When Izzy is transported into another world while jumping on her trampoline, she wonders why everything is now back to front and upside down.
She meets a boy named Angus who takes her to his enormous ancestral home where she learns the legend of the Boggart.
The Boggart is a shapeshifter and a savage being who wants to destroy humans and take over the world.
Izzy is faced with a series of impossible challenges as she tries to uncover the identity of the boggart and destroy it.
Can she rid this world of the Boggart and make it back to her trampoline before it’s too late and she’s stuck in this upside down world forever?
Targeted Age Group:: 7 to 11 years
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
The story of Izzy's Incredible Trampoline began during the summer of 2012. I was caring for my granddaughters – who were 5 and 2 at the time – following the death of their mother – my daughter – to cervical cancer, at the far too young, age of 28. We spent a lot of time on the trampoline in their garden during that summer and it is there that we created a world where everything had turned upside-down, because for them, suddenly, it had.
I took the seed of that story and in my spare time, over the next 7 years, developed it into a children's adventure/ fantasy tale. After editing and having illustrations added, I decided to self-publish on Amazon.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
The character creations were a rather interesting aspect of the overall story development. The boy character is named Angus, simply because he's an angry child, especially if things don't go his way. He's an only child and has been overly indulged by his parents, he always gets exactly what he wants from them. The girl character Izzy encompasses many traits of my late daughter and my eldest granddaughter. They are and were, both feisty, adventurous and quite fearless, but at the same time, the character of Izzy is angry with the world, she's sad and rather vulnerable. So although she was quite an easy creation, this was for me, an incredibly emotional character to create and write for.
The Boggart is a very old and mythological creature. According to legend, it causes mischief and mayhem and has the added ability to shape-shift; it can turn itself into anything it chooses, so I thought that it might make a good adversary as it tends to hide in plain sight.
The rest of the characters – Angus' family and the guests at the lunch party – developed from combinations of words that I found funny when put together. For instance, Sir Hector Pompous-Raige who is Angus' father, is loud and bombastic, Felonious Twerp is a shady accountant and Henrietta Spatchcock who is a poultry farmer, looks and sounds like a chicken. I had a lot of fun creating them all.
Book Sample
To his horror, Angus found that he was trapped. His head and shoulders and right arm were stuck fast and he couldn't get out.
He struggled and yelled, but it was no good. Angus was starting to panic, he didn't know what to do and the awful shrieking noise from the bottom of the pit was pushing out any sensible thoughts he might have had, then suddenly there was silence and everything became still once again. Angus had never heard so silent a silence before. He looked down into the inky blackness below, and strange thoughts filled his head, it was as if he was nowhere, as if the entire world had just…gone.
A peculiar sensation came over him, he felt almost as if he were floating. Staring down into the deep blackness below, he saw a faint green light. It seemed to be a very long way down, maybe it was right at the bottom of the hole, assuming the hole had a bottom. As he watched it, the ghostly green light started to move. It twirled and gradually changed its shape and became a mist that swirled around the sides of the hole. Long, finger-like misty tendrils curled upwards towards him, changing shape as they came nearer and nearer. He was terrified; too terrified even to scream. He started to struggle again in an effort to get away from whatever it was that was coming to get him, but he knew it was pointless, and all the time the mist was getting closer and closer.
Then the awful smell reached him, the boiled cabbage smell that had made him gag when he'd opened the shed earlier, but this time it was a thousand times worse; it was like bad breath, garlic and smelly drains and rotting potatoes all mixed together. Angus felt his stomach heave and the bitter taste of vomit hit the back of his throat.
Whether it was from fear or disgust at the awful smell he didn't know, but he couldn't help himself and suddenly, a stream of warm sick rained down into the hole. Slimy strings of snot hung like green elastic bands from his nostrils as he choked, each one swaying and stretching to breaking point before they too followed the vomit down into the depths of the pit. The boy watched, wide-eyed and frozen with terror as the green mist crept closer to the top of the hole until finally it enveloped him in its pungent odour.
Links to Purchase Print Books
Buy Izzy’s Incredible Trampoline Print Edition at Amazon
Links to Purchase eBooks – Click links for book samples and reviews
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All information was provided by the author and not edited by us. This is so you get to know the author better.
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