Teenage kicks

Thirty years ago, Taranaki writer David Hill struck literary gold, turbocharging a career reaching far beyond young adult fiction.

- ANN PACKER

Not many writers hit the jackpot with their first novel. But 30 years ago, after a decade of writing other work, Taranaki author David Hill did just that with See Ya, Simon, about a 14-year-old boy dying of muscular dystrophy. Published in 1992, the story of Simon's year-long friendship with his narrator, Nathan, has sold 200,000 copies worldwide, received numerous awards and been translated into Estonian, French, Dutch, German, Slovenian and Mandarin. It remains in print.

Long before diversity became a popular issue, or what the late John McIntyre called "sick lit" became fashionable, See Ya, Simon was an unlikely candidate for publication. The first publisher to whom Hill submitted it kept it for three months then rejected it. So he sent it to independent Wellington publishing house Mallinson Rendel, best known for its long association with Lynley Dodd and Hairy Maclary.

"I posted it off, glad to be rid of it," he says. When he got Ann Mallinson's acceptance call, he remembers standing at the phone shaking his fist in the air. He is hugely grateful to the publisher. "I was tremendously lucky to have her - she was everything a writer could want." When he heard she was retiring, back in 2010, he thought: "Ann, how dare you!"

Napier-born Hill, MNZM, has written more than 50 titles for children and young adults in recent decades. Many of them were shortlisted for, or won annual children's book awards, including Children's Choice, and the Storylines Notable Book Lists, with some accolades from further afield.