heeble-greebs – Grimly Darkwood

The Shop on Peculiar Hill Quiz

Have you read The Shop on Peculiar Hill? How much did you learn from it about life on the edge of the Vale of Strange? Now there’s a chance to test your knowledge in the brand new Goodreads ‘Shop on Peculiar Hill’ Quiz. Here’s a sample question to get you started:

Where do bogeys live?

a) In Boggy Hollows

b) At the Strange Hotel

c) Underneath your bed

An ideas? If you knew the answer to that one (or even if you didn’t) you can take the whole quiz here at Goodreads. It’s fun to do and it’s a very sensible idea to check your knowledge to make sure you’re taking the right precautions against all the various monsters. Otherwise you can end up trying to fend off a heeble-greeb with a bowl of glop.

And if you haven’t been to Goodreads before, you might like to take a look around while you’re there. It’s a good place to go to get recommendations for books, chat about what you’ve been reading with friends, and even to write reviews so you can share your thoughts about what you’ve been reading more widely. Rather annoyingly, though no doubt for very good reasons, you have to be 13 or over to be a member at Goodreads, but if you’re too young at the moment, this may be one of those times when a parent comes in useful. They might be able to ask for book recommendations on your behalf and it might be a really worthwhile project for you to help them write a review of The Shop on Peculiar Hill or even Stranger Days – if only to keep them out of mischief for a day or so.

You can also help them to answer that quiz of course. Here’s another sample question before I go:

What is Aunt Maggie’s lucky day?

a) Wednesday

b) Thursday

c) Every other Friday

You’ll find more questions – and all the answers – over at Goodreads...

And don’t forget to wear that hat!

(The Good Reads links above take you to the quiz. The main Good Reads page for The Shop on Peculiar Hill is here.)

Audrey’s Illustration

Hello Everyone – Grimly here, and this time we have another contribution from Audrey, the reader who I was chatting with a few weeks ago. This time she has produced this great illustration of a large proportion of the cast of ‘The Shop on Peculiar Hill‘. Let’s see if you can spot who is who.

Audrey pic Shop

Got it?

No, that isn’t Uncle Bob painted blue with wings on. That’s a bogey, one of the vary rare blue ones in fact. And the green character on the left isn’t Mr Grimble feeling a bit green and sickly after having been accidentally shrunk in the washing machine. It’s a heeblegreeb. But you really knew that, didn’t you?

The next two are easy of course: Amanda looking cool in black and Peter in his new blue jeans, but is that a hot air balloon in between them or could it possibly be a strange tomato on a lead? I think it’s a strange tomato all right. It’s the purring that gives it away!

And finally, the character at the far right hand side surely has to be Algernon, but are those muscles under his T shirt? He looks like more than a match for any strange creatures who come his way. The only thing that worries me is that he hasn’t got a hat. Hopefully Amanda has it safely stashed away in her bag in case the bogeys start fizzing.

Many thanks to Audrey for sending us that terrific picture. I look forward to seeing her illustration of ‘Stranger Days on Peculiar Hill’ which is due out later this year of course. And in the meantime, if anyone else would like to try your hand at illustrating any of the characters in ‘The Shop on Peculiar Hill’, we shall be delighted to see what you come up with. Just remember that if you send any drawings in, we will assume that you’re happy for us to publish them on the blog.

And finally, following on from last time, I decided that yes, I would change the photo of me that goes at the top of the blog. Up there now is one that my friend Lee (Audrey’s grandma) has lovingly photoshopped into submission. Yes, perhaps it makes me look a bit younger than I actually am but I think it also makes me look less scary than the previous photo did. And after all, what with bogeys and heeblegreebs and jamjam plants, there are enough scary things in ‘The Shop on Peculiar Hill’ without people having to worry about the author as well, don’t you think?

‘And I’m not really scary, am I?’ I ask the staff here at Grimly Central. But no one replies. They’re all hiding behind their desks.

Ho hum. That’s all for now then, but bear in mind it’s still bogey season so… Don’t forget your hat!

Five Stars

Hi Everyone – If you have read ‘The Shop on Peculiar Hill’ and would like to let other people know what you think about it, you can leave a review on Amazon. Here are the Amazon listings for the book. Scroll down and you will see a button on the left inviting you to leave a review.

Amazon UK site

Amazon US site

Speaking of which, we just got our first review on the Amazon UK site and it’s a good one, giving us a maximum five stars!

This is what the customer who left the review said:

“This is a thoroughly delightful tale about Peter who goes to live with his Uncle and Aunt on the edge of the Vale of Strange – a valley where strangeness oozes through cracks in the earth, engendering all sorts of weird creatures to terrify and, on occasion, consume tourists. The writer, Grimly Darkwood, skilfully treads the fine line between laugh out loud funny and disturbingly creepy to great effect. Despite reassuringly daft names like Bogeys and Heeble-greebs, the bizarre monsters that Peter and his friend Amanda encounter while trying to rescue a missing child, are often genuinely frightening. Darkwood builds up the suspense in the first half of the book very effectively, so that when the two adventurers are finally plunged into the depths of the Vale of Strange there’s a real sense of desperate peril. The sheer scope and barminess of the author’s imagination places this story firmly at the pioneering end of children’s fantasy, and I can heartily recommend it to both younger and older readers alike.”

Pretty good, eh? The review has the title ‘utterly charming and completely bonkers in equal measure’ though we’re not sure if that refers to the book or to the author Grimly Darkwood himself. (Note to Mr Darkwood: “I was only joking. Please don’t sack me, sir!”)

We look forward to speaking with you again soon.

Grimly and the Team