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Comedy, crotch water, and the hubris destroyed by taxi drivers

I was fortunate enough to perform a gig at The Stand Comedy Club two weeks ago. It was their weekly amateur night – ‘Red Raw’ – and tickets had all sold out, so I knew the crowd would be good (and, hopefully, merciful).

So, I’m sitting among the audience with a glass of water. The nerves bubble away but I’ve got everything rehearsed, so I feel like there’s not too much to worry about – as long as I don’t do anything monumentally stupid to screw it up.

AND THEN A BIG GOB OF WATER STEAMS DOWN MY GLASS AND LANDS RIGHT ON MY CROTCH.

Oh. My. Fuck.

I’m about to go onstage in front of 200 people to try and pretend I’m funny…

And I look like I’ve just peed myself.

Before I can do anything to fix it, it’s time. I slip behind the curtain and into the dressing room. My heart starts drumming like a Russian Olympian’s after they’ve OD’d on all of the steroids. Contrary to popular belief, the dressing room is in fact NOT full of topless groupies throwing themselves at people. It’s comedians we’re talking about – the room is full of nervous twitching, scribbling, incomprehensible muttering, awkward glances, and at least one PTSD trauma flashback.

It’s at this time I decide to partake in the first of my six traditional pre-gig shits.

47 minutes later, I step back inside the dressing room and glance down. Yep! The crotch water has dried out! Happy day!

EXCEPT THAT IT’S NOW BEEN REPLACED BY BACKSPLASH FROM THE SINK.

Oh. My. Fuck.

I’m about to go onstage in front of 200 people to try and pretend I’m funny…

And I look like I’ve just peed myself.

Twice.

There’s someone I’ve performed with before in the room, a familiar face among the tense, anxious mumbling – which, I’ve just discovered, is happening exclusively in my head.

“Hello Steven!”

“Hello Dave!” I say, even though her name’s Tricia. Her eyes flick to the other side of the room. “Do you see who’s performing with us tonight?”

I turn to see where she’s looking, and-

Oh.

…It’s Frankie Boyle.

Frankie Boyle – famous Glaswegian comedian and star of Mock the Week – is sitting not six feet away from me!

He nods to me and says hello. I think I nod back, but I can’t be sure because I have given up all bodily control and it’s like I’ve just floated out my head and I’m staring down at myself.

Thankfully, this means I can see that my jeans have dried.

Less reassuring is the fact that I have just looked at the running order and – yep – I AM ON RIGHT BEFORE FRANKIE BOYLE IN FRONT OF A CROWD OF 200 PEOPLE JESUS STEVEN WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF IN WHAT LIFETIME DID YOU THINK THAT ANY OF THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA OMFG JUST RUN AND HIDE UNDER THE COVERS AND HAVE A COMFORTING TOFFEE CRISP OMFGGFGFGGFFFGFFGFFGAAAAAARRR

It’s around this time I decide to take the second of my six traditional pre-gig shits.

And the third, fourth, fifth, six and – because it’s a special occasion – seventh.

I hear the compere call my name. Adrenaline mingles with my nerves. In fact, the adrenaline actively flirts with the nerves, but the nerves don’t have a lot of time on their hands for such nonsense – this is a post-Tinder world after all, so they just look the adrenaline up and down, tell it to get its coat, take it out the back, and pump it to a mutually satisfying conclusion before coming back in to put their feet up and settle into my stomach with a smug grin on their face, because nerves are wee pricks like that, a bit that mate of yours who just invites himself over and you offer him a biscuit and hand him a Digestive and he barges past you to go to the kitchen and grabs one of the Fox’s Crunch Creams you’ve been saving for your wedding day and he doesn’t even eat it, he just smears it over his face and makes you watch and he cackles knowing you’ll need to put up with out of date, soggy Digestives for the rest of the week GOD TREVOR I HATE YOU SO MUCH.

This is the sort of thing that goes through your head during the fortnight’s walk onto a stage as a sea of expectant eyes gaze upon you.

