“Summer of 69 was on someone’s radio at the time. It’s an anthem, isn’t it? ‘
Got my first real six-string; bought it at the Five-and-Dime’. It just shrieks ‘freedom’;
freedom from the prison bars of pin-stripes. It’s like an eternal summer’s day,
a group of innocent teenagers flattening the grass in some daisy-chain circle;
guitars, voices and unchained thoughts, writing the song of that day
that will encapsulate its essence forever”
Michael: Diary Of A Diary
“I have come to the conclusion that there are another two categories of people.
Those who take the book of their life and live each page, experience each line
and learn from the good chapters as well as the bad. And there are those
who immediately turn to the last page to find out the outcome
so that the rest of the book becomes meaningless”
Sammy: The Rainbow Player
This is my first novel, published in 2017, It’s the coming-of-age story of a young England footballer who discovers that he is gay. One of my aims for writing it was to help bring awareness of the ludicrous situation of gay players not being able to be open about their sexuality.
‘England footballer, Sammy Hatchington, has never considered sexuality before. As a teenager, Sammy broke the mould of his youthful peers with his desire to open the door to life’s endless possibilities. He escaped a deprived estate and, with the help of Old Thomas, his surrogate father, Davey, his soul-mate, and Gran, the connoisseur of footballer’s bottoms, launched himself on a path toward his personal and professional goals. Now, several years later, he must make a decision that could destroy everything he has fought for, and create a furious media frenzy………David Kerby-Kendall’s joyous and witty novel challenges preconceptions about professional sportsmen and love, and is also a delightful and moving story of a young man’s journey to self-knowledge’.
And here is an interview I did for BBC radio with Anton Hysen, one of the handful of openly gay footballers in the world.
My second novel (published in May 2021) is the story of three people’s experiences of depression and a diary that writes its own entries. I wanted to write about the real person hidden behind the depression, the fun-loving eternal teenager desperately fighting the shadow of the illness.
Few diaries write their own entries. This rather pompous, leather-bound journal, however, has emphatic views on life in general and paperbacks in particular. During its lifetime it is owned by three people: newly separated Michael is standing at the edge of the world, trying to remember the life-loving, eternal teenager he once was; Kathryn is an actress, attempting to keep her feisty, outspoken character whilst being constantly ridiculed by her boyfriend and family; and shy 18 year-old Jacob is sucked into the mire between his parents’ draconian morals and his own burgeoning sexuality. The Diary forms a deep and endearing attachment to its owners as they chronicle the joys of everyday life and the mental cloud that Michael calls, ‘The Shadow’.
I’m donating all my royalties to my local branch of MIND
“This morning I was a dog, an ironing board and an
eighteenth-century whore with gonorrhoea.
This afternoon I was a present-bearing fairy with a broken wing
and a 3-year-old’s puke down her cleavage.
I bet Kyra Knightley has had an easier day”
Kathryn: Diary Of A Diary