The Hairy Plug Monster goes to Town

Last week started in the most bizarre fashion as both myself and the girls took part in a world record attempt in the centre of Manchester. All over the world "Zombies" have become the new vampires and "Zombie Aid" - the brainchild of Carl Whiteley went to try and smash the world record attempt in three different areas.

1. The largest gathering of Zombies in one area
2. The largest gathering of Zombies dancing to Micheal Jackson's Thriller
3. The greatest number of Zombies in a shopping mall

This required like-minded souls to dress up as Zombies and gather at Manchester's Printworks for a group stroll around the town, much to the amusement of mortal onlookers.

Brilliant - is the only word I can use to describe the whole day. Unfortunately, the record was missed, but this might have been due to the typical cold, wet Manchester weather "bigging itself up". Thankfully it stayed dry for most of the walk, which was rounded off with a " crawl through the Arndale Centre" in true Giorgio Romero fashion.

Trying to integrate myself back in the land of the living was difficult as each time I closed my eyes, "I see dead people", however a brief stint in the countryside the following day listening to Bhangra and performing extreme gardening brought me back from the dead.

My second school visit was booked for Tuesday at Park Road Primary School in Sale, and again it went down really well. I started off reading The Hairy Plug Monster, with the opening

"Where does the bath water go?" and received lots of really sensible answers from the
Year 1 and Year 2's, which I took great delight in dispelling with the story. After which I read the follow up - "The HPM goes to Town" for the first time, which also went down rather well.

We then had a question and answer session, with the main question being "Is there really a monster under the bath?", so job done.

I set the pupils a small task of drawing some illustrations for Be Careful Ethel which are on the way back to me as I write, and will be scanned onto the website next week. More importantly was the invitation from the school to sell the books through them to the pupils, and they are going to include it on the next parents newsletter.

On the subject of sales, we are starting to feel the effect of the mailshot last week to Waterstones, with a steady trickle of orders throughout the week. Which was then underlined with an order for 30 from Borders in Stockport. That magical figure of 500 is getting closer by the day.

More importantly is the interest that has been shown from a Japanese and American party, who may want to licence the Hairy Plug Monster in the Far East, I had my first joint Skype conference on Wednesday morning as a means of introducing myself and gave them a list of sales projections and figures. To tell the truth, I think they were expecting a greater volume of sales, but I explained that HPM Media Ltd is a start up company with a staff of 2, and most of the sales have been on a local basis. All may not be lost though, as the American contingent may want to commission me to write children's stories exclusively for the Japanese market, with a possibility to earn royalties at a later date.

With a reading on Saturday 7th at Waterstones in Macclesfield together with the fun-day at Borders i am really confident that by Christmas we could already be close to that 1000 sales target.
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