There I am, earlier today, playing a quiz machine in a well known family restaurant chain while we await our main course. I’m playing the game with my eight-year-old son, Kyle, but of course I mean I’m pressing the buttons the nanosecond I know the answer, while he sits patiently by, hoping to get a chance to contribute in some way.

Anyway, we’re motoring on fine, one question away from winning five shiny £1 coins. It’s a tense moment, but – thank the gods – an Entertainment question comes up. I’m good at Entertainment category questions. Actually, I’m only good at Entertainment category questions, so this is a good sign of some riches to come.

Up comes the question:

Q. Which actor did NOT appear in the 1972 movie ‘Sleuth’?

And the three possible answers:

1) Michael Caine

2) Roger Moore

3) Laurence Olivier

I’m excited. I know Michael Caine was definitely in it, and I have a Try Again left, so even if I guess wrong the first time, I can choose the other answer I know, by default, must be right.

I’m so confident, in fact, that I choose 3) Laurence Olivier, even though I’ve got a hazy memory of him being in the film (which I saw, once, when I was twelve). Sure enough, the screen flashes red, and I’m told to Try Again.

My finger moves up the screen and hovers over 2) Roger Moore. Just as I am about to press it, though, a woman at the fruit machine next to me leans in and says, “It’s Michael Caine.”

“No,” I reply, pointing to the question. “It’s which actor was NOT in Sleuth.”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding encouragingly. “Michael Caine.”

From the corner of my eye I see question time limit ticking down. “Michael Caine was in it,” I say. Suddenly, I’m not sure, though. Suddenly, I’m doubting myself. “Michael Caine was in Sleuth, wasn’t he?”

“He was in the remake, not the first one.”

Tick, tick, tick.

She’s right, he was in the remake, but he was in the original, too, I’m sure of it.

Only I’m not sure any more. And there are three seconds left. Panicking, I jab a thumb against 1) Michael Caine. The screen flashes red. GAME OVER fills the monitor.

I look over to the woman on my left. She nods.

“See?” she says, and then returns to her fruit machine as if nothing had happened.

I frickin’ knew it was Roger Moore, as well.

On the day before the 250th blog post we’re taking a look back at the very 1st one. It was written on my mobile phone, using a tiny bluetooth keyboard, as I travelled to Glasgow to meet Kathryn Ross, who would soon after become my agent. Back then, Invisible Fiends was still called Imaginary Friends Reunited, and had yet to be sent to a publisher. I had written Beastly! for Egmont, but hadn’t yet done any of the now-too-many-to-count Ben 10 books.

I wasn’t yet engaged, my daughter, Mia, hadn’t been born, I slept more… So many things have changed since that first post, so why not remind yourself of a simpler time by reading it now?

As for today’s thing that scared me…

I’m not sure if I was ‘scared’ by this so much as sickened by it. Let’s see what it is first, and then I’ll explain why it had such a horrible effect on me.

Holy two-way communication device!

In the 1960s Batman TV show, the Gotham City Police Department elected not to summon Batman by projecting his Bat-Signal into the sky, but rather just to call him up on the Batphone, as depicted above. It’s a much more sensible option, not only because of the money saved on electricity – high-powered searchlights cost a fortune to run – but also because the Bat-Signal only works when it’s cloudy. Also, it only works at night, and since Batman battled evil during the day in that show, the Bat-Signal was all sorts of pointless.

When I was fourteen or fifteen, I had a part time job at a local supermarket. Every Saturday morning, I’d be awoken by my alarm at 5am, so I could get up and get ready to start work at 6am. Being a teenager, I had no idea 5am even existed until I started that job, and so when my alarm screeched out at me as the rest of the world slept, I often felt like crying.

It was made worse by the fact that A) the job was terrible, and B) my immediate superior – and the only other person on duty with me at the time – was a 19 year old half-wit with a curly mullet (the hairstyle I mean, not the fish). Those early Saturday mornings were among the least pleasant of my life, and it was always with a heavy heart that I dragged myself out of bed to walk – through the dark and the wind and the rain – to work.

