Flibber T. Gibbet – Craig Spence

Offer readers a preview slideshow

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Flibber T. Gibbet, An Adventure on the Hermit’s Trail will be published this summer. Readers can crack open the cover online in the preview slideshow above.

Encourage online readers to take your book off the shelf

Imagine your newly released book face out on a bookstore shelf, just waiting for an avid reader to reach for it. What’s the first thing they are going to do?

Now reel back that opening scene and imagine your reader glancing at the cover of your book for the first time online.

How are you going to translate that website experience into something reminiscent of the in-store type of experience your audience is most familiar and comfortable with?

As illustrator and partner Diana Durrand and I ready our soon-to-be-released young readers’ story Flibber T. Gibbet, An Adventure on the Hermit’s Trail for launch, that’s a question that needs answering. What has emerged for me as an author/producer/publisher is a web slider modelled on the in-store experience of deciding whether or not to buy a book.

The first thing visitors to my craigspencewriter.ca/flibber-t-gibbet page will see is the book’s cover, not as a stand alone reproduction, but as the first image in the slider posted at the top of this post. In that frame they get to: meet the main troublemaker of the story, Flibber T. Gibbet; see protagonist Lincoln Cranston, running up the Hermit’s Trail, where the story is set; and gain a sense of the audience the book is written for.

What would they do next? My guess is an interested browser might flip the book over and look at the back cover for a description. The second slider image goes there, offering readers an overview of the book’s highlights. (Please note: If they’ve got this far they’re already readers, even if they aren’t yet buyers.) The back cover foreshadows the adventures they will experience in the tale and gives a flavour of the author’s writing stye.

At that point, I’d want to know a bit more about the author and illustrator. So slide three takes our audience (Note: as an internet era writer I am redefining the nature and habits of potential readers) to a very brief introductory page, describing Diana’s credentials and achievements as an artist and my own as an author.

If I had my marketing hat on straight, I would insert a final slide, linking visitors to options for purchasing copies of Flibber T. Gibbet. But determining a distribution and sales strategy is a work in progress, one that will be the subject of future Books Unbound posts. So for now I’ve inserted a placeholder announcing the anticipated release of the book in print.

Stay tuned by going to my Connect page for options. Thanks for visiting.

Into the Hermit’s Trail

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From Flibber T. Gibbet
The most mischievous elf in all Chemainus
A soon-to-be-released adventure story
set in MuralTown
* Asterisk indicates a note below

Story Craig Spence / Illustrations Diana Durrand

Lincoln didn’t really want to go farther. He knew Nana West and Grandpa Grumps would be upset and angry when he made his way back to their house on Maple Street*. But he just couldn’t stop, and certainly didn’t have time to think. The yellow footprints hustled along at a gallop, barely visible on the crunching gravel of the E&N trail.*

“Slow down!” he complained.

But the pace quickened, as if the footprints were trying to lose him, either that or draw Lincoln on and tucker him out at the same time. He fell behind at one point, making his way up a steep grade, but rallied and caught up, hurtling down the other side.

Then, suddenly, the footprints veered off the trail, plunging into the bordering forest. Lincoln lost his footing, changing course so quickly on the loose gravel. He fell and skinned his knee. “Ow!” he cried out. But there wasn’t a moment to lose, rubbing the wound. Scrambling to his feet he peered between two boulders at the head of a trail, which disappeared beyond a stand of gigantic cedars.

For an instant Flibber T. Gibbet made a ghostly appearance, spinning wildly atop one of the boulders, taunting, cheering, daring Lincoln into the dense forest beyond the cedar pillars, then dashing ahead once again, become an infuriating set of tracks plunging into the bush.

Bushwhacked! If he could have spared the breath, Lincoln would have smiled at a remark Grampa Grumps might have made. But, gasping for air, warding off the clinging stinging blackberry canes, and trying to keep up with the manic elf, he was in no mood for joking.

Common sense warned him to stop. Give up the chase. “No way!” he rebelled, urging himself farther and farther up the Hermit’s Trail.

Suddenly, Flibber T. vanished into what seemed an impenetrable thicket. Lincoln dove in after him, warding off the clutching branches, leaves and thorns with his arms, crouching low to the ground, where glints of light penetrated through chinks in the dense vegetation. He’d only advanced a few steps when, without warning, he broke into a clearing. Dazzled for a moment, it was too late for him to react before he realized the ground had sloped away from under him. For a puzzled moment Lincoln pedalled desperately in midair, then pitched forward, tumbling down what he realized through his battering descent was a flight of stone steps.

“Yaagh!” he bellowed and thrashed all the way, amazed to find himself coming to rest on a stone terrace, looking up into the clear blue sky through an overarching canopy of trees. The teasing babble of a brook mocked from nearby.

The first thing that frightened Lincoln about the place he’d landed was… no pain? Bruised and sore as you’d expect to be, having landed with such a thump, he felt nothing. Sedated, he floated in a sort of dream, cushioned by the swaddling air, which seemed to sooth any sensations that might have made him wince or groan.

What is this place? he wondered.

