Terry Gatsby could have become a bubblegum blowing champion and scored a Super Bike. But he messed up big time, and now Dad says, ‘No more bubblegum.’ The doomed Terry has blown his last bubble.

Or has he? Take a bag of magic bubblegum, a whole lot of daring, a criminal conspiracy and some weird adventures, and you have a recipe for fun and chaos.

Published by OMNIBUS BOOKS, a Division of Scholastic Australia.

I believe in dreams.

   Not the kind of dreams you have when you’re too hot in bed, or you’ve eaten too much the night before. I believe in the kind of dreams that tell you something important, and you know they’re telling you and you know they’re important, and even after you wake up you remember them because you’re not supposed to forget them.

   ‘A Boy, A Bubble and a Whole Lot of Trouble’ began magically, in a dream.

   That is, I’m having this dream about strolling through the children’s section in a big bookshop and stopping in front of a stand of all the same book. Each book has a bag of bubblegum stuck to it. If this isn’t unusual enough, each book says that I’ve written it, because my name is on the cover! There’s a title too – ‘Bubble Gatsby’.

   If you’re quick and paying attention (and I’m sure you are) you’ll notice that ‘Bubble Gatsby’ is NOT the current title. Chalk that one up to the weird and wonderful world of publishing.

   Anyway, I wake up. Sit up. Remember the dream.

   ‘Wow,’ I say, ‘I just dreamed that I wrote (am going to write) a book that actually got (is going to get) published!’

   Great stuff, though what’s it about?

   Well, bubblegum, obviously.

   To think about it, I go for a walk on the beach. But I find that I don’t so much think as wander along the sand, skirting seagulls etc. Then, without any effort on my part, the story just turns up. It’s there in my head, like a welcome visitor. Just the bones of it … my visitor’s a bit on the skinny side. But he blows bubblegum bubbles, and he makes me laugh.

   Next comes the WORK, because I shouldn’t get away with it this easily, should I? I have to flesh-out the story with characters and a pacy plot, and make the humour, um, funny. It takes a while. I have to put thought into it … and feeling. It has to be good enough for readers to actually want to read it.

   And that’s the story of how ‘A Boy, A Bubble and a Whole Lot of Trouble’ got written – the skinny bones of it at least. If you want to check out the Bubble Gatsby Gallery of portraits on another page, click the button for it.