Friday, January 03, 2014

If you have an idea, don't take it to the grave.

Why is it that we procrastinate? All of us come up with great ideas and do nothing with them. It is said the greatest repository of brilliant ideas, is the graveyard. It was this thought that motivated me to take action and take some of my ideas and make them happen. The children's book I've written, yes I know everyone thinks it's an easy, easy genre, but I disagree. If a child is bored they let you know, they care little about decorum. I believe kids are the most severe critics of stories and I sincerely hope my story about the Adventures of Bacon & Eggs is liked.

You will find it on Amazon but here's a brief description.

The Adventures of Bacon & Eggs is a story for children about compassion, friendship, courage, and loyalty.

It features a disgustingly smelly man, a farmer who hates everything, especially children (he calls them maggots) in fact the only thing he loves is eating bacon and eggs. Which is why on his farm he keeps pigs and chickens. One day an especially clever pig makes a horrifying discovery. Along with a brave chicken they rescue their friends and teach the beastly farmer a terrible lesson. Who is this book for? It’s a difficult question because for some this story is a little ‘dark’.

My children grew up listening to stories by the genius Roald Dahl and they absolutely loved the language, characters and humour he used. It will be obvious to many that the Adventures of Bacon & Eggs has been influenced by Roald Dahl, and so there are grotesque and silly aspects to this story. Most children from the age of 6 to 10 will enjoy the book (especially boys). However there is a chance that if your child is particularly sensitive, these aspects could be frightening. To be sure why not read the sample below and 'look inside' to ensure you are happy with the book before you buy. Without ruining the story, I will say there is a happy ending. (At least for the animals).

***Note: Some have commented that the story is a covert vegetarian campaign to turn children off eating meat, this isn't the case. I just hope this story makes people think about the consequences of eating animals. As a kid I worked on a farm and to this day I am scarred by the experience. In my view we are too removed from the process of killing animals for food and this makes us blasé about the cruelty involved.
Having said that I still enjoy eating meat, its just that I believe we should treat animals with compassion. With that said here's the first few pages from the book...

IMAGINE this, a smell so pongworthy it would make your eyes water, a combination of cabbage that had been boiled for days, along with moldy cheese, combined with the smell of something unspeakable you might have stepped in and found on the bottom of your shoe.

The truth is Smythe was a walking stink-bomb, with a cloud of invisible stink surrounding him. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone invented smell-o-vision glasses so we could see smells like this in the air and then we could avoid them. Unfortunately it was impossible to avoid the stink of the man in this story, so it was just as well that he rarely left his farm and only his dog had to live with his pong. The farmer’s name was Mr Smythe, but he was such an unpleasant person, he really should have been called Mr Horrid and Nasty.

If you saw him you would think he was rather unusual. His head was shaped like a mangled turnip, he was completely bald apart from a few tufts of wiry white hair. His eyebrows were thick black and bushy. They looked like fat caterpillars crawling across his forehead. His eyes were small and mean, his nose an enormous red conk with hairs poking out of his nostrils. While his teeth, those teeth that were left in his head, were yellow and misshapen.

He only ever brushed his teeth on his birthday which meant his breath smelled for 364 days of the year. He also wore dentures, badly fitting false teeth, made of plastic. When he spoke, no, he never spoke because he SHOUTED ALL THE TIME EVEN WHEN TALKING TO HIMSELF. When he shouted globs of foul smelling spit would fly in different directions. His personal hygiene was a shocker, his fingernails were long and filthy. Bits of goodness knows what was trapped under his nails and this smelled so bad that even the farmer’s dog was disgusted.

Still he never washed or showered and even slept in his clothes. Smythe didn’t believe in washing clothes he thought it was a waste of time, and so they got dirtier and dirtier. Now this is a strange thing but there comes a point when something is so utterly filthy, it can’t get any worse...
Visit: www.AdventuresofBaconandEggs.com for more.