So, many years ago - as some of you might remember from my old Biffovision blog, before I went mad and deleted it in a fit of pique - I was meant to be writing a book about monster hunting. I did a trip to Guyana with the Centre for Fortean Zoology, and had a number of other excursions lined up (a weekend Big Foot hunting in Northern California, hanging out with a vampire in Highgate, a big cat safari in Wiltshire, meeting someone who'd been attacked by a werewolf in upstate New York... among others). I'd been offered two book deals, but they arrived simultaneously with my first CBBC show suddenly getting green lit. Ultimately, I had to make a choice - book or TV show... and I went for the latter. It was, frankly, a decision based upon income: the deals were good, but not enormous, though there was a lot travel required, and I was expected to pay for it out of my advance. Not did that mean I'd have very little money left afterwards, but with the time spent travelling, and the time spent writing the book, I'd be living on vapours for the best part of a year. When doing the maths, it was a no-brainer really. But anyway. I did the Guyana trip, and I got to write up a 16,000-word sample. Ultimately, this might look unfavourably on the CFZ gang - but I grew to love them, and I'm still in touch with them today. They're a bonkers bunch, but passionate and loveable with it... and that's where the book would've ended up. There's some Digi-related stuff in there, as the CFZ were big Digitiser fans (in a roundabout way, that's how I ended up going on the trip with them). The Guyana trip was an insane few weeks, and the hardest thing I've ever done - several people nearly died (a combination of falling off mountains, and heatstroke), and I nearly threw in the towel at one point, because I was convinced someone was going to end up dead. Latterly, my trip diverged from the others, and I ended up alone in Georgetown, staying overnight with a taxi driver - for its own reasons, one of the most terrifying nights of my life. Alas, this excerpt is just a teaser - it stops before things get really juicy, and before I could wrap things up in a tidy bow. But I thought you might want to see it. Do I believe in monsters? I didn't before I left... but there was some stuff that happened while we were out that which made me question that belief; proper hairs-on-back-of-the-neck time. But that's another story.