My life has always revolved around bookshops. My earlier memories are of my mum bringing us into our local indie to spend our paper 5 punt National Book Tokens and I would be in awe of the selection of worlds I could travel to. In 4th year I ended up doing a fateful two-week stint for work experience where the most I was hoping for was a summer job, but ended up working there part time for 6 years. That …
Category: Books
Ideas come from many places, but a story about waylaid Girl Guide cookies is definitely one of my most unusual sources of inspiration. The story – related in a US …
‘What’s happening now Ann?’ My mother is in my ear. ‘Is he out yet? It’s 10 o’clock.’ We watch the empty altar on my tablet. There’s no sign of Father …
We live in a modern world of pressure, a “perfect storm”, and parents are trying their best without a road map. Whilst they can dream about growing a resilient child, …
The Pull of the Stars began over sixteen years ago when I was in premature labour with our first child who, as a playful five-year-old, would be my model for …
Songs are mysterious companions. I remember turning the dial of my mother’s transistor radio one summer’s evening in the late Seventies and finding Across the Universe by The Beatles. It …
While I was writing my second novel A Sabbatical in Leipzig, I found myself returning to a type of drawing I first encountered in secondary school, while studying for my …
June 16th. Another cloudless summer day. The RTE Six O’Clock News finishes with a montage of boater hats, round spectacles, moustaches and parasols. Colourful crowds gather each side of the …
Halfway into my week’s holiday at the end of March, our bookshops closed due to Covid-19. It was unwelcome but not unexpected news. The stress which had made concentrating on …
I’ve always appreciated the fact that while I can read a book in a couple of days, it might have taken the author years of hard work and dedication to …
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