What’s any of that got to do with the Batphone? The noise the Batphone makes when it rings is the exact noise my old alarm clock used to make when it went off. As a result, whenever I catch an episode of Batman and the Batphone rings, my heart sinks and I am transported back to those agonisingly unpleasant mornings from 17 years ago. I feel my chest tighten and my breathing begin to race, as I suffer what can only be a mild panic attack.

So that’s yer lot for the Countdown to 250. Join me tomorrow, for a special 250th blog post, on the day the winner of the first ever Author Blog Awards is due to be announced at the London Book Fair (assuming anyone can get there, what with the volcano an’ that). I’m not going to win it, obviously, but it has been fun to be in the running all the same. My money’s on Neil Gaiman, but I’ve been known to be wrong before.

Once.

A long, long time ago.

Not got much time to post tonight. Had a hectic day of stressing, worrying, panicking and eating ice cream (the last one wasn’t so bad), so going to try to get a couple of hundred words of Invisible Fiends book 4 done before heading down to watch Flash Forward.

So, very quickly, here’s your post from the archives – a five page preview of Gangrene, my comic mini-series due to be published by Markosia later this year.

And, even more quickly, let’s take a look at something else that terrified me as a child, and still gives me the heebie jeebies now…

Need I say more?

I’ve just realised I’ve made a grave mathematical error when counting the number of posts remaining until the 250th. I thought that, after today, there would be 2 more posts and then it would be the 250th. But I was wrong. After 2 more posts we will only be on the 249th. Aaargh!

Still, never one to abandon an idea, no matter how flawed it may be, I’m pressing on regardless. I’ll sneak an extra post in somewhere between now and then, so the 250th post will be the 250th post. If you see what I mean?

Anyway, I’ve combed the blog and dug out The Idea Fairy for you to look back at today. Those of you who struggle to come up with ideas for your own stories might find it useful.

And for today’s glimpse into my damaged psyche, we’re going to take a look at yet another thing that used to terrify me as a child…

SQUIRRELS!

For pretty much my entire life I have been blessed – or cursed, I often think – with a highly over active imagination. When I should be doing every day tasks – washing the car, loading the dishwasher, and so on – my mind is miles away, imagining what would happen if the car started spraying water back at me, or the dishwasher begged me not to fill its mouth with dirty plates.

It has always been the case. In any given situation I will usually imagine at least one or two bizarre things that might happen to change the situation, usually resulting in me becoming completely distracted and failing to carry out whatever task I was doing in the first place.

The first time I thought of my imagination as a curse was when I was about six or seven. I was in Aberdeen, visiting my grandmother, and was walking through a park. In the middle of the path I came across a dead squirrel. And I mean it was a really dead squirrel. It had guts poking out through its eye, limbs snapped off – it really was the deadest squirrel you can imagine.

As I looked down at the squirrel, my first thought was “That’s a shame. Poor squirrel.”

My second thought, however, was “What if it comes back to life? And jumps up and grabs me by the face, and starts clawing out my eyes?”

I then went on to picture this zombie squirrel leaping up and attacking me so clearly, that I instantly gave myself an intense squirrel phobia. Now, if I see a squirrel – even on TV – I’m reminded of that monstrosity on the path, pretending to be squashed and lifeless, but secretly lying in wait to jump up and catch the first unsuspecting child to wander by.

I may have left the park with a lifelong fear of the things, but all things considered, I reckon I got off lightly.

Continuing our countdown to the 250th blog post here on BarryHutchison.com, I’ve dug this little gem up from the archives.

An Open Letter to Wasps.

And as for today’s Thing That Used to Scare the Crap out of Me…?

This is a still from a movie produced in 1978 – the year I was born – called The Swarm. It stars British acting legend, Michael Caine, and tells the story of a swarm of African killer bees descending on a town and doing what killer bees do best.

It’s a terrible, terrible film which makes little or no sense whatsoever, but at the time it terrified me. In particular, the scene above reduced me to a blubbering mess on the floor when I saw it, aged about 9.

