Athlone and wider Midlands feature in short story collection
by David Flynn
Mick Donnellan has been part of the midlands art and culture scene for around a decade. He has a movie, six plays, and four novels to his credit and he has now released his first book of short stories.
“There is a perception that novels are more difficult to write than short stories, but with short stories you have to get the same information in a shorter space, which is a difficult process,” he said. “I started writing short stories in college, it’s a lovely form, and I get to experiment with language.”
He finds as a writer of short stories that there is a moment in a story where you are affected by it and where you get value out of it.
“Something happens in a short story, a conflict or an unfortunate coincidence, where you as the reader are the world inside the story,” said Mick. “I’m always a bit worried reading short stories, because it can put you off doing what you are doing. But I do read some and recently I read Tales of Ordinary Madness by Charles Bukowski, which is about some sad characters.”
Mick speaks about how people are “all being harvested by technology,” and said that “everytime you are on Facebook, something is being taken away from you”.
“You think you are getting it free, but people are losing huge time every day scrolling,” said Mick.
“Your time is like money, and if you could do something productive in that time, it would be better, like reading decent literature. Spirituality and religion is gone and technology is what’s here now. Values are gone and we’ve lost a lot.”
Mick’s new short story collection is called ‘The Dead Soup – Controlling Their Minds Is Much Simpler’.
“The book is trying to capture the idea about people who have no sense of right or wrong, and no sense of morality, just greed with no sense of empathy,” he said.
“Some have no soul and they see everything as profit and loss. It’s in conspiracies, ideologies and racism. There is a lot of racism in the book and I’m trying to capture that personality. I’m trying to capture that rather than overlooking it.”
Mick said Athlone features in the book as does comedy, romance and a little bit of street violence!
“It’s an Irish book, Athlone, Ballymahon and Tullamore is in there and also Galway and Mayo,” he said. “It has a sense of reality and is all set within the last three to five years. I’ve been trying to avoid specific references to places and there are some stories that are absolute fiction, which are just set nowhere.”
Mick lived in Connaught Street, Athlone, for several years and he is a native of Ballinrobe.
He previously taught Creative Writing night classes at Athlone Institute of Technology, where he edited a collection of student writings called ‘Tales from the Heart’.
“I love Connaught Street, it’s a lovely place, that side of town and I find the people of the Batteries the finest, dead sound, very decent, very honest,” he said.
He said that in future, he will continue to write short stories as well as novels.
“The Dead Soup touches on modern issues, social inequality and it’s very local with one story even with Athlone in the title!” said Mick.
He had a successful launch in Ballinrobe last week and hopes to have an Athlone launch in the coming months. The book can be bought on Amazon as a paperback and for Kindle.
“Athlone has great talent and I’ve had very happy times here and made great friends from the moment I arrived, and I clicked into the creative circle,” said Mick. “I’ve met people like Mary O’Rourke who launched the AIT book that I edited and friends through Poetry in the Park and the people of Athlone Little Theatre.”
Mick’s feature film, ‘Tiger Raid’, was filmed in Jordan in 2016 and starred Brian Gleeson. His novels were El Nino, Fisherman’s Blues, Mokusatsu and The Naked Flame all of which are also available on Amazon.