The Hobwit

Thank ye, Mrs Figg. Haven't looked at this for ages and thought I might edit it a bit. Still lots of work to do - and the story to continue! - but not having read it myself for yonks I found myself having a giggle or three at my own wickedness! Actually, there's a lot of things I'd clean forgotten I'd written! {{{Who this G.H. MAILLARD bloke is, I have no idea -- probably some fear over copyright or sumpin'...}}}

(Actually, I'm torn between doing some more "Hobwit" or "Little People" - or maybe something else... and I've still got a lot of Forumshire Anon Author-type Tales catching up to do - and Haddon Hall and Needlehole Mysteries... Time and Motivation, that's what I need - Time and Motivation! My spare time is now devoted to writin' new stuff... Creating is always more fun than taking Responsibility for anything, methinks! ... I do wonder if "Little People" is worth persuing as a serious story. Maybe with some further development... Being a writer is a lonely frustrating business, don't you think...? ).

The "Original" Anon Author

Have you found any Time and Motivation yet?

(I tried doing what you do - reviving old topics in a funny way - I don't think I know how to do it )

Seriously though, is there any chance you'll finish The Hobwit if somebody asks you nicely? It's one of the funniest stories I've ever read, and I'd love to read the end of it

It's one of the funniest stories I've ever read, and I'd love to read the end of it - Ringdrotten

I second that Ringdrotten.  

I must ask old Anon -- he had high hopes at one stage. Coincidentally, The Hobwit (an earlier version of Chapter One) got a hit on FanFic the other day and I got to reading it again. It's good to read things with fresh eyes. I had a laugh or two. Thanks for the encouragement all.  Yes, maybe Old Anon could get off his fat arse and finish the thing... maybeee..

Yes kick Ole Anon up the arse and get him writing Orwell.  

Chapter Six
Out of Tunnels into Trees   (continued)


They soon set out on weary feet following goat paths (wild goat paths, that is, I forgot to mention that earlier) down through pine forests. As the day progressed, the sun rose higher in the sky, and it was very bright, drying even more dryly the already dry atmosphere. The pine trees were very resinous, and Bango hoped no one would drop a lit pipe and set off a forest wild fire, though this he quickly knew was impossible because they had lost all their baggage to the gobblers. Nonetheless, it was definitely one of those days one just knew was in a High Fire Danger Period. Oh yes, there were lots of tinder dry pine needles on the ground too, thick as a blanket in some places, and in others quite thinly laid, with here and there a bare patch where rabbits had been scratching, and wondering why the hell they had not gone toward Watership Down like Fiver had suggested, though I might be getting my dates mixed up. Whatever the case, it was no place to start having barbecues, even if you had a barbecue handy, which they didn’t.

The shadows had began to lengthen when they were walking along a low ridge and heard a horrid caterwauling coming from up the slopes behind them.

“Gobblers!” Grandelf said with grand solemnity, “Oh such horrid caterwauling!”

“Sweet Alluvia!” Dwarfen sighed. ”And the evening has had such a beautiful and serene ambience until now.”

And it was a lovely evening. The sun was low and red. The sky in the West a delightful and pristine cerise. The pine trees murmured in primeval joy, as if they never even considered the risk of bushfire. Indeed, they didn’t give it a moment’s thought, because they were not Narnian trees, just trees like the ones in your local area, and my suggestion about them murmurring in primeval joy was just a sweet poetic nothing as often gets threaded into the better fairytale romances, and sometimes into tales of this quality too. High overhead gigantic sparrowhawks, mere specks at a great height, flitted and glided in the heavens, just below the emerging stars. The Evenstar shone brightest, and Bango caught sight of it every now and then between the branches, and he felt very nostalgic...

“Hurrah!” the gobbler voices came down again. “Hurrah!”

“They’ve found our trail,” Poin avowed. “What do we do now? There’s bound to be Little Piggies about...”

