Ultra Violence Second Edition is out!!

The second Green Wizard book, Ultra Violence, is now in its second edition, a version created to complement the release of Violent Disorder.

Ultra Violence - Cover

It has a much improved cover, designed by GW interior designers and created by Dawn at Dark Dawn Creations.  

There is a symmetrical Yin/Yang to the cover of the sequel which unifies the whole. There won't be another book in this series so this process symbolises the completion in another fashion.

New UV cover.

BBVD cover

Ultra Violence - Interior

The interior font - a simple Times New Roman 10.5 - has been reduced in size from the unwieldy original. Like the seventies books on which the entire Green Wizard idea is based, rather than the hefty sized first edition, it's now fashionably slimmer than a heroin addicted skinhead in skinny jeans. It is also printed on sumptuous cream paper.

Ultra Violence - Text

There have been minor alterations to the text - nothing major - just the erasure of repetitions, spelling mistakes and grammatical clunkiness. Some words have been replaced and some sentences (bad ones) have been completely removed. The book has had a general polish. 

Ultra Violence - Versions and Sales

On advice from my editor, the Kindle version of UV remains at around one pound/one dollar on Amazon, but you know as well as I do that the paperback is a souvenir/birthday/Christmas gift/keepsake opportunity. 

If you are one of those trendy people and like your e-books, you can also download this onto your phone or onto a virtual PC based Kindle for a quid.

Buy here at the Green Wizard Magic Blog Shop.

Paperback: £7.99/$8.99

Ultra Violence Second Edition UK Paperback

Ultra Violence Second Edition US Paperback

E-book £1.02/$1.58

Ultra Violence Second Edition Kindle UK

Ultra Violence Second Edition Kindle US


Ultra Violence - Extract

Here's an extract in case you haven't bought the book yet in either edition. 

*Warning: Contains Adult Language. Please do not read if offended by this.

Here, Beanie, the unemployed and drunken gambler who is trying to set up the major fight on which the book is based, drunkenly attempts to explain to the skeptical narrator why he should join in after years of abstinence. 

Incidentally, for the benefit of Nottingham residents, the gang is drinking outside the Cross Keys one Saturday night after the football in early April 2011.
___________________________

You ever had a look at this place?

What, the tram?

No, Nottingham. Tahn. Ey a look.

You don’t need to look. 

You know these streets intimately. You see the regenerated Lace Market. The Contemporary Art Museum, which had so recently displayed Hockney and a retrospective of the Pre-Raphaelites. The Pitcher and Piano pub-in-a-church. 

You see the tram and the rejuvenated bars with trendy names like Ha Ha on the other side of the tramlines, which stretch all the way up to Hockley, full of happy revellers.

I work here, you say.

I know you do, wankstain. Have you ever had a look, I mean. A real good gander at the state we live in. Look behind the money, youth. Look behind the obvious.

Sometimes, you reply. Not often.

He’s starting to slur his words. Beanie was never like this when we were younger. 

Something is definitely getting under his skin. You’ve noticed in the pub, lately. Maybe it’s being out of work. 

You’ve always been a good listener. You carry on listening, even though you’d rather be talking about something else, and listening to the Snow Patrol track coming from inside the Keys. 

Beanie points in the general direction of the Nottingham Arena. He drains his bottle of WKD and walks to the window, taps on it. Little Dave nods and goes to the bar for another.

All these fellas in Keys. I love em. I do. They live for Notts, and so do I, but what’s the point? What’s the difference between us and someone who goes Ice Skating down there? Nowt. There IS no fucking difference. Planting bulbs. Mowing lawn. Skating a pirouette. Going to flicks. Watching Notts. None of it means fuck all. At least with scrapping, there was a point to it.

Was there? You say, not convinced. A point?

Yes, there was,bollocks. Hooliganism, that wasn’t just a hobby, a pastime, it was a way of life! Men need a hobby to take their minds of the mundanimity* of existence, I’m not telling you owt you don’t know there, being an intelligent man and a bloke to boot, but it takes a rare bird to follow something as a way of life, a culture. It takes bottle to pack it all in to enrol at a Shaolin temple, or sail to Africa to help starving Somalis in camps a hundred thousand strong. It takes real moxeh to stop the Japs butchering every whale in the Antarctic by getting in the road of the whaling ships on a Greenpeace boat. Handing over all your worldly goods to chariteh and go wandering the world, throwing yourself in front of some rain forest destroying bulldozer in Brazil. Helping resurrect the North American Bison that we wiped out in first place. That’s bottle. God, I wish I ed the bottle to do sumut like that.

He winks at you and leans closer, switches topic. 

Watching football without fighting is like window shopping at Harrods, matey.

Little Dave appears with a luminous bottle of blue WKD. Beanie hugs him. He looks embarrassed.

We’re off up The Approach in a bit, Beanie, he says.

That’s a proper Forest shithole, that is, Beanie replies, swaying, nearly spilling the drink as he collects it.

I don’t make the choices, Little Dave says. See him if you have any complaints - Dave gestures over his shoulder at Haxford, holding court inside. 

Beanie laughs and takes a big guzzle. He’s skipping from one topic to another incoherently, expecting you to put the pieces together if there is an end product to this. His rant is sobering you up, and you’re glad about that.

At least, we go to games. Not like them plastic shagnasties who watch Sky Sports and buy Man Utd replica shirts. I watched this documentareh the other day. They were interviewing some Malaysian Manure fans. Out there. In Kuala Lumpur. One of them was complaining about a loss to Norwich, or some muppet Prem team like that, I forget which. He says, ‘it’ll be different when we get them back to our patch!’ I pissed myself laughing. Then I realised there are people in this countreh who have never seen Old Trafford, and yet they support Man Utd! ‘Our patch’. Unbelievable. Un-fuckingbelievable.

