TWISTED TAILS - SHORT STORY COMP

Here's a new Irish short story competition with cash prizes: Twisted Tails. I'll be judging the first couple of comps (the organisers are friends of mine) and you all know I like the dark stuff.

The site says: "Twisted Tails is a competition specifically designed to satisfy our craving for stories of the ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ type. While we’re not necessarily looking for a devastating denouement, what we do hope for is to be surprised. It’s as simple as that. The surprise itself can be as gentle or as traumatic as you like – hopefully we won’t see it coming!"

Stories up to 3,000 words. 1st prize €100.

See here for entry fees, prizes etc.

SALT OPEN FOR POETRY MS'S

This is the latest from Salt:

"29 March 2010: We are now accepting proposals for poetry collections: we are particularly interested in developing our US list. We are currently accepting poetry proposals for 2010–2011."

I'm not sure why the emphasis on US titles or what it means for writers of other nationalities, but if they are open, they are open. Send your MS soon, I'd say.

More detail here.

IRISH BLOG AWARDS 2010

My blog didn't win at the Blog Awards in Galway last night  - No Ordinary Fool won in my category - congrats! - but it was a fun night.

 Dry ice & Rick

Rick O'Shea was a funny and amiable host, there was free rum and, in the young and hip crowd, lots of cool frocks and choppy haircuts. There were a few souls like myself who didn't seem to be 'in' or know what was going on but it was all very good humoured and jolly.

The funeral of Irish blogging

It started with lots of dry ice and a funeral for blogging now that Twitter has taken over the world somewhat (even I have succumbed...) There were videos from top notch entertainers of the likes of the gorgeous Miriam O'Callaghan; the Dorian Gray-like Bosco and the equally non-aging Ballydung Twins, Podge and Rodge. All very tongue in cheek and entertaining.

 Bosco!

 Podge & Rodge, giving bloggers a hard time

The awards themsleves went swiftly and many of the winners seemed to be serial winners (at least one four in a row). There was a bit of muttering about that of the variety of 'Please give someone else a chance, this is all just a bit predictable'.

There was a fabulous exhibition of paintings by Liam Daly in the loft. I hope he deosn't mind me showing an image or two here.

I found the whole night very enjoyable and, though we had to leave early for the long drive back to the babysitters, would happily go again and, hopefully, stay for the dancing too.

Screen cap of WWR - the excitement!

The list of winners has just been posted on the Irish Blog Awards blog.

BLOG AWARDS TONIGHT

I'm off to the Irish Blog Awards tonight in the Radisson in Galway city. This blog is a finalist in the Best Arts & Culture Blog category. I'm a blog awards virgin so I'm not sure what to expect but I hope it's fun. Report anon.

FIRST INTERVIEW FOR 'YOU'

I'm honoured to have my first interview about my novel You over at Tom Vowler's blog here. Tom's blog is called 'How to Write a Novel'. I'm not sure I address that exactly in my answers but I talk a bit about reading, the novel itself and not planning.

KENNY'S POETRY MS EVENT - CÚIRT & MY DESK (?!)

I

I was at the launch of the Cúirt brochure in the lovely Meyrick Hotel last night in Galway. My novel launch is there in technicolour on page 54 - woo, the thrill! I was delighted to meet fellow writer and blogger Jessica Maybury there - it's always great to put a (friendly) face to a name. Anyway, wine was drunk, chats were had, and I made a special request of Cúirt Director Maureen K, more of which anon...

As always there are lots of fantastic events on the programme: Colum McCann and Amy Bloom are there, Joyce Carol Oates and James Lasdun, Paula Meehan is reading, there's the Ropes launch, a New Yorker event etc etc.

One event, for budding poets, caught my eye: Kennys Book Shop are hosting a trio of fantastic poets who will assess poetry MS's from unpublished writers. Unheard of opportunity!! Pat Boran, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Caitríona O'Reilly will be in residence and you can pitch your MS to them.
It's on Saturday the 24th April at 11.30am in Kennys, Liosbán. Phone for more info: 091 709350

The full Cúirt 2010 programme is here.

And why the pic of my desk? Our woman in New York - writer Eimear Ryan - posted a pic of hers and wanted to see others. There you go.

'You' page now on my website

My webmaster has been busy updating my website for the publication of my novel You on 8th April by New Island.

Dedicated novel page here on my site. Thanks, Mr Webmaster, you're so good.

