Via TBM guest blogger, John Dougerty…

Cherry and I get a lot of messages on our website asking for help. Most of them turn out to be hoaxes, so when I got an email from some guy calling himself Tommy Donbavand, I was sure it was fake. I mean, what kind of a name is Donbavand?

I was just about to hit the delete key when another name caught my eye – a name I recognised: Clyde Pumfrey-Soames. Clyde’s the so-called Minister for Monsters, and not my favourite person, but if this Donbavand character had heard of him, then maybe – just maybe – he was on the level.

I read on. It sounded like Tommy Donbavand had emailed Clyde to ask for help with a monster problem, and Clyde had given him the brush-off. Sounds like Clyde. He talks big about monsters, but when it comes to actually dealing with them he’s as useful as an umbrella in a swimming pool.

He’d also warned him against me. That was Clyde, all right.

Then I got to the interesting bit. Apparently Tommy D was emailing from a cave; and the reason he was in a cave was that he was being held prisoner by monsters. And not just him, either; it seemed there were eight of them. Eight grown-ups, all authors, and all trapped by monsters and forced to write stories for them.

These didn’t sound like the kind of problem I usually deal with. But, as I’ve always said, I’d like to see the monster that can get the better of me. So I decided to take the case.

Want to know what happened? Watch this space.

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