Joya: AiR / writer Daniel Wade / IRE

‘At Joya: AiR, the true meaning of splendid isolation became clear to me.

I’ve always worked best in solitude, and so the rugged tranquility of the Andulacian countryside surrounding the cortijo provided a welcome silence that I needed to work. In my experience, a drastic change of scenery has never failed to electrify my creative juices, and this change was no different.

I arrived there in December, with an aim toward getting started on a new novel entitled ‘Tower of Silence’. I'd been making preparatory drafts for this project over the last few years, but, preoccupied by various other endeavours, I had yet to properly sit down and get it under way.

Set in contemporary Dublin, Tower of Silence concerns a wide array of characters who find themselves embroiled in a nocturnal katabasis of revenge and reluctant criminality - and all underpinned by a premium of clipped, Dublin-infused profanity and amateur philosophy.

My designated office in the cortijo offered a stunning view of the Velez Rubio mountains, a steel weather vane and a set of solar panels that followed the sun on its daily excursion. I could get up and have a coffee and work in the room’s natural light, the slow conversion of daybreak into dusk playing out right in front of me. Thus, I was ensured of ample natural stimuli. The arid, isolated and dust-clouded environ of pine trees, thistles and meandering trails that lured one further and further into the wilderness, so unlike the close-knit barometry of Dublin, helped clarify the rhythm of my characters’ thoughts, and amplify their often-savage veering between profundity and profanity. It is this veering that I have been trying, ever since I began writing seriously, to render explicitly on the page. At Joya: AiR, I finally felt like I’d made progress on it.

It is no small irony that the novel is set in a milieu that is utterly divergent to that in which its first few chapters were written; yet this very incongruence aided its beginnings. The clear air at a high altitude, the dust clinging to my boots whenever I went on a hike, the sheer weight of history that seemed to simmer at every angle - none of it was lost on me.

I have a lot of hope for this book.

I don’t take hope for granted.’

Daniel Wade

Daniel has been writing seriously for over a decade. He writes poetry, drama, and prose. In June 2015, following his graduation from the Institute of Art, Design & Tehnolongy (IADT), his radio drama, 'The Outer Darkness' was broadcast on Dublin South FM. The following year, his spoken-word album ‘Embers and Earth’ was launched at the National Concert Hall, Dublin. His first stage play, a crime drama called 'The Collector', opened the 20th-anniversary season of the New Theatre, Dublin and was described as “a brutally convincing portrayal of Dublin City life” by The Irish Times. His second radio drama 'Crossing the Red Line' was broadcast on RTE Radio 1 Extra, and later won a silver award at the New York Festivals Radio Awards for Best Digital Drama. His work has won awards, including the Hennessy New Writing (2015), the Write by the Sea Award (2019), and the Eamon Keane Full-Length Play Award (2022). 2021 saw the publication of both his poetry collection 'Rapids' (Finishing Line Press) and his novel 'A Land Without Wolves' (Temple Dark Books).

Joya: AiR / Daniel Wade / IRE