And just to confirm those sniffy-snouty creatures were about, the gobblers began to yell out, “Here piggy-pig-pig... here piggy-piggies.”

“Quick now!” Grandelf took charge. “We’ll slide down this incredibly steep and dangerous rocky-soily-leafy ridgeface between the trees. Not even the gobblers would be stupid enough to follow us.”

Bango was not happy about it, but in a trice he found himself sliding down the slope among rolling boulders, prickle branches, razor bushes, electric land eels, and broken oyster shells that had been left there by the original Narnians in the Devonian Period. They were almost all killed, some of them twice.

At last, they came out battered and bruised into an open grove of incredibly dry trees, mostly pines, but other types too, and each of them just as incendiary. Bango had a bad feeling about it all. And he felt not the least bit encouraged when they heard the gobblers and piggies drawing closer, having used the path they themselves had left at the top of the ridge to descend. The path came out into the grove about twenty feet away, which only went to show that Grandelf had been right, not even the gobblers were stupid enough to follow them.

“Quickly! Into the trees,” Grandelf yelled.

So the dwarfs ran about and swung up into whatever tree they could find. Bango could not reach any of the low branches. Biffo eventually dropped down out of a birch and helped him up, thrusting him up from beneath with an indecent hand up his cloak. Fortunately, Bango had placed the Bangle in a pocket of Bwalin's borrowed cloak, so, while he knew the touch of Biffo’s gnarled hand up his crack, at least he didn’t risk losing the precious item of jewellery. As to the indelicate handling of his other jewellery, well, circumstances being what they were, Bango knew he must endure. Biffo swung up into the tree just as the piggies – large wild piggies about eight feet long – rushed snorting into the grove.                

“Will you look at that,” said a piggie coming to squat under Bango’s tree. “That hobwit’s got no knickers on!”

“Nice bit of rump, yum yum yum, methinks,” said another.

“Black Narnians,” Biffo groaned, “We’re in for it now. Not only will they eat us alive, they’ll make sarcastic comments about the quality of our titbits while they chew on us.”

Bango didn’t like the sound of that at all.

Soon the gobblers were in the grove laughing and hooting and taking the piss out of the folk in the trees.


“Oh look at them all up in the trees,
Like little red faced Rhesus monkeys,
Yeah looking like creatures from an unknown continent,
Yeah from Africa, that’s what we meant.”


“Ho, kiddies! Did you know that little children who make hurtful comments get their fingers burnt!” Grandelf called down defiantly.


“What shall we do?
Shoot ém with arrows?
Eat ‘em like sparrows?
And do sparrows have marrows?”


“Look you little children," Grandelf called down sternly. "Watch it or I’ll do something potentially quite dangerous.”

“Like what?” the head of the gobblers asked superciliously in his bowler hat and wearing his accountant's fobwatch like a talisman.

Grandelf looked uncertain for a moment in the light of the newly risen moon. Then he seemed to make a big decision. “I’ll send fire down upon you all and burn your piggies’ noses!”

“Well, that would definitely be dangerous, I think,” opined the head gobbler.

And all the other gobblers agreed. "Yes," they said, "It would definitely be dangerous, not just potentially dangerous, what with everything being so dry and combustible."

“I think it is till justifiable to say 'potentially' dangerous,” Bwalin put in from his ash tree. “The potential involved is incredibly high on the probability graph, and we must not be afraid to say so, but until it actually happens it must remain only 'potential'."

“Oh that's very wise to say --- and what a nice seeming dwarf,” one of the piggies said.  “Maybe we should let him go.”

“Yes, he is a nice dwarf," the head gobbler agreed. "I remember him back in our lair when that annoying wizard killed the Great Gobbler. What was it he said? Oh yes. ‘Sorry about that chaps, but these these things can easily happen when people become disputatious and unneighbourly.”

“That’s right,” said another gobbler, “He was the very voice of reason...  But that damn wizard just laughed at us and said the Great Gobbler got exactly what was coming to him. The prick!”

