The Slug Who Flew by Daniel Couzens

Vivid memories


My most vivid memories of books when I was a child are reading to my dad, I am one of four children and we would all take it in turns to read chapters of the famous 5 books by Enid Blyton. 

I was always the strongest reader out of all my siblings and my brother was probably the weakest so another memory of mine is when we were younger I would have him read to me at bedtime and we would laugh our heads off at all of the words he would mispronounce. 


When I was 10

I never really had any specific aspirations of what I wanted to be when I was 10, but I used to love building things. We had a huge box of Lego and k’nex as kids and I would always be building weird and wonderful things with different moving parts.


Did you write stories

I was never really a fan of writing, but I did love drawing. And it would usually be some kind of machine with different stations on it for different operations. 

One drawing I remember was designing my own idea of what a crisp making machine would look like, with a station for peeling the potatoes, and a chopping station.


Writing process

When it comes to my writing process, I’ll start with a basic idea, usually involving one main character. Then I think about all the different situations I want the character to go through, and also how the story will end. 

Then I break it into sections, treating each situation as its own little story within the story.

How do you dream up new ideas

I love the idea of making the impossible, possible. So many of the ideas that I have will start with an impossible situation (like a slug who can fly) and then trying to come up with a way of making it happen (making him a set of wings). That’s the great thing about story telling, you can really let your imagination take the lead.

What advice would you give young storytellers 

Let your imagination run wild and try not to overthink things, once you have your basic idea, I find that ideas for the rest of the story come to me when I least expect it.