Monkfish Maggie and the Bungalow Stairs

By CatchphraseDan

“Maggie stepped forward and rubbed her eyes in disbelief - how was this possible? A giant stone staircase stood in front of her, climbing high up through an ugly hole that had appeared in the ceiling. Maggie strained her eyes and looked for the end of the staircase, but it climbed and climbed into the darkness of the loft.”

When Maggie returns home from the market one spectacularly normal day, two things in particular strike her as strange.

• Firstly, a rather peculiar set of stairs have sprouted from her otherwise stairless bungalow.
• Secondly, and probably most concerning of all, her husband Nesbitt is nowhere to be found...

Where is Nesbitt? Why have these extraordinary stairs appeared - and more importantly, what lies beyond them? Evil? Good? Monsters? Head lice?!

Join Maggie as she searches low, high and even higher for Nesbitt, in an intriguing debut adventure that will captivate children and adults alike.

Love stairs? This story is for you!
Hate stairs? It’s for you as well!
Don’t care either way? Me neither - have yourself a read!

Written by CatchphraseDan and bursting with over 50 enchanting illustrations by the mystical Berg Norcross, Monkfish Maggie and the Bungalow Stairs will dunk you deep into a barrel of mystery and then wring you dry like a limp blue flannel. Sit yourself down and open your mind hole, because this story is coming at you...

...Now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CatchphraseDan
• Release date: Jun 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311013538

CatchphraseDan

CatchphraseDan landed naked on earth in 1991 pretty much like Terminator, if you’ve seen it. He went into a bar full of bikers, took some clothes and a motorcycle, forgot completely about his mission of killing Sarah Conner, and has been residing in the West Midlands ever since.

Book preview

Monkfish Maggie and the Bungalow Stairs

Book 1

First Edition

Copyright © CatchphraseDan 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of CatchphraseDan except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. All characters in this publication are purely fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. CatchphraseDan cannot be held responsible for the appearance of any bungalow stairs, steps, ladders or ledges.

British English spelling and grammar used throughout.

All illustrations belong to Berg Norcross, and cannot be used without written permission.

Front cover illustration and design: Berg Norcross

Story illustrations: Berg Norcross

‘About the Author’ illustration: CatchphraseDan

Published for the people by CatchphraseDan

For more information visit:

www.catchphrasedan.com

www.bergnorcross.com

For questions, queries and comments, please contact CatchphraseDan via:

[e-mail]

About the Author

CatchphraseDan landed naked on Earth in 1991 pretty much like Terminator, if you’ve seen it. He went into a bar full of bikers, took some clothes and a motorcycle, forgot completely about his mission of killing Sarah Conner, and has been residing in the West Midlands ever since.

You can find CatchphraseDan on social media using the following links:

Ello - @CatchphraseDan

Twitter - @CatchphraseDan

Facebook - CatchphraseDanArt

Instagram - @CatchphraseDan

Tumblr - CatchphraseDan

About the Illustrator

The mysterious Berg Norcross rose from the ocean on a cold Monday morning and by lunchtime he'd just about finished his first painting. Berg speaks Norwegian, English and Lobster. You'll find him in his windmill, unless he's not in his windmill in which case he could be anywhere…

You can find Berg Norcross on social media using the following links:

Ello - @BergNorcross

Twitter - @BergNorcross

Instagram - @Berg_Norcross

Words: CatchphraseDan

Pictures: Berg Norcross

Chapter X - An Introduction

Whenever I leave the house, I always hope that I get into trouble.

Not a great deal of trouble. I don’t want to go back to jail, you see. Just enough trouble for a good story.

I’ll give you a recent example. I was at the market trying to return a chicken I’d bought the day before from a man with hooves. Tall fellow, he was. You know the kind; long face, four legs.

Couldn’t speak a word of English, bless him. No, it was all snorts and whinnies for some reason.

Anyway, I’d bought a chicken from him and I wanted to trade it in for a very fancy duck I’d seen. The chicken wasn’t taking very well to his moat so I thought it would be best for everybody involved if I gave him back. The four legged man wouldn’t reason with me, so I pushed the chicken over to him and tried to make off with the duck who, it turned out, was actually a member of market security.

Have you ever been pecked by a duck? I have.

Before you start to worry, the whole matter got sorted out in no time. After an apology, the four legged man sold me a duck that didn’t have a job, for a very reasonable price.

This book isn’t about one of my unfortunate misunderstandings though. I have got a handsome wicker basket full of those stories that need to be told one day, but this is far more important. You see, this is a story that has only ever been told once, and once only. It’s the tale of something that happened a long time before I was born, and a very long time before you were born. The person who told me the story kindly asked me to type it up on an elegant Italian typewriter when I was exactly 25 years old. A typewriter is a machine from the past that uses magic