BARNABY TAYLOR

Hi Everyone

With Dr Don’t Know now in custody it appears that the work of Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird is done for the minute. I hope you enjoyed the serialization of the first volume in the series. I am currently two-thirds of the way through Volume II and I plan to have that finished very soon.

Until then, and if you felt moved to do so, Volume I is FREE for download on Amazon here (UK) and here (US). As you will see, Volume I has received some glowing reviews and some not-so-glowing reviews – the book was particularly savaged by someone on goodreads but that’s all the fun of the fair.

If anyone felt so moved as to download the book (for FREE) and then upload a review that would be a most welcome and generous gesture. In order to help you make such a momentous decision I thought I would leave with some real quotes from real people who have really read the book – including Mr-Terrible-Review whose words are now being used to market the very thing he disliked intensely:

‘Extremely funny stuff. I have enjoyed every silly word of it. I only give “five stars” to Shakespeare and Dickens, so…’

‘It’s like reading Terry Pratchett for kids’

‘A wonderful book for both children and adults’

‘This book is beautifully written. It’s highly imaginative and richly descriptive.’

‘I highly recommend this stunning novel to all readers everywhere!’

‘Falcon Boy is an incredibly amazing novel that readers will fall in love with.’

‘This is a book that all readers can enjoy reading!’

‘[Falcon Boy] bounds with creativity.’

‘This is a book you do not want to miss out on reading! I rate this novel a 5 out of 5 stars.’

‘We all agreed that this story and these characters would be great transferred to the screen.’

A ‘stunning novel’ with a ‘unique and interesting plot’ for ‘all readers everywhere.’

I will now be taking a brief blogging break before returning very soon with a brand new series for you all. Until then, thank you everyone for your kind support and attention.

Lots of lovely love,

Barnaby

The music started playing again and Doodah began to dance. Davey, Deirdre, Daphne and Donny all turned to the side of the stage and beckoned to Ellis to come out and join them.

‘How exciting,’ Ellis thought, as she went out to join in the encore.

‘Wait for us,’ said Falcon Boy wanly. ‘We were heroes too!’

Ellis rolled her eyes but even despite Falcon Boy’s obvious failings, she was becoming very fond of this fairly hopeless hero. Bewilder Bird tried to dance but as you know by now, his boots make it very hard for him to do anything properly.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter as at this point in the story, no one is really going to start quibbling about whether or not superheroes should be able to dance properly. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the rest of the show.

‘Here we go,’ said Davey to the watching world. ‘1, 2, 3, 5 …’

We are One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good,

Bringing joy to the Neighbourhood,

Nothing ever stops us smiling,

Nothing ever could,

We just keep on going because

We are One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good

THE END

Bewilder Bird had managed to get himself untangled from the lighting and he and Falcon Boy stood ready to pounce. Captain Lori Lorimer and her officers were also ready, but at this moment, Ellis made the kind of decision that I always knew would make her the central focus of this story.

‘Stop!’ she shouted to the assembled forces of law and order. ‘Leave this to me.’

And definitely feeling like the hero in her own story now, Ellis walked out onto the stage. The music had stopped. Doodah were standing still now. The most evil man in the whole wide universe was standing just in front of her. Unaffected by any of this, Ellis walked up to Dr Don’t Know and touched him gently on the arm.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s all go home’.

Dr Don’t Know simply nodded. Ellis took his hand and the two of them walked off stage. The crowd had been watching silently, but now they began to shout and cheer.

For many of them, this was still part of the most amazing live show they had ever seen and they simply weren’t aware of how close the world had just come to total and utter catastrophe.

Now, obviously the police needed to speak to Dr Don’t Know for a long time but for the moment, at least, his evil plan to ruin the world forever had not happened.

Were this the dress rehearsal, then Deirdre would have gone crazy about the unauthorised outfit appearing on the stage but it wasn’t, so all she could do was make a mental note to herself that perhaps an outfit like this one would be what Doodah would be wearing for their next concert.

Dr Don’t Know doesn’t know how to dance, and so he just stood there awkwardly and got in everybody’s way. This is how empires crumble.

Nobody knows for sure – and it would probably be better for the story if somebody did – why it was that Dr Don’t Know turned to a life of crime in the first place, but it is quite clear that dedicating his life in this way left him with very little time for anything else. This might explain why he can’t dance.

Whatever the case, and the speculation here is now making the end of this story take even longer to arrive, where once the thwarted supervillain might have loomed large and menacing in most people’s minds, Dr Don’t Know now just looked small and lost and forlorn. Everything that had seemed so powerful about him previously seemed so simply vulnerable now, and Ellis began to feel very sorry for him. She looked around.

According to his plan, this was exactly the right time for Dr Don’t Know to appear but when he had been planning this caper, he hadn’t factored in the possibility that his plan might have been thwarted this early in its execution. This meant that now was exactly the wrong time for him to appear.

Having visualised this moment a thousand times in his mind, Dr Don’t Know had always imagined that this would be the exact moment when the world was his to command. Sadly, this was not the case and now he was just Dr Don’t Know, alone on the stage at a Doodah concert, in front of millions and millions of people.

Daphne, Davey and Deirdre turned in unison and moved towards the microphones, ready for the chorus.

