Writing
I have always written.
Sometimes for work, sometimes for other people, and, increasingly these days, for myself. There have been columns, short stories, children’s books, and assorted bits and pieces along the way.
Now, I’m concentrating on fiction for the page and screen.
I seem to be drawn to ordinary people who turn out to be anything but. The overlooked, the underestimated, and the people who behave in ways they really shouldn’t.
Usually, they get themselves into trouble.
Driftmeyer
Driftmeyer is a small Wisconsin community where people know each other, notice things and are usually fairly sure they know what's going on.
Then, an eleven-year-old boy is found murdered.
This is my current novel-in-progress; a crime story about secrets, loyalties and the things that can hide beneath the surface of an apparently ordinary community.
Driftmeyer is set in a place I am familiar with. I have experienced, first hand, the quirkiness of a tight-knit mid-west town.
Whilst planning out this novel I began to realise that, for me, the crime may start the story, but the characters are what make me want to tell it.
Ashes to Stashes
Feature screenplay · Completed / currently being re-edited.
Four Midlands mates. Their dead friend’s ashes. A trip to America. And a camper van they really shouldn’t have taken opens up the story.
Ashes to Stashes is a feature-length comedy drama about friendship, loyalty and what happens when a well-intentioned journey goes spectacularly off course.
More writing, updates, extracts and further projects at Jackie Wilkes
100 Word Stories
I started writing stories in exactly 100 words — small ideas, usually involving ordinary people getting themselves into rather less ordinary situations.
Some stayed at 100 words.
Others, I’ve begun to suspect, might not be finished with me yet.
The Drop
A motel chambermaid. A cocaine drop. The wrong room.
Kaylee only makes one small mistake. Unfortunately, room 3 has just been given to a retired LAPD officer and his K9.
Ransomware
Penny and Brenda run a perfectly respectable dry-cleaning business.
They've discovered that people reveal rather a lot about themselves when they hand over their clothes – names, addresses, occupations, habits and, occasionally, opportunities.
When a successful QC walks in carrying an armful of expensive suits, Penny and Brenda take an interest.
Meanwhile...
Finishing one thing has never stopped other stories turning up.
There are ideas for television, more fiction and several half-started stories currently waiting — not always patiently — for their turn.
One involves planning permission, parish politics and two formidable women in their seventies.
I’m trying not to encourage them until I’ve finished the novel.
Before the fiction...
I was writing long before I started making trouble for fictional people.
For several years I wrote food, drink and lifestyle features alongside my work as a graphic designer, as well as copy, proposals and editorial for clients across hospitality, art and other creative projects.
Somewhere along the way, the food columns became less about the food and increasingly about the people, places and things that happened around it. My editor eventually gave them their own heading: Jackie's World.
Words and pictures have always gone together. These days I'm mostly using them to tell stories.
Looking back, perhaps the clues were already there.