I pick up the microphone, wee Nervey McNervington sitting there with a post-coital glow whispering “they hate you already” in my ear IN GREAT BIG CAPITAL LETTERS – and, for some reason, a French accent.

And I start talking.

And, somehow, the crowd starts laughing.

Time dissolves. Half of my 5 minutes has evaporated in the time it’s taken to write this sentence.

It’s… It’s going better than I could have hoped for. People laugh when I want them to! People say “aw” when I want them to! People are disgusted when I want them to be! Confidence flows through me like… I don’t know, I’ve never done drugs, so, eh, tea. Confidence flows through me like tea. Or water onto an unsuspecting crotch. Anyway, I’m loving every moment of it until…

Oh. My. Fuck.

I’m currently onstage in front of 200 people pretending I’m funny…

Frankie Boyle is waiting in the wings…

And the cable has just disconnected from my microphone.

OH DEAR LORD THE WIRE HAS JUST COME OUT THE MICROPHONE AND ONE THOUSAND PAIRS OF EYES ARE LOOKING STRAIGHT AT ME.

Le coq.

But then the strangest thing happens – the strangest, most beautiful of things.

The crowd applauds. They laugh. I fumble with the wire, stick it back in, regain the volume and crack a joke about it…

And they laugh some more!

Now, I don’t like to say things overly positive of myself because (a) I’m terrified I’ll sound arrogant (b) I’m Glaswegian and we simply Do Not Do That, and (c) the universe might implode.

But – at the risk of ending existence and sending us all into the fiery depths Hades – I think I did Quite Well Actually, Hope That’s Okay, Cheers Thanks Ta.

I’m on a bit of a high for the rest of the night. Even in the taxi home, I don’t just act like I’m on my phone when the driver attempts to speak to me. “I know your face,” he says, in a voice that makes me think he’s going to follow it up with “Any chance I can cut it off and wear it whilst frolicking amidst a frenetic blood orgy in tribute to my deceased mother, whose remains I keep propped up in her old favourite chair, as she gazes at me and whispers lullabies into my head every night as I waltz around the living room wearing the dress she died in?”

Turns out he just recognised me from a pub, but whatever.

Anyway, he asks me what I was up to – so I give him the short version of this story by removing the embarrassing stuff, i.e. 90% of it.

Doesn’t bat an eye lid. At the mere mention of Frankie Boyle, he cuts me off and tells me about how he used to chauffeur Henrik Larsson, Paul Gascoigne and just about every other football player who’s stepped foot in Glasgow, including the custom team I made up in FIFA 99 that had a blue and orange kit and were called “Glasgow Irn-Brunited”.

So that shut me up.

Moral of the story is: Don’t talk to taxi drivers.

(And big thanks The Stand and all the other acts.)

Cancelled promo date (and potential apology/vent whilst paranoid)

Boldly Going Nowhere‘s term in Kindle Unlimited ends tomorrow (28th April 2016), which means it’ll be back on iBooks, Google Play and Kobo soon. But first, I need to possibly explain/apologise/vent my paranoia that a cancelled free promo was actually live at some point without my knowing.

I enrolled it in KU to test the waters and see how a creative non-fiction book would fare. I had a couple of ‘free’ promo days left so I’d scheduled them for the 26th and 27th of April, intending on releasing a video of me talking about the publication journey etc.

Unfortunately I was bogged down with quinsy, which is an evolved, sentient, and much more bastardly form of tonsillitis. This effectively KO’d my voice (if you imagine a fatality from Mortal Kombat happening to a voice, then you’re in the ballpark), so I cancelled the free promotion and decided to wait until my throat was fighting fit again. Like Scorpion. From Mortal Kombat.

A spike in sales occurred over the would-be free period — not by a huge number, but enough to get me worried that the free promo was listed without the book actually being free. Additionally, a ‘free unit’ was downloaded on the US Amazon site, meaning despite me cancelling the promo at least 24 hours previously, it went live for a brief period of time. Not that I’m remotely concerned about the actual free ‘sale’ – I hope whoever bagged it is enjoying it! No, I’m worried that the people who paid for the book yesterday did so because they believed it to be free when it wasn’t (given that someone in the US did get it for free) and accidentally paid £2.99 for a copy.

