Sean Walsh

Biography

I've worked and lived in communications all my life: journalist, subeditor, editor, actor, director, producer - here in Ireland and abroad.

I fell in love with Hiberno-English a long time ago - English as it is spoken and written in my country - and have been in love with it ever since.

I love the challenge of pen and blank paper: creating characters, storylines, drama.

If I may share with you some of the gems that have influenced me down the years; I've tried to abide by them but didn't always succeed!

"You make your way by taking it...

"It does not just happen, you have to make it happen...

"Sometimes in stooping down to pick up two pennies one can lose a fortune..."

Interests

Friendship - when it is not possessive, controlling...

Quiet. Silence - a positive value completely overlooked by many today...

Reading - carefully judged. If I'm not hooked by the first sequence - the first paragraph - I won't read any further...

Trying, day in day out, not to spill any more milk... and to stop crying over milk already spilt.

Not suffering fools gladly...

Analysing Casablanca, frame for frame, line by line...

(TBC...)

Publications
My scripts have been broadcast on RTE, Radio One, BBC 4 and, in translation, on European networks; televised on RTE One, BBC One and Channel 4; staged at the Peacock by the Abbey National Theatre, at the Project, the Eblana, the Liverpool Playhouse and on the London Fringe…

Credits include The Night of the Rouser. Earwig. The Dreamers. Fugitive. Veil. Penny for Your Travels. Far Side of the Moon. Three for Calvary. Jenny One, Two, Three… The Circus. Centre Circle. Where Do We Go from Here, My Lovely? At The Praetorium. Conclave. Assault on a Citadel.

Has conducted many workshops on Creative/Script Writing in Dublin and at various centres around Ireland.

Favourite authors
A D Sertillanges. John Henry Newman. Waugh. Greene. Hemingway. Hans Kung.

Likes
Good conversation. The company of my fellow searchers... Con pane... meaning, with bread... hence company...

Dislikes
Arrogant, self-opinionated prigs... Controlling, bullying clerics...

Favourite Quote
"I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time." (Orson Welles (1915 - 1985))

