{"id":259,"date":"2009-01-23T09:58:08","date_gmt":"2009-01-23T17:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=259"},"modified":"2009-01-23T09:58:08","modified_gmt":"2009-01-23T17:58:08","slug":"a-monster-compromise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"A Monster Compromise?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, me and seven other unlucky authors are still <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.trappedbymonsters.com\/\">TRAPPED BY MONSTERS.<\/a> <\/strong>But I&#8217;m doing my best to negotiate an early exit for us all, as you&#8217;ll see from the following post I just put up over there&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I love writing about monsters. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I do. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change that no matter how long you keep me here or what you do to me. But the intriguing-looking upcoming Wii game <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deadlycreaturesgame.com\/\"><em>Deadly Creatures<\/em><\/a> has got me thinking, and I believe I may just have an alternative suggestion for you.<\/p>\n<p>Will you let us out of here if we promise <em>only<\/em> to write books about <strong>monsters who allow themselves to appear in nature documentaries?<\/strong> Work with me on this, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got some examples\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n<p>The original \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnature bites back\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 classic <strong>JAWS, by Peter Benchley<\/strong> is still a cracking read. But for my money his <strong>BEAST<\/strong> is even better: the chapters told from the giant squid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s point of view are just AWESOME.<strong> James Herbert<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <strong>THE RATS<\/strong> books are also dead good, particularly the post-apocalyptic third in the series, <strong>DOMAIN<\/strong>. Sliding further along the scale from scary to silly, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <strong>SLUGS by Shaun Hutson<\/strong>. Even <strong>THE FUNGUS, by Harry Adam Knight <\/strong>is a great way to spend a rainy afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking that the ultimate, the ne-plus-ultra of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnatural monster stories\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 could well be something like THIS:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-294\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trappedbymonsters.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/100_1459-1.jpg\" alt=\"100_1459-1\" width=\"640\" height=\"492\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Now <em>there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/em> a type of creature that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yet to have justice done by it, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say. Yep: FROGS! As one of the other posters for this film said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc<strong>Today, the Pond. Tomorrow, the World!<\/strong>\u00e2\u20ac\u02dc<\/p>\n<p>Well, monsters? What do you think?<\/p>\n<p>Hello?<\/p>\n<p><em>Sigh<\/em>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get back in my hole.<\/p>\n<p>One last thing before I do. If anyone reading this is <strong>at school<\/strong> or you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a <strong>school librarian<\/strong>, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something that may interest you: the fabulous <strong>Liz <\/strong>over at <a href=\"http:\/\/myfavouritebooks.blogspot.com\/\"><strong>My Favourite Books<\/strong><\/a> is currently organising a <a href=\"http:\/\/myfavouritebooks.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/childrens-book-competition-news.html\"><strong>Giant Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Book Giveaway<\/strong><\/a>! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sponsored by five major UK publishers, including mine: hit the link for all the details.<\/p>\n<p>For further fine reading, as ever, check <a href=\"http:\/\/www.librarything.com\/profile\/othersam\">my LibraryThing profile<\/a>. OK, <em>now<\/em> I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll climb back into my hole. ;p<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, me and seven other unlucky authors are still TRAPPED BY MONSTERS. But I&#8217;m doing my best to negotiate an early exit for us all, as you&#8217;ll see from the following post I just put up over there&#8230; I love writing about monsters. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I do. And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change that no [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}