The huge metal cylinder slowed and hung in the air, before planting itself on the New York tarmac, the door swung open and out strode an alien? No just an elderly ex pat Brit from Tenerife, armed not with a ray gun, but a haul of SciFi short story books. Unbeknown to him, Tony Thorne MBE (left in pic) had taken his first steps to Hollywood glory.
First contact made
The first of 3 volumes of Tenerife Tall Tales won the Best Science Fiction Read award at the New York Beach Book Festival Contest earlier this year, and it would take a bizarre and speculative mind to see that turning into a film offer, but in Tony’s world, anything is possible.
Now retired from developing advanced medical products; and with his Queens honour for low temperature surgical instrumentation pinned to his chest, Tony’s cynical and mistrusting tales have taken him to several international SciFi events. Home life is split between Austria, native land of wife Eva (she’s written a Viennese Cooking recipe book) and the west coast of Tenerife for the winter months.
The Plot Thickens
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, as Tony was to find out, “the prize for the book award wasn’t money, but it was some excellent publicity. “Apart from several enthusiastic published reviews, I received an email contact from a Hollywood producer/scriptwriter, saying she liked my book and wanted to consider developing some of the linked stories into a screenplay, for a full-length movie. I told her about my other two volumes, and a new collection of Macabre Tales, and she insisted I send her them all!” Tony knows a bit about the gap between Hollywood plans and execution though; his friend, American writing legend, Harry Harrison (right in pic) has had many film options running since his story Soylent Green first hit the screens in 1973.
Delving In Tenerife History
Emails have since bounced back and forth across the Atlantic and things are firming up. “She is now developing a screenplay based on “Hologhosts” a tall tale about some holidaying ghost hunters who try to evoke the past up on Mount Teide. It will be a character driven adventure, set and filmed partly in Wales but mainly in Tenerife. The scriptwriter already has one of the producers of The Lord of the Rings trilogy seriously interested in selling the project to a studio.”
Mystery And Adventure Beckon
There is a rich vein of fiction to mine with Tony; he is just finishing his first full length novel, SciFi of course, and has written well over 70 short stories in the last 4 years alone. It all stems back to Saturday mornings at the local flea pit in Southend-on-Sea, watching the grainy black and white adventures of Flash Gordon. In his working life, Tony was always on top of science, but he wondered how easily those roles could be reversed, and that set him off contributing to various short story collections.
Unexpected twists and turns are normal to Tony, so as this real life drama plays out he will continue to type even more bizarre and surreal fates for his characters, as he awaits the call for action. Copies of Tony’s books are available on line from Amazon, WH Smith, and direct from Tony via his website www.tonythorne.com .
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