News
Five Go Mad in the Falklands
Back in l982, our dear leader Margaret Thatcher was in deadly trouble. She was considered to be a harsh and grating shopkeeper with a vicious streak, who was heading for oblivion at the next election. Then some nasty little fascist nutter called General Galtieri in Argentina decided - also for reasons of electoral unpopularity - to invade the Falkland Islands, to which his country had a claim. Like everybody's claim to the islands it was legally dubious, and could only ever hope to be settled through legal processes. Neither Galtieri nor Thatcher were interested in such nonsense, obviously - they were politicians. There was kudos, and votes, to be won.
Much to the astonishment of the British - who had, however, just removed their naval presence from the area - the Argentinians were serious. They sent a small but determined force across the water, and quickly captured the place. Much to the astonishment of the world, and her own advisers, Maggie sent a task force 8,000 miles to get them back. Militarily, it was as near insane as makes no odds. To put it at its bleakest, if one of Argentina's submarines had sunk the ocean liner Canberra that was carrying our troops (we had no troop ships, naturally - SO expensive!) the fallout would have been beyond belief. In the event, in the weeks of fighting, many soldiers and sailors were killed and maimed. More than nine hundred from both countries. Borges said: 'It was like two bald men fighting over a comb.' And now the islands are still British, although Maggie never held the promised referendum, and now Argentina is making belligerent noises once more, because the legal issues are still unresolved. Progress, eh?
I wrote a play about it at the time. A three part serial for Thames TV, which they decided would be best placed in their schools programming. It was called A Game of Soldiers, and the Government were horrified. It told the story of three Falklands kids who find a badly injured young Argentine conscript hiding in a sheep shelter and decide to kill him. Not because they are evil nasty little beasts, but because of the reason the task force went all those miles - it was a patriotic duty.
The government, in the person of Defence Minister John Stanley, were determined that it should not be shown. Pressure was put on ITV to pull it from the schedules, and all sorts of knocking stories went the rounds. At one stage it was described as being 'Five Go Mad on the Falkland Islands' in the hope that ridicule would do the trick. It did not. The government were told, politely, to go to hell. Brian Cowgill, for Thames, agreed in the end to have a voiced announcement before it was shown, pointing out it was a work of fiction. Possibly one of the neatest mickie-takes against a government in broadcasting history. 'Please note - this play is fiction.' Oooh - vicious...
One wonders if broadcasters would have been able to resist similar pressure these days. Unhappily, I quite seriously doubt it. There won't be another Falklands war anyway - both countries have run their navies down to the point where it could be neither fought, nor defended. Eight thousand miles is a hell of a long way to row.
Anyway, the serial was shown, to critical acclaim, and was even nominated for a Bafta. It didn't win it - that honour went to the least cutting edge contender of the year, Tony Hart's drawing programme. Standing up to governments can only go so far! But Collins asked me to write it as a novel, which was extremely successful, and then as a play to be performed for schools. With typical publishers' timing, they took it out of print, after twenty plus years, not long before the thirtieth anniversary of the war. On a news programme six months ago I saw tatty copies of the novel still being used in London classrooms, which is when we decided to redo it as a 99p ebook for Skinback Books
And if you want to see a bit of the original TV serial, someone's put an episode on YouTube
My other most recent offering through Skinback is Silver and Blood, my modern take on Stevenson's miraculous Treasure Island, which clashed most egregiously with Sir Andrew Motion's sequel, called just Silver. I haven't read his yet, but I'm getting great feedback on mine.
It's a reimagining of the story for the 21st century, without parrots, wooden legs, and upper-class good guys pitched against the lowlife scum. Stevenson was shining a light on the accepted moralities of his time, and inviting people to work out what was really going on. Is Doctor Livesey, a Scot, really that much of a hero, for example? He boasts that he served with Butcher Cumberland,for instance - and Cumberland was known then as the brutal scourge of Scots. And Squire Trelawney, a pillar of his community, chose to search for stolen treasure that he had no right to, with a ship and crew that an honest man would have run a mile from.
Many of the people in my version are also pretty 'challenging' from a moral point of view. And like Stevenson, I like a bit of blood and guts. Throw away the flintlocks - try an AK47!
The covers for both books were done from photographs by a friend of mine called Alex Marrs alexjohnmarrs@hotmail.co.uk, and designed by my son Matti Gardner matti@gramatticus.com
Silver and Blood available here.
All Skinback Books are here.
