I began to write at the age of 8, with the libretto for "A Modern Opera", a very short opera set in Chicago gangland.  I suffered a nervous breakdown when 12 years old, and in an effort to escape from the pit of fear in which this left me, I began to write short stories based on my nightmares, which I collected under the title "Legends of Torment of Body and Soul".  I wrote two other stories, 'The Birch Tree' and 'The White Animal', and at the age of 16 I began my first novel "A Winter Emerald", which I completed at 19.  At 22 I wrote my first full-length film script, "The Devil's Skin", which was filmed under the title "Blood on Satan's Claw".  Since then my writing has favoured film, because of the way it fuses the dream world with reality, the more real it seems, the more dream-like it becomes.  My film, "The Outcasts", which I directed myself in Ireland, joins reality and fairy-tale.