Vincent van Gogh

Irish Secrets of The Past Uncovered

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Exciting news from Ireland (for history nerds).  Secrets of the 1916 Easter Rising and War of Independence have been revealed by a new project from The Bureau of Military History that focusses on eyewitness accounts of the time.

How I would have loved these to have been available when I was researching my first novel. In those days, I had to hunt deep – in the National Library, museum of military history, University College Dublin Archives and other archival sources, for accounts of what had actually happened. So much myth and legend surrounds those times in Ireland, with so many commentators having

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Friday Fiction: I'm No Traitor

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AFTER THE RISING. EPISODE SIX: I'm No Traitor

The story so far: Jo Devereux is back in Mucknamore, the Irish seaside village where she grew up, for her mother’s funeral. In her will, her mother’s has bequeathed a pile of family papers and asked Jo to write about her family’s part in the Irish liberation struggle. Jo is fascinated by what she finds in these papers. But what part did her family really play in that struggle? Why did Dan O'Donovan die? And what does it all  mean for her relationship with Rory O’Donovan, Dan's nephew, whom she swore she'd never let back into her life?

You can read previous chapters HERE.

They are unmaking the house. From the door of the shed, I stand and watch the diggers trundle their mechanical dance around the building: forwards and backwards, claws up, claws down, buckets full, buckets empty. Drills puncture the walls and bricks that have supported each other for more than a hundred years fall apart.

On and on it goes, day after day. Inside, steel struts brace the structure they want to retain, stop the whole from collapsing.

I watch the work from my cowshed. Here is where I live now, inside a strange

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Chapter 4. Jo Shares Her Secret.

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The story so far: Jo Devereux is back in Mucknamore, the Irish seaside village where she grew up. Her mother's dying request is that she will stay on and write a family history, from the pile of family papers she's bequeathed her about the Irish liberation struggle in 1922. Life back in San Francisco is not ideal for Jo but how can she stay on in Mucknamore, when she has never fitted in? And when Rory O’Donovan, the only man she ever really loved, lives there with his wife and children and seems to think they can now be friends, despite all that happened.

You can read previous chapters HERE.

Now READ ON:

Over, yes. But now this compulsion to write about it and live it again. And I have to start with that awful night in San Francisco with Dee, just before I heard that Mrs D. was dying.

I don’t want to remember myself, walking along the solid city sidewalk, through air thickening with the smell of food.  Or Dee and I, sitting at our usual table outside Benton’s, heads leaning into each other over bowls of pasta, while the sky faded from blue to purple, and lights sprang on across the city, their sense of promise making me ache, so that the night stretched

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Change To Friday Fiction

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Because I've just been given an exciting new screenwriting opportunity (of which more anon)…  and because, as advised by Joanna last week, I need to have my published novels e-reader-ready for Christmas…  and because I'm also publishing a poetry book this month…, I find I have to put Skin Diving on hold.

This hurts. I've spent days resisting. Firstly, your feedback told me you were enjoying the chapter-by-chapter, Friday fiction slot. So was I.

And I've been carrying this story about the MacIntyre family for years. A part of me, a very big part of me, wants more than anything to write this book. That's why I started serialising it in the first place.

But I've learned enough about the creative process to know

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