He tried turning his head to get a better sense of his predicament… Tried again, but couldn’t move. No matter how hard he strained, his muscles wouldn’t respond. What’s happening! he pleaded, desperate to twitch a finger or even an eyelid… Imagine yourself a stone with a brain, able to see and hear and smell everything around you, but totally paralyzed, and you’ll get an idea of the state Lincoln found himself in.

What would you do? What could he do, but panic!

Notes

Lincoln has been lured from Mural #36 The Hermit, onto the E&N Railway Trail in Chemainus.
Flibber T. Gibbet leaves yellow footprints wherever he goes, but they can only be seen by people who believe in elves, and the vanish quickly ‘like invisible ink’.

The Squirrel & The Owl

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Click up above for a Video Reading
Excerpted from the children’s novella, Flibber T. Gibbet, this story-within-a-story sees a quick-thinking squirrel trying to avoid being eaten by a predatory, but not unsympathetic owl.

Ptero was going about his business one evening, searching for nuts, berries and tasty insects to eat, when – whoosh – Bubo, the owl swept down and snatched him up in her talons.

He struggled and squirmed, but she held him fast in her powerful grip, and he knew he could not survive long. He had to think quickly if he was ever to see his nest again.

‘Bubo!’ he gasped. ‘Bubo, why would you bother eating a scrawny little squirrel like me. Winter has just ended, and I’m not much more than a skeleton right now. Let me go, and I promise to return to the very branch you snatched me from in three month’s time. Then I will be plump and delicious, and make a mouthful… er, a beakful.’

Because squirrels always keep their word, Bubo agreed to Ptero’s request, and returned on the appointed evening to find his prey, plump and well-fed, on the same branch where they’d first met. Bubo swooped down and carried him off again.

‘Bubo,’ Ptero pleaded this time. ‘Why would you tear me to pieces and eat me up now, when it is the season I am preparing to make many meals for you?’

‘Explain yourself, and be quick about it, for I am hungry,’ Bubo demanded.

‘It’s springtime, and I must mate. Soon there will be many of me scampering amongst the branches for you to catch and eat. Three more months, and I promise to return so you can me carry off a third time. But by then there will be many more like me for you to feast on.’

To Bubo this made good sense, so he returned Ptero to their favourite branch. ‘I shall see you in three months my little friend, then – sadly – I will have to gobble you up, for that is my nature,’ she said as she flew off.

So Ptero met a mate, and they had a family, and after the three months past he returned for Bubo to catch again.

‘What am I to say now,’ Ptero fretted, shivering with fright. He thought, and thought, but no new ideas came to him before Bubo glided silently overhead and snatched him up a third time.

‘So Ptero,’ the owl said as they flew away, ‘what reason are you going to give me tonight to keep me from my dinner?’

Ptero had nothing to offer, so he went limp in Bubo’s talons, closed his eyes, and prepared for his grisly fate.

‘Before I devour you, let me ask a question,’ Bubo said.

Eager to postpone what was surely coming, even for a heartbeat – and I can tell you, a squirrel’s heart beats very quickly when he is afraid – Ptero replied, ‘Please ask, and I will do my best to answer.’

‘What time of year is it, my scrumptious little friend?’

Now, to Ptero this seemed a silly question. But he pretended to be puzzled, and took as many wing beats as he possibly could to answer. ‘It is the season of long days and warm weather,’ he said at last.

‘Indeed,’ Bubo agreed. ‘It is also the season of abundance, is it not, when an owl can catch more food on a single night’s hunt than she could eat in a week.’

‘True,’ Ptero agreed.

‘And what season will arrive in three month’s time?’

‘Why that would be the season of falling leaves and withering fruit.’

‘So what might a wise owl do – and there is no such thing as an owl who-hoo-hoo isn’t wise – what might a wise owl do with a bit of prey, if her stomach and larder were already full, but winter was on its way?’

Ptero hesitated, fearful of making a guess. But he finally screwed up enough courage to say, ‘He might return a little squirrel to its branch and come back again in three month’s time, when his larder and belly will both be empty?’

‘Ah!’ Bubo hooted happily. ‘Excellent idea. Why, if you weren’t shaped like a plump little rodent, I might mistake you for one of my kind.’

And so for many seasons Ptero and Bubo have been getting together for their pleasant flights, and neither has figured out in all that time why one should eat the other. You could even say they’ve become good friends.

~ The End ~

Backspin – Flibber T. and the Water Wheel

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You've heard about the water wheel,
has Chemainus in such a flap?
Well, now the truth has been revealed...
what turns its forward back.

The culprit's name is Flibber T,
that's Flibber T Gibbet for long.
He's the one you're gonna see
if you listen to this, my song.

Oh Flibber T, Oh Flibber T
You're such a curious fellow,
your cap's as red as red can be
and your shoes are bright, bright yellow

Flibber T is a naughty elf,
as naughty as naughty can be. 
Never thinks of anyone else,
out on his troubling sprees.

Turning clockwise the other way
for unbelieving eyes
is just the sort of trick he'll play
to shock, and tease, and surprise.

But when it comes to elfish kind
you've gotta believe to see
you have to alter your state of mind
with the likes of Flibber T.

Oh Flibber T, Oh Flibber T
You're such a curious fellow,
your cap's as red as red can be
and your shoes are bright, bright yellow