Suzanne Bha­gan

Fran­cis Es­cayg is a jack of all trades. Or rather, of all arts. The song­writer, com­pos­er, mu­sic pro­duc­er, screen­writer, film­mak­er says that writ­ing fic­tion is just an­oth­er way of ex­press­ing him­self and reach­ing wider au­di­ences. Most of his work seems to slant in the di­rec­tion of fan­ta­sy. Es­cape from Silk Cot­ton For­est, part of Macmil­lan Caribbean's Is­land Fic­tion se­ries, is no dif­fer­ent. What's it all about? He sum­maris­es, "It's a sto­ry of friend­ship, strug­gle and over­com­ing dif­fer­ences."

He chose to tell a folk­lore sto­ry be­cause lo­cal young peo­ple can iden­ti­fy with it. In it, Fran­cis cre­ates the King­dom of Ierie, where folk­lore char­ac­ters live, a place akin to Tolkien's Mid­dle Earth. Sur­pris­ing­ly, no hu­mans ex­ist here. He want­ed to dis­pel the "jumbie kin­da vibe" sur­round­ing folk­lore since lo­cals know lit­tle about each char­ac­ter's life. In his book, he ex­plores the ques­tion–was Pa­pa Bois al­ways Pa­pa Bois? Set in the El Tu­cuche for­est, Ierie is home to the Goans. When­ev­er there is un­rest, King Zar throws a huge par­ty to ap­pease the mass­es but Ierie needs a true leader.

One young Goan, Domi­no, plots to avenge his moth­er's death. To­geth­er with Peenut, a klep­to­ma­ni­ac mon­goose with a back­pack, he tries to find her mur­der­ers. How­ev­er, he is side­tracked from his mis­sion when he and two hun­dred oth­er Goans are kid­napped and tak­en to Silk Cot­ton For­est, ruled by Queen La Di­a­b­lesse. Domi­no leads a dar­ing es­cape and al­so dis­cov­ers love and his life's true pur­pose. At the end, Domi­no is chris­tened Pa­pa Bois.

Ini­tial­ly, Domi­no's sto­ry was set for the big screen but pro­duc­ing a movie was too ex­pen­sive at the time. In ear­ly 2006, Fran­cis heed­ed a call from the se­ries ed­i­tor Joanne John­son.The rest is his­to­ry. He wrote while mak­ing his film, The Ghost of Hing King Es­tate. The book would be­come the per­fect re­lease when things got hairy on the set.

Es­cayg moved rather seam­less­ly from screen­writ­ing to writ­ing chil­dren's fic­tion. De­scrib­ing the dif­fer­ences be­tween the two, he says "It's crazy. It's en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent." How­ev­er, be­cause of his screen­writ­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, his writ­ing style is very vi­su­al. He adds that nov­el writ­ing "gives room to get flow­ery." Writ­ing with­in the reach of his "tween" au­di­ence (ages 10-16) was a chal­lenge. Like all writ­ers, he wres­tled with edit­ing. It was al­so a task to cre­ate a back­drop that would rise and fall with the plot, not de­tract from it.

Af­ter fin­ish­ing the nov­el, Es­cayg no­ticed many sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween his sto­ry and mod­ern day T&T. He says, "Even if he is not aware, a writer writes from his en­vi­ron­ment." Writ­ing has al­so sparked him and fel­low Is­land Fic­tion au­thor Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni to launch the Read­ing Rev­o­lu­tion. They hope it en­cour­ages tweens to read in­stead of sub­mit­ting them­selves to dis­trac­tions like the Xbox which have "numbed the sens­es."

He adds, "I don't want my book to dive and duck un­der."

Al­ready Lons­dale Saatchi & Saatchi Ltd, NALIS and the Schools' Broad­cast­ing Unit have com­mit­ted to the project. Fran­cis feels very ex­cit­ed that the book is now pub­lished. In the fu­ture he hopes to cre­ate oth­er Domi­no ad­ven­tures and ex­plore the lives of oth­er char­ac­ters in Ierie.