UP AND RUNNING
Exploding jails are not the only excitement on the horizon. After much pain and headscratching,I've finally got Skinback Books up on the road. The first six titles are available on Kindle, with some of them also on Smashwords for people with different devices. But none of them will set you back a pound...
Four of the books are mine - two new, two reprints - and two are by my friend Barry Purchese, double Bafta award winning TV playwright who's now pitched himself into prose. Very shortly 'J' by Margaret McCann will hit the virtual streets as well. That one, I promise you,is a real eye-popper.
The Unique Selling Point is their price. My first one is more than 115.000 words long. And it's up on Kindle for 99p. As are all the others, and as will new books in the future be.
The idea is not to make a fortune, but to try and make a dent. Publishing in this country is deeply in the doodah, and things are getting worse. The big boys are as greedy as they are short-sighted, and the way they treat even long-established authors is terrible. This is not a personal bleat - quite frankly I'm at the stage now where I just want books out there, I don't look to them for fame and fortune. Suck 'em and see - and if you don't like the taste, you've spent less than a half a bus fare.
Here's a thumbnail sketch of what Kicking Off is all about.
When the cauldron of hatred that is Britain’s prisons last boiled over, it cost the country untold millions to put the lid back on. Then, there were fifty thousand banged up inside – now it’s almost double that. And trouble, as the Arab spring has shown, can spread like wildfire once it's started. And race beyond control.
Critic Cally Phillips, on indieebookreview, said: "Jan Needle’s new novel offers a unique perspective on the social ills of our country and an uncomfortable insight into the powderkeg that is our prison system. From the first memorable image to the last page, the style is relentlessly tough and the complex plot will keep you gripped and guessing – and thanking your lucky stars that this is fiction. Or at least hoping that it never becomes fact."
The spark that explodes the jails this time is the naked ambition of a politician gifted with the task of solving the crisis that's flared up in our bleak Victorian fortress prisons. A playboy millionaire has been betrayed by the highest in the land, while an American gangster is set to be sprung by a squad of hitmen who will stop at nothing. Mix in a Glasgow hardman thirsting for revenge, and a governor who is more humane than the Prison Service can stand or stomach – and the cauldron of violence and hatred can only overflow - to spread across the land like cancer.
My second book, Killing Time at Catterick, was published last year as The Skinback Fusiliers, and has been put up for the Orwell Prize. It's a warts and all look at the way the British Army treats some of the young men it sucks in with dreams of glory (or perhaps a wage packet.)
My second two are My Mate Shofiq, which was runner up for the Guardian Award and Albeson and the Germans, which is exciting, realistic and reckoned by kids to be very funny.
Barry's books are designed for adults, but appeal to younger readers too. Grass Roots is the story - from the life - of an idealistic father who sets up a football team for the kids who don't get chosen. All goes well until they begin to get successful. Then the punch-ups start...
Summertime Blues is set in the era of teds and paper nylon skirts, and dreams of stardom and the sexual revolution. It's truly bittersweet.
Here's a taster for KICKING OFF. It's the prologue. The full story is violent, sexy, and moves like a rocket. There will be a sequel.
A TRAGEDY FORETOLD
FROM: XXXXXXX
TO: XXXXXX. SECURITY CODING R+EI. (All restrictions)
Look, we’re in the shit. You know it, I know it, everyone with half a brain knows it, even OGL knows it. I’ve seen prisons in Ukraine more civilised than some of ours, I’ve met Guantanamo Bay warders with a greater grasp of human rights. More to the point, it’s going to blow, and I’d say very soon.
Brief rundown: Career criminals, the mentally ill, drug addicts, alcoholics. Gangsters, Yardies, Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Asians, and good old fashioned crims. Thugs, murderers, rapists, paedophiles, gunmen, terrorists. POA men completely disaffected, private sector worse. Worse paid, worse treated, worse pissed off. The madrasa problem, too, Stone Agers spreading like the plague. Rumour has it that some of ‘our’ God-botherers are jealous of the mullahs now, and one’s even converting. He says he’s lonely on a Friday afternoon.
It’s not just our friends on the other side of the House who’ve ignored the problem, no point in claiming that. We’ve also seen the cities burning, we also know what could cook up this summer. The police, the Mets particularly, have gone insane, and OGL looks more and more like a badger in the crosshairs. The numbers just go up and up, the pressure valve is lifting by the day. Who said prison works? What sort of raving lunatic? What happens when we hit the hundred thousand? How long does the lid stay on?
