#TommyvsCancer Blog Tour

 First and foremost lets get the important information to you...and the reason we're all doing this!

As you all hopefully know by now, we’re doing this blog tour to help raise awareness and donations for Tommy Donbavand as he battles cancer.
Tommy is the author of the popular 13-book Scream Street series for 7 to 10 year olds, published by Walker Books in the UK and Candlewick Press in the US. His other books include Zombie!, Wolf and Uniform (winner of the Hackney Short Novel Award) for Barrington Stoke, Boredom Busters and Quick Fixes For Kids’ Parties (How To Books), and Making A Drama Out Of A Crisis (Network Continuum).
In theatre, Tommy’s plays have been performed to thousands of children on national tours to venues such as The Hackney Empire, Leeds City Varieties, and Nottingham Playhouse. These productions include Hey Diddle Diddle, Rumplestiltskin, Jack & Jill In The Forgotten Nursery, and Humpty Dumpty And The Incredibly Daring Rescue Of The Alien Princess From Deep Space. He is also responsible for five episodes of the CBBC TV series, Planet Cook (Platinum Films).

As an actor, Tommy played the Clearlake MC in the West End musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story for over eight years, in addition to roles in the movies Zombie Love Stories (where he battled hordes of Scottish undead) and Going Off Big Time (where he was beaten up on a bouncy castle). A veteran of pantomime, he has portrayed just about every comic character from Abanazer to an Ugly Sister.
Tommy lives in Lancashire with his wife and two sons. He is a HUGE fan of all things Doctor Who, plays blues harmonica, and makes a mean balloon poodle. He sees sleep as a waste of good writing time.

Website: http://www.tommydonbavand.com/ Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tommydonbavand
Here are the links to his website and how people can donate:
Website: www.tommyvcancer.com
Patreon Link: http://www.tommyvcancer.com/support/ Paypal 
Link: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=Nl-IE_9Fhy7jbNI-H8DqkoBnmUwmOAA9TnlRAPyO8oZz6VpeywfwY3hWxai&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f8e263663d3faee8dcce3e160f5b9538489e17951d2c62172

So for my stop on the tour I wanted to pick something that contained a number of my favourite things and so landed on one of Tommy's Doctor Who novels... Shroud of Sorrow Published by BBC Books (April 11th 2013). It's got history, it's got the doctor...and more importantly it's got Matt Smith as the Doctor ( he was one of my favourites). And when you have a book that's based off a TV show it makes the book interesting for a number of reasons.

For so long I've seen the characters on a screen and had to infer the written words or just accept what I'm seeing. So then when reading this it allows you to project that into the book so the visual you are getting is very strong. You also have a good understanding of the characters. As we know each doctor is different with their own quirks and mannerisms and so you can fall back into the character because the author has so much to play on already. This gave Tommy room to make this story his own, but he still felt so true to the characters.I felt like I was in the Tardis on an adventure with Matt and Clara I could hear and see them clearly and this really heightened the story for me. The writing was smooth and I fell into the story easily, I loved the blend of history with monster, and the idea of the sorry projecting. Its classic Doctor Who with all the feels and the emotion woven into the comedy and the humour that the franchise is known for. You have to be able to write a good story for this to work, because there is a legacy and this fits right in with that legacy helping to make it bigger and better than it already was. I'd always initially been a little weary of reading Doctor Who novels but with this and the short story collection released last year I think I'm in for a real ride! Thank you Tommy!

NOW! Don't forget to check out the rest of the fantastic stops on the tour and help in any way you can. Every RT, mention and thought for Tommy counts!

Twitter Chat

To end the tour, Vivienne and Chelley will be hosting a twitter chat.

This will be on 30th June 2016, 8 – 9pm

The hashtag for the chat is #tommyvcancer