“Let’s make that nice dwarf our King,” another gobbler said.

“Well, we will have to wait and take a vote at the next Socialist Gobbler Conference,” said the head gobbler. “I mean, I was hoping for the job myself truth be known, but now I'm not so sure, I do admire the chap - but then again, we should at least nominate another candidate or two. You know, so as to maintain our primeval democratic principles...”

“Enough!” Grandelf called.  "You can’t have Bwalin. Yes, Bwalin's a lovely person, but he’s our dwarf, not yours.”

And the other dwarfs yelled, “Aye!”

“Well, have it your way,” the head gobbler said. “Shame really. Anyhow, back to the piss-taking.”


”Fourteen little freaks up in the trees,
Oh look one of them is wearing beads,
Is he a bit gay, or do I detect,
A girl with a beard and rather large breasts?”


Now, Dwarfen did have rather large breasts, but Grandelf found their comments quite offensive. “How revoltingly sexist of you,” the wizard growled. “I'll have you know, this is not some sexualized paternalistic fairy tale, in spite of what any potential readership might think! You filthy gobbling gobblers - take this!” And Grandelf threw down a handful of pine needles at the gobblers and piggies.

This had little effect.

So he set the next handful on fire, which, after being thrown, fell apart and went out.

“Why don’t you just throw out fire from your staff like it’s a flame thrower?” Dwarfen suggested.

“Wouldn’t that be a bit anachronistic though?”

“No, if you had a flame thrower it would be, but I said, ‘throw out fire like it’s a flame thrower.'“

“It still’s anachronistic, because to even suggest something like a flame thrower you must first admit to the existence of flame throwers to begin with...”

"What about hypothetical or prosphesized flame throwers?"

"That certainly bears thinking about..."

“Does it really matter!” Thorny grumbled from a neighbouring tree, and Bango had to admit it was all getting a bit pedantic. “Just throw the f^#&*^g fire!”

So Grandelf did just that, and soon the piggies were running around with scorch marks on their snouts. The dwarfs cheered. But then the head gobbler ran forward and yelled, “Quick, put a lot of dry leaves and twigs and branches under the trees. That wizard has given me an idea. We’ll burn the bastards.”

“Why not just shoot ‘em with arrows?” a more sensible gobbler suggested. “I mean, we don’t want us to get all burned up in a forest fire storm...”

“Oh do please shut up,” the head gobbler said. “I mean, how boring can you be?”



High up on a rocky mountain ledge the Chief of a tribe of gigantuan Sparrowhawks was watching keenly what was happening about two miles below.        

“Hey love,” he commented to his girlfriend, Blaze. “Is that Grandelf the Mair in a tree throwing fire down at a group of gobblers and piggies?”

Blaze - a rather handsome gigantic sparrowhawk - answered, “Oh Love-duck, I do believe you’re right. I suppose we better go and rescue him after he did me that personal favour a whiles back.”

“Bless him,” Love-duck answered.

And so the Chief of the Sparrowhawks of the Mushy Mountains set out with many of his subjects and they spiralled down toward the events in the grove.




“Ouch ow ouch oochie-ooo owwar!” Bango was saying as the flames began licking at his fuzzy feet.  

Grandelf said urgently, “This hasn’t turned out at all like one might have expected. Oh well, I’ll just have to jump out of the top of this tree and go out in a blaze of glory.”

“Did you just say something to me?” Blaze the Sparrowhawk asked as she glided toward him.

“Oh how fortunate!” Grandelf grinned. “You can rescue all of us and in that way repay the personal favour I performed for you a whiles back.”

“Oh what an amazing coincidence,” Blaze commented as she picked the wizard up in her claws, “Love-duck and I were just talking about that, and not ten minutes ago.”

And so the company were plucked from the treetops one after another and hoisted off high into the sky above the roaring flames, leaving the gobblers and piggies cursing them mightily, and running for dear life as the wild fire began to spread.

