Author Archives: Steven Kenny

Sex and the Praying Mantis

Mandy came down from putting the baby to bed and looked over at David with a frown on her face.

‘It’s not like they get a choice though, it’s like, one of them ‘cultural imperative’ things!’

        David looked up from the magazine he was reading and gave her a scathing look.

          ‘Are you still goin’ on about that!?  And “cultural imperative”?  What on earth are you talking about?  They’re insects, they don’t have a bloody culture!’ 

He went back to his magazine, shaking his head.  Mandy wandered over and snatched the magazine from his hands.  She closed it theatrically in front of him and slapped it down onto the coffee table.

          ‘Well, a natural imperative then, or whatever it is.  I’m just saying that the female ones have no choice but to bite the head off the males.  It’s the only way they get pregnant.’

          David opened his mouth to speak, but Mandy continued to talk.

          ‘And then even with their babies, it’s the mother’s instinct to protect them.  I’ve seen nature programmes where a male Lion just abandoned a cub when it got injured.  It was awful.’

          ‘I think you watch too many bloody nature shows, you’ll be wearing a loincloth and yodelling next.  It’s just survival of the fittest hun, “The Law of The Jungle”.  Why are you so concerned anyway?’

          ‘No reason, just making conversation.’

           Mandy plopped herself down on the couch beside David, leaning away from him as she continued her train of thought.

          ‘But it makes you wonder though, doesn’t it?  About their evolution? Like, what kind of thing in its life makes a creature decide the best way to conduct a relationship is to bite off the chaps’ head?  Or leave the kids behind?  Maybe they met your ancestors, eh?’

          David feigned looking hurt and gave her a playful tap on the arm with his fist.

‘You’re skating on thin ice now, I’ll bite your bloody head off!’

          Mandy made evil eyes at him jokingly and pointed to his crotch.

‘Yeah?  Well it’s that head you should be worried about, mi lad!  You’d soon cry if I bit that off.’

          David winced, sucked in breath through his teeth and held up his hands.

‘Alright, point taken.  I know what you mean though.  I suppose they just do it for survival’s sake.  Same with leavin’ their weak kids behind.  As I said, “Law of The Jungle”.’

          The room went quiet then as they both sat there together, lost in their thoughts.  Mandy was frowning and as David leaned over to pick up his magazine again, she spoke.

          ‘I suppose they’d do anything to survive.  Most animals would, wouldn’t they?’

          ‘All animals would, love.  When it comes to living or dying, there’s no middle ground.  It’s kill or be killed; live and let die.’

          Mandy considered his reply for a moment and then looked at him.

‘Would they put their survival above their own kids, do you think?’

          ‘Yeah’ He replied ‘I think they probably would.  Why, Mand?  What’s this about?’

          ‘Oh, nothing.  It’s ok.’

          Upstairs, the baby started crying again.

Submission Update!

Okay, this is just a little quick note just to let you know what happened with the Bandit Fiction submission.  I know you were all on the edge of your seats wanting to know what happened, so here we go…

They rejected it!  They did give me some really good, quality feedback though, which was very much appreciated.  Time to take that little story back to the drawing board and give it a polish.

Onward and upwards!

(told you this was a quick one!)

 

Be kind to each other,

Steven x

Submission – Bandit Fiction

As part of my MA (that’s right, it’s been so long since I updated this blog, I’ve passed my degree and am now studying for my Masters!), we had to write a piece of fiction specifically tailored to a publisher/magazine/whatever of our choice.  Then, we had to actually submit the thing!

Now, I’ve always been very hesitant about submitting my stuff because, well, I’m not a big fan of rejection and I can always manage to convince myself that whatever I submit is going to get rejected.

writersblock

    dealing with rejection like a boss…

So, I don’t submit anything.  See how that dragon eats its own tail?

Anyway, I had to submit something this time, otherwise I would have failed the module, or at the very least would have been marked down for it.  So, as reluctant as I was to do it, I started looking around for somewhere to post to.  That’s how I came across Bandit Fiction.

Bandit Fiction are a new company, specialising in digital publishing. What I like about them, and what drew me to them as a target for my submission, was their emphasis on giving opportunities to writers who are currently studying or have recently graduated from Creative Writing courses.

For the most part, the lecturers and the course content of most Creative Writing degrees show you how to break into the industry and often provide definite ways to do so. It’s not always easy though when you emerge, blinking at the sun, from your safe university eggshell. Newborn baby writers often have no idea where to go once their degree is finished and wander around staring in wonder (and sometimes horror) at the possibilities that lie before them.

That’s why it’s a breath of fresh air to see publishers like Bandit Fiction who want to provide a bridge between education and application. I should point out that they aren’t exclusively for Creative Writing students. Their website makes it very clear that they don’t care about your age, race, gender, disability. All they care about is whether your story is good and suited to them. 

frog

yep, shouldn’t be long now…

That’s pretty refreshing to see too, right?

