Pop Tarts: Omnibus Edition

Pop
Tarts

By

Brian
Lovestar

Copyright ©
2015

www.brianlovestar.com

Brian Lovestar
has always loved the 1980s. In writing ‘Pop Tarts’ he has created
the ultimate tribute to it. Join him as he reunites 80s pop
favourites Tequila Sun in your newest, filthiest and frothiest
guilty pleasure…

First published
in Great Britain in 2015.

Brian Lovestar
has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a book
of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely
coincidental.

No part of this
publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the
copyright holder.

Cover image by
MILA Zed @ Shutterstock

Copyright ©
2015 Brian Lovestar

All rights
reserved.

“Growing up in the 1980s, grown-ups would harp on about how
special the 60s were and I didn’t get it. The music sounded basic
and TV and film seemed mostly in black and white. But everyone has
their ‘special decade’ I’ve since realised and mine was certainly
the 80s. The 70s was just a little before my time and I totally
rejected the 90s. The fashions, TV and music just weren’t quite in
the same league – and they’ve dated badly too – whereas the 80s are
still fresh and cool. So when it came to writing my second novel,
of course it was the only place I wanted to go back to.”

After the release of
his debut novel ‘Dream Myself Alive’ in 2014, Brian Lovestar
decided on a new concept for follow up ‘Pop Tarts’. “I released
‘Dream Myself Alive’ on paperback first,” he says. “It felt good to
hold the actual physical copy in my hand. But for ‘Pop Tarts’ I
decided to release it digitally first and to stagger the release in
volumes. The idea was to generate interest and promotion in the
build up to the fully fledged release.”

Three volumes later
and the paperback omnibus edition is finally in your hands. “I’m
excited to be in print again,” Brian says. “It was good to release
the eBooks and kind of felt like I was writing the novel live and
able to get instant feedback, but a lot of people still like the
feel of something hard in their hands.” Not that ‘Pop Tarts’
doesn’t come without its fair share of puns…

It’s about Felix, an
80s pop star who - to achieve another fifteen minutes of fame - has
to reform the band that made him a star… the only problem is they
haven’t spoken in over 20 years and generally hate each other.

Soap operatic cliff
hangers with supernatural elements to boot ‘Pop Tarts’ really does
serve up all the main ingredients of this year’s newest and most
exciting guilty pleasure.

“The
main character Felix is trisexual,” Brian reveals. “As in he’ll try
anything once and usually thrice, just to make sure.” He’s joined
by sultry starlet Holly Wood, stage schooled from the uterus; and
hermaphrodite-with-a-heart Cherry Fontaine, and together they
endure an adventure that spans two decades of time.

There’s also the bonus treat of actual music by the fictional
band themselves. “The band are called Tequila Sun,” Brian says.
“They have their own Twitter and Facebook pages, as well as a Sound
Cloud page where you can listen to the tracks mentioned in the
story. They aren’t the greatest of recordings but they seem almost
authentic - and it would have been a shame not to use
them.”

The
novel is multiple genre crossing. “It’s a retro parody of the 80s,
with an infusion of black comedy,” Brian reveals. “Anyone who read
my first novel will know I have a twisted sense of humour. 
That is only evident tenfold here. This book is definitely not for
the faint-hearted or easily offended. But if you’re as sick and
twisted as me, you’re going to absolutely love it!”

And here’s hoping you
do…

The man on TV
smiles and his teeth sparkle. They are a lighter shade of white so
brilliant, you feel the need to grab for your shades. His face is
lobster red perma-tanned, his jaw chiselled to perfection. He looks
plastic fantastic. And he introduces himself:

“Hello and
welcome to ‘I’m a Has Been, Please Don’t Feed Me to the Lions’. I
am your host Dexter Anton and tonight we see former 80s heart throb
Felix from pop band Tequila Sun face off against sex siren Jade
Astley, the sultry one from Pink Champagne and one of the Ants from
Adam And. But first, here are the highlights from yesterday’s live
feed.”

The VT plays
and we see Felix and Jade sitting in a cage in the jungle. Felix is
wearing a loin cloth, Jade is wearing a coconut bra and a Hawaiian
hula skirt. Both are covered in war paint.

“Where is the
Ant?” Felix asks.

“He’s still
upset over losing Harry from Spandex Belly in the crocodile swamp
yesterday,” Jade replies.

The camera cuts
to the Ant sat huddled in a corner by himself, rocking backwards
and forwards and humming, then mixes back to Dexter in front of a
live studio audience. His look of put upon sorrow soon turns into a
delighted smirk and he reads his next line right off of the
tele-prompter:

“Who will be
next to sashay his or her has been little tushie out of the
limelight tonight? Find out now in a round we like to call ‘Pass
the Bomb’.

Felix, Jade and
the Ant are sat in a semi-circle on a giant inflatable banana.
Felix is holding a parcel which looks to be a gift wrapped
cartoon-style bomb, complete with a lit dynamite fuse sticking out
of the top. He looks tentative but not half as freaky outy as the
Ant, while cold-as-ice Jade is as cool as a cucumber.

When 80s pop
classic ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ starts playing, he passes the
parcel of dynamite to Jade who then in turn passes it to the Ant
and so on and so forth.

After a few
rounds the music suddenly stops and the Ant is left holding the
parcel, which then explodes into smithereens, the Ant along with
it.

The feed cuts
back to the studio, where a proportion of the audience are jeering
and heckling.

“Not enough
blood that time, eh?” asks Dexter. “Vultures the lot of us, I mean
you, heh heh.” The baying crowd chuckles.

“So we are now
down to the final 2 survivors and it’s a straight face off between
Felix and Jade. Who will be crowned the winner of ‘I’m a Has Been,
Please Don’t Feed Me to the Lions’? Find out now in ‘The Bridge of
Doooooooom’…

Felix and Jade
now stand either side of a rope suspension bridge, above a hundred
foot steep drop into a fiery gushing lava.

