Derek was a homosexual gerbil. He knew he was because his parents christened him Derek the Homosexual Gerbil. He was born in 1987 and was first noticed in 1993 by the author. Derek was a tragic joke from the beginning, and a terrible, degenerate, immoral fiend, gifted with immortality and infamy, for better or worse.
Once upon a time, in the summer of ’93, I lay in the hammock in our garden and penned the meandering foundational chapters of The Nice Adventures of Derek the Homosexual Gerbil.
And Derek has been tailing me ever since, those deviant stories proving a compelling focal point for me to express a huge range of ideas, views, traumas and high drama. The novel that is emerging is a wild undertaking of modernist nerve-tingling introspection and silliness.
A coming-of-age metafictional novel, full of naughtiness and loveliness – The Nice Adventures of Derek the Homosexual Gerbil is the story of a sensitive and lonely young man challenged and inspired to get his life together by a dramatised gerbil. It’s a big bad bonkers book of (currently) around 159,000 words and a few crap drawings. A poetic tale of self-exploration and self-expression, prejudice and pride, secrets and shamelessness. A loving friend to the LGBTQ+ community, acknowledging the challenges we face in knowing, creating, and showing ourselves, questioning our truths, mistakes, and beliefs. Some of it is beautiful.
32 years since conception, it’s getting tantalisingly close to being almost complete. I don’t have a publishing plan fully ironed out yet, and welcome any recommendations or professional enquiries. Won’t (might) be too many more years until you can hold a copy of this fabulously filthy fiction, and gasp most vividly. In the meantime, here, you can read and listen to some extracts:
Some Nice Derek the Extracts
I have attempted to (somewhat retrospectively) document the creation of this thing, without giving away too many spoilers. The following is a link to a ‘making of’ page about the making of The Nice Adventures of Derek the Homosexual Gerbil:
The Making of
The Nice Adventures of
Derek the Homosexual Gerbil
I like this novel. Readers and audiences like it too…
Reviews
“Really beautifully written.” ~ Steph Lloyd (16/4/2010)
“I really like this – I’d like to read the whole thing… It’s really lovely.” ~ Nancy Howard (17/4/2010)
“Awesome… So gay!… Hilarious!” ~ Philippa Knudson-Judd (17/4/2010)
“It just grabs you and sucks you in.” ~ Steph Lloyd (7/3/2014)
“I do like a bit of surrealism.” “I need that book. I want to give it to my niece and nephew.” ~ Audience members at Jurnet’s Bar (23/4/2014)
“Haven’t you finished that yet?” ~ Wifey (24/7/2016)
“How’s the writing going? The gay hamster… Yeah, gerbil, sorry… It’s gonna be really epic when it’s finished. It’s kind of like the Bible, how it’s written in chunks over time. I haven’t even read it… I’ve read all of the Bible. There’s a whole chapter devoted to the rape of a city. The worst thing is it’s the children’s version of it. It’s the only version I can understand.” ~ Theo Gallant (6/4/2017)
“You manage to stretch out a lot of crap, don’t you!?” ~ Chubbs (25/10/2018)
Find out more!
Find out more and register your delight, frustration or disgust by liking Derek on Facebook.
Nice Adventures Productions 