Nicky Singer

Listening Books

Nicky — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:29:52 +0000

Listening Books is a UK charity providing a fantastic selection of high-quality audiobooks to over 17000 people across the UK who find it difficult or impossible to read due to illness or disability.

Now available: Feather Boy http://www.listening-books.org.uk/sso.aspx

The Flask

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:15:40 +0000

My new novel The Flask is out now. It’s about songs and souls and things which live in bottles. Do you like the cover? I love it!

The real flask – that I found on the net and had sent to England.

Twelve-year-old Jess is grieving for her beloved Aunt Edie, and anxiously awaiting the birth of her twin brothers, when she finds a mysterious glass flask hidden in a desk. The flask is beautiful to Jess, and soon she starts to believe that it contains a magical life-force. When her half-brothers are born critically ill, Jess becomes convinced that their survival depends on what’s happening to the flask…

Through Jess’s stunning narration, Nicky Singer explores the meaning of life, and the interconnected nature of all things – in a way which is entirely accessible to young readers.

Nicky says:

The meaning of life, eh?

Island

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:10:26 +0000

Not to mention - Island, my new play at the National Theatre, 15th-25th Feb. It’s about ice-bears and ways of knowing. Book here if you want to come and book quickly as some shows are already sold out:

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=68380

Knight Crew

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:28:38 +0000

Opera

View the Glyndebourne official Knight Crew Opera website

Knight Crew by Nicky Singer retells the legend of King Arthur as the story of Art, Quin and Lance – members of a teenage knife gang who experience violence, love and a revelation of how their world can be remade. Inherently operatic with grand themes of passion and betrayal, it caught the eye of composer Julian Philips, and opera director John Fulljames.

In March 2010 Knight Crew was staged as an opera at Glyndebourne with a cast of young adults (libretto by Nicky Singer, music by Julian Philips) – Glyndebourne’s first ever commission from a teen novel.

Nicky says:
Wow. I so left the planet. Watching Knight Crew in rehearsal – and then on that hallowed stage in front of packed houses four nights in a row – what can I say? Here are a few pictures that give some small taste of it – but imagine this, imagine you made up a whole group a people, a whole universe, and four years later, they all got up on a stage, walked, breathed, sang. And broke your heart. Night after night. That’s what it was like for me.

‘The Crew on Es Devlin’s amazing revolving set’

‘The Knight are not to be messed with’

‘This is my hero Lance, all in white.’

‘Art’s not so happy about being betrayed by Quin’

‘I’m the one wearing the -er – non Knight Crew colours…’

Feather Boy

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:27:16 +0000

Theatre

The National Theatre then commissioned Peter Tabern and Nicky to re-write Feather Boy as a Musical with lyrics by Don Black and music by Debbie Wiseman. The piece, which is now published by Collins (see Books) was devised as part of the National’s Connections series. Over 200 schools take part in Connections, each school selecting one of ten newly commissioned pieces to perform. One production of each script in the portfolio is then showcased as part of the National Theatre’s Festival of new writing for young people at the NT on the South Bank.

There were about 25 performances of Feather Boy nationwide and two of the best ones were produced in Brighton, Nicky’s home town.

Here is the winning group, Blatchington Mill, performing at the National. They were awesome!

And here’s a picture of Don, Nicky and Debbie receiving their Cactus Awards on the night. Cactus? Don’t ask.

Feather Boy the Musical – full length version.

Nicky, Don and Debbie are currently re-writing Feather Boy as a full-length musical starring only people under 12 and over 70.

Watch this space!

Feather Boy

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:14:34 +0000

Television series

Even before Feather Boy won the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, it had been spotted by Childsplay producer Peter Tabern, who wanted to adapt it for television. The result was a fantastic six-part drama starring Thomas Sangster as Robert and Sheila Hancock as Edith. The BBC also broadcast it as a 90 minute film.

View an excerpt from the movie.

Feather Boy went on to win the Best Drama category in the children’s BAFTAs 2004. The award actually went to Producer Peter Tabern and Director Dermot Boyd, but here’s Nicky getting her little piece of glory.

Crumbs – she’s even wearing make-up

The Flask

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:00:42 +0000

The real flask - that I found on the net and had sent to England.

Through Jess’s stunning narration, Nicky Singer explores the meaning of life, and the interconnected nature of all things – in a way which is entirely accessible to young readers.

Nicky says:

The meaning of life, eh. The Flask is about songs and souls and things which live in bottles.

If you want to know what led me to The Flask see – here (link coming soon – hey, I’m new to this)

Knight Crew

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:59:52 +0000

Buy this book

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

Nicky says:

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.

Knight Crew was 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. The making of the opera was documented by the BBC in a three part series – Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne

Feather Boy

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:58:57 +0000

Buy this book

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

Nicky says:

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.

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

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:57:33 +0000

Buy this book

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

Nicky says:

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?

