I've become one of those insufferable fucks who reads Harry Potter. Hated the new film, before you ask. All this book-reading nonsense has reminded me that, for some reason, I can't write anymore. Used to write like a motherfucker back in high school. These days, I can still write words, and write them well, but, I dunno... it never goes anywhere. I've lost the passion, or something. Maybe it's just that I haven't come up with a story idea in years that made me go, "Ahhh. That's a novel, there." Perhaps I will, soon. Perhaps I'll force myself to. Goddammit, I want to write again. I miss it.

In the past year or so, I've started three books -- two for all ages, one very much for grown-ups -- gotten a few hundred words in, and stopped. It pisses me off, 'cause what I did manage to squeeze out is great stuff. Shame to see it go to waste, so, here, kids -- see what you make of these:

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Chapter One: [title later]

In the Olden Days, which happened exactly several years ago, there was a rugged, ragged bushranger called Ned Kelly, whom you’ve probably heard about. He had fierce blue eyes and a huge, terrifying beard that made him look like he was gnawing on a poodle. His beard was told of in song and yarn throughout the land. For example:

Yarrr! Neddy’s beard, it’s true, is big,
It’s larger than a stoat!
It’s full of bones and crumbs and twigs,
And warms his mighty throat.

So sang Yodrick Funtingscrap, the famous bard, one cool summer’s eve in a tavern somewhere, before someone set fire to his hair and he had to stop.

Ned Kelly’s beard was of such tremendous size that not even his helmet -- you must have heard about Ned Kelly’s helmet -- hid it completely. He was wearing his helmet now, as he staggered about frantically, thrashing the air with his free arm in a blind panic and kicking over the billy.

“My dear Nedward,” came Oscar’s voice, “flail like a monkey with its tail caught in a paper shredder if you must, but mind the receptacle, will you? It’s done you no wrong.”

“Baaa.”

Oscar Wilde is another famous historical person from the Olden Days. He dressed like a repressed clown, spoke like a book, and was Ned Kelly’s sidekick. They were on the run from the law, and were resting by a billabong in the bush.

Ned couldn’t see Oscar -- or anything at all -- because his fingers were poking into his eyeballs. He’d have shot the cheeky sod a glare, otherwise. Ned’s hand was stuck in the front of his helmet, as though he’d posted a love letter to his face, but changed his mind at the last moment and made a desperate grab for it through the slot.

“I have a gun, you know!” he blurted. “Don’t upset me!”

“Is that what you’re fishing around for in there?”

“I had an itchy nose!” wailed Ned, ruggedly. “Start acting like a sidekick and help me, you blighter!”

“Baaa.”

Oscar freed an impatient sigh. “I’m trying to, old fruit, but each time I come near you, I’m kicked rather savagely in the shins. Stop throwing yourself around like a rag doll, and I might be able to wriggle your hand free.”

Ned cooperated, and soon his hand was liberated. With it, he removed his helmet, and his beard returned to its natural shape like a spring-loaded sponge. Relaxing at last, he expelled his claustrophobia with a sigh and looked about. On the ground nearby, someone had piled a colourful assortment of uprooted flora into a flattish heap about two metres wide.

He eyed it warily. “What have you been doing, Oscar?”

“Why, arranging bushes, my dear old sausage,” explained Oscar, wearing his patented straight face.

Ned braced himself. “And... why?”

“Baaa.”

“Because,” said Oscar, whose life so far, he suddenly felt, had been but a prelude to this shining moment, “I’m a bush-arranger.”

If you’ve ever stepped in dog poo, then looked at the bottom of your shoe and found that it wasn’t dog poo after all but a dead, maggot-filled kitten, you’ll have likely groaned in the same way that Ned Kelly groaned right now.

“Don’t tread on it, whatever you do,” said Oscar, who

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That's right, bitches, I stopped mid-sentence. Shut the fuck up.

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Spy Agent
The greatest airport novel ever written,
by Patrick Alexander © 2003 -

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Chapter One
The Plot Thickens

Our hero, Gerald, awoke to the din of a cheap alarm clock, and by “the din of a cheap alarm clock” I of course mean “the pleasant sensation of one of the seven women he was in bed with fellating him enthusiastically”. Soon enough, he was shooing them out of his fifty-second story penthouse. “Go on, darlings,” he said with a smile, “fuck off.” He slammed the door in their faces too early to see them swoon, and made for the kitchen. On his way there, the eighth girl from the evening before that he’d forgotten about leapt at him from the spa in the living room and planted her face firmly in his groin.

“Oh, ooh!” she explained. “Ooh, ah, oooooooohhh!!”

“Not now, sweetheart,” said Gerald. “Hard to believe, I’m sure, but I’m hungrier than you right now. Bringing nine women simultaneously to sustained multiple orgasm for hours on end can really take it out of a chap, even a dangerously sexy international secret agent. So be a good girl and push off.”

