The Toads Trilogy

Lord of the Rings toad on brink of extinction

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Just til the end of the year. The dragon has now written on all the snow near the fence. So Molly climbs the fence, and walks with the golden dragon to a smooth white part of the pitch. The dragon writes in the clean clear snow. The dragon shakes its spiky sparkling head. Molly sees a bright orange flame burning at the back of its throat. The dragon hiccups, a blast of flame jets out of its throat, and Molly drops to the ground, making a messy snow angel as she scrambles away.

Toad (comics)

Would you let me try to put your fire out? Molly stands as close as she can bear to the furnace heat coming out of its mouth. And she starts to throw snowballs in. But most of the snowballs hit the target. Molly throws in even more snowballs. The fire gets dimmer and dimmer, then dies. When Molly has used up all her snowballs, the dragon breathes out.

And the air that hits Molly is warm, not flaming hot. If you feel your throat sparking up again this week, eat more snow. So you can use the Scottish weather to get round the curse until Hogmanay. Book festivals , Events , Monsters defeating! The moment a story becomes a book. Then after that, wherever you are, you should be able to get hold of a copy of your own! Or if you are very keen, you can pre-order it …. Because of course the entire point of a story becoming a book is so that other people can read it!

And now — even more excitement. Because being a writer is ALL about the excitement. I can now also show you the covers for the other two books in the trilogy:. What do you think? I particularly like the looming baddies at the top of each book, and I love the fact that Molly and her friends are having to run faster every time to get away! The artwork is by the brilliant Jordi Solano. Any book has at least two phases of life, maybe a bit like a caterpillar and a butterfly. Or in the case of my new trilogy, like a tadpole and a toad…. And with my new book, Spellchasers: I will get one more chance to look at it, not to change my mind about character names or fight scenes or magical plotlines, but just to check that no apostrophes have gone for a walk and that no spelling mistakes have snuck in.

After that, the book is only alive when you are reading it!

Lord of the Rings toad on brink of extinction - BBC News

Normally the book would snooze for a while, in between me writing it, and readers reading it. The book would be waiting for the printer and the marketing people and the distributors and the book reviewers and all those other vital people to do their things. But this particular book is so bouncy and alive, that it refuses to take a nap at all. And so, Floris have decided to let a few, a very select few, readers have a look at Spellchasers: A few keen readers will get a chance to see a very early copy of the book so early, it might not even be wearing its jacket….

All you have to do is tell my publishers why you want to get a sneak peek of the first Spellchasers adventure, and the winners will be the people who write in with the most creative reasons. So, if you want to bring Spellchasers: As you can see, the title of first book is: And I can reveal that the second and third titles are: I can tell you there will be magic, and danger, and witches, and shapeshifting, and riddles, and chases, and a mysterious toad. And the story is set in Speyside, where I grew up. So, they will all be out within about a year….

Just adding a bit more magic, and a bit more combat…. I will be submitting the final draft of the first novel in my new trilogy to my editor next week. My publishers are going to reveal that in a burst of glitter and glory sometime soon…. The story is written. The words are all there. And sometimes my assumptions are wrong.

One of the five main characters in this adventure is a toad. So I was checking whether toads inflate their throats when croaking they do when I noticed a tiny little line on a toad website about toads walking rather hopping. Which was a shock, because when I started writing this book, I assumed toads were basically warty frogs, and because I know frogs hop, I assumed toads hopped too.

So in this book, my toad hops, leaps and jumps quite a lot. But at the time I noticed this awkward little line, I was dealing with croaks and throats. So I made a wee note to myself: The next day, I saw the note and I thought, right, this will either take me 30 seconds or all day. If I find out that toads hop, there will be no changes required. And also possibly the whole page.

Changing one word can unbalance or undermine a whole sentence, or a whole paragraph, or a whole scene. Writing a novel is like weaving a piece of fabric. If you pull on one thread, it can warp the pattern and create holes right across the loom. And you can guess what happened. On several reputable wildlife and amphibian websites, I discovered that, even though frogs hop, toads walk.

Go and look it up. They sort of crawl, in a sprawly fashion. In a wonderful cave made of purple crystals. Do hares make a noise when they are scared? Do pike eat eels? How long are the October school holidays in various council areas? When were the prime witch-burning years in Scotland?

None of them resulted in nearly so many changes as the Toad Gait Scandal, because most of my assumptions were correct…. It turns out that hares can see almost the whole degrees around them, with just small blindspots to the front and back. Which makes them very hard to sneak up on, and meant I had to rewrite almost all my chase scenes.