“I really don’t like heights,” Bango whimpered as he hung desperately from Biffo’s legs having almost been left behind again.

“Try not to look down, ” Biffo growled as claws bit into his brawny shoulders. "Look up instead."

When Bango looked up, he saw an aspect of Biffo that was rather large, hairy and scary. “Don’t you wear anything under your cloak?” he asked appalled.

Biffo seemed very pleased. “No, I keep it all in tip top condition, and how nice of you to notice.”

Chapter Seven
Queer Business

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to hold onto two legs, bearing your whole weight, while a gigantic sparrowhawk lifts you up a mile high in the moonlight, but I can say it’s not anywhere near as much fun as you might think it is as you sit there in your comfortable chair or lie in your comfortable bed drinking your hot chocolate. For a start, there is no way you can hold a hot chocolate without spilling it, nor have the wherewithal to make one in the first place. What’s more Bango was only too sadly aware of his danger, and his aching arms, and the thought of drinking a hot chocolate while holding onto Biffo’s hairy legs did not even occur to him. All he could do was hold on for dear life and hope he did not plunge to a horrible death.

He had to admit though that the view was quite good up here – once he had averted his eyes from Biffo’s valuables that is. The beautiful stars seemed close enough to touch. The Evenstar seemed particularly nice up here, very sparkly. And the moon, well, it was like a big yellow gemstone. He could not quite make out the Man in the Moon, but he did catch a momentary glimpse of a cow. But all too soon he was thinking about his sore arms again and he was quite worried all over again that he might have to let go and plunge to a horrible death. If you’ve been paying attention you’ll notice that this was the second time he thought that.

“Three times pays for all,” he said miserably, “Oh my poor arms!”

“My poor legs,” Biffo moaned.

“It’s alright for you Biffo, the sparrowhawk has you firmly in her grasp and she seems to have very powerful thighs.”

“How do you know she’s a she?”

“I’d rather not say... Oh no... It’s no good, I’ll have to let go and plunge to a horrible death. Three times pays for all.”

“What’s that about anyway? Three times pays for all?”

”Well, it’s the third time I’ve thought of plunging to a horrible death.”

“What do you mean? Is that over the period of your whole life, or just recently?”

“I’m not sure it really matters. Oh here I go. Farewell cruel world!”

And Bango let go and landed on a mountain ledge five feet below, which was quite fortunate actually when you think about it.



Battered and bruised, Bango lay on the ledge. An hour had passed as he lay recuperating. At last, he murmured, “I suppose I should be thankful I’m alive, but I’m so hungry I’m not sure the thought offers much solace. I certainly could do with something to eat. I haven’t eaten for yonks. I feel like a potato sack without any potatoes.”

“You look more like a rabbit than a sack,” the gigantic sparrowhawk commented as she preened her feathers about ten feet away. “Do you eat grass like the other bunnies do?”

Bango caught her keen eyed appraisal and he wondered if sparrowhawks ate rabbits – or hobwits for that matter. “I’m not a rabbit,” he gushed out nervously. “I’m a hobwit – and I’m sure I’m not tasty at all.”

“I don’t know about that,” Biffo said.  

“I mean, I’m sure I wouldn’t be the kind of meat a nice sparrow hawk like you would want to eat.”

“Perish the thought,” said the sparrowhawk.  “I imagine you’d be very tasty, just like this dwarf said. But as you are a guest of Love-duck the Bold, I suppose I must resist my natural urges.”

Another sparrowhawk flew up.

“Hi Mavis,” he said. “The Chief wants us to bring this dwarf and his rodent friend over to the main ledge.”

And so, much to Bango’s discomfort, he and Biffo were soon hoisted to another ledge on the mountainside.

All the others were there, looking singed and bedraggled but relieved to be alive.

Grandelf was in a deep conversation with Love-duck and Blaze. “I would think our mutual obligations resolved if you would take us to the Big Boulder, my friends.”