I know it’s unlikely that several (i.e., 11. Told you it wasn’t a huge number) people all clicked ‘buy now’ during what must have been a very brief free listing (if indeed it occurred at all — certainly it wasn’t listed as free when I checked in the morning, afternoon and early evening, which is what I do when I should be writing…) but it’s still possible.

So if you’re one of the Golden Eleven, please accept my apologies for what I think must have been a technical hitch. Feel free to return the book to Amazon for a refund and contact me for a free .mobi/PDF copy (with a screengrab of your confirmation email from Amazon showing the date of your purchase).

I reached out to Amazon to see if it was possible that the promo was activated. Their email read:

“Since the Free promotion for the book was canceled on KDP, I can assure there is no free copies of book downloaded by the customers from our Kindle store. Hence, as the book sales are not due to mistakes from customer nor any technical error, In this case, there is no need for you to issue refund to the customers for the normal sales of your Kindle book on KDP. ” [Emboldening mine]

So, Amazon assures me that no mistakes have slipped through, but I’d rather be upfront in the unlikely event that an error slipped through and customers were charged when they thought they were getting something for free.

Thanks for listening. You deserve a biscuit.

Book review: A Boy Called Christmas by Matt Haig

Matt Haig’s latest effort (soon to be followed up by quasi-sequel, The Girl Who Saved Christmas) is a treat. Ostensibly a festive tale for kids, its story is one that can be read and re-read at any time of year, by kids of all ages. Even ones in their forties. Probably older. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much whilst reading.A Boy Called Christmas

So, the story then. Told with sharp prose and Matt Haig’s delightful sense of humour (tinged with darkness and tragedy, naturally) and accompanied by Chris Mould’s wonderful illustrations, A Boy Called Christmas tells the tale of Santa Clause before he was Santa Clause – when he was just Nikolas, a lonely boy who lives in a tiny isolated house in the frozen lands of Finland.

And no wonder he’s lonely. Nikolas witnessed his mum die after she fell down a well, sees his dad struggle to make ends meet every day, and his best friends are a mouse and a doll made out of an old turnip. If that doesn’t tug on your heartstrings, then I’m not sure even this story will breathe life into your cold, dead soul.

Trekking through the hazardous landscape, Nikolas encounters an angry bear, a friendly reindeer, comes close to dying on more than one occasion, becomes embroiled in the political machinations of a tiny magical tyrant, liberates a prisoner from a group of bounty hunters working for the King, and finds his True Calling In Life.

Nikolas’s story is about family. It’s about friends. It’s about magical reindeer and redeeming a paranoid elven society that wants to close its borders so it might save itself from the corrupting influence of humans. It’s about taking risks and believing in magic. It’s about how a child’s imagination allows him to adore even the most filthy and decrepit of toys year after year, as though it was a brand new still-in-its-box Buzz Lightyear action figure.

Oh, and some of the characters are delightfully twisted. The malicious Aunt Carlotta possesses the same tangible cruelty that made Roald Dahl’s antagonists so terrifying, and there’s the murderous pixie who literally cannot lie. Probably my favourite character in the novel, she’s at once achingly earnest and unabashedly wicked, and that’s not an easy combination to pull off.

I’ll add reading this book it to my annual Christmas traditions, along with watching Die Hard, promising and failing to watch It’s A Wonderful Life, and watching—but not admitting to it—Love Actually.

Since this is my first review and I’ve yet to come up with a numerical rating, I’ll award it 5 out of 5 Christmas crackers.

A Boy Called Christmas is available at Amazon.

Disclaimer: I have in no way been paid for this review. I am enrolled on Amazon’s Affiliates programme, which means I get a paid a small percentage of any physical purchases that come from use of the link. Don’t worry – this in no way costs you anything, just a small consideration from the vendor for sending you their way!

In Memory – a tribute to Sir Terry Pratchett

I’m thrilled, humbled, excited and quite frankly baffled to at last reveal that one of my stories will be featured in an anthology being produced in memory of my favourite writer – the wonderful, fantastical and majestic Sir Terry Pratchett.