Perhaps I have a blindspot about wildlife research? Perhaps I should leave the puns alone? Now I just need to have one more readthrough for silly typos, then the book will be ready for my editor next week. Which is very exciting. But even more exciting is that in a few months, the book will be ready for YOU! So yes, writing a book is exactly like telling a big lie! Because, in my heart, I believe I tell the truth in my books. I set up a system of magic, and I stick to it rigorously.

I create characters, and I let them do what is right for them which is often extremely inconvenient. I sometimes have discussions arguments! In the next fight, however, Toad battled Wolverine. His new abilities caught the X-Man off guard and he managed to deal some damage. However, his overconfidence led to his defeat.

Wolverine spared his life, not wanting to partake in the act of cold-blooded murder. Toad made a brief reappearance on Genosha some time after the island's annihilation, leading a team including Paralyzer and Unus to try to rebuild the statue of Magneto as a monument to him.

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For reasons unknown, Toad eventually returns to Magneto's side during the Planet X storyline; however, Toad was not as docile and subservient as he had been in the past, even openly questioning Magneto at times. Magneto, in turn, is tyrannical in his treatment of Toad, who had become his second-in-command. At that point, the long-presumed-dead Magneto's image had taken a Che Guevara -like notoriety, and Toad questions if Magneto may have been more powerful dead than alive. Nonetheless, Toad tries to defend his former master, only to be incapacitated by Fantomex , who shoots his kneecaps out.

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Shortly thereafter, Magneto is killed by Wolverine and Toad vanishes from the scene. It is later revealed that this was not the real Magneto, but a copycat named Xorn. It is unknown if Toad was aware of this. Either way, the real Magneto turns out to be alive after all. So far, Toad has made no known attempts to rejoin him.

Unus' gang has come into conflict with Xavier and his allies, who have gained a foothold on Genosha soil.

Toad was among the group of mutants who broke out of the camp, with help from Caliban , Domino , and Shatterstar. The group hid in what they believed was an abandoned nuclear bunker in the Nevada desert. The group of mutants discovered this as Outlaw , being controlled by Johnny, pointed her gun at Domino. Domino's powers caused a misfire, giving Toad a chance to bring Outlaw down. It was then revealed that the bunker was actually a blast-containment chamber for experimental weapons.

As the auto-destruct sequence was initiated, Toad was trapped inside the chamber with the rest of the Marvel , quickly found a way to rescue the trapped mutants and the walked away unharmed. Toad is later seen rioting in San Francisco, angry about the fact that mutants have been forbidden to mate with each other to prevent new mutant births. Toad is faced by Cyclops and is defeated. After Cyclops deputizes the population of Utopia to help fight an invasion of Nimrod Sentinels from an unknown future, Toad advises a group of mutants including Sack to remain behind on the island, where they could remain safe.

In the middle of arguing with Sack, a Nimrod Sentinel fires on them, decapitating Sack and blowing off Toad's right index finger. Toad decided to go to Westchester with Wolverine who accepts him as the school's janitor. In the miniseries "Magneto: Not a Hero", Joseph is resurrected under unknown circumstances and forms a new Brotherhood of Mutants with Astra and mutated deformed versions of Blob , Mastermind , Quicksilver , Scarlet Witch , and Toad. During the events of AvX , Toad and Husk have developed a sentimental relationship.

In the Hellfire Academy he found himself disillusioned with their attempts to teach the children how to be villains, feeling they should actually try educating them and tell them how unfortunate the life of a villain could be, which ended up with Husk shoving him out of the room and claiming he had embarrassed her. When he witness Quentin Quire - whom he had brought to the Hellfire Academy along with him - being tortured by Sauron he finally took action and turned on the Hellfire Academy choosing to help Quentin escape. As they were escaping they are attacked by Husk and the All-New Hellions.

Husk's increasingly slipping sanity causes her to attempt to kill Toad during the fight. Despite his reluctance to hurt her Toad begins to rip off layers of her flesh until she is left in her human form, confused about where she is and why she is not still in the Grey Academy, having apparently lost most of her memory. Toad is seen sitting beside Husk's hospital bed. Later, it transpires Husk's unhinged personality was caused by a secondary mutation that caused her powers to affect her mind along with her body.