IRISH BLOG AWARDS FINALIST!!

I just found out that Women Rule Writer has made the finals in the Irish Blog Awards in the Best Arts & Culture Blog category. Wow!

Huge thanks to my nominators (is that a real word?!) and to the judges who've finalised me along with

• Average Film Reviews
• David Maybury
• No Ordinary Fool
• kDamo

Looking forward now to the night out on the 27th which, handily, is in Galway - a mere 40 minute spin away on the new M6. My blog looks homemade compared to my fellow nominees ones which are all very swish and spanky. But, anyway...best of luck to us all!

I'm heading t'other way up the M6 tomorrow to go to Roscommon to read and to attend the Hanna Greally Award prize-giving. I judged the poetry end of the comp and it was a great pleasure. I love my winners' poems -  they have real heart and craft. Congrats all.

Wear Your Heart on Your Skin

Picture from Contrariwise

I have a piece on literary tattoos in the current Poetry Ireland newsletter here. Lots of other stuff in there too about upcoming festivals and readings.

Speaking of wearing your heart, another agent didn't bite. Sigh. I think I will give up Project Agent for a while.

SHORT FICTION COURSE AT THE IRISH WRITERS' CENTRE

The description of the short fiction workshop I'll be leading at the Irish Writers' Centre is now up here.

When: 15th and 16th May 2010, 10.30am - 4.30pm both days

Where: The Irish Writers' Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin

How much?: €140

Two days talking about short stories - I love it!

HAPPY PADDY'S DAY

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, people. I am in the back of my (green) car as I write this, heading from Dublin to Galway. (We went to see Paloma Faith in Vicar St last night. A great gig - she is brilliantly bonkers.) We're scooting back to see the Middle Child in the parade in the 'Sloe, though he is threatening not to march. I think the memory of being temporarily lost after last year's parade is looming large in his mind. We'll see.

Anyway, I'm going to post one of my two Paddy's Day related poems for y'all and wish ye a Guinness-fuelled, green and happy day. Personally, I am not in the mood for alcohol at all today but a nice Irish dinner (spuds!) and a creme egg will do the trick. 

Beannachtaí na féile, oraibh!

Saint Patrick’s Day, Achill Island

‘Jamesie,’ she says to me, from the chair,
‘put the green frock on me today,
I’m feeling powerful festive.’
‘I will, Dolly,’ says I, ‘it’s the one colour
that brings up the gold in your hair.’
‘Don’t cod me,’ she roars, ‘the hair’s a disaster.’

We settle down, watch the parade on RTÉ,
and drink six bottles of porter apiece.
‘This is the life, Dolly, hah?’ I say,
but there isn’t a gug out of her;
all I hear are gulls and the hum-thrum
of a tractor going down the boreen.

NEW SHORT STORIES 4 - SPANKY COVER!

Here's the cover of New Short Stories 4 from the Willesden Herald and Pretend Genius, in which I have a story called 'Letters'. I wrote the story over two years ago during a stay at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and have being trying to flog it since. It goes out, it comes back. One comp organiser wrote to me to say she liked it and was sorry it didn't make the judge's shortlist. Anyway, each time it comes back, I read it carefully, make some wee changes, and send it off again. I tend to do that with stories I believe in. Some that get rejected I start to dislike and see flaws everywhere. (Which, in fairness, there probably are.)

'Letters' has a few elements: it's about an illiterate Irish woman in 1940's New York, who is distractedly lonely; it was inspired by an observation of Maeve Brennan's in one of her New Yorker articles. (I love her non-fiction.) That was my ending and I wrote towards it. There's also an anecdote of my father's in it, about a frog.

Anyway, I'm pleased to be shortlisted for the Willesden Herald Comp with 'Letters' and that it'll appear in the anthology. I'm going to London for the prize-giving event. I'm loving the cover for the book - it'll be after April 10th before you and I can all read what lies behind it.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, LADIES

I want to wish a Happy Mother's Day to all my mother friends and all my mother-writer friends, especially. I am hungover - the Group 8 launch last night was a huge success. Loads of people turned out to support us and the exhibition looked fantastic. Report and/or pics anon. So, I intend to spend my Mother's Day doing very little. Looking forward to eating chocolate and reading the papers, taking it easy.

I looked through my poems for a mothery one. The one I'm posting is in my pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with A Red Car and I wrote it before my baby girl was born last year.