‘Ouch,’ said Davey, as he tripped over Dr Don’t Know. ‘Who on earth are you?’

‘Don’t know,’ replied Dr Don’t Know.

‘What are you doing here?’ screamed Daphne. ‘You’re getting right in the way.’

This was the trickiest part of the song and Daphne knew that if she was talking, then she wasn’t counting and if she wasn’t counting. then it meant she was out of time. She was.

‘Are you going to just stand there?’ asked Deirdre. ‘Or are you going to dance?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Dr Don’t Know.

Dr Don’t Know is small and always wears black. After years of experimentation, he had finally settled on jogging trousers with an elasticated waistband, a polo neck, a baseball cap and rubber boots as his bad guy supervillain evil outfit of choice.

Dr Don’t Know’s favourite show is the highly-influential What Bad Guys Wear. Each week, the show reports on what is hot and what is not in the world of uber-villain fashion. Viewers are also treated to a tour of the homes, lairs, laboratories, caves, cribs and other supervillain residences.

Dr Don’t Know found What Bad Guys Wear very intimidating. It was so hard to decide on a public image. For a while, he figured that a purple facemask and fluorescent goggles would make him look more menacing, but sweat filled his eyes when he got too hot and he couldn’t see to drive a moped.

Another time, it was all the rage for super-evil international villains to wear expensive handmade suits but Dr Don’t Know could never find one that fitted him properly. No self-respecting criminal mastermind wanted to have to turn up the hem of the trousers.

Eventually, the climax of the show approached. The lights dimmed and the backing track started to play the opening bars of One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good. With the loud burst of the cannons shaped like the claws of an enormous bear paw, Doodah landed back on the stage.

‘Come on, everybody,’ they shouted. ‘It’s time to make some special noise!’ Doodah started dancing as they waited to sing the first verse.

Doodah all find the dancing part quite hard and so they tend to count in their heads to keep time. As Doodah kept counting and dancing, Ellis was amazed to see a small man wearing a black baseball cap appear in the middle of the stage from a secret trapdoor.

‘Dr Don’t Know,’ she said to herself.

And it was.

And what a show!

Though he is barely capable of sensible speech, Donny Doodah is a seasoned professional and his performance is so polished that he can ‘play’ the drum with one drumstick whilst drinking an ice-cold bottle of everyone’s favourite Fuzzy Cola© at the same time.

Davey Doodah can’t sing to save his life but he finds it very hard to stop smiling. Even though he wouldn’t know the meaning of either of the following words, his enthusiasm is certainly infectious. As he sways slightly in front of the microphone encouraging the audience to put their hands in the air, Davey truly looks like the epitome of pop star perfection.

Daphne Doodah bashes, waves, whacks and whirls her silent tambourine. Daphne isn’t aware that the tambourine can’t make a sound but it doesn’t matter anyway. A simple fact like this would never stop her from really shaking it really, really hard over her head in a shiny, shimmering shower of silvery silent notes.

Deirdre Doodah sings and dances as if every performance is her last. This would probably be the case were there ever to be a power cut during a performance, and so Doodah’s record company spends at least fifty percent of its budget on ensuring that the various digital enhancements designed to make a Doodah concert the pleasurable experience it is do not ever malfunction while the group are ‘live’ on stage.

Nobody would pay money to hear what Doodah really sounded like. There would be riots on the streets and questions asked in parliaments all around the world.

Save

Save

Using the closest spotlight to him, Bewilder Bird shone it on the badly-dancing dancers one at a time. As each Troublebot was caught in the spotlight, two policemen sprinted onto the stage dressed as stagehands.

Each policeman carried a heavy-duty magnet that they used to stun each Troublebot. More policemen waited backstage and deactivated the stunned Troublebots with a bucket of water. There were sparks everywhere but anyone who saw them thought they were simply part of the show.

The deactivated Troublebots were piled in the back of an open-top lorry, ready to be taken to the Panic Town Detention Centre where prisoners will strip them of all their useful parts. Anything left after this will then be sent to the Panic Town Recycling Centre.

As the Troublebot cull began, nobody watching in the audience thought that anything odd was happening. As far as they were concerned, it was all part of the wonderful stage show that Doodah had created especially for them.

Even Dr Don’t Know was taken in as he waited patiently beneath the stage. He was watching the concert on his telephone and waiting for the moment when he could activate his terrible plan.

Anyway, as is becoming increasingly more frequent, it was left to Ellis to get things going once again.

‘Falcon Boy,’ she shouted above the roar of the crowd. ‘You should use your special power to tell Bewilder Bird to use the spotlights to point out the Troublebots, so that they can be removed from the stage without causing chaos.’

She turned to Captain Lorimer.

‘We simply cannot let the Troublebots ruin the show.’

Falcon Boy nodded, but whenever he uses his superpower he cannot stop his lips moving, and so it looked like he was talking to himself. He would make a terrible ventriloquist.

Captain Lorimer turned to her assembled men and women and issued her orders.

‘Quick, men and women,’ she said. ‘We need to get the Troublebots off of the stage one at a time so as not to ruin the show.’

Her men and women agreed and so as one show continued, another show began. Which one is the sideshow and which one is the main attraction is for you to decide.