The child on the bed has just lost his or her parents to the killer swarm. I say “his or her” because I can’t remember whether it was a boy or a girl, and that hairstyle is kind of non-gender specific. I’m sure you’ll forgive me for not noticing the child’s gender, what with all my attention being fixed squarely on the frickin’ enormous bee flying above the bed.

What made it so scary, for me, was the fact that neither Michael Caine, nor the woman beside him could see the giant bee themselves. It was just a great big scary hallucination the boy/girl/other on the bed was having.

The entire scene was made up of A) the child weeping and howling like a maniac, B) Michael Caine shouting “There is no bee in this room!” and C) Michael Caine shouting “Reach out and touch it. Touch the bee!”, which completely contradicts what he was saying in point B. Reach out and touch the bee that isn’t there, Michael? Are you trying to mess with the poor kid’s head? He or she has just seen his or her parents murdered by African bees, it’s no time to be playing mind games.

Anyway, the kid did reach out and touch the bee, only to discover that it wasn’t actually there at all. Personally I’d have jumped up from the bed, booted Michael Caine in the groin, then legged it out the door before I got a stinger through the face, but that’s just me. The boy (or girl) in The Swarm was evidently made of sterner stuff than I.

Technically it should be “The Count up to 250″ but that just looked stupid as a post title, and I look stupid enough in my day to day life without doing it here, too.

By my reckoning (or, more accurately, by my website stats) this is the 244th post on BarryHutchison.com. Since I did nothing whatsoever to mark the 200th post, I’ve decided to do something special for the 250th post. I have no idea what it’ll be yet, but it’ll be at least reasonably good. I think. Just promise me you won’t set your expectations too high or anything, eh?

Anyway, I thought I’d start building the excitement now by having a countdown (or up, if accuracy is your thing) to post 250. Each day, for the next five days, I’ll be pointing you in the direction of one of my favourite older posts on the site.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’ll also be giving you a glimpse into my psychological make-up by revealing every day something that either scared me as a child, or scares me now. Or both, in most cases.

Today we kick off by looking back at the 100th Post Spectacular – the first (and currently only) blog milestone celebration I wrote - and by recalling the fits of sweaty panic brought on whenever I saw this man on TV in the 1980s:

Andre the Giant was a professional wrestler from Grenoble in the French Alps. He weighed 380 pounds – or 27 stone – and from what I can tell from looking online, his height ranged from 6 ft 10 in to 7 ft 5 in, suggesting he could alter it at will.

Nothing in the paragraph above was the root of my fear, though. I didn’t care how tall he was, how frickin’ enormous his arms were, or how many times he sat down heavily on Hulk Hogan’s unsuspecting face. Even as a child I was tall myself, so I knew I had nothing to fear from people who just happened to be big.

No, what scared me – what made me run upstairs crying whenever he appeared on screen – was his voice.

His voice, for those of you who have never heard it, was like the rumbling of two tectonic plates deep beneath the Earth’s crust, or the yawning of some long-dormant sea monster. It was the deepest, most resonating sound I had ever heard, and it scared the bejeesus out of me.

You know in the film Titanic, when the boat’s big foghorn thing gives that long, ominous blast after they hit the iceberg, and you know virtually everyone is going to die a horrible death? Andre the Giant could make that exact same sound just by breathing in.

What’s worse, he made those noises with a heavy French accent. To a boy from the Highlands, who had never met anyone from another town, never mind another country, this only added to the sheer, unwavering terror his voice caused inside me.

A few years later, I saw him as the lumbering, deep-voiced giant, Fezzik, in the movie The Princess Bride, and all was forgiven. Although his voice was still unrelentingly chilling, I realised he probably wasn’t going to use it to murder me with, and that – despite his repeated stamping on the face of Randy “Macho Man” Savage – it was clear he was just an unfortunately huge French bloke with a heart of gold.

Which may have played some part in him dying of a heart attack aged 46. Or it might not.

Dear Fat Bloke Down the Road,

I’m the first to admit that it would be easier to come and speak to you in person than to draft this letter, but there is a very good reason why I have elected to contact you in writing.

Put simply, you terrify me.

