the books
Six Impossible Things
Fourteen-year-old nerd-boy Dan Cereill is not quite coping with a reversal of family fortune, a mother with a failing wedding-cake business, a just-out gay dad, and an impossible crush on Estelle, the girl next door.
His entire life is a mess, but for now he’s narrowed it down to just six impossible things.
Six Impossible Things has been great fun to write, and Dan is a character I loved spending time with. Just as well, because writing the book took quite a while.
Scripts, I can write quickly, but when it came to the novel, I slowed down and wrote several drafts, working things out as I went along. To my horror, I realised that on the third draft I wanted to change the tense. Fortunately much of this draft was written at beautiful Varuna, a place guaranteed to ease the writing process.
It was an exciting day when Pan Macmillan told me they wanted to publish the book. It was another exciting day when they said they’d like to publish my new novel, ‘Wildlife’. I had foolishly thought that with one novel under my belt, the second one would be easier to write. Wrong. It was another case of slow writing and several drafts. I blogged here about coming up with the title.
Here are the cover blurbs for ‘Six Impossible Things’:
‘I loved this book so much I wanted to be in it.’ Kaz Cooke
‘Dan Cereill is an odd sock and an absolute sweetheart. His journey through the joys and stings of first love, suburbia, humiliation and reinvention will make you smile and cheer for the underdog. It’s impossible not to love this book!’ Simmone Howell, Everything Beautiful
And here are a couple of readings. Because Dan’s story is told in the first person, I asked actor Nigel Langley to do these…
Here, Dan decides what the impossible things in his life are:
The List
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And in this one Dan is checking up on his progress – he’s not too delighted:
The List Revisited
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