Inspired by his children’s reading habits, New Zealand director and long-time Ponsonby resident Dan Salmon recently wrote Neands, his first book aimed at the ‘kidult’ market.
Inspired by his children’s reading habits, New Zealand director and long-time Ponsonby resident Dan Salmon recently wrote Neands, his first book aimed at the ‘kidult’ market.
“When my son was about 12 or 13, I realized that there weren’t a lot of books out there for either early teens or young adults; there seemed to be a gap between the two”.
“It was the same with my daughter; they’d end up reading books for kids and then ones for adults all by the time they were 13”.
Neands centers around a young boy named Charlie Rutherford, who finds himself in the middle of a world-wide pandemic, one that’s forced everyone around him to regress into a more primitive, and violent state.
As he digs deeper, he discovers that genes that’ve remained dormant in us for eons have suddenly awoken to devastating effect.
During a trip to Ethiopia, Dan visited the national museum of Addis Ababa and saw a display of the various stages of humanity’s evolution. While it didn’t directly inform the book, it fascinated him and helped tap into his imagination.
“I had started reading about DNA and discovered that a lot of us still have around three percent of Neanderthal genes within us.” It’s an intriguing concept, and it's one that got me thinking about what effect they could have on us?
“I thought about how America is today, about the age of prejudice and anger that we’re living in. The Neanderthal’s a metaphor for that, while at the same time it’s an interesting and exciting story.”
While fictions a bit of a departure for him, it’s something he’s clearly enjoyed. Despite making a living as a documentary director, he firmly believes that books still a place in the 21st century.
“We need to remember how intimate and important reading is. It gives us the experience that our screens can’t touch.”
To learn more about Dan, please visit www.nzonscreen.com/profile/dan-salmon/biography
And to find out more about Neands, go to NEANDS www.WhatBookNext.com
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