Actually, perhaps ‘terrify’ is the wrong word. ‘Alarm’ might be more appropriate. ‘Disturb’, maybe. Whatever the precise definition, the thought of coming within a few feet of you and holding a direct, one to one conversation chills me to the bone.

That’s not to say I can’t speak to you. You’ve heard me say ‘hello’ to you several times. In fact, I’ve probably said ‘hello’ more times to you than I have to anyone else alive, and it is for this precise reason I have chosen to write this letter.

I’m going to come right out and ask: Why are you following me? It was funny the first few occasions I bumped into you in unexpected places, but now – if I’m honest – it’s kind of creeping me out.

Remember that first time – two, maybe three years ago, I forget – when I was out running along a dirt track several miles from where either one of us lives? I’d covered a fair distance that day, but was still a good twenty miles from the nearest signs of civilisation.

Imagine my surprise, then, to meet you walking at a leisurely pace in the opposite direction. We greeted each other with a polite nod and a mumbled ‘alright?’ and continued on our way, and though I wondered where you could possibly be walking from, I quickly put it down to one of life’s funny little coincidences, and didn’t give the incident another thought.

Until two weeks later, when I met you in the gents’ toilets of a Pizza Hut. The gents’ toilets of a Pizza Hut located one hundred and nine miles from our home town. You were leaving as I was entering, and though I smiled at our second coincidental meeting in as many weeks, you remained largely impassive, simply giving me another nod as I stood aside to let you by.

By the time I emerged from the toilets – just two minutes later – you were gone.

In the weeks which followed I became more and more suspicious. It seemed that wherever I went, there you were.

When I went to the petrol station you were there filling your car up. In the supermarket you were at the next checkout, your trolley groaning under the weight of cakes and chocolate. On my way home from nights out with friends I’d pass your house and find you standing on the front step, smoking. At 3am! Why were you standing outside smoking at 3am?

On every occasion the salutation was the same: A single nod of your oversized head and – if you were feeling generous – a curt ‘alright?’. On the night of your late night smoking session, you broke with tradition as I passed and commented on how cold it was. It was three o’clock in the morning. In January. Of course it was cold. If you were cold why weren’t you inside your house?!

Why? Because you were waiting for me, that’s why. That’s what I decided at the time, anyway, and you’ve done little to convince me otherwise in the weeks and months since then.

I travel 65 miles to the nearest cinema and you’re sitting in the row in front, scoffing popcorn by the fistful. I go swimming and you’re standing in the changing room, vigorously drying your crotch like your life depends on it. I pass you on my way into town and then meet you in the first shop I go into. How is that even possible? Do you double back? Is there more than one of you? It just doesn’t make sense any more. Had it not been for the fact that other people have seen you I’d be convinced you existed solely in my head.

I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that time I went to visit my Dad in hospital, only to find you lying in the bed I expected him to be in. For a brief moment I felt an almost overwhelming sense of relief. I thought I had finally reached the end of some twisted, elaborate game, and you were going to be revealed as nothing more than my Dad in a fat suit. But no. My Dad had simply been moved to another ward, and you had been given his old bed, supposedly completely by chance.

Well I don’t buy it. There’s not enough room in the world for that much coincidence. The Universe just doesn’t work that way.

It’s got to the stage now where I’m actively looking for you wherever I go. Will you be sitting in the dentist’s waiting room today? Or at the next table in a coffee shop? Or hiding in my cupboard? I feel like I’m trapped in some psychologically harrowing version of ‘Where’s Wally?’ with no way of reaching the final page.

It’s the apparent lack of motive which scares me the most. Have I done something to you? Is that why you’re pursuing me like some sort of relentless machine? If I have, then I’m sorry. Whatever it was, I’m sorry. Just please … please leave me alone!

Ironically, I don’t even know your name, despite knowing your face better than I know my own. It has reached the stage now when I can identify your slow, lumbering walk at anything up to five hundred yards, though I’ve learned long ago that taking evasive action even at this early stage is pointless. You’ll find me. Wherever I go, whichever way I turn, you’ll find me. You’ll hunt me down, and for what? To nod at me and say ‘alright?’ in a low voice? It seems like such a waste of both your time and mine.

