Nope, not the Hobbit book. In this case, I’m actually referring to the book that I wrote titled An Unexpected Journey a few years back. I recently realized that I haven’t bothered to talk about it, despite this being an ideal place to do so, so here we are. So… it’s a kids book about an alligator named Cilantro who accidentally ends up going on a quest when he really just means to find a new place to live. Yeah.
You can find out the rest by reading it! It’s really short, 46 pages and it’ll be shorter once I’m done editing out the unnecessary extra line spacing, but, well, it was my first book and I may have made some mistakes. That’s part of the point of this post: to advertise the fact that I am finally going back and fixing spacing, punctuation, I think one or two typos… all the stuff that makes me cringe when I open it up and go, “There should be a comma before that dialogue!” Which means that first edition will be, fingers crossed, going out of print very soon. If you’d like a copy, pick it up before second edition is released! (This may also be a good time to plug the fact that the second book is in the later stages of editing, so you have that to look forward to, too.)
While I’m working on that, I’ll leave you with a snippet of one of the fight scenes. Enjoy!
“What was that?!” Rebecca whispered, “A monster?” “Shhh! I’m trying to listen!” Allan warned, “I think it’s goblins. Everyone, stand in a circle, back to back.” Cilantro noticed a couple of sharp, pointy sticks. “Rebecca!” he whispered, “I’ll grab a stick. Use your horn as a spear.” “What?! Are you kidding?!” she yelped, “I spend hours polishing and cleaning my horn until it sparkles like freshly fallen snow! I’ll take a stick too, thank you very much!” Allan looked at them. “Do you guys even know how to fight?” Rebecca looked at him, giggled, and said, “Of course! Beat up the bad guy, and don’t get beat up!” Suddenly, a goblin pack started dropping from the trees. “Augh!!” Rebecca screamed, while instinctively poking at one with her “spear.” Meanwhile, Allan had drawn a sword and was busy slicing goblins with, may I add, great skill. Just then, they heard a shout from Cilantro, signaling that he had been captured. Allan took one look toward Cilantro, chopped off a goblin’s head, and charged toward the goblin holding Cilantro. As Allan’s sword made contact with the goblin’s torso, he heard another scream from behind him. As Allan and Cilantro stared, they realized it was the goblin’s scream, not Rebecca’s. “How dare you mess up my hoof polish!” she scolded the goblin, “It took an hour to put on!” That made them laugh hysterically.
Do give it a bit of slack, I’m not adjusting the actual story or the writing style and I was nine when I wrote it, so there’ll be cliches and tropes and so-so sentences that are probably unnecessary, but I’m trying to stay true to my beginnings.