“Mmmmm,” she objected, unable to resist Gerald’s sweet-talk. “Mmmmmmmmmmm. Mmm!! Ooh!! Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Ooh, ooh, mmm, mmm, ooooooh!!”

Gerald smiled paternally as he beat her about the face with a frying pan and threw her off the balcony. “Oh, Gerald,” she sighed as she plummeted to her death, her last breath caressing a satisfied smile.

Eggs and bacon on buttered toast shot up into his brain from the groaning cavity in his stomach, and Gerald realised he now had no-one to make his breakfast. “Dash it all,” he said, and a passing female bird exploded in sheer sexual joy at the faint hint of his voice on the wind.

“Well,” our hero remarked, casually watching the scattered feathers being blown out of sight, “that’s one way to go down on me.” He smiled charmingly at himself. “And as for being blown out of sight...”

He was distracted from his brilliance by a thought. Nine girls?

“Oh Gerald,” sang the girl standing behind him, “Are you always so very, very funny?”

Gerald turned to face her and raised an irresistible eyebrow. “Only,” he said, “when... er...” He urgently tried to think of some apt sexual innuendo, drew a blank, and danced a little jig instead. The girl somehow managed not to ravish him then and there, and immediately, Gerald knew she was different. Maybe a robot?

The phone rang. Gerald answered it.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” said the Minister of Very Important Things.

“Just a moment.” Gerald put his hand over the speaky-bit of the phone; I don’t know what it’s called. “Kitchen’s just through there,” he said to the girl, then turned his attention back to the Minister. “Yes?”

“Some sort of bad stuff is happening. We need you here at once.”

“After breakfast,” said Gerald.

“Oh, all right. Now, one more thing: Have you disposed of the assassin yet?”

“What assassin?”

“The assassin! The deadly female assassin, ‘Sexy’ Sally McKillspeople-Smith. Surely you received our alert.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t, my dear old banana.”

“We sent our best messenger pigeon!”

“Ah.”

“Listen: Is there a woman in your apartment right now?”

Gerald’s stomach growled in agony. “Er, no.”

“Sexy Sally has brown hair, green eyes, and is invulnerable to the Naughty Jig of Seduction. Are you certain you’ve seen no-one matching that description?”

“Look,” said Gerald, “I can’t get started properly without a decent breakfast.”

“You bloody fool!” screamed the Minister.

“Kkkhhghgg!!” retorted Gerald, struggling with the wire that was suddenly tightening around his neck. “Kghggghgghgghh!!”

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Eric the Wonder Squirrel
by Patrick Alexander (c) 2004

Chapter One:
The Plot Thickens

The Squirrel family -- a family of squirrels -- lived in the Big Old Tree in the Reasonably Deep Forest in the Kingdom of Wherever-it-was. Poets, bards and (later on) archaeologists agreed that they were the cutest, nicest, most fluffy squirrels in all the land. One bright morning, Papa Squirrel sat down to a hearty breakfast of nuts and his eyeballs exploded.

“AAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIAAAAARRRGH!!!” he remarked, desperately pressing his paws against his face in a vain attempt to stop litres upon litres of blood from rocketing out of his eye sockets. “AAAAARGH, SWEET LORD NO, THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!!!”

“Gerald!” cried Mama Squirrel (for that was Papa Squirrel’s name). “Oh no! Gerald! Oh, someone do something!” And she began running around in circles, flapping her arms with considerable urgency. Mama Squirrel had lived through the war and knew how to deal with a crisis.

“AAAAAAAAAAAUUURRRgnnnnnnnnnnnnnYAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!”

Now Mama and Papa Squirrel had three children. Victoria, the eldest, wore black clothes and chunky white makeup, and still hadn’t returned from clubbing the night before. Baby, the baby, was supposed to have been christened ‘David’, but the new vicar had a terrible lisp. It made his sermons wonderfully entertaining, but now the youngest Squirrel had a name that would become more embarrassingly inappropriate the older he grew.

“BLAAAAARGH!! YAAARGH!! UUURGH!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!!!”

And then, in the middle, there was Eric. Eric was a happy, bouncy young squirrel, always in the middle of some crazy antic or other, and beloved by all the creatures of the forest -- except the spiders, because spiders don’t have feelings, which is why you should always kill them. Jeez I hate spiders. Eric was such a lively and popular squirrel that people called him ‘Eric the Wonder Squirrel’. Well, all right, no they didn’t -- that was just in his imagination. Eric had an active imagination, full of spaceships and superheroes and floating bunnies with dead eyes who told him to burn things.

“EEEEEEEYYYAAAAAaaa... aaaaa... urgh.”

With that, Papa Squirrel finally passed out from blood loss and, after wobbling upright for a moment like an indecisive jelly, flopped forward onto his breakfast with a noise like a wet sponge.

“Don’t worry, Mama,” said Eric, springing to his feet. “I know what to do.” And he ran off to fetch Grandma Squirrel.

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There you go. Now leave some comments, you ungrateful cockmongers.