I’d like us to wipe the slate clean and start again. If it takes some kind of rota system in which only one of us can leave our respective houses at any given time, that’s fine by me. I can work with that if it means not having to constantly be on the lookout for your bulging frame.

As I explained earlier, I don’t know your name. Nor do I know the exact number of the house you live at, as I usually fix my gaze firmly on the pavement when I pass. This would make addressing this letter difficult, however I am reasonably confident that when I finish writing and turn around I will find you standing directly behind me, so I foresee no difficulty in getting my message to you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and for the five minutes of relative freedom you have afforded me by doing so. I look forward to never seeing you again for the remainder of my natural life.

Regards,

Barry

Since starting this blog back in February 2008 I’ve tried to at least occasionally write something that readers might find vaguely useful. I haven’t often succeeded, but I’ve tried, at least. Surely that counts for something?

Anyway, now that I’m doing more and more author events, I find myself being asked to share writing advice and tips, which I’m always happy to do. Because time is usually quite limited, though, I rarely have time to talk for very long on the subject, and I end up referring people to this here website.

I’ve realised, though, that the useful content gets lost in amongst all the rubbish about water pistols, soup, and Sylvester & Tweety, so I thought I’d collate the writing tips here in one post to make them easier to find. So, for those of you interested in becoming an author yourself, you might find some of the posts below useful.

12 Tips for Pro Writing – Part 1

12 Tips for Pro Writing – Part 2

12 Tips for Pro Writing – Part 3

Writing Lesson #1

Writing Lesson #2

3 Tips for Writing Horror

The Idea Fairy

During my school workshops I mention an early attempt I made at writing a children’s book – a comedy fantasy novel called KENTUCKY FRIED FAIRY. I’ve mentioned it on the blog a few times, and if you do a search for the title you’ll even find a few sample chapters to download and read.

Today, though, I thought I’d give you a glimpse into where the book’s title comes from. You’ll find the answer – along with a fairly detailed description of the process – somewhere in the extract below.

There is very little to compare to the many and varied sights, sounds and smells of market day in Upper Stumm, as Ben and Claire are only just discovering.  Before we get to those, however, I feel a quick geography lesson is in order.

Hobley’s Square, where the children are now, is situated slap bang in the middle of Upper Stumm.  Upper Stumm is by far the larger of the two boroughs which make up the City of Stumm, the other borough being Middle Stumm.  No-one can recall what happened to Lower Stumm, but after several decades of arguing about it, historians agreed that presumably it must have existed at some point or another, and to leave it at that.

Stumm itself is the largest – and, indeed, only – city in the land of Volgorthia.  Volgorthia in turn is one of the three biggest countries in the whole of Sub-Divan, which, as if you didn’t know, is a vast and expansive world only accessible via a few portals scattered across a variety of dimensions.

Those wishing to discover the exact location of these dimensional doorways are invited to turn to page two hundred and eighty seven of It’s a Bit Like a Big Banana, Really, where Brunt Thrushtap of Ing has helpfully provided a most informative and detailed fold out map.

Although one of Upper Stumm’s busiest locations, Hobley’s Square only truly comes alive on market day, which takes place twice a month and which, despite the name, can often last for anything up to a fortnight.

During this period the expansive square is crammed to bursting point with salesman, traders, and wave after relentless wave of fanatical bargain-spotters.  On each market day morning the more fanciful traders set up quaint little thatched roof stalls from which they sell their wares.  Inevitably, these are torn down by the fervent masses of over-zealous shoppers some five minutes later, but it’s the thought that counts.

The produce on sale at Stumm market ranges from the ordinary to the outrageously elaborate.  It is not unusual for one trader to be selling small nick nacks made from his own rotten teeth, while the next trader along is advertising the wide range of magical spells and powerful elixirs he has available.  Obviously in this instance the real bargain would be the scabby tooth sculpture, as everyone knows there’s no such thing as magic.

Unless you’re talking about fairy magic, of course, which is a different matter entirely.  It’s powerful stuff, fairy magic, and not something to be meddled with lightly.  There are a range of fairy products available at Stumm market, one of which can be found in no other country in all of Sub-Divan.

