WRITING 

After writing several short stories in the seventies, Richard Woolley began his first novel, Back in 1984, in the late eighties. But, as other creative and academic projects took precedence, he did not finish the book until 2004 – and, even then, put it to one side. 

 

In 2005, a second novel, Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands, was written, but again, on completion, locked up in a virtual drawer. 

 

Finally, after writing a third novel, Friends and Enemies, in New Zealand, Woolley decided to come out of the authorial closet and push for publication. Despite, or, perhaps, because of being a filmmaker and screenwriter, he has always suspected that the written word, in its literary form, offers both writer and reader more scope than film or TV. 

In the following decade he published a further three books starting with the futuristic novel Sekabo in 2014, followed by Bread of Heaven in 2016 and Stranger Love, in 2017.  

 

Bread of Heaven offers a reworking of the second half of Back in 1984 combined with a comedy feature film script about the 1984 miners' strike originally commissioned by the British Film Institute in 1985. Stranger Love reconstructs events surrounding the first meeting in New Zealand/Aotearoa of Europeans and Maori in December 1642, as seen through the eyes of Tasman's young nephew and the daughter of a Maori chieftain. 

 

Woolley's latest book, and seventh novel, DETACHMENT THEORY, was published in June 2022. For more details of this new work and purchase options, please click here.