Books
Knight Crew
Young people get a very bad press these days. According to the newspapers, there are a lot of scary kids out there – the hoodies, the gangs, the knife carriers. These people are evil, unredeemable. I began to wonder about that. And I wondered about the nature of goodness itself and that bumped into thoughts about modern-day ‘respec’ versus old-fashioned ‘honour’ , and then the legend of King Arthur started to whisper in my ear. I took a tour to the Bemerton Estate behind the Holloway Road in London. I met a boy – let’s call him Lee – who told me about his life. His father was a ‘puff-head’ who abandoned the family when Lee was still a toddler. His mother had had a succession of different men, some of whom had abused Lee. He stopped attending school, starting TWOCing, getting into fights. At 15 he was thrown out of home. Pretty soon after that he was arrested, and you can probably guess the rest. I asked Lee, if I could wave a magic wand and give him one wish, what would he ask for? In my prejudice I thought he’d ask for something material – a fast car maybe; what he actually said was ‘to be away from here – give me some calm’. Then I asked him what qualities, in his view, made a man. ‘That he stays with his woman,’ Lee replied instantly. And what makes a woman? ‘The same, innit, she stays with her man’. Simple really. Stability, a place to lay your head, to breathe. And I began to think, then, that a lost soul really isn’t and that what if there was a boy, let’s call him Art, from a very difficult background who nevertheless contained the seed of goodness and who could shape something new and beautiful from the rage of the estates and people around him. And so Knight Crew began.
After a gang feud claims its first life, violence escalates. But then the prophetic words of a strange old baglady start to hit home, and Art and the girl he loves have one chance to make good, one chance to bring honour and peace to a murderous world.
Fierce tender and unflinching, Knight Crew breathes the passions of ancient legend into a contemporary wasteland – passions that can create or destroy.
‘A story for this generation…written with love, passion and intelligence.‘ Benjamin Zephaniah
JUST PUBLISHED! Be one of the first to read it.
Knight Crew will be staged as an opera at Glyndebourne (to see more go to Theatre/Film or link straight to www.knightcrewopera.com ) with a cast of young adults (libretto by Nicky Singer, music by Julian Philips) - Glyndebourne’s first ever commission from a teen novel.
Feather Boy
So – when my son Roland said what he said (see About), I took off for a walk. I live in Brighton and when I want to think, I walk by the sea. It was April and very cold. I walked for about an hour and nothing came in to my head at all. Eventually, I turned inland, up a street called St. Aubyns, and there was this large derelict house all boarded up – except around the back, where the 15 foot steel mesh had been wrenched off.
So I went in. It’s very stupid to go into derelict houses, especially in a town like Brighton which has a big drugs problem. I went right to the top and, in the room next to the one with the blood-stained mattress – I found Feather Boy. Or at least the idea for it. I’ll tell that story later, if we meet maybe.
Meanwhile:
Catherine would say it all began in a time that is yesterday and tomorrow and eternally present. But then Catherine’s a storyteller. I’m not a storyteller. I’m just the guy it happened to.
Robert is the class victim, the guy who’s never picked for the team. So noone is more surprised than Robert himself when a strange old lady sends him on a quest to solve the mystery of Chance House. Legend has it that a boy fell to his death from an upper window. But what has this past to do with Robert’s future?
To get to the truth, Robert must learn what it really means to fly.
‘Feather Boy is simply fabulous… an emotionally intense suspense novel of the highest order.’ Michael Thorn, Achuka
Blue Peter Book Award
Feather Boy was nominated for the Blue Peter Book Awards 2002. I was thrilled about this because, although the shortlist is drawn up by adults, the actual winner is chosen by children. I was also thrilled because it allowed me to go to the Blue Peter Studio, which had been my ambition since I first sent Val Singleton a plasticine alien about 40 years ago… Anyway I went with all my Blue Peter badges on (yes, I still have them all in my jewel box – how sad is that?); I have an ordinary one (for the plasticine effort), a silver one (for some letter I wrote about a rabbit) and two Blue Peter Annual competition badges. The producer called me a Blue Peter Nerd. Then when they announced I’d won the Book I Couldn’t Put Down category– I couldn’t believe it. I got up and thought I was going to make a speech, but mainly cried. Then I sat down and heard the Chairman of the adult judges, Ian Hislop, say now they were going to award the Book of the Year. I didn’t actually know there was an overall winner and I remember thinking, ‘Crumbs, I hope I don’t get that because I’ve shot my bolt on speeches already’. But then I won anyway. I got two huge ships made of glass and did some more crying. Then – guess what, the producer actually gave me a new-modern day Blue Peter Badge. Hooray! That’s in my jewel case now too.
Doll
When I was researching myths for Feather Boy, I came across an old Russian folk tale called ‘Vasalisa’ in which a mother, on her deathbed, bequeaths her daughter a doll and tells her that whenever she loses her way or is in need of help, she should ask the doll what to do. And so the child does and, every time, the doll helps her. I began thinking – this is an OK story if the mother is a good person – but what if she isn’t? What then? Thus Doll was born. It’s the story of Tilly and an adopted Chilean boy, Jan.