Enjoy your Lá 'le Mamaí, ladies!

A Sort of Couvade

There is a distance in me, a removal
from this, my last pregnancy,
few chinks let in the possibility
of a positive coup de grace
to end all the years of strife and faith.

I dream other people’s babies,
ones who refuse to suckle,
so I hand them back to be
cauled in their mother’s love,
but still my baby labours in me,
adding lanugo and vernix
to her cornucopia of miracles,
positing layers of fat
that will insulate her
when she delivers herself to us
in the cool-aired birthing suite,
borne down by my body’s rhythms,
because and in spite of me.

Wrapped in a battle dress of
grease, blood and bruising,
she will wear me like a crown
before forcing through, pulling labia taut,
and I will be present because
that is what I am made for,
I will perform a sort of couvade
at my only daughter’s birth.

MOLLY KEANE AWARD

The Molly Keane Memorial Creative Writing Award, organised by the Arts Office of Waterford County Council, is closing on the 25th March. This is one of the very few awards named for one of our women writers. When I am filthy rich I intend to set one up for one of my own favourites. I hope I get rich soon so the dear woman can live to see it...

This comp is for a previously unpublished short story up to 2000 words.

Fee: no entry fee - woo!

Prize: €650 will be awarded to the winner at a special ceremony during the IMMRAMA Literary Festival in Lismore, Co. Waterford (June 10th – 13th 2010).

Deadline: 5pm, Thursday 25th March 2010.  

Full details and an entry form on the Waterford Co Co site here.

ALL WOMAN JURY FOR THE 2010 FRANK O'CONNOR AWARD

It's an all-woman jury for this year's Cork City - Frank O'Connor Award. Interesting!!! My short fiction collection Nude is eligible. Wooooo.

 

From Munster Lit:

"The Frank O'Connor Short Story Festival culminates with the presentation of the Cork City-Frank O'Connor Short Story Award, which at €35,000 is the richest award for the Short Story form in the world. I think going into its sixth year we can safely say that it is now also the world's most prestigious Short Story Award which ensures worldwide fame for the festival and the participation of some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction. Currently we are receiving entries for the award which can be received by us up to the end of this month.

 

In April we will publish the 2010 longlist for the award as well as the names of this year's judges. We can confirm, as a teaser, that all the judges this year happen to be women. They were each selected by Patrick Cotter for their professional relationship to fiction and the arts.  Cotter says: "I didn't deliberately set out to select a jury of all women and maybe one of these days I'll end up with a jury who happen to be all men." In June a shortlist of four or six will be chosen and those writers will all be invited to read at the festival too."

BITS 'n' BOBS OF GOOD NEWSY STUFF

Great fun this week. Apart from the sick Man and the sick Baby, all goes well.

First exhibition of my artist's collective Group 8 on Saturday - excitement. My baby sis is coming down to it. And there'll be poetry and wine. Little poetry, lotsa wine.

My blog is on the shortlist for the Irish Blog Awards. More shortlisting to follow. Fingers crossed.

I've been offered a CRAZY amount of money (IMO) for a short story by a prestigious publication. I feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kind of. Not really. He lived on the income from his short fiction. I have earned more than This Special Amount for a single story before but only by winning comps. This feels good.

I was told a secret piece of info, that I'm not allowed share ever, about my writing - it warmed my heart.

I've got a gig teaching short fiction for a week-end at the Irish Writers' Centre in May.

I didn't get an agent. Again. (I need an agent - interested parties mail me at nuala AT nualanichonchuir DOT com...) And, no, I have nothing new to sell. Just myself and the foreign rights for my novel. And everything else I ever write...

The launch of my novel You at the Cúirt Festival has been confirmed for Saturday the 24th April, at 5pm in the Dáil Bar on Cross Street, Galway. YEEESSS!!!! I ♥ Cúirt!


I heard today that I've been awarded a 2 week residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre from Galway County Council. I will have quiet time to write some time this year. Yipee!!! Note to self: wean Baby.


I'll be reading from my novel (have I mentioned my novel?) at one of my favourite bookshops ever on Thursday the 29th April at 8pm: The Winding Stair in Dublin.


What a week. And you know, I credit my Lit Death Match win with it all - that medal is swinging over my desk like a big old lucky charm.

