human being and reduce them to a jabbering, shaking, paranoid wreck.

Anyway, during my worst bout of insomnia, I was working in an office in Mayfair. The company I was working for had a deal with a private doctors’ surgery around the corner. Any staff member could ring up and have an appointment within an hour. Once at the surgery, they’d be show to a backroom, where this Russian doctor would sit and listen to your troubles and the prescribe whatever he thought would remedy the situation.

So I went along and told him all about my insomnia and how it was affecting my life, and two minutes later he’d prescribed me 28 Stilnoct tablets. ‘Take one a night,’ he said, ‘then come back in a month if you still can’t sleep.’

Well, sleep I did. And the first few nights were glorious. But Stilnoct (or Zolpidem, to give ’em their generic name) are highly addictive, fuck with your head (in a way not dissimilar to the effects of insomnia) and should not be mixed with alcohol (or any other substances, for that matter). And I was drinking a lot at the time.

After the first week, my life was a waking nightmare. I was seeing things that weren’t (hopefully) there, I was still paranoid, but it was not so much to do with the stark reality of London or my life anymore, now I was living in this surreal horror movie and I didn’t know what was real and what was inside my messed up head.

Anyway, the following week, the doctor was arrested. Turns out his only formal qualification was a Batchelor of Arts in French, and that he was just winging it at that surgery in Mayfair, rinsing these companies for as much as he could get.

I stopped taking the pills, and eventually things became stable again.

These days I use meditation to combat insomnia.

TWO: Breaking Up

Ever had a really bad breakup? Ever been so messed up by it, you’ll see your ex winking back at you in the reflection of a shop window? Ever been too scared to walk into a certain part of town just in case you bumped into him or her, but kind of wanted to anyway, because you have this irrational yearning to see them again?

Course you have.

Well imagine that coupled with insomnia and surreal sleeping pill visions.

Sleeping Pills took me a long time to get right. I think it’s my favourite in the collection – and it’s certainly the most bleak of all the stories in there.

Also, The Rats In The Walls were there too.

Underneath: The Scowl

The sixth story in Pills, and the first that could be described as ‘Flash Fiction’.

Personally, I think ‘Flash Fiction’ implies lack of care in the process – this is not true. I spent a long time on this one, because I wanted to make every word count.

This one is a serious little tale of infidelity and hate. It also picks up on the male fear of fatherhood, which is something I don’t often see being addressed.

The location of this one is pictured above. I know it well; I spent many days walking along Regent’s Canal from London Fields to Angel. Looks quite pretty in the shot above. At night, with the wind and the rain beating down, it’s a sinister prospect.

And I’m sure that murky brown water hides some true horrors. Amongst the shopping trolleys and the Tesco shopping bags, there’s something really bad down there. It’s not a place you’d want to bathe in (although to my disgust, I did watch an inebriated friend of mine take his shoes off and dip his toes in there at 4am on a Sunday morning).

Underneath: Bit

Bit is the fifth short story in Pills.

This one is out-and-out horror. I wanted to scare the shit out of people, and what better way than by spider-like bugs that crawl underneath the skin?

The beauty of writing short stories is that you can experiment with ideas. I loved the thought of the story being mainly dialogue. The cop and the suspect. There’s not a lot of descriptive work in there, just two blokes chatting.

Also, what if the suspect is lying? Read it with that in mind.

It was a quick write. I think that’s because of the dialogue. It’s something I enjoy writing, and think it’s one of my literary strengths. Perhaps I should’ve been a screenwriter or something.

Still time, I suppose.

 

Underneath: Happy Endings

The fourth short story in Pills.

I always wanted to write a story about a dude who lost his penis, but every time I wrote it, I could never figure out the ending (if you see what I mean).

As a natural extension from the world I created in Dot Matrix, it worked. Another layer of corporate slime, some useful little characters I could expand upon.

The story’s main character was an amalgamation of the old sexist bastards I had dealt with throughout my time working in offices. Morally void. Nasty. Blames the world for problems they created. You know the type.

I go third person here, which is not my natural default (that’s first person). But I just couldn’t bring myself to delve into the guy’s internal monologue. Also, it worked better if the reader was an observer.

And the ending’s killer.