All right, the purpose of this note. For Christ’s sake keep it underneath your hat, but at the risk of sounding cynical, I think this is your chance. Sycophantic maybe, but I think it’s you we need, XXXXXX, you personally – that combination of brain and ruthlessness might be our only hope. OGL thinks so, too, he just needs a bit of prodding in the right direction. Think hard, be brilliant, don’t overplay your hand. Because, my friend, somebody’s got to get a grip. Let it be us, okay? I’m laying down the poison for you now.
PS Try and keep it in your pocket. Your dick, I mean. Believe you me, it doesn’t help.
FROM: XXXXXX.
TO: XXXXXXX.
OGL? R+EI? Internal memos? Dick? Are you mad? Redaction may not ever be enough.
FROM: XXXXXXX.
TO: XXXXXX
Very possibly. But greater love hath no man – or woman either – than to give a lethal weapon to a friend. Be prepared. It’s going to happen soon.
Buried in it
Up to my eyes in work,as always. I'm trying to evolve a whole new series of shortish books ranging over a whole lot of areas that interest me. Mainly adventurous, but probably a little dark. Most of all, having done a version of Bram Stoker's Dracula a couple of years ago that continues to attract letters and emails from all over the place (it's published by Walker Books), I want to work up the play that developed out of it into a different sort of Dracula altogether. The drama is published by Collins Educational, and is getting more and more productions. It sets the whole story in the present day, in a mental hospital, and raises the possibility that there is far more madness to the story than Stoker even dreamed of. Most recently been performed in Scotland by Firefly Arts of Livingston, Midlothian (I failed to get to see it, unfortunately) and now selected for the National Festival of Youth Theatre in Glenrothes in July. It's a book that's always fascinated me, and continues to grip. Fangs in the neck have got nothing on it!
looking forward
can't be long until the white stuff goes and the sun comes out, can it? i want to sail a boat.
now the sun is shining
yes yes it is, which makes keeping up with the unimportant things of life even more difficult. a man needs to be in a boat, not flogging himself to death with deathless prose. i keep getting letters from people as far apart as texas and germany (whichever is the bigger, i wonder?) urging me to write another william bentley book, and to be sure i'd dearly love to. but my sea books tend to be a bit unpleasant in genre fiction terms, so they don't exactly make me rich. william is young and handsome, to be sure, but his beloved is a whore, and his eyes are too wide open to british brutality to sit comfortably with hornblower and all the other overprivileged gits(!)who used to sail the seven seas. most pirates were ex-naval men, incidentally. have you ever wondered why? nelson's beloved was a whore, incidentally, and when he died he left her care to the english nation. she died penniless in a calais gutter. says it all, doesn't it?
my naval heroism lately has gone no further than failing to get across the channel with the dunkirk veterans. a sad story, but a good night out, and i wrote the outline of a novel on the train back up north from ramsgate. and my mate who did go threw up over the side of his little ship because he'd been drinking pimms for breakfast. wow.
Onwards ever onwards
Having survived a long bout of pneumonia, we're back in business. been hellish cold up here - perhaps i should have listened to my mother, who kept saying there was always a place for me back at home on the south coast. too late now, mum, but thanks anyway.
i've just written a profile for author hotline. i used to visit schools a lot until i had a big car crash and was out of it for a few years, but i'm doing more again now. i went to a few schools and colleges last year and had a really good time. so did the kids, i think...
the hotline goes national in march, and you can access me/it on authorhotline.com.
i'm also available to be seen and contemplated (i hope) on contactanauthor.co.uk.
my visits to schools tend to be fun, apart from anything else. and i LOVE school dinners!
noo year noos
Some of the things that have been said about Wagstaffe the Wind-up Boy, by local author Jan Needle. Yes – you may have heard him play tin whistle at the Cross Keys or the Con Club. If you’ve got children – this will keep them quiet!
Original, clever and touching. Western Morning News
Left me gasping for breath like a naughty schoolboy. Weekend Review.
The book I’ve always been waiting for. I love it. Carl Grose, KneehighTheatre.
This book is so funny it will kill you. If it doesn’t, I will. Siri L.Killer
Grim, ghastly, gruesome – a children’s dream! Daily Mirror
Don’t let your grannie read it. Northern Echo
A kids’ book to die for. My children could not read it fast enough. Morning Argus.
Reluctant readers? They’ll eat this one for dinner. The Standard.
Wagstaffe the winning weirdo. South London Press
This is the most disgusting book I have ever read. Please buy it – we need the money. Jan’s mum.
The book that put the ex in dyslexia for Toby, aged nine. Parade
Grown-ups might hate it. I promise you, children will not. Today.
