Tag Archives: illegal

Jimmy Savile in a time machine in an odd e-book not like Fifty Shades of Grey

Now Then as e-published by Ben

Now Then as e-published now by Ben

“Who is Ben?” I asked.

“Ben is actually an acronym formed from the initials of the three people behind this.” I was told. “Think of us as a six-armed editing/ design/ marketing monster.

“We’re like-minded friends who are a bit disappointed that the eBook revolution has mainly resulted in an awful lot of dodgy, generic pap being e-published and not a huge amount else. eBooks should be heralding in a new literature, not 50 Shades Of Grey and a bottomless pit of 50 Shades Of Grey clones.”

So Ben has/have started a publishing entity called Illegal Characters.

“Our goal,” he/they told me last night, “is to build up Illegal Characters into a brand where readers know they’re getting something weird and original – and authors know they can fart around with creative ideas that would get them thrown out of any respectable publisher’s office.”

“So why,” I asked, “should Fred Bloggs publish with you?”

“It really depends on what kind of guy Fred is,” I was told. “If Fred’s written a standard scifi/romance/thriller/self-help book, then Fred should contact a standard scifi/romance/thriller/self-help publisher.

“But, if Fred’s written something that he thinks is really wonderful that doesn’t really fit anywhere else, he should come to us. We’re happy to take the time to work on a text that’s brilliant but flawed and, as long as we like the book itself, then we’ll get behind it.

“We’re not looking for the next JK Rowling, we’re looking for someone who’s going to be the first to do whatever the hell it is that they’re doing.”

“And your first book is…”

Now Then by Colin Alexander.”

“The premise of which is…”

Jimmy Savile steals a time machine… It’s a sci fi comedy about a nerdy professor and a pissed-off schoolgirl who are trying to wrestle the machine back from Savile before he rewrites human history to his own sickening ends. Featuring cameos from the Bronte Sisters, Shakespeare and A Time-Travelling Alien Who Cannot Be Named For Copyright Reasons. It also explains the true story of Jesus in a way that will probably have Dan Brown kicking himself for not thinking of it first.”

“And it has just been published this week,” I said, “which is why you’ve approached me?”

“Well,” I was told by Ben, “the plan was (and still is) to have a Spring launch for Illegal Characters with three full-length novels. But, when Colin told us about Now Then, we had to read it. And, once we’d read it, we thought it made a pretty good statement of intent for Illegal Characters.”

“Because?”

“It’s weird, it’s lots of fun and it would probably have been subjected to a lifetime of snippy rejection letters from other publishers.

“The fact that it’s a piece of fiction about something in the news right now was also really appealing because you don’t get a lot of rapid-reaction literature. You certainly don’t get a lot of rapid-reaction book publishing. So we took this on as a challenge to see how quickly we could produce it. Answer: very quickly.”

“And your deal is?”

“Illegal Characters is offering a financial deal that’s pretty hard to beat – no upfront costs, half of the profits.”

“Oh well,” I said. “I’ll blog about anything interesting and the film I saw today was shit.”

“Outstanding,” said Ben.

And then he/they went away.

Leave a comment

Filed under Books, Publishing

An unsettling story about an illegal gun and “an awful lot of firepower out there”

In a recent blog, I mentioned that mad inventor John Ward – a man of often admirable creative eccentricity – used to have a gun licence for several weapons. It was not something I ever found reassuring.

He now tells me this true story…

_____

One evening in the early 1990s, before the Dunblane massacre, I was at my local shooting range. It was not unusual for members to bring guests.

The evening went on its merry way with members blasting away at paper targets and seeing who had the best score. Then, at the end of the night, as we were clearing up to go home, a guest who had been watching asked:

“Does anybody mind if I use of the target area?”

No-one did.

So he went to the boot of his car, dragged out a bag and walked back to the shooting area which was a wall about twenty feet high and twelve feet wide made from old wooden railway sleepers because, as well as being a ‘stopping point’ for all the bullets fired in its direction, it ‘soaked up’ the bullets and prevented any ricochets.

The guest unwrapped his weapon and it was a German MP 40 machine pistol – also called the Schmeisser sub machine gun – of the sort that is a staple of World War 2 films when the German side is shown with automatic weapons – think Where Eagles Dare. It is the cheaper-made model that derived from the MP 38 but, for all that, it still killed folk efficiently.

Its magazine holds 40 rounds of 9mm ammo. It is not a sporting gun by any stretch of the imagination and, as such, was/is a banned weapon on these shores for obvious reasons and can only be legally owned by a very few people or dealers who hold a Home Office Section 5 Licence.

So we stood there with our mouths wide open and the silence was deafening. Our guest then inserted a magazine into the forward section of the MP 40, cocked the weapon, turned to us and said:

“I’m not sure how this is going to go as I have had it years and I’m not sure what noise it gives out.”

With that, we put our fingers in our ears – we had already cleared away our ear defenders/ear muffs – and… BBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRR as our guest emptied a full magazine of forty 9mm bullets at the target area in about ten seconds – much like Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare in fact!

As the smoke cleared, he turned to us and said:

“Well! – that seemed to go alright, didn’t it?”

And, with that, he took the magazine out, thanked us, proceeded to put it back in the bag with the gun and took it to the boot of his car and drove off.

Afterwards, oddly, nobody could recall just who had brought him along as a guest…

For the next few weeks, I scanned the newspapers to see if there had been any ‘bank jobs’ done locally but there were none.

That was almost twenty years ago.

All this was and is illegal and, if caught with an MP 40, one’s future holiday arrangements might be arranged by Her Majesty for the next twenty years, but the streets of this country are nowadays awash with far more of this sort of stuff than ever before.

There is even more firepower in the MAC-10, which has 32 rounds of 9mm held a stick magazine housed in the pistol grip – a .45 calibre option was/is also available. The MAC-10 can empty its magazine in about 2 to 3 seconds flat.

It was put on test by the SAS but they refused to adopt it as it was inaccurate unless  – I quote – “you were having a fire fight in a telephone box”.

The MAC-10 is now a common fashion accessory among British drug gangs.

There is an awful lot of ‘firepower’ out there, perhaps some of it nearer than you might think.

7 Comments

Filed under Crime, Legal system