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Tumble Turn

Dominic is nearly thirteen years old and, according to an IQ test, a potato. Home life is tricky. Dominic’s mother is allergic to everything in the universe, including his father. His little sister Dale is a witch who does awful things with jelly. School life is doubly difficult. Dominic is in love with not one but three people. The first is his purple-clad teacher, the divine Miss Havercroft. The second is an American girl called Elisa who is perfect in every way except five. And the third ... well, it’s tricky.

All the madness and confusion of Dominic’s life is revealed through his e-mails to the mysterious Uncle Peri in Albury. Uncle Peri has a secret, as well as a house full of sheep. Tumble Turn is a coming-of-age novel for anyone who has ever felt they are not quite normal.

FREE BOOK

By now you might have noticed something about this site, aside from the fact that it is not about the Doug MacLeod who is apparently one of the best blues players in America. (Come on, you've surely worked out that by now.) No, one of the more arresting things about this bookish site is that there are no raves from critics about how good the books are. It's not that such raves don't exist. It's just that it seems, well, needy for an author to include them, especially after he's bombarded you with happy snaps of himself and given you edited highlights of his rather ordinary, though pleasant, life. So, let's pretend I am that needy author. But I'll need to invent someone to speak on my behalf. He'll require a strong, self-confident name. I'll call him Jack, a name I've always admired, and I'll give him a good, self-assured font. Here he is now.

Hi, this is Jack. Tumble Turn has been put out of print. This is a shame. A lot of people liked it. Some even said it was the funniest book that they had read. And it got some terrific reviews:

"When you read a first-person narrative as witty and concise as this hilarious catalogue of misadventures, you realise why so many YA comedies fail to appeal to their target audience."
- Robyn Sheahan-Bright, Australian Book Review.

"Doug MacLeod's new novel is a humdinger. The poet we know and love is here in word games, snappy lines and an essential goodwill towards complicated people. Highly recommended."
- Kerry White, The Australian Bookseller and Publisher.

"Tumble Turn (Penguin) is a funny and charming novel for young teenagers; Doug MacLeod is one of Australia's best writers for this difficult age group." - Sonya Hartnett, The Age. (In 2008 Sonya was the recipient of The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Seriously major.)

See if you agree with them. Your free copy of Tumble Turn is just a click away. Whack it on your iPad and read it like one of those old-fashioned books made of paper and cardboard.

Yours,
Jack.

Thanks Jack. If you want to know more about how the book came to be, scroll on.

Tumble Turn is the first proper novel I wrote. I had a main character in mind, along with a story and some jokes. I didn't think writing a novel could be hard. As usual, I was wrong. I read how-to-do-it books and chatted to other authors. The more I did this, the more frightened I became. Writing a novel suddenly seemed huge.

We have a group of maniacs here in St Kilda. Well, we have many groups of maniacs in St Kilda, but there is one particular group that jumps off the pier and into the sea every morning in winter. According to these guys, it's simple. You just hold your nose and jump in.

I sat down and wrote the first draft of my novel in a weekend. It really was like holding my nose and jumping in. I decided not to censor myself but just kept banging out the whole thing till I was exhausted and had a 30,000 word manuscript. A week later, I read what I'd done. It wasn't great, but at least it was a start. I worked with Penguin editor, Dmetri Kakmi, and through six further drafts we made Tumble Turn into a proper novel. As you'll note from this photo, Dmetri is so cool that he wears his sunglasses indoors. Laura Harris, the beautiful lady in the top left hand corner, is the Publishing Director of Children's Books for Penguin Australia, and almost as cool as Dmetri.

The book was originally called I Might Have Been a Pig, and I think I should have kept that title. (Dmetri preferred it too.) This book has more rejected covers than any other book in the entire universe. Designer Karen Trump gave them to me as a giant birthday card.