Where do you go to find a missing goblin?
Baughurst UK - March 28, 2001 - where do you search when you think that the Old Wessex Division of the Goblins has kidnapped your five year old son... again?
You've tried the back garden. You've gone into the cellars of the old bookshop in Petersfield near to the Waitrose carpark, where they live, but Gunnar the king of the goblins says that they haven't got him. To make matters worse, even the goblin minions who were supposed to be looking after him, have vanished, leaving behind nothing but a salty wet space on the carpet where his bunk bed used to be, and only a silvery fish as a clue, and even that evidence was eaten by your jack russel, Snoozy.
The answer turns out to be - www.goblinsearch.com.
That problem occurs in an as yet unpublished children's story about the goblins which live in Petersfield in Hampshire (published later as Alexander Woyte and the Pirates (and Goblins) so the author Zsolt Kerekes, thought it would be prudent to register the domain name, and by the way, include on it his first children's story - "Alexander Woyte and the Goblins".
"I
wrote this story over a year ago, as a surprise for my godson Alexander"
says the author. "Ever since then, he's been asking for more. I noticed
that the quality of bedtime stories for young children, wasn't very high, and
thought I would have a go at writing something modern and different. Childern
have a pretty rich fantasy life, and I thought that by blurring the edges
between real places, and real people but using fictional goblins, I could try to
hold the attention of a four year old for about half an hour.We use a cartoon character, called Megabyte the Mouse, as the editor on my enterprise computer storage portal called STORAGEsearch.com, and that's aimed at adult computer buyers. So it shows that there's a real need in all of us for something magical."
The first story, "Alexander Woyte and the Goblins" can be seen now on www.goblinsearch.com at http://www.goblinsearch.com/story1.html.
There are no log-ins, no passwords, and you can read the entire story free on the web. As you'd expect, there are some ads. But you haven't seen ads quite like this before.
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...Later:- May 2023 - and that was indeed the situation for over 20 years.
You could indeed read that first goblin story of mine and a bunch of follow up stories free on these web pages then and for the next 20 years for your own non commercial use. They always remained my copyright.
And due to changes in the technologies that people used to read on the web (screen sizes shrinking from 21 inches to 3 inches, browser software changes etc) the original pages had become kind of unreadable.
Another thing I noticed earlier this year (2023) when I was trying to decide how best to rescue these stories from their once craefully crafted but now cobwebby web pages - was that I could see ways to improve the stories by rewriting them. So what to do?
I decided to rewrite them all and present each story in current ebook, print and audiobook versions. In some cases that means completing draft stories which only made it to the website in a partial form.
Hopefully that editing, rewriting and conversion will mean they'll be accessible to new generations of readers. For more news on the books see the home page.
About goblinsearch.com:- this web site is sponsored by Gunnar's Goblin Hammers - (makers of the finest picnic protection tools since 1862)
goblinsearch.com, concept, stories and text copyright © 2000 to 2023 Zsolt Kerekes
This is a work of fiction. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual goblins living or dead is purely coincidental or due to ensorclement beyond our control