Makes Roald Dahl look polite. London Pride.
Made my whole class shriek with laughter. Chris Shaw, Pallion School, Sunderland.
Originally published by Andre Deutsch and Lions, now repackaged as a classy paperback by Back to Front, and available from bookshops, Amazon, and direct from www.back-to-front.com – who will give a discount and free post and packing anywhere in Britain.
Isbn 1-904529-41-0
working for a living
ages since i had time to write on this, and now i've spent half an hour updating and pressed the wrong bleeding button. no time to do it all again, as i'm meant to be working for a living. in fact the last couple of months have been a hard round of sailing, sinking my canal boat, fighting the insurance company, who seemed to think that accidents are nothing to do with them. exhausted by all that, i was forced to go to germany, austria and slovakia, to test the beer and food.
revelation. the germans and austrians have got it made when i comes to eating a drinking. i put on several pounds (minus several kilos, because they're bigger i believe)and can now hardly reach my keyboard.
all well. an die arbeit. tchuess!
news news
Such a humiliation for a hard-working nurse. Now read on...
august
And now the poor girl is being read about on the Plinth in Trafalgar Square! Julie McCarthy, mother, arts co-ordinator, canal boat operator, is doing her bit for Waggie and Sadie M'Gee - at an admittedly ungodly hour of the morning. The plinth is the sort of idea that would have driven Waggie mad. A golden opportunity for bringing his magic catapult into play, at the very least.
Still, it'll bring a bit of northern culture to the deep sarf, won't it? In his second adventure - Wagstaffe and the Life of Crime - our hero actually goes to London, and being Wagstaffe, goes by tandem, with his friend Hugh N'Dell providing the back-up pedal power. They use the M1, of course - and outrun the police cars that pursue them.
Although, to be fair, Waggie is a little knackered when they reach the Smoke.
Put the finishing touches to the latest novel a couple of days ago. It's to be called Silver and Blood, and it's a fast-moving thriller for the sort of readers who love Anthony Horowitz. My son Wilf, for one. He once wrote to the great man, and told him he thought his books were fantastic.
"My dad also writes children's books," he added - "but his are crap!"
Painful business being a norfer, I can tell you...
My cut down version of Moby Dick is now out in a smaller, paperback format, in Britain and America. Keep getting lovely letters from the USA about it, and so far, nothing from nearer home.
It's a lovely thing, though. Illustrated by the great Patrick Benson, published by Walker Books,at less than a tenner.Isbn 978-1-4063-1744-2
Buy some for Lulu!
More on Waggie
Sadie M'Gee, the unfortunate nurse who cooked and ate Wagstaffe's heart after his accident, is apparently being hounded by the press.
Reporters have been ringing her at work to ask for comments on her "cannibalism." Pretty embarrassing for someone who works in the A&E department where Wagstaffe was put together after being squashed flat by a lorry.
Sadie, 29, who is a real nurse in Oldham Royal Hospital, blames her father. (That's me, incidentally.) She wonders if she'll ever live down the shame and become a matron?
A picture is circulating now of her in her uniform, with her father. Weirdly, she is still smiling.
She even plans to go to Waterstones in the Spindles Precinct in Oldham on Saturday July 4 - either to buy a copy or (more likely) to cause a scene.
And it serves him right.
If you miss the signing session, you can get the snazzy new paperback in other ways.
Order directly by going to back-to-front.com and buying online, or by going to Amazon or into your local bookshop and providing the ISBN, which is 1-904529-41-0. Books bought on the Back to Front website have a discount and are free of P&P.
News of a flattened boy
Wagstaffe, the unfortunate boy who was squashed flat by a lorry just because he threw an egg at the windscreen, rides again!
Now with clockwork guts, he has been appearing in a theatre in the south of England and horrifying parents with his filthy habits and bad behaviour.
Many children have tried to commit their parents to old people's homes, according to the national press (Sunday Sport).
More permanently, the original book of his adventures, Wagstaffe the Wind-up Boy, has been reprinted, and is now available.
If you order it from the publishers, Back to Front, you get free postage, and a discount! Makes sense to Wagstaffe, but then he's a "manky little rat."
Here are the details:
Order directly by going to back-to-front.com and buying online, or by going to Amazon or into your local bookshop and providing the ISBN, which is 1-904529-41-0. Books bought on the Back to Front website have a discount and are free of P&P.
New website
Here's the new janneedle.com. designed and built by matti gardner. Hopefully it looks good and is easy to use.
Not all sections are up-to-date yet, but they will be soon.