Due to his earlier betrayal Toad is fired by Wolverine as janitor of the Grey Academy. As he leaves the school, Husk arrives to apologize to him. Toad accepts her apology and tells her he always knew things between them were too good to last. Before he can go, Husk asks him to visit her in a nearby coffee shop so she can try to get to know him and remember what she liked about him before she lost her memory. But, Frankenstein creates self-replicating energy robots to attack the city and distract the staff so he and Endque can escape the Grey Academy.

Toad tracks them down and tells them how he was given a second chance and intends to take it. Frankenstein tells him to show him to prove his commitment, Toad does this by attacking and hospitalizing Endque. Husk sits alone in the destroyed coffee shop and Toad never shows up, later she gives Endque counselling and finds Toad left her a message saying he had to leave or else someday she would wake up and see him for what he really was.

Toad is seen crying silently as he now works for Maximilian Frankenstein and recommends they go someplace nobody can hurt them. The Toad's intellect and physical abilities have gone through some changes over the years. In the character's inception, he possessed superhuman leg strength and endurance, agility, reflexes, coordination, balance, a superhuman ability to leap great distances.

However, over the years, the Toad's original powers have increased and he has gained additional powers through further mutation, including adhesive saliva and an elongated prehensile tongue. As a result of further mutation, he now has mottled green skin and pointed-tip ears. Toad's primary mutant ability is a superhuman leaping ability that allows him to leap many times higher and farther than an ordinary human.

He possesses some degree of superhuman strength and endurance, primarily concentrated in his lower torso and legs, which grants him his superior leaping abilities. His vertebral column and skeletal structure are unusually flexible, enabling him to remain in a constant crouching position and contort his body into unusual position without injury or strain.

Recently, he has demonstrated a better sense of combat and a leaner physique, using both his leaping ability and his elongated prehensile tongue to his advantage. As a result of having his genetic structure restored thus stabilizing and augmenting his mutation Toad has the ability to extend his elastic tongue up to 25 feet in length to ensnare objects and people. His tongue is superhumanly strong and tough to the extent that he once killed a magistrate of Genosha by ensnaring him within his tongue and squeezing, causing the magistrate to be crushed to death almost immediately.

He can also secrete a highly adhesive resin from his pores that paralyzes the nervous system of anybody that touches it. Toad's intellect has increased beyond his original levels and he has considerable knowledge of advanced technology and access to vast technological and scientific knowledge, which he gained as a lackey to Magneto and while he was held captive by the Stranger , as well as his studies of machinery in the possession of Arcade and Arkon.

He once possessed alien technology that he stole from the Stranger's world, and could utilize it to create synthezoid robots, among other uses. He has demonstrated the ability to apply this advanced technology, but lacks the creativity to make progress beyond his existing knowledge. For example, while he could construct and utilize a powerful exoskeletal armor, he would be unable to improve on its base design.

Although Toad's amphibian-like traits extend to his physical appearance, this was revealed to be contingent upon his mutation during the events in which the High Evolutionary deprived the world's mutant population of their extraordinary abilities. Following the events, Toad was revealed to be an extremely handsome young man. This is as he would look had he not been born a mutant. Toad appears in the Marvel series working as a spy for Enrique Magneto in the Vatican. As Enrique's plot was to recruit the "witchbreed" who could conceal their abilities in the unfriendly world, it is unclear why Toad was included, as he is shown with a long tongue constantly coming out of his mouth.

He also has the ability to move around on walls and ceilings. When his deception is discovered by the Papacy, he betrays Enrique and his allies in exchange for his life. However, when Enrique's group breaks free, they capture Toad. This version of Toad was a highly articulate Shakespearean actor , and a master swordsman.

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When the Outcasts were attacked by Domino , Toad killed her henchman Caliban but dies immediately afterward at the hands of Grizzly. When a mentally unstable Scarlet Witch warped reality into the mutant-dominant House of M , Toad appeared as a member of Wolverine 's Red Guard, and wrote a best-selling book about his time in Magneto's service. Toad is seen as a zombie, along with several other members of the zombie Freedom Force chasing after the still living Blob. In the limited series Powerless where the characters of the Marvel Universe are ordinary humans, Toad, referred to simply as Mortimer or Mort, appears as member of the shadowy organization headed by Erik Lensherr.

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He briefly aids Victor Creed as they search for Weapon X, but they are attacked by their target and their car runs off the road. Mortimer's fate is unseen but Creed assumes Weapon X kills him. He does not appear again. In the limited series X-Men Ronin , Toad is an elderly teacher that several of the X-Men turn to for help when the entire Prefecture are made to believe they are monsters.

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