“Well,” Blaze said. “Grandelf did pay me that personal favor awhiles back.”

“Too true,” Love-duck agreed. “But there are Men in the plains that would shoot us as soon as look at us. F #@^&*g sparrow loving bastards.”

“I have always been curious as to that. No one I know even likes sparrows,” Grandelf commented.

“I think it’s a Totemic thing,” Bwalin offered, reasonably.  

“Bloody religion!” Snodgrass grunted, who had a lot of bad childhood memories in regards to Alluvian Priests. “I’d gut the lot of ‘em.”

“I’m not sure that Totemism is strictly a Religion,” Bwalin said gently. “And I personally feel some sympathy for the humble sparrow, which is not to say his Lordship should not carry out his responsibilities as a predator, that’s only natural in Al’s eyes.”

“I have a mind to start eating their sheep,” Blaze said with some bitterness.

“It would make some sense,” Love-duck concurred. “It’s a bugger finding enough sparrows to eat as it is. I mean, we’re like whales eating krill. It’s all rather stupid really. Why the High Lord Al made us so gigantic in the first place is any one’s guess.”

“One should never question the will of Al,” Bwalin said wisely, and the sparrowhawks quickly apologized for their intemperate words, they being God Fearing sparrow hawks all said and done.

“These sheep,” Thorny piped up when he could get a word in. “I don’t suppose you could grab a couple. I’m starving.”

“And me too,” Bango put in anxiously.

An hour later there was a fine fire crackling a mile up the mountainside. If you had been passing by – possibly in a helicopter or a single engine Cessna 172 – you may have thought it very odd indeed. The Company would hardly have noticed you though, because they were soon stuffing their faces.  Bango ate a whole leg himself, though he made sure to munch on a couple of grass stems plucked from a juicy clump of meadow sward that had been brought up for him. After all, it is never wise to offend a gigantic sparrowhawk.

Mmmmm.... recapturing the feel, or what?

I will let you know- I have copied this out and printed it and will sit down for a proper read of it tomorrow starting from the beginning again (and I am very much looking forward to it   ).

Copied it out!  I hope you don't plan to plagiarise me! That's my job!  

I just read an earlier version of the Prelude, which in some ways is superior to the one here. Ol' Anon was a bit hasty in an edit, I think. Will have to review some time, but I think Ol' Anon will stick to new stuff for awhile as time allows. It is fun writing new stuff. Editing is not usually as much fun, unless you're in the right frame of mind.  

I hope you don't plan to plagiarise me!- Orwell

Well, no more than usual.  

But I meant I copied it from here into Open Office to make printing it easier- try not to add anything new before tomorrow though as Ive run out of ink!   (you can expect the bill in the post  )

Any changes will be cosmetic. I'll do it in a Word Doc anyhow. As to payment for the printing, I'll have it sent to you post haste in the very fullness of time - as usual. Or as we say in Little Forumshire, at some time in the short term. That's 'short term' in Elvish Terms, which goes without saying.

Here am I, lost again   So this is another story, from long ago ? that was started & left to go all musty & dusty ? and cos some bright spark said, "oooh, start it again !" like an over active puppy, someone did ?
Fook. 
Its very funny ! we are to get more ? yes ?  

Was a serious attempt to write a spoof, hopefully worthy of publication, that I lost momentum with, but a combination of getting a new hit on FanFic recently (Chapter 1 only) and Ringo asking nicely, I thought I might have another dip. I guess the bottom line is that positive (and honest) feedback is often the only catalyst I need to write, Azriel.

And Yes, I think I will write more. Shame not to finish it after coming so far, methinks.  

Thats the spirit ! Crack on old thing ! I love a good read & Ive a funny feeling in my bonnet that this just might be a good read !  
So, get your appendage..er...appliance...you know what I mean   to the old vellum & get on with it  

but  first... nighty night

Will the "removed for renovation" parts be reposted? I should like to reread it all, if possible And perhaps give you more constructive feedback this time around (if I can come up with any - I can't remember anything that I didn't like! )

Look at Page 5 this Thread for Renovated bits and Page 6 for newest bits!  