Dexter fires
off himself, again from the tele-prompter: “In this game each
contestant has to answer questions from their former 80s heyday.
Get a question right and you can move five steps over the bridge.
The object is to reach the middle first. However get one wrong and
face dire consequences.”

Felix and Jade
gasp while Dexter raises an eyebrow with a wicked glint.

“Felix you’re
up first. What year did Tequila Sun have their first and last hit
singles?”

Felix bites his
nails. He knows the first answer is 1984, but not the second. There
was just too much vodka and cocaine. Through a haze of sex, drugs
and sausage rolls, he throws out a wild guess: “1984 and…
1988?”

The crowd
cheers enthusiastically as Dexter announces he is correct and tells
him to move forward five spaces onto and over the bridge of certain
death.

Felix breathes
a sigh of relief as he does so, and mops some sweat from his
brow.

“Over to you,
Jade.” Dexter laments.

Jade would be
shitting her panties, had she been wearing any. But she wasn’t, as
usual. And her ankles were getting a tad cold because of it.

“If you can’t
stand the cold, what should you do?”

Seems this is
an easy one for Jade: “…keep out of the fridge freezer!” she sings,
almost in key. And joins Felix in the same position on the opposite
side of the bridge.

Bubbling blood
red lava spits below them and a gust of wind almost knocks Felix
off his feet, giving him the heebie jeebies.

“Felix, who had
the biggest penis in Tequila Sun? Yourself, Rhino Zagreb or Cherry
Fontaine?”

Is this a trick
question? Felix knows full well he
was
the biggest penis in
the band, but
did he have it
? He decides to throw caution -
and his ego - to the wind and go with Cherry instead, and earns
himself another rapturous cheer and a further 5 space move into the
centre of the bridge.

“Jade, who was
the biggest biatch in Pink Champagne?”

Dexter’s
eyebrows are dancing like a snake at a school disco. Jade seems
stumped and befuzzled.

“Well I would
say Rita Barker, but it was probably me.”

Dexter rolls
his eyes in cheap disdain.

“I’m sorry
Jade. The correct answer is Mick Nelson. Adios my little has
been.”

Suddenly the
bridge panel Jade is standing on gives way and she falls screaming
into a fiery death below her.

Production
mixes back to the TV studio and Dexter announces on set: “Please
welcome our winner of ‘I’m a Has Been, Please Don’t Feed me to the
Lions’, star of 80s pop tarts Tequila Sun… its Felix.

The audience
reaction is mixed as Felix joins Dexter on stage, looking both
terrified and thrilled. Confetti cannons and fireworks go off and
the credits begin to roll.

Felix wakes up
with a jolt. He gets out of bed and goes to the shower. As he opens
the shower door, a woman is showering with her back to him. She
turns around and it is Jade Astley of Pink Champagne back from the
dead Dallas-style!

“Good morning,”
she says, as she yanks him in the shower to join her, clasping him
between her heaving bosom and succubus love loins.

As the water
hits him he wakes up again, this time for real as his mobile
telephone rings by the side of his bed. He feels around for it
blindly, still half asleep, burrowed in the pillow and knocks it
from the bedside cabinet onto the floor.

He leans over
the side of the bed to retrieve it and answer. It’s his agent Max
Jacks.

“Felix this is
your wake up call,” he says with a hype too fervent – according to
Felix - for this time of the morning, even though it’s almost 12
noon.

“Oh Max, thank
God it’s you,” Felix stifles through a yawn. “I thought the whole
first chapter of the book had just been a dream.”

Max suspects
Felix was up partying hard till probably dawn. Usually literally,
with a revolving door of blatant floozies.

“Where are we
meeting today?” asks Felix. “The Ivy? Have you sent a limo to pick
me up?”

It’s the
morning after the wrap party for ‘I’m a Has Been, Please Don’t Feed
Me to the Lions’ and Felix is hopeful that having won the show, his
career is now finally back on track.

He hasn’t
really been in the public eye since 1988 when his band Tequila Sun
broke up under somewhat acrimonious circumstances. And his
crestfallen attempt at a solo career went somewhat tits up in the
early 90s.

“I couldn’t get
a table,” Max replies. “But I’ll see you in Wetherspoons at 1
o’clock, so get a move on or you’ll miss the number 27 bus.”

The realities
of a supposedly glamorous lifestyle hit home harshly. It always
amused Felix that the GBP (the Great British Public, as he called
them) assumed that if anyone had been on TV just once, they were
instantaneously a millionaire for life.

Nothing could
be further from the truth.

Felix lived in
quite a modest apartment just outside of North London, afforded to
him only by the godsend of a Christmas hit in 1986 that has been
played every year since.

If it hadn’t
been for that and the fact he’d co-written it - for co-written read
changed a couple of words in a drunken and enthusiastic ad-lib -
he’d probably be working his arse off in a fast food restaurant or
living in a cardboard box right about now. Time had not been
forgiving.

“So what are
the plans, Max? Felix asks as he joins him at a table in the local
pub. “What have you got lined up? I suppose the phones haven’t
stopped ringing?”

“Not quite,”
Max replies, stirring a cup of Earl Grey tea, white with no
sugar.

Felix orders
himself a pint of Strongbow and a packet of pickled onion crisps.
How very rock and roll.

“The solo album
you recorded in 1992 is back in stock at the pound shop,” Max
relays with just the merest hint of sarcasm.

“Better get
started on another one then, eh?” says Felix, refusing to let it
dampen his enthusiasm.

“They’re not
interested Felix,” Max tells it like it is. “Without Holly, Cherry
and whatshisname, they just don’t give a damn. They never did.”