EXHIBITION LAUNCH & READING, BALLINASLOE

I'm a remember of Group 8 which is a professional artists collective based in Ballinasloe, County Galway that came together in August 2009 in order to add to the cultural interest of Ballinasloe. We decided the best way to do that was to organise a joint exhibition of our work in the town. Our mission statement sets out what we hoped to achieve in the short term:

‘Group 8 is a non-profit, professional arts group, united in the belief that art worthy of exposure can express the vitality of a community, and foster awareness, imagination and co-operative learning between the artist and their community.’

The group is comprised of five visual artists, two writers and one singer: Joyce Little - visual and multimedia artist; Tommy Campbell – sculptor; Grellan Ganly - visual artist; Úna Spain – visual artist; Brendan Grealy - visual artist; Nuala Ní Chonchúir – writer; Zara Little-Campbell – writer; and Lee Ní Chinnéide – singer.

Junction 14.5 – Group 8’s first exhibition – will take place between the 13th and the 20th of March 2010 in The Regency Room in Hayden’s Hotel, from 12pm to 6pm each day. All the art works have taken Ballinasloe as their starting point; some of the poems and the paintings have inspired each other. The resulting work has been a true collaborative process by and about artists in Ballinasloe.

The exhibition, and accompanying catalogue, will be launched by John Boland on Saturday the 13th March at 7pm. All are welcome to come and see sculpture, photography and paintings; listen to live poetry and music, and enjoy a glass of wine. The exhibition will be open throughout the week including Saint Patrick’s Day.

Blog here.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Here's a poem called 'Women.com' by Bengali poet and feminist Mallika Sengupta, translated by Sanjuta Dasgupta, for International Women's Day. I really like this poem. I copied it from the PIW site.

Women.com   Today, on our Computer Day Come let’s place our hand on the women.com button This very own history of women From illiteracy to women.com. Once upon a time from this woman You snatched the chance of reading the Vedas All of you said women were just housewives Men had the right to Sanskrit Women’s language, the language of the Sudras was different. After a thousand years when the girl Prepared herself for a girls’ school Bethune and Vidyasagar stood by her All of you said Women who read and write Are bound to become widows. Then when the woman entered the office space Mother-in-law’s sullen face, and the husband was suspicious All of you said What’s the use of a family run with a wife’s money? The woman had to fight the storms and tempests. Inch by inch in the thousand years the woman Has earned knowledge and power Inside a fiery heart, tranquil outwardly Today half the sky is in the woman’s palm The world is an amlaki held in the woman’s fist Just a touch of a button One day you who had denied her knowledge of alphabets             In her hand today is the computer world.

LITERARY DEATH MATCH TRIUMPH!!!

 Marty Mulligan

Dublin's first Literary Death Match was great fun. I've never laughed so much at a literary event in my life. And I like the Sugar Club as a venue - it's cosy and cool.

I think the Death Match's successs is definitely down to its host, Opium Magazine editor Todd Zuniga. Todd is an instantly likeable kind of person - funny, down-to-earth and a tad eccentric. He struck me as a very unAmerican American (if that's not too rude a thing to say...) Anyway, a good host makes the audience believe in and enjoy something that they are not sure they know anything about. And so it was on Friday night.

I read poetry in the end - sticking to my (hopefully) humourous ones, along with a couple of lovey ones. The judges approved anyway as I was put through to the final. My rival Colm Liddy read a funny short story about sibling rivalry. We had to read for 7 minutes apiece and if you go over you are shot. With foam balls. I didn't get shot but Colm did.

Judge Nadine O'Regan said my work was like "Mills & Boon meets Paul Auster". Good Lord, I thought, as I giggled into my beer. I won Philly McMahon over once I mentioned Madonna, and Úna Mulally's mother is from Ballinasloe so she appreciated my imagining of Frida Kahlo coming along to brighten up the town. They said other good things which I cannot remember now due to mind-bending fatigue.

The other two readers who were pitted against each other were Brian O'Connell who read a great extract from his book Wasted, which I am looking forward to reading. And Mullingar's finest Marty Mulligan who recited rather brilliantly from his performance piece 'Direland'. In the event, Brian went through to the final, so we went head-to-head in a throw-the-spud-through-the-writer's-mouth contest.

 

Spud throwing

There were large photos of Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor and Oscar Wilde and we had to toss potatoes of differing sizes through their gobs. It was madness and I am unsporty in the extreme but somehow I managed it and was the winner. I got a lovely medal of which I am VERY proud!