How very silly of me   Awesome, can't wait to reread this story and read the new bits Is it ok if I copy it into a word document, save it as PDF and copy the story over to my Kindle? I can only give you my word that I won't distribute it to others, but I understand it if you prefer me not to copy it.

Chapter Seven
Queer Business (continued)


The morning was very sunny because the sun was out. Bango blinked and sat up and stretched. He took in the amazing vista looking out over the vastness ofWeirdland. He saw a Great Big River in the middle distance eastward, and beyond that, a stinking big smudge of a forest that stretched from left to right for a heap of miles and was very thick in the girth.  

“My goodness me, I’m on a ledge on a mountainside!” the hobwit gaped in dismay and confusion.

Then it all came back to him.

“I’m not home in my comfortable bed as I thought at first. No, I’m on a rocky ledge in a borrowed dwarfish cloak besmeared with sheep fat. Oh my hole sweet hole! I miss it so much, and I bet it won’t be the last time I feel this way.”

He then heard voices. Grandelf and Love-duck were about eighteen to nineteen feet away at the other end of the ledge deep in conversation, or at least reasonably deep.

“As I briefly mentioned last night,” Grandelf said. “If you take us to the Big Boulder, I’m sure we’ll be able to call it quits as far as any old favours go and all that.”

“I don’t think we finished discussing that last night, or did we?”

“No we didn’t. We got distracted talking about other things.”

“About whales and krill, or some such nonsense, I seem to remember.”

“You’re quite right, Love-duck – it was among the things I just alluded to.”

“Mmm... yes, it all comes back... Now, let me get this straight: if we take you to the Big Boulder - as you requested briefly last night and just mentioned again - we can call all things even? Is that it?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, the thing is, I am a fair minded sparrowhawk,” Love-duck mused, “and I really feel that the personal favour you rendered Blaze awhile back was pretty big. I mean, your good advice and practical demonstrations pretty much saved our relationship. You know, she’s been laying eggs like nobody’s business. We have you to thank for that...”

“True, true... What say you guys then owe me one more service then? After that, we can call it quits. What do you say?”

“Yes, I think I’m prepared to save you in a tight spot one – no, let's make it two times down the track. That’s of course if you have a totally new and unexpected adventure after this one ends. I mean, who is to know, you might get killed yet...”

“I don’t think that’s likely...”

“Nevertheless, you can’t be sure. Alright! I’ve made up my mind. I’m prepared to save you twice more – but only if it comes to that in a future time.”

“That’s very fair of you, I have to say.”

“We sparrowhawks of the Mushy Mountains may have areputation for being vicious predators, but I assure you it’s never anything personal, just our innate nature calling, and we do have our softer side.”

“That is obviously true, my friend, even if I don’t always associate giant sparrowhawks with acts of random kindness.”

“Now, now – you’re getting all emotional on me, Grandelf,” Love-duck said with a touch of guys-down-the pub jocularity. “And that will never do.”

“No, I guess it won’t,” Grandelf said with a laugh, and Bango swore he wiped away a sentimental tear. The hobwit decided then and there that he would never understand the ways of wizards; which was just as well, because he didn’t want to.    

The dwarfs were stirring by now and they got up and stretched the aches from their muscles. They then set to, polishing off the last of the cooked sheep for breakfast.  

Before long they were riding on the backs of sparrowhawks gliding down toward the Great Big River.

“Hey! You’re pinching me!” Bango’s sparrowhawk said as the hobwit gripped on tightly.

“Oh sorry, I’m truly sorry!” Bango exclaimed and let go. “I’m just worried I might fall off and plunge to a violent death.”

“Oh no, no, I don’t mind. I actually like it. Pinch harder... Harder, I say!”

