The Mysterious Shadows

Recently I uncovered a load of old school stuff in my parents house. Most of it has never been seen by anyone who knows me as it was all before I moved to Scotland. Over the coming weeks I shall be indulging in some of my past material and I hope you guys find it as funny as I do!

So without further ado, I shall introduce you to my 7 year old brain with the novelette The Mysterious Shadows.

(Mick Allen was a pseudonym. No idea why!)

There was a dark and misty town not far away from a dark and misty forest. Lots of gigantic shadows rose upon houses in the town and rose on the trees

the town and rose on the trees in the forest. In the town a little boy went for a walk with his dad from the shopping centre to get a ball for the little boy to play with at the park and on the way home

(Notice how the shopping centre has separate “In” and “Out” doors. Very organised! I believe the parts underneath the “Shopping Centre” sign are entrances for cars; you can see I’ve then detailed the layout of the car park – an essential part of any artwork accompanying a book!)

they went to the park to play football. Suddenly the shadows got to the park and when they got to the gate of the park one of them took out a gun and tried to shoot the little boy and dad but he missed them so he tried again and missed. He looked down to

(In the first image you can really see how I’ve detailed the mistiness of the town using an HB pencil. It also shows how I was experimenting with stepping out of my comfort zone as this is the only top-down piece in the whole book. The second image is, I feel, a really good example of how perspective and motion (of the bullet) can be utilised to great effect.)

fill his gun up and while he was doing this the boy and dad ran out of the park and when he looked up he

(Aha. It’s a bit of a cliché nowadays but at the time the “baddy looking down to reload” twist was rather novel and here it’s used to get our heroes out of an impossible situation.)

couldn’t see them. So they turned around and walked back to their secret hut and

(The pathetic fallacy of the increasing murkiness of the artwork really captures the more sombre mood of the second act.)

when they turned round a corner the boy and dad flung

(You can really see the influence the Beano has had on my artwork with the action framing of the second piece.)

their arms round the shadows mouths and they started to

(Note that in this amazing world we are visiting, door handles are larger than heads.)

question the shadows. The boy said “take us to your secret

hut.” So that’s what they did and when they got there the boy asked “do you have a leader” and one of them said “yes” “then take us to your leader” said the boy and one of them said “no” and the dad got really angry and then the shadow said “ok ok keep your hair on”. So they were taken to the shadows leader and the boy and dad together said “were going to take you some where your going to love” (the shadows were silly enough to believe them). So the boy and dad took the shadows to that place and that place was jail.

The End

(It’s a well known fact that bad guys are amazingly gullible. It’s such an underused plot device.)

No one knows when.
No one knows how.
But what puzzles them is who are they.

(This is a study in how to write a great blurb. Entice the reader in with vague questions and then never answer them in the book!)