Hello...
I think the first thing I should do is apologise. Apologise to everyone who signed up to my email list, only to be met with very long silences. Apologise, and do better...
I do hope you can forgive me, it was never my intention - perhaps the hardest thing for writers to do is write about their writing. Certainly, that’s been my finding.
To remedy this I’ve signed up to Substack, thereby creating that extra push to actually deliver to my long-suffering readership, but also create some sort of concrete platform as well as a return.
My plan is to write fortnightly to everyone on this list and also publish my long-awaited non-fiction – ‘Anatomy of A Flop’ to paid subscribers.
For those new to me, allow me rewind a little...
Although it took a while to realise it, I’ve been a writer for most of my life. That transmogrified into ‘Storyteller’.. first as actor, but then as screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist - completing a Screenwriting Masters from the National Film & Television School, back in 2007.
As an actor, I got a fair few TV staples after graduated Guildhall… ‘The Bill’, ‘Eastenders’, ‘Soldier, Soldier’, ‘Casualty’, etc., and also a few films; poorly paid and depressingly stereotyped, in the main. I also realised though that if I wanted to work consistently, and in stuff I actually wanted to do rather than merely pay the bills, I was going to need to get pro-active about it.
This was the 90’s, after all.
To that end, I made my first short film ‘Losing Heart’ in '97 and my first feature film ‘Offending Angels’ in '99 as writer, director, producer and co-lead, all pre-digital, shot on the legendary Kodak Super-16 film stock.
As author, I’ve self-published three novels on Amazon, also just recently completing the Faber Academy 6-month novel course, scribing the second of two novels (‘Brown Sugar’ being the first, then ‘Silver Spoon’), which need to go through the mixer (at least) one more time before anyone else gets to see them.
Concerning the two sides to transracial adoption... ‘Brown Sugar’ is about race, tracing birthparents, Windrush and Britain’s mostly-forgotten ‘indentureship’ replacing Black slaves during the UK’s Victorian ‘sugar rush’.
Book two, ‘Silver Spoon’, covers the experience of growing up in a white family, as a Trinidadian Asian and explores deeper, unseen aspects to adoption. ‘Auto-fiction’ I believe, is what it’s called.
But again, I’m jumping ahead. If you’d care to subscribe, what you’ll become privy to is the quite extraordinary story of ‘Offending Angels’ and how the wheels came off.
And I don’t say ‘extraordinary’ lightly...
What started out as an opportunity to act in something non-stereotyped - for myself, but also as a bit of a laugh - making a low-budget movie with my mates, turned into a saga involving not only a cast of Jack Davenport, Andrew Lincoln and Susannah Harker among others, but also Lord Fink, Prince Edward, Cannes Film Market, Raindance, HMRC, Channel 4 News, Sky News and even the London Footsie.
The reason I’m doing this Substack at all is to share what my life is about at the moment, offer a cracking good yarn and also eke out a living, whilst the industry I love fails to provide one. I suppose also by default offering insight into what it is to work as a person of colour within this business: As an actor, but also as filmmaker (of two feature films) and author (of five six novels and a memoir).
So, I shall be putting out a weekly excerpt relating the ‘Offending Angels’ wheeze, entitled ‘Anatomy Of A Flop’ - named after the headlining double-page spread in the Evening Standard of the same title, and available to any kind subscribers.
So many stories to impart, hopefully, you’ll find this journey of mine diverting in some measure.. I look forward to sharing with you all.
To non-subscribers, I’ll continue to blog - on film, on books and my journey as an Indie filmmaker and author. I do hope you’ll come along for the ride, but understand if you want to bail.
The last thing I ask of you is to share this endeavour with anyone you feel might be interested.
Thank you.