The long and the short of this blog post then is simply to say that I submitted something to Bandit Fiction!! Hooray for me!

Now I just have to wait for the rejection email…

Be kind to each other, yeah?

Steven.

Labyrinth

So, when I was in my third year of university, which ended in June of this year (2018), I wrote a fiction piece which took its inspiration from the Greek myth of Perseus and the Labyrinth.  We all know the one, right?  Perseus heads into the labyrinth as a ‘sacrifice’ and with the help of Ariadne, navigates his way through with string.  In the end, Perseus defeats the Minotaur that lives in the labyrinth and returns home (sort of) triumphantly.  This is an oversimplification of the myth, I know, but it serves as a good introduction to this blog.

You see, I wanted to write this story because of my struggle with depression and how much it sometimes feels like wandering through a labyrinth, only without the string.  The Minotaur, in this scenario, is played by my depression itself.  It loves its role.  The story itself took on a life of its own, as these things often do, and it didn’t go in the direction that I thought it would.  That was okay though because I’m happy with how the story turned out, although it might need a little more editing before I think it’s finally finished.

I guess what I wanted to talk about in this blog post, was how much it actually feels like my depression is a maze, a labyrinth.  I feel like I’m stuck in here, wandering through a labyrinth of past thoughts, past mistakes, present thoughts, present mistakes etc.  You get the idea.  Without the string though, this maze gets pretty disorienting pretty quickly.  It’s really easy to get caught up in what could have been, what should have been, and it’s really easy to get lost in all of that.  Ultimately, I think the maze is made up of my lack of self-esteem.  It’s the linchpin to everything that’s wrong with my mind.

I have a really, really low self opinion of myself.  I have no idea why.  I can’t trace it to any traumatic experience in my past, so maybe it’s just all in my head?  I don’t know, to be honest.  I guess if I did know, I could fix it.  The fact of the matter remains that I don’t like myself, like, at all.  It’s probably some kind of mental illness, it probably even has a name, but if it does, I don’t know what it is.

Anyway, the fact of the matter is that I feel that my ‘labyrinth’ is made up of my self-esteem issues and that my depression functions as its ‘Minotaur’, stalking the halls and making sure that anything that find its ways in never gets out again.  You know, things like me.  I feel like I’m trapped in here and can’t ever really find my way out.

I’m always hopeful that one day, someone will come along with a ball of twine and help guide me out of this maze, but the deeper and deeper I get into this place, the less likely I feel that I’m ever going to find my way out.  It is what it is, and, as anyone who knows me well can tell you, I can be pretty stubborn when I want to be.

So, while my actual maze isn’t quite as dramatic as the one I wrote about in my short story, it’s still very much a real thing and I’m trapped inside of it, even while it does an okay job of keeping me connected to the outside world.  Well, it sometimes does a good job of that, anyway.

Maybe this post lost its thread along the way, which in the context is kind of ironic, but not entirely unexpected.  I suppose I’m trying to say that my problems probably stem a lot deeper than just simple ‘depression’, but every maze has a way out, right?

Be kind to each other,

Steven

Blowing off the dust…

So, it’s been well over a year since I posted anything to this blog.  That is entirely on me.  I have been busy though completing my degree and living my life, so that could serve as an excuse, but it really shouldn’t.  The original idea of building this whole website was to keep my writing skills flowing when I wasn’t at university, but then I kind of let that slide.

I’m here now though and even though this blog post is only going to be a short one, I do intend to keep up to date with it and add new stuff going forward from here.  So for those of you who follow this blog, the good news is that I’m back and will be making more of an effort to keep up to date and keep in touch with you here on the blog.  Thank-you for your patience and for following me in the first place!  I’ll try not to let you down in the future.

Be excellent to each other,

Steven.

Bliss

It’s all we can do
To hold the world together.
An explosion of life
An eruption of love
Then fill the void
With anger.

A gunmetal sky hangs
Over restless waters.
A tsunami of need
Of restlessness
Of want
Stirs below the surface.

The maelstrom boils
And we ignore;
Occupy our time
With fripperies
Baubles
Well dressed celebrity.

Where will you be
When it ends?

Force of Nature

Fierce as a maelstrom

locked up in a jar.

Like lightning strikes

upon the sea;

the thunder of a heart.

 

It stirred a storm

Inside the soul.

Spans whirlwinds

through the mind.

 

Shook the foundations,

cracked to the core.

Surged like lava

through quivering vines,

twisted into veins.

 

It stalked like a predator,

hunted prey.

An early bird

who catches the worm;

spirits him away.

Seconds Out

In the red corner,

pensive.

Staring across a ring

a thousand

miles

wide.

Her adversary

only grins.

 

In the black corner,

weighing in

at the totality of life,

the grim reaper

flexes his bones.

A dry, ancient crackle

shivers her spine.

 

She wears

sorrow,

a dark veil,

a tartan skirt.

