Some books are easier to write than others. I’ve written one or two in a matter of weeks; others have taken several years. The House of Ashes was the latter. In fact, it’s probably the most difficult novel I’ve ever written. Stories sometimes pop into my mind fully formed, plot, characters, themes, all ready to go like one of those Indian meals for two you buy in the supermarket and stick in the oven. Other times, you not only have …
Category: Crime
When the first lockdown hit Ireland on March 27, 2020, I was living alone with no home-schooling to worry about, and I was already working from home and had been …
I wrote the first draft of All Her Fault at a corner of my dad’s dining room table – writing furiously to get the words down while my kids were …
A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to be asked to talk to a classroom of children about my route to publication. “I wrote my first book by …
During the last recession, I once came upon a small ghost estate in the middle of the countryside. It was completely uninhabited; eerie and quiet, you could see right through …
‘Write what you know’. It’s the writing advice that most people have heard, and it’s advice I’ve never followed. In fifteen books, including the Maeve Kerrigan series and my latest …
I was conducting some background research for my novel Stranger when I came across an old article in The New Yorker about diagnosing mental illness. At one point, it referred …
I began the #ReadIrishWomenChallenge back in April 2019 as a way to spotlight great work by Irish female authors, and to start a conversation about their writing. Now that it’s …
When I was pregnant with my first child, a woman I’d barely spoken to came over to me in the office toilets and touched my belly. It felt like such …
A Good Father is a psychological suspense novel about a man who kills his family. I wanted to explore the idea that jealousy could be the driver of such an …
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