BOOK SYNOPSIS
Well there’s this talking monkey who won me in a game of Othello in a coffee shop in Amsterdam. He came back to Cornwall with me and has become a prolific reader and dabbler in magic. He also has past life flash backs – the most prominent of which are the Nam special forces ones. We have partially deceased girlfriends who apparently eat dead bodies.
The Monkey created a sort of black hole in the spare bedroom and now we have a team of nerds investigating it and trying to stop ‘things’ coming out of it. A bunch of Oriental hit men who appear to believe he is a god attempted to steal The Monkey’s magic lolly pop sticks, but he managed to blow them up in their caravan.
We are off to Cambodia in search of a temple from which came a monkey faced pendant with glowing eyes and we seem to have upset an international cabal who are out to get us.
Oh, and did I mention that The Monkey likes a cigar and we regularly get very drunk on Jack Daniels…
The Monkey and narrator have arrived in Cambodia and after buying guns the gun dealer invites them to dinner where they get a taste of a local delicacy. The following day they go to see a local shaman for a bit of inside information....
4 April
Last night we became snake eaters. I think I had better qualify that before everyone thinks we have found a new sexual pastime… Our host for the evening served us up a little treat which he told us was for warriors. It began with a salad containing fried cobra skin. Next came a plate of roasted cobra meat along with crispy noodles, shredded ginger, and chillies. Then came cobra eggs – I looked at The Monkey and without hesitation he just chopped off the tops and wolfed them down so I followed suit ( I could hear my mum’s voice in my head going, ‘If The Monkey jumped off a cliff would you?’ and I got the giggles, also I thought that I probably would). Then a tray of glasses arrived – brandy in one lot and dark stuff in the other. ‘Cobra blood,’ our host announced, and we proceeded to knock back the shots followed by the brandy. Blaghhh! I looked around at our fellow dinners and I realised that this wasn’t a test. They all tucked in as well and had no expectation that we would not devour whatever was put in front of us. So, when the last course rolled out, I knew that there was no going back. Large brandy glasses appeared with a good double measure in each and floating in the brandy was a deep purple blob. I looked enquiringly at our host and before he could answer The Monkey said, ‘The poison sac of the cobra,’ and raised the glass to his lips and necked it. Our host smiled and nodded and raised his own glass, and as I lifted mine I could see the others around the table doing the same. I swallowed, a massive swallow, almost gagged and then it was down. Boom – my skin went ice cold while my insides burnt like fire. Sweat sprang from every pore on my body and I shivered as if I had the flu. Everything swirled and it looked like it does when you push your knuckles into the corners of your eyes – yellow and black spiralling squares that flooded my vision and threatened to make me pass out. Then suddenly it was gone, and I looked around the table at all of the faces grinning back at me and then at The Monkey who was looking at his glass and muttering, ‘Fucking snakes.’
This morning I woke without a hangover despite the abuse of last night and the fact that I could remember very little of what happened after the meal. I asked The Monkey why I had woken up singing a Fields of the Nephilim song and he said that our host had asked what sort of music we liked and I had told him to play the Nephilim obviously expecting him to be stumped. But The Monkey said that he had got really excited and shouted over to the club DJ and the next thing a full-on Goth night was in session! Turns out our friendly gun runner is a closet Goth and any excuse to play them is fine by him . Flashes began to come back to me, and I asked him if I was correct in thinking that there had been girls involved –‘Several,’ came the response.
After breakfast we went to see the local witch doctor/ shaman dude who The Monkey had got lined up. This guy was skinny, and his long hair was in dreadlocks with beads , bits of metal and bones woven into it. Around his neck hung a bunch of talismans and charms that looked heavy enough to weigh him down. Apart from that he was wearing a red Tupac t-shirt and brand-new Levi’s which sort of ruined the whole mystic thing. We sat down on the floor in the back room of his riverside shack and he and The Monkey went at it in Cambodian. Every now and then I caught a word of French that I understood but most of it just went in one ear and out of the other. I gazed out of the doorway at the passing river and nodded off. I jerked awake and The Monkey was showing him the pendant. He was fascinated but had actually backed away until he was against the wall. I asked The Monkey what was going on and he explained that the shaman had confirmed the story of the planetary alignment and that the pendant only proved the rumours that had been circulating that the monkey god was finally coming to claim what was his. The Monkey showed him the journal and asked him if he could read it, but he said that it was in an ancient Khmer dialect that he could not translate. With The Monkey interpreting I managed to follow the conversation at last and ask a few questions. We got some info on where to look for the temple and it corresponded pretty much with the map in the journal. When we had finished, I shook hands with the shaman, he gripped my hand tightly with both of his and in broken English he said to me, ‘You are The Monkey’s companion. It is an honour and a heavy burden.’ Then he gave me a look of respect and something I suspect was pity and we left and headed to the shooting range.
Author Bio –
Andy Darby, would-be Viking, and lover of the bizarre. Mission – infest the world with his strange creations. He is the author of Me and The Monkey.
Son of a WW2 Commando, growing up in 1970s Birmingham, as a teenager Andy became a fan of heavy metal, fronting several metal bands over the years. His passion for martial arts also began in the 70s and has continued to the present. Competing as a bodybuilder and playing American Football for the Birmingham Bulls took up much of his 20s.
Following a mixed career involving working in a jewellery factory, spraying cars, and office work, he finally managed to follow his other passion, art, and began a career as a designer. A marketing department honed his skills, and he became aware of the world of designing for live events, joining a small production company, and eventually becoming creative director of their larger parent company. Moving to Cornwall he decided it was time to go freelance setting up his own business focusing on motion graphic design.
In the late 1990s he began to get the urge to write and his laptop drive is littered with the unformed creations that have popped into his head. Me and The Monkey is his first novel, coming to life as an experiment in having the discipline to write something every day during a period when he was travelling extensively for work. The story was written during train journeys, flights, backstage at events, 2am in hotel rooms, even during stops at motorway service stations, and was often written on his phone or iPad.
Andy lives on the north coast of Cornwall with his artist wife, teenage daughter , cat, two ponies, and constantly growing library. He still secretly thinks he could be a big wave surfer regardless of what reality tells him.
Social Media Links –
https:// www.meandthemonkey.co.uk/
https:// twitter.com/ MeandTheMonkey0
https:// www.facebook.com/ WhatWouldTheMonkeyDo
https:// www.instagram.com/ me_and_the_monkey/?fbclid = IwAR2ZV8acMWu6X443p5oj7mfxLEaTPHFRjHUdLhfkisVfWpBhjrOfL4jLD6k
PUBLICATION DATE: 10th July 2021
PURCHASE LINK.....
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Me-Monkey-Andy-Darby/dp/1916084591?geniuslink=true
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