There’s an old saying that suggests that every time someone says, “I don’t believe in fairies,” a fairy dies.  This is nonsense.  While it may hurt their feelings a little, saying you don’t believe in fairies will not directly bring about a fairy’s death.

Snatching one from the air, coating it in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, then plunging it into boiling oil for three to four minutes, on the other hand, almost certainly will.

It was a uniquely Volgorthian delicacy, rumoured to have been conjured up in the castle kitchens by Lord Volgorth himself during a particularly voracious attack of the midnight munchies.  Soon the recipe spread far and wide, until all across the land, from Ingle to Shum, everyone was hungrily munching on the dish Lord Volgorth had dubbed: “Kentucky Fried Fairy”.

Before long, Kentucky Fried Fairy had become the unofficial national dish of Volgorthia, quickly overtaking the official national dish of Stewed Scum Slug in the popularity stakes.  These days, no matter where you are in the country, no matter what time of day or night it is, somewhere nearby there’ll be someone merrily plunging fairies into scalding oil and serving them up with fried sticks of potato and little soggy napkins which smell faintly of lemons.

Make no mistake, they have one hell of a time of it in Volgorthia, fairies.

I am going to devote this blog entry to an apology. Or rather, to a series of apologies, many of which are long overdue. I hope you will bear with me as I cleanse my soul of sin.

I am going to devote this blog entry to an apology. Or rather, to a series of apologies, many of which are long overdue. I hope you will bear with me as I cleanse my soul of sin.

I’d like to start by apologising to Miss Adam my primary four teacher, for disappointing and angering her by drawing a half-assed picture to accompany a story I’d written in her class. Though the picture was more of an afterthought, and was really little more than a thumbnail sketch depicting the events in the accompanying prose, it clearly did not live up to her high standards. For this, Miss Adam, I am sorry.

I would also like to apologise for quietly calling her a “fat cow” when she stormed away from my desk, and for adorning a copy of the Dandy annual 1987 with the words “Miss Adam is a fat cow” several dozen times upon my return home that evening.

I would like to pass on my sincere apologies to John, the then area manager of Blockbuster Video, for convincing the staff in all the stores in the Aberdeen area in 1998 that he was a dancer in Abba: The Movie. I take full responsibility for the time everyone stood round him at an employee’s leaving do, chanting, bellowing and insistently demanding he perform some of the more complex dance steps from the Swedish supergroup’s motion picture, until he finally gave in and utterly humiliated himself before the baying, jeering crowd.

Likewise I take all blame for the black eye he received from an irate customer when he refused to sign said customer’s wife’s copy of the compilation CD album, Abba Gold.

I would like to say sorry to the attractive American customer in the pub I worked in in 1999 for convincing her I was Tony Hadley out of Spandau Ballet.

I am not this man.

I would like to apologise to the nation of Belgium for a large number of things, including but not limited to:

• Wiping it from the face of the earth in Issue 1 of The League of Supervillains online comic.
• Several years of cruel and ignorant mockery, which didn’t once take into account your rich heritage and culture.
• Assuming ownership of the country by means of sending a letter to King Albert II instructing him I would like to lay claim to the entire nation, and that if he didn’t reply within 48 hours I would assume he had no objections. As a token of my remorse I am now re-instating Christmas before relinquishing all control of Belgian affairs of state.

While I’m at it I’d like to return the Shetland Isles to their rightful owner, and beg their forgiveness not only for the devious way in which I seized control of the islands, but for their new shape and colour scheme. I hope in time you can come to accept the new look.

I hope that somehow all of the parties mentioned in this post can find it in their hearts to forgive me. I’d also like to beg forgiveness from (in no particular order): Dr Macleod; Raymond Hervo; Steven Seagal; The London Philharmonic Orchestra; Andy Cameron; Tyne Daly; Estelle Getty; Andrew Lloyd Webber; Yoko Ono; the cast of Bread; East 17; Lewis Grassic Gibbon; and her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, for all manner of misdemeanours too numerous to go into here.

I am profoundly sorry for them all.