The Innocent’s Story

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:56:26 +0000

Buy this book

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

Nicky says:

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.

Gem X

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:55:37 +0000

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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 says:

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

The Good, The Bad and the Opera

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:50:39 +0000

An article bout the Prison System, published on Notes From The Slush Pile

Click here to read the article

Does this bomb cross your boundary?

Nicky — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:49:52 +0000

My novel – The Innocent’s Story – is a dangerous book. I didn’t know that when I wrote it. I thought it was a serious and moral attempt to contextualise terrorism for children. If the idea of talking to children about suicide bombing makes you want to turn the page, you’re not the only one. When they received the manuscript of The Innocent’s Story, my American publishers set about cancelling my contracts with immediate effect. So much for the Land of the Free. I thought things might be different here, not least because I had a good track record: my first book for children Feather Boy won the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award, was made into a TV series which won a BAFTA for Best Drama and is currently published in 18 countries. Wrong again. The British publisher, having said initially that the book was ‘interesting, intelligent, provocative and important’, declared, six months later, that it didn’t work and asked me to lay it aside. But I couldn’t because, more perhaps than any other book I’ve written, The Innocent’s Story represents everything I believe in: open-mindedness, robust no-holds-barred debate and, yes, pushing at boundaries.

The most obvious line I crossed was the ‘wanting to open a discussion with children’ one. Although, with suitable innocence of my own, I have to say it wasn’t so obvious to me. My father died when I was a scant fourteen and that’s when my mother began to treat me as an adult. I’ve replicated that in my relations with my own children and talking openly about challenging subjects is one of the delights of my family life. But the wider world, apparently, doesn’t see things this way. The gatekeepers are very nervous about what is said to children.

But there’s a schizophrenia here: as parents, or even simply as decent-minded adults, we like to think we can protect our children from some of the worst horrors of the modern world, but actually they are exposed all the time. When our media culture beams the horror into our living rooms it also, willy nilly, beams it in to our children’s lives. There will be no child on earth with access to a television who did not see pictures of the twin towers falling; no child in London unaware of the July bombing. What do they do with this knowledge, who speaks to them about it, how does it affect them?

The least our children deserve, I believe, is a context for the events they witness around them. If we say nothing about the bombs to our young people it gives terror a kind of legitimacy, makes it ordinary, not something worthy enough to be remarked upon. The usefulness of fiction in this process is that it can offer a ‘safe space’ for that discussion. Terrible events can be realistic but not real. Love and morality can sit alongside difficulty and grief. And the experience of a book and the issues it raises can also be shared at school, or among a peer group.

So what’s my scary story about? Well it opens (bear in mind I finished this book over 18 months ago) with a suicide bomb going off in a London train station. The narrator of the story is a 13 year old child killed in the explosion. She becomes a ‘para-spirit’, only able to survive if she holes up inside a living human’s head. As luck and fiction would have it, she ends up in the head a bomber, because that’s what the book is, an attempt to get inside the head of a bomber. Now here’s the next line being crossed: if you try to get inside the head of a terrorist, you can be accused of sympathising with terrorists, as the Lib-Dem MP Dr. Jenny Tonge was when she made her remarks about the Palestinians. But, for me, there is a world of difference between sympathy, where you agree a person’s premise, and empathy where you attempt, for a moment, to stand in that person’s shoes and wonder whether, if you’d walked their path, you’d have ended up where they ended up. If, as nations and people, we lose our grip on empathy, then we are lost indeed. And people includes kids.

Next frightening line: religion. All sides of the religious divide currently appear to wish to legislate – sometimes violently – about what can and can’t be said artistically about their faith; witness Sikh outrage at the Birmingham Rep production of Behzti, or Christian Voice’s attacks on Jerry Springer the Opera. My research on suicide bombers turned up two basic types, the politically motivated who use religion as a fig-leaf and the genuinely religiously motivated. I didn’t see how I could write a book about the inside of a suicide bomber’s head without inquiring into the role of religion. I didn’t want my readers bringing any baggage to the religion I chose but it seemed disingenuous to settle upon a radical sect of Icelandic Quakers. I decided to make up my own religion. I needed something close enough to the truth to feel real, but far enough away from reality not to demonise or offend. Enter the T’lanni religion with its radical Haliki sect. The gatekeepers said it was thinly disguised version of Islam. But – despite a millennia of religious conflict which would have you believe otherwise – all religions are to some extent thinly disguised versions of each other. Take for example Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they all have their single deity (whether it be God or Allah) their Holy book (whether it be the Bible, the Torah, the Koran), their principle witness (Christ or Abraham or Muhammad). I used this basic structure: My god is J’lal, my book the Holy Desert Scrolls, my witness the angel Ingali. Now here’s a thing the grown-ups don’t get: children do not think like them. When I gave the manuscript to my eat-books-for-breakfast 12 year old friend Hannah, she said: ‘It’s brilliant – except, well, I’ve never heard of the T’lanni religion and we do Comparative Religion at school.’ Game on.

