Here's a first stab at the synopsis of Monster Belt:
There are caverns in everyone's head where monsters lurk. And there's a belt between two latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere where flesh and blood monsters exist.
Harris White needs to find the monster that killed his best friend over ten years ago. Two twelve year old boys, out boating as they did every day off the Balearic island of Formentera, drinking a couple of bottles of San Miguel, dive into the cool water. Jonah disappears and Harris stares into the large dark eye of the monster that has taken him.
Jane Clark lives in Hawksmoor, West Yorkshire, the central point of the Monster Belt and home to the annual Monster Convention. She dreams of being killed by large spiked hair curlers and strives to work in London. Fresh from university, the job market is bleak and she agrees to accompany Harris on his quest of the Belt.
What bonds them is the disappearance of a young boy in the local lake called The Mere. Legend has it that a monster lurks there; the Mere Monster. Jane doesn't believe in monsters, Harris believes that is all that makes up the world.
Harris grows increasingly preoccupied and frustrated that Jonah's killer will not show itself and unsettled by his withdrawal, Jane's inner demon can no longer be ignored. Bother their monsters are close to home but they are lodged where least expected.
Returning the following year to Hawksmoor for the next convention, the perpetual downpour floods the rivers which pour down into the Mere, saturating the marshland and as the water floods into the valley, cutting off the Bunkhouse Hotel where the convention visitors await rescue and Harris and Jane sit marooned on the roof, deciding whether or not to jump into the murky water and risk confronting the Mere Monster.
And the real test is how we confront the monster within.