Set loose upon the world on October 31st, and with all proceeds going to Alzheimer’s Research UK, “In Memory” is a labour of love forged and formulated by the immensely talented Sorin Suciu and Laura May. Comprised of 16 hilarious, emotional, insightful and downright entertaining pieces of fiction (and one further story which belongs to me and one I’m still convinced has been left in by accident), the anthology promises to be a worthy addition to anyone’s bookshelf – even if you’re not normally keen on things like sci-fi, fantasy and laughing. And you can buy this lovely little bundle of joy right here.

On a personal note, I’d like to express how proud I am to be counted alongside authors such as Sorin, Laura, Scott A. Butler, DK Mok and others. They’re a fantastic and gifted bunch. You can find out more about the project and the authors involved with a flourish of your clickity finger here and follow it closely by allowing updates to be beamed directly into your brain here.

On an even more personal note, here’s a quick blog post with some of my thoughts on Sir Terry, the project, the theme of memories – and some insight into The Vividarium…

A note on “Vividarium”

Hello!

It’s less than a week before Boldly Going Nowhere is deployed. I’m excited, terrified, happy, scared, exhausted and elated.

As a completely self-published writer, I’d like to take this opportunity to explain why you’ll see “published by Vividarium Books” when you turn/swipe the first page. This is my sole trader, self-employed, Doing Business As company name. It’s not being published by some New York publishing house where people keep their toes warm by hurling piles of hundred dollar bills into the fire or anything like that – it’s an entirely self-published endeavour.

I mean, I could have just put “published by Steven McKinnon” – on account of that being my name and all – but I figured, I don’t know where this independent writing adventure will take me and it would make sense to cultivate a publishing identity at the outset.

“If you prepare for success, you may attain it; if you don’t, you never will.”

That right there is a quote. You can tell by the quotation marks. I don’t know who said it. Maybe I just made it up now. I doubt it though, it seems a bit profound for me and it doesn’t even contain a single reference to Batman.

And the meaning behind the name “Vividarium”?

I wanted a name that stoked the imagination, something that felt tangible – something that felt like you could step inside, run around, climb up and explore. Something that felt connected to the imagination, like how a planetarium is connected to planets. Books are the best medium for firing up the imagination and letting us walk through magic corridors and hallways (which is why the logo, by designer extraordinaire Sophie Taylor at Rotten Core Design, looks like a book), and what’s an imagination if not vivid?

Logo1

I’m also delighted, thrilled and frankly perplexed at being featured in an upcoming anthology in memory of my favourite author, in which my piece is called The Vividarium. The name for the publishing company came first, but it fit with the story. (I’ll be making a more formal announcement on this very, very soon…)

So there you have it. An explanation behind The Vividarium, what it means, and what I hope it will come to-

Sigh.

I can’t keep this up. It’s actually a nonsense word that appears in a puzzle in Final Fantasy VIII.

I just liked the sound of it.

New book alert!

Steven has written a new book! Check it out:

Boldly Going Nowhere

The dating game was going well… Until she found out he was a virgin.

Steven McKinnon is in a rut. He’s tired of being a burden to his friends. He feels like life is passing him by. Nothing is going his way.

When a friend convinces him to try speed dating, things start to look up… initially. As soon as Bachelorette Number One discovers that he’s a virgin, she unceremoniously dumps him. What follows is a quest across Europe in search of happiness, companionship, and an answer to the age-old question: Why is sex such a big deal?

But much like other aspects of Steven’s life, things don’t go as planned. Soon, he discovers the dark side of putting himself out there. Brash-talking strippers, treacherous friendships and an unexpected encounter with the police leave him wondering if his old, boring, solo life was really so bad after all.

Told with painful honesty, raw emotion, British humour and wit, Boldly Going Nowhere is the true story of what happens when one man takes a stand against his own insecurities and societal pressures — and somehow manages to find himself in the process.

 

Boldly Going Nowhere is available from Amazon, Google Play, Apple iBooks, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.