The other advantage of an invented religion is that you can draw parallels. My religion has an equivalent of ‘jihad’ but only to make it clear that, far from being exclusively associated with ‘holy war’ (which you would think by reading the western press) the predominant meaning of ‘jihad’ in the Koran is the literal Arabic one ‘to strive hard’ and it’s used, for instance, to mean the attempt to get closer to god by overcoming bad desires. I didn’t know that before I began my research. I wonder if you did.

On a lighter note, the gatekeepers had a problem with the book’s humour. If it’s about a serious subject then it should be serious, they intoned. I mentioned, only a tad defensively, that the gravediggers’ scene in Hamlet isn’t there because Ophelia’s death doesn’t matter but because human beings can’t bear very much reality. Adult ones anyway. My friend Hannah likes a good laugh.

Finally, and very seriously, what I aimed for in the book was complexity and that I realise (again rather late in the day) is another line I’ve crossed. Our increasingly complex world is increasingly simply– and inadequately – described. Take, for example, the phrase ‘The War on Terror’. That has no more meaning than a war on ‘shooting’ would. because terror is not the thing, it’s a symptom of the thing. The political useful – but deluding – thing about the term War on Terror is that it lumps everyone together: religious fanatic, Palestinian, Chechen. All of them conveniently characterised as The Other, The Enemy, as in Them and Us, Goodies and Baddies. Disney stuff, ‘kids’ stuff. But these are not the same peoples with the same grievances. If we are going to address their problems – which have become our problems – we need to ask deeper questions. We need, I think, to know what the ‘thing’ is, the driver behind the anger that would bring one human being to believe it is appropriate to blow up another. And you know what? I think the kids may be able to go this place more easily that we can because, as yet, they are the ones with the open minds.

I hope my book The Innocent’s Story can contribute to keeping it that way. And I’m very lucky that my new publisher – Oxford University Press – with it’s 527 year tradition of research, education, scholarship and free speech, believes so too.

Me, Knight Crew and the Prison System

Nicky — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:28:34 +0000

Bass Robert Winslade Anderson playing the OG/Mordec character in Knight Crew and bearing an uncanny resemblance to my friend Khaine

My research for Knight Crew brought me into contact with a man called Khaine, who I visited in prison for two and a half years. During that time I learnt alot about the British ‘justice’ system and Africa and street language and about being black in a white world. I was often angry, often upset. I was also incredibly moved by some of the goodness I found in very dark places. Some of that story – which fed into Knight Crew the novel and Knight Crew the opera is available here: http://notesfromtheslushpile.blogspot.com/2010/06/guest-blogger-nicky-singer-good-bad-and.html

Knight Crew BBC2 17th June 9pm

Nicky — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:18:26 +0000

Mordec gets down and dirty with the Knight Crew

Well – it’s just about to happen. In ‘Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne’ (three consecutive Thursdays from 17th June) you can follow the journeys of some of the amazing kids who took part in my operatic version of Knight Crew the novel (check under Books on this site) with music by the wonderful Julian Philips. I’m missing it.

Marvellous young minds

Nicky — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:00:05 +0000

Some future writing stars

At St Mary’s Primary school in East Grinstead to give a workshop to some 10 and 11 year olds. It’s such a privilege to work with people with such glorious, open minds.

Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne…

Nicky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:12:01 +0000

Desi Hayward, Gareth Malone and a hoodie - but which is which?

Would you want to meet either of these characters on a dark knight?

Knight Crew Smash it!

Nicky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:36 +0000

I'm the one in the middle wearing - er - the wrong colour - Saxon colours!

Knight Crew the opera opens at Glyndebourne to four star reviews in The Independent and The Guardian and a call for a West End transfer from Gramophone. To quote: This or Mama Mia? No competition. But what I feel about that is nothing to the way I feel about all the people who have made this project possible – most especially the extraordinary chorus of young people who have worked their socks off to become my Knight Crew. LEGEND! Days later I’m still over-adrenalised (hey, I’m the guy who normally sits alone at a desk….), over-excited and totally exhausted.

BBS Booksigning in Chichester

Nicky — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:59:32 +0000

BBS - Bookshop of choice

EXCLUSIVE BOOK SIGNING AT BRITISH BOOKSHOPS & STATIONERS

Did you see Knight Crew at Glyndebourne and fail to pick up a copy of the book? Have you heard the buzz about the new Gareth Malone BBC TV documentary on Knight Crew and want to read ahead of the game? Do you live somewhere near Chichester? If so – join me on Saturday 13 March when I will be signing copies of Knight Crew at British Bookshops & Stationers situated in Chichester town centre at 9 North Street between 12.30noon and 1.30pm. Hope to see you there. For more information on British Bookshops & Stationers visit www.britishbookshops.co.uk