Brian, His Granddad & the Cup of Ages
P.J. Taylor
Author Bio
P.J. Taylor is 42 years old and lives in London, England. ‘Brian, His Granddad & the Cup of Ages’is his first children’s novel. He is currently busy writing a sequel which is provisionally titled, ‘Brian, the Alchemist & the Silver Dragon’ which will be released in the spring of 2014.
Description
‘Brian, His Granddad & the Cup of Ages’ is the book that I always wanted to read when I was a boy growing up in Kent. I wanted to read a book that was set in the real world and yet had magical themes woven within it. Hopefully, this is something that I have accomplished. From start to finish the book took about ten years to write. Its sequel, ‘Brian, the Alchemist & the Silver Dragon’ will be released in the spring/summer of 2014.
If you’re missing Harry Potter then this could well be the book for you. The main character is an 11 year old boy called Brian Pankhurst who believes that his parents have split up and, whilst his mother seeks a new job and a new house, has to live temporarily with his Grandparents. His best friend is another boy called Norman Crabtree who, after an accident, three years ago is confined to a wheelchair. His neighbour is a girl called Audrey Jenkins who suffers from asthma and, later within the book, they befriend another girl called Violet Armstrong who they believe maybe being beaten by the people she’s working for.
No sooner has Brian moved in with his Grandparents when he begins to notice some very odd things indeed. Firstly, strange titled books such as ‘Open Doors & How to Close Them’ appear to move about his Grandparents house of their own free will. Letters arrive, addressed to his Granddad, which appear, at first glance, to be completely blank whilst every other customer who enters the local book shop, ‘Newtblasters Book Emporium’ never ever seem to come out again.
But it’s only when Brian’s Grandparents mysteriously disappear one night and their house is attacked by a huge and fearsome monster consumed entirely in flame that Brian’s adventure really begins. Rescued in the nick of time by two bickering monsters called Sam and Hadley Brian is taken via the Soobius System (a collection of magical pathways connected by bookcases) to a secret underground town and is informed that a demon is trying to steal something called . . . the Cup of Ages
Book excerpt
The first time Brian ever met his Grandparents was at a funeral. It was a burial for a relative that he had never heard of before. A rather well to do chap, by all accounts, called Bertie Snodgrass. He had been killed one evening when the house he was living in had suddenly taken upon itself to blow up. Apparently, the explosion had been enormous. Not only did it create a rather unsightly ten-foot deep crater that his posh London neighbours complained to the local council about long after his death but the blast had also been so great that it had sent some of the bricks that had previously formed Bertie’s front living room wall in to the back garden of another house at least four streets away, injuring a cat. The investigators from the Gas Company claimed that the cause of the explosion had been a faulty pipe.
The second occasion that Brian had met his Grandparents was at another funeral a few years later, this time for his Uncle Meredith. A somewhat tall and bearded man he too had passed away in rather unfortunate circumstances. You see, Uncle Meredith had been the chairman of quite a prestigious golf club called “The Last Fairway”. It was the sort of golf club that you couldn’t just apply to join. No, you actually had to be invited to become a member and you were only ever asked to become a member if you had quite a lot of money. Anyway, the weather on this particular August afternoon was downright awful. Yet, the rumbling clouds and the howling wind and constant pouring rain did not affect Uncle Meredith’s round of golf. In fact, if anything, it actually seemed to help. For as he walked up to take his final putt on the eighteenth green and win the tournament to the cheers of the few onlookers who were cowering bravely under their umbrellas a huge and brilliant flash of lighting struck Uncle Meredith slap, bang, on top of his head. And in a blink of an eye he had gone. Nothing of him was left. Uncle Meredith had spontaneously combusted. The only proof that he had been standing there, on the putting green, just seconds earlier was an abandoned golf club lying next to a smouldering pair of scorched shoes.
So, in ten years Brian had met his Grandparents only twice, at two funerals. The third time he met them was when he went to live with them.
His Granddad was old. Really old. Brian wasn’t sure exactly how old but he looked at least 120. He was a tall, thin man with very little hair whose eyebrows, in contrast to his balding head, were a mass of bushy white spindly hair that looked remarkably like two fat caterpillars had crawled upon his face and fallen asleep above his eyes. His glasses, which appeared as though they had probably been purchased sometime before the first World War, were fragile looking and each arm, it seemed, had been repaired at one time or another with some sticky black electrical tape. Whilst always hanging within his shirt pocket was a small, yellow screwdriver, which oddly he seemed to carry with him wherever he went.
His Grandmother on the other hand was a much smaller woman and a lot rounder too. She seemed to spend most of her time in the kitchen baking cakes, scones and jam tarts that she then forced upon anybody and everybody who happened to call at her door along with boiling hot cups of tea whether they wanted them or not. Brian wouldn’t have minded so much if the cakes were actually nice but her rock cakes could be used to literally hammer nails in to walls and her sticky toffee pie had been known to glue your mouth shut for up to four days.
Author Website