I think you’re rambling a bit now, Beanie.

It all makes perfect sense to me, mate.

What’s your point, then?

My point, dear sir, he says drunkenly as he airily gestures to the night sky, is that YOU need to turn up next month.

I thought we’d changed the subject, you say.

We ALL need to turn up next month because life has no point otherwise, youth. Look at that lot. Look at you. Look at little moi. Look at these posh wankstains with the puff’s cocktails here, he says loudly, gesturing at the trendy students and call centre executives on the Galleria enjoying intelligent conversation in mostly mixed racial and gender-based groups. 

A young man with a casual just out of bed haircut that probably took him an hour under a hairdryer to achieve turns round and gives Beanie a quizzical look. Then he looks at his drink, which is indeed, a brightly-coloured cocktail full of crushed ice and crimson syrup. The girl he’s with stares at Beanie coldly.

Look at them all, he continues. They go to work. Them that ey jobs, that is. Fuck me, it’s a living hell for those that ain’t. They come home. Eat tea and fall asleep on their favourite armchair. Watch soaps or Strictly Come Dancing. Cooking shows with Jamie Oliver, or Cash in the Attic, or Homes under the Hammer, or Bargain Hunt, or reality shows about American housewives. They lose the inheritance on Internet Poker. Go out and play five-a-side with their fat mates at the Leisure Centre. Chat up old girlfriends on Facebook. Surf the net for photos of insecure teenage birds taking photos of themsens naked in bedroom mirrors. Snack on cupcakes at a quid a pop, or four packs of blueberry muffins until they become a health statistic for the NHS five-a-day fascists. The lucky ones get to shag their wives, those that have em: The really lucky ones might even enjoy it. Every day is the same shit. Every Saturday, they have a lie in. Get hammered round here at night. Hungover, they go for a pint and a game of brag Sunday dinner in the Rose and Crown, and they fall asleep on the sofa while the missus cooks the roast. They sit round with the kids on Sunday night seeing which talent-starved nobodeh is kicked off X-Factor, and they lie in bed weeping like little girls because it’s work tomorrow, and they fucking hate it. Absolutely hate every second of it. The eternal traffic jams, the dull people they have to wok wi, the managers who make them beg for treats like abused dogs in an RSPCA sanctuary, the ever-present threat of redundancy hanging over them like fucking mustard gas. It all kicks off, day in, day out, day in, day out, with the exception of that traumatic fortnight in Benidorm, and even more traumatic week off at Christmas, with kids who once loved you, and now couldn’t give a fuck whether you lived or died.

He gestures grandly and staggers a little.

This little scenario, with obvious variations, mate, is repeated a quarter of a million times in Nottingham. And do you know what it is?

What?

Do you know what it all is?

I don’t, Beanie. No, I don’t.

A suicide note in daily parts, youth.

He points a finger at your heart and taps it lightly with his fingertip. He leans toward you until you can smell his aftershave and see his heavily-lidded eyes up close.

You really need to front the Northerners, buddy. It’ll give your life some purpose.

_______

*Mundanimity is a word of my invention to symbolise the drunken state Beanie finds himself in at this point. It is not a spelling mistake. 

** The above video depicts two groups of older men from Wales, bitter rivals from Swansea and Cardiff City, accidentally bumping into each other one Saturday afternoon at Newbury Races, and subsequently having a disagreement.

Violent Disorder Launch

VIOLENT DISORDER, my first solo book for a year, and the sequel to Ultra Violence, is out on August 1st for e-book buyers and three weeks later for paperback customers.

Have a look at Dark Dawn Creation's Cover.

Back "Blurb" (in progress)

Let’s ‘av it…

The tall one advances toward me, grinning, all teeth, denim jacket and faded jeans.

He wants it, I can tell.

This knowledge makes me content. It fills me with calm, a balance. An equilibrium.

As he approaches, a sense of certainty descends that this upcoming scenario is somehow meant to be.

There is a mutual acceptance.

A tacit agreement that extreme violence is about to take place, that punches will be thrown, that blood will be spilled, and that one or both of us is going to be hurt, possibly quite badly.

Maybe very badly, indeed.

The Bully Brothers.

Forty-something football hooligans determined to go straight.  

A young Internet writer charts their progress to becoming productive citizens against the background of a disintegrating England.

Shortages of healthy food. Zero hour contracts. Moated communities. Disturbing gangs of homeless roaming the streets. Cancer victims forced to work for dole. Frightened offspring poisoning immortal parents to avoid impossible care bills. Twenty quid for the flicks, three fifty a pint, and eight quid a packet of fags.

You don’t know whether to wear a parka to go shopping or slap on sun block.

The writer takes their confession but stays at arm’s length. Old football war stories - myths and fables from the terraces of Meadow Lane. Sins of Ultra Violence two decades old carried out in service stations, back alleys and the high streets of dead towns like Hounslow, Rotherham, Swindon and Peterborough. 

Will they succeed in going straight?  Can they resist the carnage planned for the last match of the season against Coventry’s top boys?  

Or will they fail, dragging the writer into the bloody battle with them…

Violent Disorder is the much anticipated sequel to Green Wizard’s best-selling Ultra Violence.

______________________________________________________________

There will be an extract next week, and the following week, at least four interviews with me on various blogs, where I discuss the writing of the book.

Hope you enjoy it.

Wiz