By Ruth Dowds
ART imitates life in Bangor teenager Luke Dowling’s creative vision of a world in which expectations are defied.
Without any financial backing behind him the 17 year-old shop worker and student has persuaded volunteers from across the world to help him bring his creative vision to life.
Luke has written a new audiobook series entitled Paradox: Tales From Hell, a dark fantasy adventure that will also be streamed on YouTube from July 31.
Luke’s story reimagines the Seven Deadly Sins not as villains, but as rebels who are banished to earth by Satan.
When hell descends into chaos, they return to face Satan in a final war, determined to prove they don’t need to conform to fate’s expectations.
The story is a reflection of the non-conformist attitude Luke himself has adopted to get the project off the ground.
“I wanted to show that you can go out and do something creative without a big studio behind you, to encourage people to go out and do the idea that they have,” he explains.
Using a casting site he made a call out for volunteers who were willing to contribute their services for free, with no other return than an impressive addition to their portfolio of work.
He was stunned when 400 people from New Zealand to the USA and England applied to audition as voice actors, musicians and artists.
“It’s a project fuelled by the passion of the cast and my job is to give them that experience so they can go out and get more jobs,” says Luke.
He started the project two years ago with nothing more than the seed of an idea for the characters he wanted to be at the centre of the action.
“I have no background in writing but I found I enjoyed it so I just threw myself into the deep end,” says Luke.
“It leads to you making lots of mistakes along the way but that helps me to learn,” he adds.
Luke wants both his real life story and his fictional one to encourage others to tread their own path.
He added: “The message is don’t fit into the way people expect you to be, be yourself, be human, embrace your flaws and don’t change yourself for what other people expect.
“In the story the Seven Deadly Sins are sent to earth and they have to live as humans, so it’s showing their struggles and how they overcome them.
“It is the idea that we can accept the flaws but at the same time be your own person.”
The Paradox series has been split into eight chapters with each to be released individually on YouTube on a bi-weekly basis before the full audiobook becomes available on platforms such as Audible and Spotify.
Luke aims to reach a large audience in the hope that someone in the creative industry will pick it up and turn it into an animation or live action production.
Beyond that he aspires to make a successful career for himself in the creative writing field.
Paradox: Tales From Hell premieres on the YouTube channel Hylactic on July 31.