And so Bango did exactly what he was told, for it is never wise to cross a gigantic sparrowhawk in mid air, though as you seem to be very bright child, I'm sure you already knew that .  

About an hour later the troop of sparrowhawks were circling toward a pebble in the Great Big River. As they got down closer to it, Bango saw that it was actually a large stone. A bit later, he realized it was a boulder. And soon after he saw that it was a big boulder. It was, in fact, the Big Boulder!

It was a sad leave taking after the Company had dismounted on the top of the Big Boulder. Grandelf shook Love-duck’s claw and gave Blaze a rather promiscuous kiss on the beak – which was strange, Bango thought, though it was none of his business. Then the sparrowhawks launched themselves back up into the sky. Bango never saw them again except from the distance at the Battle of Seven Armies

(Mind you, that’s the Battle of Seven Armies only if you count the Dark Owls of Corkscrew Hollow, and Brawny Bjorn as an army of one, but we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves).      

“Where to now?” Thorny asked.

“I dare say you’ve left us in the middle of nowhere so we can starve,” Snodgrass sneered cynically.

“Yeah,” Poin grumbled. “And how the hell do we get down from this Big Boulder?”

“Good points all,” Grandelf said wistfully as he watched Blaze’s disappearing form. He sighed at last as if recalling half sweet half melancholy memories. Then: “There is a stairway on the other side of the Boulder.”

The Company turned around and there it was, a perfectly cut stairway.

“I bet you feel very stupid just now,” Grandelf said to Poin with eyebrows joined in the middle in stern consternation. “No, don’t say anything... Now, my friends, there’s a chap I vaguely know who carved that stairway about seven hundred years ago, and the very same chap – if you can even call him a chap, and I wouldn’t, not to his face, now that I come to think of it – lives about eight miles away from here. Can you make out that dark green-grey smudge over there? It is a small wood surrounded by a hedge. And see that wisp of smoke rising above the trees that looks a bit like smoke wafting from a cottage chimney? Well, it’s not! No, it’s in fact smoke coming through a hole in the roof of an Anglo-Saxon style Hall.”

“Is that the abode of Brawny Bjorn?” Bango asked with wide eyes, him having read an awful lot about famous people in the Olden Days. “And isn’t he a Shape-shifter originally from Denmark?”

“Do you mind, Mister Bigguns!” Grandelf growled. “You have a wonderful ability to spoil things you know.”

“But....”

“Shut up.  Where was I? Oh yes... this ‘chap’ is rather grumpy and he doesn’t much care for dwarfs, so I’ll have to play him a trick. So when we get there, I’ll go up with Bango first, then the rest of you can arrive in twos. Bumburr, you’ll have to come last, which will teach you for being so fat.”

Soon after, the Company crossed the river – where it was shallow on the east side of the Big Boulder – and were trudging toward the house of Grandelf’s mysterious ‘chap’.

Ringdrotten wrote:How very silly of me   Awesome, can't wait to reread this story and read the new bits :DIs it ok if I copy it into a word document, save it as PDF and copy the story over to my Kindle? I can only give you my word that I won't distribute it to others, but I understand it if you prefer me not to copy it.

Go ahead. It's not like I can stop you.  The minute I think this is worthy of publication, I'll stop posting new bits and then everyone will have to buy the published version to read the end...

As to the Kindle. Couldn't possibly send it to me? Having thoughts of self-publishing on Kindle when I'm finished (if I ever get to that point). Wouldn't mind seeing how it looks.

If it looks and works ok on the Kindle I'll mail it to you

Good ol' Ringo! The Herring Clan must be so proud of you!

I've saved it as a PDF doc now, however, on a kindle the document behaves more like a picture than an eBook. For example, if you try to enlarge the font you'll only "zoom", and the parts you don't zoom into will be left out of the screen. It's ok just for reading, though, but if you want to publish it as an ebook I suggest you talk to Paul Send me your email address with a PM if you want to try it

I'll try almost anything once... Consider yourself PMemmed.