Tony Domaille, 'Resolutions' contributor, talks about his writing

Tony has recently won our Script Challenge, where writers we have published were invited to turn one of their short stories into a ten minute script. His script, Star Gazing will be published  next month with the other scripts that were highly commended in a volume entitled Script Challenge. 

We have also published Tony's short story Conflict Resolution Management  in our annual anthology, in 2021 entitled Resolutions. Several contributors to Resolutions will be featured here over the coming weeks.              

So, over to Tony: 

I primarily write for the stage, and I never tire of the buzz of an audience reaction to my imaginings being played out under the lights.  Having said that, writing stage scripts came about by fluke. I had injured my back and, being laid up for weeks, was very bored. Then my brother, who knew I wrote short stories, convinced me to try script writing. Months later, an AmDram group produced my first effort, and I was hooked.

 

In all the years I have been writing I’ve never come up with a routine, or even a dedicated workspace. But I do have a method that often works out well. I come up with an idea for a short story and write it.  I’ve been fortunate to be published in a number of anthologies, in e-zines like CaféLit, and magazines like Seven and Your Cat.

 

 

Once I’ve written a story, I can sometimes see a stage script in the making and write the conversion.  So, I’m lucky enough to have been paid for stories, and to receive royalties for my published stage scripts, but it still feels like a joyous hobby rather than a trade. I suppose that makes me a writer, but I still feel awkward making the claim. That said, it’s a source of pride to know that people are prepared to pay for my work.

 

I guess I’m most proud of my scripts that have won awards. I genuinely look to audience reaction for the best guide as to whether the work has hit the mark. But who doesn’t like an accolade, and winning prizes?  My plays have won script writing competitions in the UK and USA and at Festival competitions.

 

   

 

As an impatient chap, I’d have to admit to not really enjoying the before and after parts of a writing project anything like as much as the writing itself.  Research can be interesting, but not as alluring as the idea! And editing can be painful. Still, I know both things are important and most often find the self-discipline to get it done.

 

             

          

 

I’m really lucky in that I have never been short on ideas, even if I’m sometimes short on the tenacity to further them! My immediate goals are to write my third full length play and to add to my festival awards for one act plays. Time marches on, but I still cling to the ambition I will one day write something as good as someone like Richard Curtis. Imagine being able to engage that many people with a mix of the comical and the heart touching. In the meantime, my latest one act drama, Normal For, will premiere at the Avon Short Play Festival on 26^th February.  It’s a hard hitting story of a teacher concerned about a little boy, but finding people won’t listen.

 

The majority of my published scripts can be found on the Lazy Bee Scripts website. Tony Domaille (lazybeescripts.co.uk)

 

Maeve Murphy and Christmas at the Cross

 

Today I have on my blog film maker and aficionado writer, Maeve Murphy. Bridge House recently published her novella  Christmas at the Cross. Maeve has also contributed to several Bridge House and Chapeltown anthologies.    

So, Maeve, can you tell our readers about your book.

 It is set at Christmas in Kings Cross in the early 90s and Blathnaid a young Irish woman fleeing an abusive relationship i with her ex Kieran s holed up in a flat of a friend who is away. She makes friends with a neighbour who is also a street walker. Things get edgy when Kieran appears back again....

 And what about your research for this book. How did you do that?

I lived in Kings Cross in the early 90s, and so know the world like the back of my hand. It was a  unique time. The characters are inspired by people I met and things I heard or saw. That said as a writer I normally will merge these people together to make a third who is an utterly new character in their own right. 

Very wise. So, what inspired you to write this? How does this compare with your other creative practice?

I am a film maker, i.e. a screenwriter and film director and so story telling is very familiar to me but prose is not. I have always had a secret desire to write prose, I think many Irish writers do, its such a hallowed place in Irish culture. I wrote the first part as a story for the Bridge House Collection Nativity and that was published in The Irish Times and that was so thrilling and exciting it inspired me to keep writing and complete the story as a novella. 

There is a strong sense of time and place in this novella? How did you create that? 

 I guess I remembered what the world was like when I lived there. For some reason I remember it vividly and this sense of time and place is very accurate. The fictional story slipped into that. 

What's next? Are you tempted to write more fiction?

I would love to do some more fiction; I am just trying to find time to figure out a new idea at the moment. I have written one page and found a new voice and am excited. Also Christmas at the Cross has been optioned by a production company in Dublin for a film. I have written the first draft and we are waiting to hear about funding for the second draft. So I will be adapting it as a screen writer. I read Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption and watched the film over Christmas just to see the difference. The film centralised and dramatised the central two characters and their friendship whereas the book, though it had that, was also reporting the story of the guy who breaks out at one step remove. 

