Hi. 

My name is Patrick - I used to be fond of writing back in High School but I pursued a career in Engineering and later IT and I kind of left my creative past far behind me.  My son Ricky who is in the Spectrum and was a real handful when he was in his mid teens.   To curb his behaviour I promised him we would write our own animated film script.  So mid late 40s I re-awoke my love of writing, and we wrote many scripts and I even wrote a few myself and we wrote manly family animated scripts, but also Fan fiction such as The Dreamstone based on the UK TV series of the same name from the early 90s and The Chespins Movie based on the Pokemon character.  These scripts will likely never be made due to copyright but we also wrote various other scripts, one being an animated script called Amberley's Christmas where, one year when Rudolph gets injured Santa enlists the help of Amberley the Red nose Dalmatian.

I've also written screenplays - both shorts and features - on my own and Dark Sails on the Horizon is one I wrote.  The main character Bridgely is in the spectrum and his volatile behaviour is based on my son ten years ago on a bad day.  The title is from a first verse of a Jethro Tull song - Broadsword (1982) with the first verse being - "I see a dark sail on the horizon," - the medieval progressive rock conjures up images of vikings and was the kernel of the idea - wonder how the constant fear of an invasion from Viking marauders happen at any time and the effect it would have on the people of that time and it lead me to come up with the premise that a medieval town has a Viking Watch program initiated to watch out for Viking ships approaching. I won't get to much into it but to say the main central character is Bridgely - who I hope will be played by my son Ricky. Dark sails is a drama, comedy, romance and it covers themes of inclusiveness and acceptance as well as Redemption and second chances. 

Anyway we made the transition to filmmakers in my mid 50s and we made our first low budget feature 'PJ' - a 108 minute modern adaptation of Pinocchio when I was 60.  PJ is available to stream for free on Fawesome. 

You could say I am a late bloomer but I feel creativity in art is ageless.  I hope to make our second feature 'Dark Sails ' a low budget film in the Illawarra using home sets