The Thirteenth Floor. Teen murder thriller / spacetime travel. First and last chapters and synopsis. Loved by children’s TV/film maker, Maddie Darrell of Darrell MacQueen (I hope you don’t mind me quoting, Maddie): “I have now read the Thirteenth Floor – a great, epic adventure, wow. Why is it not for me? It is too epic/big budget – indies do not get these sort of drama opportunities (I wish we did)! The in-house drama team at CBBC might be a better bet – they are fully-funded so the opportunity to visualize time travel, Vienna locations is much greater. What I love (of course) is the time travel theme – nicely weaved and a huge surprise. I love the scene where Hannah is in the lift but the reader only gradually realizes that all is not what it seems – your mix of the real with magical realism is wonderful. I worry that some of the brutal truths will be too much for CBBC but it might all be in the execution.
This feels less serial and more of a one-off. A feature film? There is something really engaging about your ideas and I am genuinely sorry to not offer more positivity in regard to the move to the TV screen via Darrall Macqueen.”
“It’s a remarkable piece of imagination... but not quite suitable for our list... not quite children’s, not quite adult,” Barry Cunningham.
Any takers?