Are there any writers who inspire you?

Actually I like Stephen King as he writes great novellas. I love shorter novels. I also was inspired by Jack Kerouac for his exuberant speedy poetic prose and his interest in counter culture and people off the beaten track and buddhism. I love the economy and psychological depth of Colm Toibin and also Anne Enwright who has a similar quality.  And I love the great read and wonderful characters of Marian Keyes.  

Do you have any new events planned for the book?

Not yet...but I hope some will arise. 

 Find out more and how to buy it

 

My mate Vincent: some thoughts on Vincent Van Gogh and how this artist is similar to us writers

 

As part of my 70^th birthday celebration we went to the Van Gogh Alive exhibition at Media City, Salford. It was a cold, clear day and what a charming innovation: there is a café set up on the piazza and so that customers don’t have to sit in the cold air they’ve erected small green houses, each with their own heater, so that you can sit out of the wind with your “bubble”.

I’ve been a great fan of Van Gogh for many years.  I first got to know his work when we lived in Haarlem in the Netherlands for a while.  The children went to the British School of Amsterdam, which was situated near to the Van Gogh museum.  We all had the Museumkaart which gave us continuous access to this museum and many others.

I became fascinated with the artist and even went to a “beginners” art course at the museum.  Now, I wasn’t a complete beginner but I was much more a beginner than the other participants. It was enjoyable nevertheless and I learnt a lot.

It’s always seemed so unfair that Van Gogh’s works are worth so many millions now yet he lived in poverty, only selling one work in his life time and frequently having to write to this brother Theo to beg for money with which to buy paints. Yet if he’d become famous in his own life time he would have probably been completely overwhelmed. Still, it might have been nice if he could have lived just a little more comfortably.  To some extent Van Gogh was aware of this irony. “I can’t change the fact that my paintings don’t sell. But the time will come when people will recognise that they are worth more than the value of the paints in the picture.”

Even as I write this I ask myself whether I really want a best-seller published by one of the Big Five because of all the attention that goes with that?

Van Gogh was also a prolific writer and wrote so many letters. I have read most of them. This exhibition highlights several quotes form Van Gogh and many of them seem to apply to my life as a creative practitioner as well.

“the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad and commit a crime” Well perhaps I wouldn’t go that far, but cafés are important spaces for  me and I can work every well in one.  Hence the Creative Café Project.      

“The way to know life is to love many things.’ ‘Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.” Quite so.

‘Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.’ Isn’t that the way we always work?

‘I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?’ I often wonder what we need to earn money for. Clearly in order to provide ourselves with food, warmth shelter, clothing and the well-being that comes from being healthy. But what do we need beyond that? Nature, art and literature would be enough for me.   

Van Gogh definitely lived to work rather then working to live: “One must work and dance if one really wants to live.”

Why do I like his work so much? That’s hard to define. Perhaps it’s the intense emotion it carries with it. A favourite work is the Wheatfield with Crows painting. It was housed at the time we lived in the Netherlands in the permanent exhibition at the Van Gogh museum. You could stand in front of it and feel that the crows were flying towards you.  The Active exhibition implies that they fly into the air as they hear a gun shot. Is this the sound of Van Gogh taking his own life? Perhaps he knew this was going to happen. This was his last painting.

Yes, I feel a strong affinity with Vincent Van Gogh. Is my ultimate aim as a writer to write as effectively as he painted?            

The Van Gogh Alive Experience continues at Media City until 28 February 2002.  Details here.              

News 1 January 2022

Happy New Year 

 A happy new year to you. Let’s hope 2022 is a good one.  

Do any of you have any new writing ambitions? If you’d care to share them I’ll hold you to them and check in with you from time to time. My own aspirations are a little vague: write better, be more determined, but above all continue to enjoy the process.

I have to have some routine surgery in the next few weeks. I’ve been advised to shield until then. I’m seeing this as an opportunity to get stuck into my writing.          

Current writing

I’m now on penultimate draft of my fifth Peace Child novel, The Glastonbury Specification. In fact, I’m near the end of that. Then I’ll be transferring it form Scrivener to Word for the final edit. This is always an interesting process. It can show up some previously unnoticed typos and formatting issues. It’s also very useful seeing it in a different form.  

I’m also almost finished my manual for writers’ group now. It has fifty-two plans for creative writing sessions. This includes a description of equipment needed, any activity that needs to be done in advance, timing for writing and sharing work, with suggestions of how to do the latter and suggestions of how to build on the work.

I’ve had another article published with Talking about My Generation: https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/memories-of-christmas-day-growing-up-rituals-of-christmas-past This has also appeared in the print version of the magazine.

