By Martin Duffy 

I have been a writer since I was about ten years old. Could be earlier.

I believe I inherited that from my father, who was apparently known for sitting at the bar in a pub, telling a great story, then walking out before the ending, leaving the other men in the pub gasping to know how the story ended.

That was my Dad. A storyteller.

I am seventy-three years old, three years older than my Dad lived to be. Looking back on my career as a filmmaker and author I see that most of my creative work has been about telling family stories, either

gathering research or helping others in my family tell theirs. In my working years I was everything from a postman to a film editor as I tried to make a living and do my best as a husband and father. I did not always succeed. But I always told stories. Radio, TV, novels, films. You name it, I applied my ham fist to it.

I am proud of what I do as a storyteller and I hope that my father would be proud of me too.

The older I get, with the sand slowly running out, the more I find myself on the road to honoring my father as much as I possibly can. He was a giant of a man, frail as he looked, but I only saw that in these later years of my own life.

My newly published book, simply titled DAD, is about my father and the generations that came before and after him. It traces the paternal line I felt compelled to understand more deeply. 

Despite all the family recordings and research I had done, writing DAD was an eye-opening experience as, for the first time, I tried to grasp the voyage of my father's heart. The heart that gave up when it ran out of air supply: another inheritance. Surgery has helped me. It was something my father never had the chance to benefit from. 

The woman my father chose as life partner was joyous but difficult. She was also the one who carried the visible emotions, which meant that, emotionally, she often overshadowed him. My parents suffered the loss of three children. Yet my father kept on fighting the good fight. He always stood by his wife. He endured, which is something I have not done in my life. My father did the marathon. I selfishly only managed a few sprints.

My father drank a bit, but his wife and family were always his priority. He devoted himself to protecting our home and always shielded us. My father was a good man clearing a good path for his wife and family.

My Dad's upbringing was very transient. Throughout his childhood, he moved pretty much every year from town to town in Ireland during the early years of the twentieth century. As I have learned, that era was a defining journey for the man who became my father. My life is reflected in that. My new novel Manhattan Rat has shades of that: giving yourself permission to be who you find out you truly are and not who you are told you are.

In an unexpected way, I find themes of identity and finding the way back home in most, or maybe all, of my work. Learning to be who you are. Being content with who you are. Becoming the person you were building all along, without realising it. Looking in the mirror one day and asking: is this finally me? And being at peace with yourself at long last.

I thank my father for the love, warmth and kindness he passed on to me. My novel DAD, the upcoming children's book Manhattan Rat, and Butterflyman, coming out in 2027, are my thanks to him, again and again and again.

To learn more about Martin, or preorder his book, connect with him at: https://martinduffywriter.com/