Foiling the Dragon

Synopsis

Paul loves beautiful girls and he loves poetry. He's a pub poet - courageous enough to recite sonnets to the Hell's Angels in the Hailstone Inn. So when Zione, a beautiful black girl - and a real head-turner - appears in his audience at the Old Crown, Paul is well pleased. When she asks him to go outside with her, he doesn't hesitate. When they're alone, in the darkness of the pub's yard, Zione calls up green fire and, for Paul, everything goes away... He wakes up in a strange bed, not knowing where he is - which, for him, is nothing new. Then the luke-warm hot-water bottle nips him. It's a dragon. A small dragon, but still a dragon. It turns out, Zione is a sorceress. The sorceress of Dragonsheim. Where Paul now is. Paul cheers up when he finds that poets are far more respected in Dragonsheim than in his own world. Everyone is glad to see him - and keen for him to meet the biggest poetry lover of all. A very big poetry lover who has devoured most of the Oxford Book of Poets. In the most literal possible sense. When Paul performs for this poetry-lover, he finds his work examined and criticised as never before. When this critic rips you apart, you stay ripped. It's extreme lit-crit. Can Paul's ego survive it? Can he survive it? And get back to his beloved lost world of pubs, pints and crisps? A light-hearted fantasy of poets, sorceresses, dragons - and wrapping paper.