Tilly: Sometimes I think my brain is full of locked boxes. And that one day there will be too many boxes and my brain will explode. Then fourteen years of scary things will cascade to the floor and I’ll finally have to look. But not now. Not yet.
Jan: The stars of the cold north are not visible to southern eyes, the eyes of his mother. If he were a real Chilean boy, what stars would shine for him? How can he imagine his mother if he cannot imagine her sky?
We are the misfits.
We are the motherless.
We share so much
But we have nothing in common.
We are twin souls
But we have never met.
Yet.
‘Tilly’s plight is deeply moving and her story is beautifully developed.’ The Guardian.
‘Nicky Singer tells another gripping story in Doll.’ Financial Times
Shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize
The Innocent’s Story
Everyone remembers where they were when the Twin Towers fell. I was in the park with my young daughter when news began to filter through and back home in front of the TV in time to see the second of the Towers fall. I remember exactly what passed through my mind at that moment: Who could hate us this much and me not know? and What could I do or give to these people so they never want to do this again? There’s hubris in the first thought and danger in the second, but that’s the truth of what I felt in that frozen in time moment. A year on we thought we knew who had ‘done it’ but as for the trigger behind the anger, the thing that would drive one human being to think it was appropriate to blow up another, that remained a mystery to me. And I wanted to know. But how could I get inside the head of a suicide bomber? My rather radical solution was The Innocent’s Story.
I’m not quite the person I was at 5.11pm yesterday afternoon. In fact, I may not be a person at all…
When Cassina is blown up in a bomb attack, life as she knows it is over. Except that she doesn’t die. Cassina becomes a para-spirit – a presence that can live in other people’s minds. Nobody knows she’s there, but she can see their thoughts and fell their emotions. She just can’t do a thing to change them.
Being in the minds of her grieving parents is not good. Being in mad Aunt Lou’s brain is an eye-opener. But Akim’s head – that’s a dangerous place. Because Cassina knows he’s going to do something terrible, worse even than before. And it’s up to her to stop him – but how?
‘Tender, thoughtful and idealistic, this is a tough but immensely worthwhile read.‘ Independent
‘The sheer imaginative audacity of The Innocent’s Story propels it beyond anything expected.’ Julia Eccleshare
GemX
Well, there I was in New York – out in the Bronx actually – the day the lights went out. Post 9/11 nervy Americans thought it was a terrorist attack – but it turned out just to be a power failure, albeit one so huge it knocked out the entire of the Eastern seaboard of the US from Canada to Florida for the best part of three days. We’d taken a subway out of New York carrying only enough money for a jolly day at the Science Museum and an evening at a Red Sox game. The museum threw us out, the Red Sox game was cancelled, the subway wasn’t working, the restaurants put down their shutters, the traffic lights were out, the roads were gridlocked, the buses packed, the taxis non-existent and the mobile phone networks jammed. We couldn’t get back into New York, night was falling and I had three children, the youngest of whom was five. We realised we were going to have to spend the night in the Bronx. At that point it became clear that the only thing that mattered was food and shelter. From everything working to nothing working (when we finally found a hotel which could take us, they took a brass rubbing of my credit card as the pin machines were all down) was a blink of an eye. I had one of my little thoughts: what a thin veneer there is between civilisation and choas, I thought. And so a book began to seep into my mind. If you want to find out more about it try this video link
Maxo Strange is a GemX, the most perfect human ever made. Top in social class, in looks, in intelligence. . . until the day he wakes up and discovers a crack in his face. Repulsed and terrified, that crack starts him on a journey to places he hardly knows exist. Into the world of the Dreggies, the wretched underclass of imperfect people who live outside the Polis. Into the world of his father, the Polis’s chief scientist who ravaged human life to create the GemXs. And into the life of Gala and Stretch, Dreggies who ‘disappeared’ while volunteering for scientific research in the city.
What none of them knows is that the research is still going on, because the city’s supreme leader has plans. Plans which will leave all of their lives hanging in the balance.
‘A gripping, superbly written narrative of struggle and aspiration, faced by a monolithic Establishment and involving real moral choice, develops. Compelling and absorbing, this story underlines what a versatile, remarkable writer is Nicky Singer.‘ Carousel
‘Nicky Singer is one of our best contemporary writers for teenagers, and GemX is a lot of fun to read.‘ Write Away
‘A brilliantly inspired plot and some terrific characterization.’ Love Reading for Kids
Nicky’s books for adults are:
To Still the Child – Click here to view on Amazon
To Have and To Hold – Click here to view on Amazon
What She Wanted – Click here to view on Amazon
My Mother’s Daughter – Click here to view on Amazon
And her non-fiction
The Tiny Book of Time (with Kim Pickin) – Click here to view on Amazon
The Little Book of the Millennium (with Jackie Singer) – Click here to view on Amazon