Books

Pilate Under Pressure 2
You set the price! Words: 3,940. Language: English. Published: February 20, 2024 . Categories: Essay » Literature, Fiction » Christian » Classical & allegory
Asides on Good Friday. Pontius Pilate and Lucius, his trusted C O, confer: how to deal with this angry mob, subdue them... From a Roman perspective... We watch a weak man in a role of Leadership... give way.. give in to the demands of the crowd growing more angry by the minute...
Penny for Your Travels
Price: $6.00 USD. Words: 12,890. Language: British English. Published: January 23, 2022 . Categories: Essay » Literature
Sunday afternoon, long ago winter. My Dad was taking Rusty for a walk and would I like to come? Would I! Thus begins a menoir of sorts: I look back on my boyhood in an Irish town in the 40's, during and after W W 2... Nostalgia, humour, innocence - the stuff dreams are made of... A world that has gone forever and will never be again...
Signals from a Distant Planet
You set the price! Words: 12,890. Language: English. Published: March 19, 2021 . Categories: Essay » Literature
A memoir of sorts. In the world of the 1950's, in an Ireland that no longer exists, a young man enters a religious order and begins a first year Novitiate, cut off from the outside world for the most part. He is allowed to write a monthly letter to his friend, Michael... letters that give the reader an insight into the church of that time... a Pyramid church.
About Veil
Price: Free! Words: 2,480. Language: English. Published: November 13, 2020 . Categories: Plays » European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
A hook... teaser... Snatches from the Smashwords publication listed elsewhere on my page... Pictures, scenes,reviews... press releases... all calculated to whet the appetite of the reader... arouse him/her to invest ina full lenght version of Veil... an ebook, short, sweet and free!
Jenny One Two Three
Price: $6.50 USD. Words: 19,100. Language: English. Published: May 24, 2020 . Categories: Nonfiction » Parenting » Teens
A love story - with a difference! The love of Dad for daughters, the love of daughters for their Dad... Jenny as a child, a teenager, a young woman... the heart break, the tears, the laughs, the good days and the bad... Ann... a woman who helped put the pieces together again... saved the man from himself... slow burnout... gave their Dad back to two girls a growing...
Veil
Price: $4.90 USD. Words: 17,060. Language: English. Published: February 3, 2020 . Categories: Plays » Ancient & Classical
Drama set against the backdrop of the first good Friday. The dilemma of a family in Jerusalem touched by the words and actions of the Central character – who remains unseen, unheard, throughout. And at the core, the daughter, Veronica, the young woman who dares to challenge the status quo, who defends the Nazarene in the face of criticism from her father, mother, boy friend... Veronica's Veil...
Pilate Under Pressure
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 13,810. Language: English. Published: June 25, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Plays & Screenplays » European
(4.50 from 2 reviews)
The events of the first Good Friday from a Roman perspective. Not an angel or a saint in sight!.. A dramatisation of the facts as recorded in the Passion Narrative of Matthew. Enacted at the Praetorium, the fortress in Jerusalem that was the centre and symbol of Roman occupation. How will the Governor of Judaea react when a prisoner is brought before him for trial, one Jesus of Galilee?..
The Dreamers
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 7,890. Language: English. Published: May 30, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Literature » Plays & Screenplays
Set in a grotty bedsitter in the London of the late 60’s, THE DREAMERS centres on two Irish immigrant labourers, Shay and Liam: the former a maturing tree, the latter a mere sapling… They have much in common, little in common… Both are dreamers of dreams: we come to realise that their foremost dream - of making it, returning solvent to their homeland - may never be realised...
Turn of the Tide
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 5,690. Language: English. Published: May 23, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Literature » Plays & Screenplays
Evening. Dublin suburb. Emma alone in a semi-detached... Ever alone. Her marriage on a knife edge. Thin, thin ice. Trapped. No way out. Until the day she meets by chance the woman who is to offer her a new lease of life, restore her self confidence, open doors for her she did not even know existed. Lisa, the stranger who turned Emma's life upside down...
Playback
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 2,600. Language: English. Published: May 21, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Literature » Plays & Screenplays
(2.00 from 1 review)
Evening. He gets home, checks his voice mail as is his wont... listens, bemused, to various recorded messages... tenses, frowns as he hears a far-away voice from a distant past: his estranged wife speaking to, pleading with, her daughter, Jenny, now well into her teens... And so begins a chain reaction...
Dead Man Talking
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 6,080. Language: English. Published: May 16, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Literature » Literary
(1.00 from 1 review)
Ireland in the early 80's. No civil divorce. No exit. Cul-de-sac. No way out of a broken marriage... Shock. Aftershock. Wave after wave... As he comes to realise that his wife has gone, gone for good, he begins to talk - to himself, to his nine-years-old daughter, to a "local in his local," to a parish sage, to a solicitor/lawyer, to his Boss at work, to clerics, to a psychiatrist...
Three for Calvary
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 5,460. Language: English. Published: April 30, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Literature » Plays & Screenplays
(5.00 from 1 review)
Jerusalem. Beneath the Roman Praetorium, in the dungeons, three men lie in chains, awaiting execution: Dismas, a thief, perhaps the greatest thief in all history - who stole Paradise even as he suffered the death penalty. Gestas, a man who may die as he has lived. And Jesus bar Abbas, held for murder and sedition, of whom so little is known, so much surmised... even to the present day.
Centre Circle
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 5,180. Language: English. Published: April 6, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Plays & Screenplays » European
(3.00 from 1 review)
Emma has begun treatment for her alcohol addiction at a Substance Abuse clinic - much to her husband's relief. When it is put to him that he should visit, participate in one of the sessions, he hesitates, then agrees rather reluctantly... What lay ahead on the morrow - for her, for him?..

Sean Walsh's favorite authors on Smashwords