My novella, Rozia’s U-log, is serialised on Channillo: https://channillo.com/series/rozia-s-u-log/  The story is a bridge between books two and three of the Peace Child series, Babel and  The Tower. It tells the story of what has happened to one of the medium-strength characters between the two books.  

 

The Young Person’s Library

Alas, no new books added this month. Come on The Hive.

I really recommend this lovely online shop that supports indie bookshops and delivers promptly.   

Please can you make some more recommendations in children’s books?

 

 Current reading recommendation

I’ve been a little bogged down with reading Mr Dickens this month and I’m not actually recommending him this time. Well, we all already know he’s good, don’t we?    

I won three books by Katie Flynn in the draw at the U3A Christmas dinner. They are as one might expect delightful easy reads. I’ve read two so far and the one I prefer of these two is Liverpool Taffy.

It is set in 1930s’ Liverpool where Biddy O'Shaughnessy works at a sweet shop. After her mother dies she is taken in and almost enslaved by the sweet shop’s owner.  She escapes to live with a friend for a short while. The friend is a “kept woman” and Biddy has to move on again when her friends’ lover dies and her friend finds herself pregnant.  Biddy goes into service but encounters complications here as well.

The characters are engaging. The story rattles along at a good pace and has an upbeat ending. It’s quite a long read but good for this time of the year or as a holiday read.

It’s the type of book I’d like to write myself.      

Grab you copy here.  

 

 Giveaway

Note: these are usually mobi-files to be downloaded to a Kindle.  Occasionally there are PDFs.

This month I’m offering my The Prophecy, the first story in the Peace Child series.

Kaleem Malkendy is different – and on Terrestra, different is no way to be.
Everything about Kaleem marks him out from the rest: the blond hair and dark skin, the uncomfortable cave where he lives and the fact that he doesn’t know his father. He’s used to unwelcome attention, but even so he’d feel better if some strange old man didn’t keep following him around.

That man introduces himself and begins to explain the Babel Prophecy – and everything in Kaleem’s life changes forever.  

Find out more.  Grab your copy and lots of other freebies here.

And please, please, please leave a review when you’ve finished.    

Note: Normally my books and the books supplied by the imprints I manage sell for anything from £0.99 to £10.99.  Most on Kindle are about £2.99 and the average price for paperback is £7.00. Writers have to make a living. But I’m offering these free samples so that you can try before you buy.

 

The Schellberg Project

The posts may be helpful for teachers who are familiar with the Schellberg stories or who are teaching about the Holocaust.  They may also be interesting for other readers of historical fiction.

Sometimes I also write about what might be of interest to other writers.

I’ve added just one post this month. This is actually about something that can happen as part of the publishing process. It’s just so ironic that it hit the book about Clara.  Read the post here:

Clara let down again   

 

Some notes about my newsletters and blogs

They do overlap a little but here is a summary of what they all do.

 

Bridge House Authors For all those published by Bridge House, CaféLit, Chapeltown or The Red Telephone or interested in being published by us. General news about the imprints. News for writers. Links to book performance. Sign up here.

 

The Bridgetown  Café Bookshop where you can buy my book and books published by Bridge House Publishing, CafeLit, Chapeltown Books and The Red Telephone.  Visit us here.     

 

Chapeltown Books News about our books. Sign up here.

 

The Creative Café Project News about the project and CaféLit – for the consumer rather than for the producer.  Sign up here.   

 

Gill’s News: News about my writing, The Schellberg Project, School Visits and Events. Book recommendations and giveaways. Find it here.   

 

Pushing Boundaries, Flying Higher News about conferences and workshops to do with the young adult novel. (infrequent postings) Sign up here.  

 

Red Telephone Books News about our books and our authors. Sign up here.

 

A Publisher’s Perspective Here I and some other editors blog as a publisher. Access this here.   

 

The Creative Café Project Listings and reviews of creative cafés. See them here.   

 

CaféLit Stories Find these here

 

Gill James Writer All about writing and about my books. View this here.

 

Gill’s Recommended Reads Find information here about books that have taken me out of my editor’s head and a reminder of the ones I’ve highlighted in this newsletter.    

 

Gill’s Sample Fiction Read some of my fiction here.

 

The House on Schellberg Street All about my Schellberg project. Read it here.

 

Writing Teacher All about teaching creative writing.  Some creative writing exercises. Access this here.     

 

Books Books Books Weekly offers on our books and news of new books. Find them here. 

 

The Young Person’s Library The children’s book catalogue. Access it here.

 

Fair Submissions  Find it here.   

Opportunities for writers are added several times a day. Roughly once a month I send it out to a list. If you would like to be on that list, sign up here.  

Happy reading and writing.