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'Lost in Yonkers' at Roxy Lane Theatre – Review

I attended the Roxy Lane Theatre in Maylands on Saturday, 24th August, for a captivating production of Lost in Yonkers . The show played to a full house, a testament to its popularity and the anticipation surrounding it. The audience’s reactions throughout the evening—frequent laughter and quiet attentiveness during poignant moments—reflected the high quality of the production. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance, as did the engaged and appreciative audience. Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers is a complex blend of humour and heartache, and the cast at Roxy Lane Theatre brought this to life with a balance of light-heartedness and depth. The play, which originally opened on Broadway in 1991, won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play that year. Set during World War II, it follows two young brothers who are sent to live with their strict, intimidating grandmother after their mother passes away. As the plot unfolds, the family dynamics become a rich tapestry
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Short Story published: Civilisation

'Civilization' is a story set in the near future where life has just got that bit harder for people. They live in smaller apartments, work longer hours for less pay. There are more rules which they must obey or face violence from stressed out guards. I like the fact that Marco, the main character has such a simple aim, to get to work, but it becomes nearly impossible to achieve. I also like Marco’s determination. So many things are going wrong for him but he just keeps going. So even though the world I’ve created is quite grim, it’s ultimately quite an uplifting story. Movies involving future dystopias are very popular these days with films like ‘The Hunger Games’, ‘Divergent’ and ‘Ender’s Game’ getting a lot of success. Each one of these has a discernible bad guy. That’s fine, movies don’t get much traction without the foe to be overcome but I’ve often wondered what if life just kept getting steadily worse and worse. If the pace of the decline was slow enough, humans wou
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SEARCHING

I searched for ‘adventure’ and it said it was an unusual, exciting or daring experience. The searching wasn't that exciting. I was still sat in front of my computer.  I searched for inspiration and I decided that image of a lightbulb that was returned wasn't at all inspirational in and of itself. So I searched for ‘enlightenment’ and what do you know? I spent a whole hour finding out stuff around the subject of 'The enlightenment’.  But I still hadn't moved. I sat stock-still like a tree, roots reaching out into a world of facts and information, roots that stretched around the world sucking at the sap of our accumulated knowledge. What did I learn? Lots of stuff. I saw a million images as if I'd sprouted many extra sets of eyes that popped from my head and flew out into the world. Omniscience only eluded me because the shininess of each new fact dimmed so quickly when the next one came along. So I shutdown my computer and went out. It was cold. The
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Captive Uploaded

I've just uploaded short story No.5 "Captive." http://issuu.com/peteraoconnor/docs/captive_-_peter_o_connor Here's the blurb: Set in the time of the Spanish conquest of South America, "Captive" is the story of Franciscan monk, taken prisoner after the Spanish Conquistadors desecrate a number of Mayan temples. In order to escape he must face his fears and his prejudices and decide what price he's willing to pay for freedom.  It's one of the longest stories I've ever written at over 8000 words, more of a novella really. Most of it was written in 1994 so, yeah, I'm a bit of a slow writer. I had a problem with the ending so I've dug it up, dusted it off and I'm pretty happy with the ending now. I've you happen to read it I'd love to hear any comments or feedback whether good or bad. "Captive" was inspired in part by Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" where the main character wa
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Story 1: Darwin's Army Uploaded.

My first story is up on Amazon and available for purchase for a measly 89 pence or 99cents or 3 fish fingers, a paper-clip and a sprout if you use the barter system. For the folks in Europe: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00P6F1BMA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0 For the folks in Asia Pacific: http://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B00P6F1BMA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0 Not forgetting the folks in Mexico. Ola! http://www.amazon.com.mx/gp/product/B00P6F1BMA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0 I feel very happy to have my story out there on the inter-galactic super highway rather than gathering virtual dust on my hard disk.
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It's A Start

I've signed up for this blog thingamabob because I figured I needed a spot to waffle on about my writing without boring my facebook friends to death. So here it is. I've started it. I write short stories or I should say I wrote short stories. I've not actually finished one in a very long time so my plan is to dust off the ones I have written and send them out to the universe by way of Kindle Direct Publishing or Facebook and try to get inspired to write some new ones. I've got somewhere around 20 completed stories that I'm happy with. They range from drama to sci-fi to fantasy to just downright weird. Hopefully I can knock the best of these together into a collection for a book. I love the feeling of finishing a story and I love those moments when you get a spark of an idea and the world seems full of possiblilities.  The first one I'm going to upload is called 'Darwin's Army'.
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