 

The reaper wears sequined shorts,

brazenly.

Emblazoned with his name.

Hanging

like

rags

from bony hips,

he shadow boxes;

queensbury rules.

 

The seconds are out.

She stands,

Bumps leather gloves

Together.

Wonders idly,

why the reaper

gets to use a scythe?

Negative Space – A Review

This is a review of a play that we went to see and was submitted as part of an assignment in my first year at Edge Hill University.

 

Negative Space is a stage production from the Reckless Sleepers, a UK/Belgium based theatre group.  The Reckless Sleepers have a philosophy about their work in which they embrace mistakes and accidents as part of the performance in the hope that it will add to the piece or help describe it in a way not thought of before.

This latest production is something of an oddity.  For a start, there’s no dialogue at all, the whole thing is pure physical theatre.  It takes place on a stage where, it’s fair to say, the real star of the show is a plasterboard cube in (and through) which the actors perform.  The performance begins with a single actor stood alone in the cube.  Not long after, another actor drops in from over the top of the wall and pretty soon there are actors everywhere, pulling and pushing at each other, leaving through holes in the floor or using ladders to climb out of the cube.  The whole thing was a little confusing, but I think it was meant to be some kind of love story.

Things started to become a little more interesting when one of the actors came crashing through one of the plasterboard walls and onto the stage.  From that point on, the whole performance became an orgy of destruction, slapstick and comedy violence.  From a fairly underwhelming start, the performance suddenly found some life.  Unfortunately, once you get over the initial surprise and delight of them smashing up the set, it loses its ability to hold the audience.

I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Reckless Sleepers were trying too hard to make art for art’s’ sake.  The performance just didn’t seem to have any direction and if there was supposed to be a plot, I couldn’t figure one out.  Overall I was left with the feeling that, yes, watching a group of people smash up a plasterboard room is quite cathartic, for a little bit at least, but ultimately I was expecting a little more substance with my style.

If you like your theatre to feel avant-garde while not really innovating at all, then perhaps Negative Space will be the show for you, but if you’d prefer something with a lot less pretension and a lot more plot, then I think you would be disappointed with this one.  It’s an interesting idea in theory, but in practice it turns out to be the equivalent of paying good money to watch plasterers work.  Now if they’d all been dressed as plasterers and the pseudo love story unfolded from that, it might have been a little more interesting.  As it stands right now though, Negative Space was disappointing, underwhelming and ultimately as flimsy as the plasterboard walls themselves.

Shopping and F**cking – A Review

Written as part of an assignment in my first year at Edge Hill University

Warning: Contains swearing.

 

Mark Ravenhill is a British playwright whose second play, Shopping and Fucking, propelled him into the forefront of contemporary theatre in the 1990’s.  He has since gone on to great success in the theatre, due in no small part to the popularity of this play.

Shopping and Fucking is a shocking and cynical look at the disposable world of 90’s England.  It opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1996 and was a major part of the Nineties movement known as ‘in-yer-face theatre’.  Despite the play now being 20 years old, it still manages to resonate the shock factor that put it in the forefront of the movement.  However it has to be said that a modern audience may not be as shocked with the complexities of the relationships between the characters in the play (who are, amusingly, named after members of the boyband Take That).  It’s a testament to a (little) more enlightened age that the relationship between Lulu, Robbie and Mark doesn’t seem as shocking or strange in 2016 as I imagine it did to a theatre audience in a time when homosexuality and pansexuality were not as accepted as they are today.

The plot of the play revolves around four characters; Mark, who used to work in the city but is now a recovering drug addict, Robbie, Mark’s jealous and insecure lover, their girlfriend Lulu and a sexually abused teenage prostitute called Gary.  Mark meets Gary and pays him for sex which serves up one of the plays many shocking scenes.  An unforgettable bedroom scene which includes analingus and blood.  This play is definitely not for the faint of heart!

Lulu goes for a job interview at a tv shopping channel where her sleazy boss gets her to audition topless before convincing her to sell Ecstasy for him.  Lulu agrees and involves Robbie in the dealing too, but when Robbie practically gives all of the pills away, they find themselves in trouble to the tune of £3,000.  After trying to set up a phone sex line, Mark introduces them to Gary and the four of them are faced with a life altering choice.

The themes behind the play, those of the disposable nature of the world and the fact that everything is treated as a commodity, still have relevance in the world today.  Perhaps even more so, as the slightly far fetched world in which the play is set resonates uncomfortably in the even more throwaway and commodity rich world of today.

Perhaps then, the most shocking thing about Shopping and Fucking is not the ‘in-your-face’ sexuality of its characters, or the pints of blood and sadomasochism.  Maybe it’s the fact that Ravenhill was onto something twenty years ago, he tried to warn us and we didn’t listen?  Whatever the answer, the play is hard hitting and darkly humorous, so if you’re not easily shocked and you have a strong stomach, I’d recommend watching Shopping and Fucking.