More from TBM Guest Blogger - Elizabeth Kay…

I needed a van to be able to transport all the gear you suggested. Some of the items were too American. I took a cricket bat in place of a baseball bat, and I had to look up Twinkies on the internet – fairy cakes seemed to be closest. The soap, mirror, air freshener and toothpicks were easy – but a good lawyer? Where do you find one of those? The machine-gun wasn’t an option, either – you need a licence for those things over here – and no one would hire me the jet-packs.

I did explain that Mark Robson would know about all the Health and Safety issues, with his pilot’s background, but the answer was still No. I packed eight signed copies of The Divide, although I didn’t hold out much hope that they’d work as a bribe. I’d have been a lot better off if I could have taken Grimspite with me, as he’s awfully good at disembowelling – but he was off on a cookery course somewhere, learning how to make black pudding…

Once I’d got everything packed I settled down with a good book to while away the time – Feasting the Wolf, by Susan Price. It’s about two blood-brothers, Ketil and Ottar, who leave their farm on Shetland to join the Vikings, and find adventure. Things don’t always go the way you expect, though. It is a violent life, but it’s far from glamorous…

When I looked up it was dark, and it was snowing again. I got in the van, and drove down to the canal. The wheels were slipping and sliding all over the place, and I thought I’d end up in the canal, rather than next to it. But I managed to park it, and I lugged all the gear over to the dustbins, settled down, and waited.

It was really cold. I mean REALLY cold. The sort of cold that lets you know why frostbite has teeth, the sort of cold that grabs hold of the end of your nose and twists it until you can’t feel it any more… I suddenly realised that it wasn’t the cold attacking my nose, it was a leathery hand with just two fingers. Each finger had a talon on the end; it was like one of those silly little hands a Tyrannosaurus has. All bone and muscle and nasty carnivorous ideas. I became aware of a cheesy minty garlicky smell, and something started to nibble the back of my neck in a very worrying way. It wasn’t a sign of affection, that nibbling. It was something have a quick taste to see if tonight’s menu was to its liking.

“Hey!” I yelled, jerking away. “You said you’d take me to the cave, to meet the authors so that I could persuade them to write you in as a hero.”

“Oh yes,” said the monster. “So I was. You’d better follow me.”

I couldn’t carry all the stuff I’d brought, so I left everything behind except the air freshener. The snow was coming down so heavily now that it was like following a shape-shifter. I couldn’t really get a good look at it – one minute I thought it had horns on its head, the next minute it seemed to have six legs and a pot belly. And then it disappeared through a crack in a rock, and I was squeezing in after it and thinking, this is a bad idea. Really bad.

I realised I was in some sort of cave system. It was too dark to see anything properly, and I could hear water dripping and someone moaning in the distance. As I got closer I realised the someone was saying, “No! No! Don’t make me rhyme! I can’t be dramatic, it’s too problematic, it all sounds too flimsy, just juvenile whimsy, I can’t write in verse, it’s worse than a curse… ow! No! Not moon and June, please… anything but that… Aaargh!!!”

I whipped out the air freshener, and gave them a burst of lavender. There was a horrible drawn-out screech, and before I could say BO I was propelled back through the crack in the rock, and outside into the snow. There was a loud clang, like the gates of hell closing, and the suddenly the smell had gone and so had the crack in the rock.

I’d failed.

The monsters were making those poor authors write poetry instead of action adventure stories. The horror of it. The unspeakable horror…

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