 | How to download | | Please enter your email address and your name in order to proceed to download. Please note that your email address will not be divulged to a third party: the reason to request email addresses of the people that download the book is to be able to send them a short "review" feedback questionnaire about the book (to which there is no obligation to respond) and/or information about any future books or other hdesign projects. If you do not want to receive any of this, but would still like to download the book, then please untick the appropriate box. | | Please let me know what you think of the book: if you think it's good, email the link to your friends. If you or your children would like to see more stories, long or short, featuring Fluffy and Hotbot, I'd be pleased to hear from you: send an email using the link at the very foot of this page. |
Fluffy and Hotbot Go To Brussels  I had a lot of fun writing this book, so if you or your kids enjoy this story I'd love to hear from you. The characters and other ideas and stories (in draft) have been shelved, pending some time in the future when I can dedicate a little more time to them. I know that persistence is the key to this kind of thing, but doing fee-paying work has to take priority.
When planning this website update I figured there'd be nothing to lose by putting this out to the world wide web, let people download it for free and see what they think. I believe that the characters have got real potential, but I haven't got the time to keep up the long weary slog of marketing and hawking it around publishers.
As with many things, the children's book market has become quite bland and samey and (in my opinion) many books on sale do not do justice to
children's imagination or intelligence. My aim with this book was to create an involving, fun story with depth and appeal to all ages. A picture on every spread tells the story so smaller children can "picture read" it. Some of the concepts are quite complex and may give rise to questions and interesting discussion from older children in the 6-9 age group. I have also included a small number of more challenging words as I believe it is a good idea to introduce longer words to children in a balanced way to raise awareness of the vocabulary "beyond the regular". I also tried to address "daddy yawn syndrome" which is something I have experienced a lot reading certain popular but bland and formulaic books to my children. I wanted to make a book for children which grown-ups would also enjoy, as it contains some things which I hope will make parents smile and give them an interest in the story, to make them want to read it rather than it being a chore. So here, in the original spirit of the web, is something of value which I am making available for free gratis and for nothing in the hope that by sharing and linking it will grow "organically" (or "virally" as the new media marketing people would have it). Richard Harrison
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