In this anarchic adventure, the residents of Lamonic Bibber appear transfixed with the reappearance of the long-missed king of the woodland spirits, Runtus.  Sounds sane enough (in Andy Stanton’s world, at least) but when Runtus demands the townsfolk bring him their most prized possessions – trouble pricks at the ears of Polly, Friday and the biscuit with electric muscles, Alan Taylor.

Can our heroes discover the truth behind Runtus’s real identity and stop the madness before it’s too late?  Only if they can deal with a veritable menagerie of bizarre pets…

Mr Gum and the Cherry Tree is the 7th book in this brilliantly barmy series.  If you haven’t dipped your toe into the adventures of Lamonic Bibber yet – I highly recommend you do so as soon as possible.  You’ll love it – or I’m not a caterpillar called Graeme.

Tommy
(er… Graeme the caterpillar)

Tommy

As a special surprise, Walker Books arranged for the waiting staff at dinner to be dressed as Wally from their hugely successful Where’s Wally? series.  While an almost invisible waiter is not the sort of thing you might want when hungry, I’m delighted to say these guys were easily found!

I spent much of the evening accosting innocent people – including bestselling crime author, John Connolly – and forcing Scream Street coffin-shaped bookmarks into their hands, often entirely against their will.  The photo below is the result of a bet with Jo and Jane from Walker and Irish book supremo Conor that I couldn’t get one into this guy’s sporran…

I’ll be back in Ireland in September for the Mountains to Sea Book Festival.  I can’t wait!

Tommy

“Over the past week, I have been reading Fang of the Vampire to my class of P4 children.  I read to them all the time – and in all my years of teaching (nearly 20!) I have never seen a class of children so utterly enthralled with a book as they have been this week.  The excitement in the class over this book has been incredible and, when I told them they were going to meet Tommy Donbavand, they just couldn’t believe their luck!”

Angela E. Brogan
Primary 4
All Saints Primary School
Greenock

Aw, shucks…

Tommy

Here I am in a Butterkist Popcorn TV ad from around 1995…

Not sure where that slim version of me disappeared to…

Tommy

Please?

Tommy

By far the best way to protect your name online is to register it everywhere you can – along with the titles of your major projects.  That includes domain names (even if you don’t have a website yet), Twitter accounts, Facebook groups, YouTube channels – in fact, just about any social networking site that allows the registration of account names.

The vast majority of these accounts are free to set up and the time it takes to open the accounts will be worth it to stop anyone hijacking your name and possibly posting inappropriate material under it.  A lot of celebrities were slow to realise that about Twitter and, in its early days, the micro-blogging service was awash with imposters tweeting as though they were the stars themselves.

Even domain name registration is a lot cheaper than it used to be.  The service I use is 123-Reg, where a .co.uk domain costs just £2.99 for a year, and the .com equivalent for £9.99 a year.  Many other domain registration sites – such as GoDaddy – are available, so find one that has the best deal for you.  When I began to suspect that my Scream Street series might sell, I registered screamstreet.co.uk to use for the official website – but was disappointed to discover that the screamstreet.com domain had already been registered by someone else.  In the end, when the series launched in the US, I had to buy the .com domain name from the owner at a much higher price.

I’m already planning to buy the domain names for what I hope will be my next series of books.

A handy online tool to check whether your name is still available at various websites can be found here: http://namechk.com/

So – what are you waiting for?  Get registering!

Tommy