Nottingham writer Tony Domleo gives insight into the inspiration behind his debut novel, The Offer: One Life. One Offer. One Ending.
It’s Never Too Late To Tell Your Story
“People often say it’s never too late to try something new. Until recently, I thought that was just one of those phrases people liked to post on social media. Now I know it’s true.”
Writing books was never part of the plan. I never sat down and thought, “One day I’d like to become an author.” In fact, if you’d asked me a year ago whether I would ever write a novel, I would probably have laughed. It simply wasn’t who I was.
I’m a middle-aged Project Manager in the shopfitting and interior fit-out industry. Living in Nottingham has always suited the job because, being centrally based, I can reach almost anywhere in the UK within a few hours.
During the winter of 2025, work became unusually quiet and I suddenly found myself working just three days a week. Instead of seeing it as a setback, I decided to use the extra time to try things I’d never really made time for before. I quit social media, started cooking fresh food, became curious enough to begin reading the King James Bible, took up archery, and enrolled in an evening art course to see if my drawing skills were really as bad as I remembered.
Writing wasn’t on the list.
Then, one evening at art class, while trying to draw facial features, I experienced one of those strange moments of déjà vu that completely stopped me in my tracks. I drove home, made a coffee, shut myself away in my bedroom, and started typing. I still can’t fully explain why.
For the next few months, I disappeared every evening and every weekend. The Project Manager in me immediately took over. Before I wrote the story, I planned it. I worked out chapter lengths, page counts, word counts, and the structure of the book. Notes became paragraphs. Paragraphs became chapters. One chapter led to another until, before I realised it, I had written a novel.
The surprising part wasn’t writing it. The surprising part was how easily the story came.
People often ask how long it took me to write the book. In one sense, it took about five months from the first word to reach the publishing stage. In another, it took more than thirty-five years. Most authors spend years researching their novels. I didn’t realise I’d been researching mine simply by living my life.
The book eventually became The Offer – One Life. One Offer. One Ending. Although the novel is fiction, almost everything that shaped it comes from real experiences. It draws on growing up in Nottingham, the friendships that shape who we become, the vivid dreams that refuse to be forgotten, becoming a single dad, navigating the modern dating world, and spending years quietly questioning the world around me. I’ve always looked at life a little differently. I look into the night sky and wonder how it all began. I’ve always questioned where science and faith meet, and whether there are things happening beneath the surface that we simply don’t yet understand.
Looking back, I can even pinpoint one seemingly insignificant decision that changed the direction of my own life forever – choosing to sing Pretty Woman at a karaoke night. At the time it felt like nothing more than a bit of fun. Looking back, it changed everything. It taught me that the smallest decisions can redirect an entire life, and that idea became one of the foundations of the novel.
Setting the story in and around Nottingham, with its roots in the early 1990s, felt completely natural. It’s the city I’ve called home all my life, and I wanted readers to experience a version of Nottingham before smartphones, social media, and constant connectivity. It was a time when friendships were built face-to-face, evenings were spent together rather than online, and life felt just a little simpler.
I didn’t set out to write this book with any sense of literary ambition. I reached a point where the story simply refused to stay inside my head. Ignoring it became harder than writing it. Writing the novel became far more than simply telling a story. I laughed so much at my own past, I cried tears that I thought had dried up long ago, and it gave me peace. More than anything, I found answers to questions I didn’t even know I was asking.
When I finally reached the end, I had absolutely no idea whether I had written something worth reading. I wasn’t a writer. At least, I didn’t think I was. The first draft wasn’t emailed to professional editors or uploaded to a website. It was printed onto ordinary A4 paper, stacked into ring binders, and handed to a few close friends who already knew parts of my story. I genuinely expected them to tell me to stick to the day job. Instead, they came back with incredibly positive feedback and just a handful of suggestions that helped make the book even stronger. That was probably the moment I allowed myself to think that perhaps I really had written a novel.
From there, I decided to self-publish. Like most first-time authors, I made plenty of mistakes along the way. One of them accidentally launched the paperback on Amazon months earlier than I had planned. Rather than panic, I decided to embrace it and treat it as a quiet soft launch, giving me the chance to gather genuine reader reviews before the official release. Looking back, it was probably one of the best mistakes I could have made.
Holding the first printed copy in my hands is a moment I’ll never forget. Seeing something that had existed only in my imagination become a real book was one of the biggest personal achievements of my life.
People often say it’s never too late to try something new. Until recently, I thought that was just one of those phrases people liked to post on social media. Now I know it’s true.
I still don’t consider myself a professional writer. I never studied creative writing, and I certainly don’t claim to be a literary expert. I might not be a wordsmith, but I am an honest man. I didn’t worry about writing the book the “right” way; I wrote it the only way I knew how—with the truth as my blueprint. Because, in the end, the story doesn’t need to be fancy. It just needs to be real.
Here I am, at the end of June, on my 58th birthday, writing a blog about my first book.
I’m still a Project Manager, but now I can add something else to my CV: self-published author.
And hand on heart, I genuinely believe that if I hadn’t signed up to the art class, then this book would never have existed.
Sometimes the biggest changes in our lives begin with the smallest decisions.
For more information about Tony Domleo’s debut novel, The Offer: One Life. One Offer. One Ending. by Tony Domleo | Goodreads., visit the Goodreads page.
Tony Domleo is a lifelong Nottingham resident and debut novelist. While working as a Project Manager in the shopfitting and interior fit-out industry, an unexpected evening at an art class inspired him to write his first novel, The Offer – One Life. One Offer. One Ending. Set in and around Nottingham from the early 1990s onwards, the novel blends lived experience with fiction to explore memory, love, loss and the choices that shape our lives.
Continuing his life and career in Nottingham, Tony enjoys spending time with family and friends while pursuing his new passion for writing and developing new creative projects.