A rummage through the virtually dusty archives of my computer hard drive has unearthed a handful of short stories, and I thought I’d post a few here for your perusal.

This one, The Luger, is probably five or six years old. It was published in the Tonto Short Stories anthology in 2006. It’s set in Amsterdam, and is the story of an old man who gets an unwelcome visit from a persistent salesman.

Looking back on it, there are some things I’d change, like cutting out some of the over-description, but I like the conflict and tension between the characters, and I think the resolution is pretty good. Feel free to download, have a read, and post any comments.

The Luger (PDF)

Paul Fiction The Luger

The Rocketbelt Caper is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. You can order it here and be reading it on your Kindle in less than a minute. Which is considerably less time than it took to get the book listed as a Kindle download…

Anyway, it’s up now, so Kindle people can go and do their Whispernet thing. The price will vary according to which country you’re in, and to be honest I can’t work it out, so just go take a look.

If you don’t have a Kindle, you can get a non-Kindle ebook here. And, of course, if you’re still living in 2008 or something you can get a version of the book made of cellulose pulp, derived mainly from wood, rags and certain grasses, processed into flexible sheets or rolls by deposit from an aqueous suspension. That’s a paperback to you and me.

The Rocketbelt Caper is the non-bestselling true story of three men who build a jetpack, fall out, hit each other over the head with baseball bats, and other unspeakable things. It is most definitely NOT the source material for straight-to-video rocketbelt caper movie Pretty Bird.

[UPDATE 21/05/10] Having investigated further, the Kindle version costs $2.99 in the US – the lowest price it was possible for me to list an ebook on the service. Amazon keep 65% of that, and then pay me the remainder via a US dollar cheque, on which I have to pay a fee to cash into my UK bank account. So I’m not making any money on this. I’m simply making the book available on Kindle to get it in front of as many readers as possible.

However, in the UK, Amazon hikes the price to $5.86 – almost twice the price paid by US readers. The official reason given by Amazon for this is ‘taxes and operating costs’. Hmm. UK VAT might account for an extra 17.5%, but is there really an extra operating cost associated with sending an item that does not physically exist across the Atlantic? A rum deal, but if you don’t want to pay Amazon’s premium feel free to buy direct from this website instead.

[ANOTHER UPDATE 25/06/10] The UK price has now been reduced to $3.51 for no fathomable reason, but is now only $0.52 more than the US price.

Paul Books, Technology Kindle, The Rocketbelt Caper

Pretty Bird, the rocketbelt caper movie most definitely NOT based on my Rocketbelt Caper book, finally gets a straight-to-DVD release in June.

The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, but has sat on a shelf ever since. It stars Paul Giamatti, Billy Crudup and David Hornsby, and was directed by Paul Schneider. The story is credited to Zene Baker…

The original Wikipedia entry for the movie stated that it was based on The Rocketbelt Caper. However, as the revision history shows, a user named Econbowery has ‘removed erroneous information (that this movie is based on a book)’. Econbowery’s only user contributions to Wikipedia have been to edit the Pretty Bird listing.

The Rocketbelt Caper tells the true story of three men (Brad Barker, Larry Stanley and Joe Wright) who set out to build a rocketbelt, nicknamed Pretty Bird, only for their friendship to fall apart in bizarre and dramatic circumstances.

By contrast, Pretty Bird tells the fictional story of three men (Kurt, Rick and Kenny) who set out to build a rocketbelt, nicknamed Pretty Bird, only for their friendship to fall apart in bizarre and dramatic circumstances.

The movie had mixed reviews after the premiere and failed to find a distributor, hence its straight-to-DVD release. See some reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. This review mentions The Rocketbelt Caper.

For the record, I have had no involvement or contact with anyone involved in the production of Pretty Bird. The movie option for The Rocketbelt Caper was purchased by another production company, but that option expired without a film going into production. (Interestingly, Pretty Bird is being released by Paramount – the same company that held the Rocketbelt Caper option.) I have not yet seen Pretty Bird, and so have no reason to believe it takes any details from the book that are not otherwise available in the public domain. I am looking forward to seeing it.

The Amazon product description says: ‘Based on a true stoy, this comic tale of three would-be entrepreneurs set out to invent a rocket belt. The venturesome partnership soon takes an unhealthy toll as their mismatched personalities clash and some unexpected success lead to retaliations and kidnapping in this parable of American dreams and delusions.’

The DVD is released on 29 June 2010 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com.

The Rocketbelt Caper is available in paperback and as a download here. It should also be available on Kindle soon.

Paul Books, Film Pretty Bird, The Rocketbelt Caper