I hope the next time the LDM comes to Dublin that I can make it. (Update - they are coming back on the 30th April!) It was definitely the most fun I've had at a reading ever.

 

  

My medal! 

There's a  report on the night on the Lit Death Match site here.

RED CAR MOTORS ON TO THE UK

My little red car tour for my poetry pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car is over at the inimitably wonderful Vanessa Gebbie's blog here today.

Oh, and I won the Literary Death Match last night. Score! It was enormous fun. Big thanks to Todd Zuniga for being a brilliant host. Report anon.

LITERARY DEATH MATCH IN DUBLIN - TOMORROW!

Happy World Book Day!

I'm reading/competing in this tomorrow. I've decided to read poems. Or a story. Or poems. Agghhh - I can't decide. My neck hurts. The Baby is sick listening to me procrastinating. I can't deeeecccciiiidddde.

The spring issue of the Stinging Fly will also be launched at 7.30pm. Death Match at 9.15pm.

The Sugar Club, Leeson Street. Hope to see some of you there.

FROM THE DEATH MATCH SITE:

The Literary Death Match is heading to Dublin — and what a thrilling mix of stars we've got lined up!

The all-star judging panel is set to feature journalist/radio presenter Nadine O'Regan, playwright/producer Philly McMahon, and journalist/TV presenter Una Mullally. All will preside over a fearsome foursome of literary talents, including award-winning fiction writer and poet Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Stinging Fly's hand-picked reader-representative Colm Liddy, scribe Brian O'Connell (author of Wasted: A Sober Journey Through Drunken Ireland) and spoken-word brillianteur Marty Mulligan.

Hosted by Opium's Todd Zuniga. Co-produced by Belinda McKeon.

When: Doors at 7:30, show at 9:15 (sharp), afterparty: 11 p.m. and beyond.

Cost: €6 preorder; €9 at the door; €6 with a valid student ID.
This event is free for Literary Death Match subscribers!

GUEST POST - 100 STORIES FOR HAITI

Today I have a guest post from Greg McQueen who is the driving force behind the 100 Stories for Haiti book, in which I have a story.

Greg asked writers worldwide to contribute to a collection of short stories which will be published as an ebook and paperback on March 4th, 2010. Proceeds from the book go to earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti.

On the morning of January 19th, Greg posted a video on his blog saying: "Dear Twitterverse, I can't keep watching this on the news or trending on Twitter without doing something. I woke up this morning with the idea that together we could make a book and donate profits to the British Red Cross."

Within hours, news spread throughout microblogging website, Twitter, then Facebook, and story submissions began arriving. Nick Harkaway, author of The Gone Away World, contributed a short story and penned the book's introduction. By the submission deadline a week later, the project had received over 400 submissions - whittled down to one hundred during the following week, and the full 80,000 word manuscript was edited and assembled within two weeks of Greg's first announcement.

The book will appear on smashwords.com as an ebook and as a paperback through Bridge House Publishing available on-line here and in shops.

Take it away Greg!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

In the last six weeks I have met a heck of a lot of wonderful people. Generous. Talented. Passionate. Writers. We made a book that can make a difference. But only because of you. Dedicated. Enthusiastic. Vital. Readers.

What follows is an extract from 100 Stories for Haiti. A story by Layla O’Mara entitled, The Forgetting. Layla is an Irish writer based in Berlin, currently working on a series of short stories about memory. This is one of them. You can follow her work online: www.goldfishexperimentstories.tumblr.com

-----

The Forgetting

By Layla O’Mara

I received a note from a man in the post today. It said it was the longest time since we had met, so many years. He wrote with such familiarity, albeit coupled with hesitance, almost like an unsure teenager.

‘Hello, this is Ella,’ I said down the phone to the man who had written the note. He said hello back and remarked how good it was to hear me after all these years. And I said yes, yes, yes it was and little sparks flew off his voice as it jump-started something in me.

He asked if I would like to meet for a coffee or a drink. I said, ‘Yes, Jay, that would be nice’, and suggested meeting at the Patrick Kavanagh bench. I have no clue why the bench came to mind. But it did. I said it and his voice smiled and he answered that that would be fine.

* * *

It felt like a first date. Which was stupid, really. Getting dressed with that same butterfly attention. Seeing myself in the mirror as he might. Which was stupid, really.

I stepped out into the grey day. I had left a little late deliberately, wanting to arrive with him already sitting there on the Patrick Kavanagh bench.

I had it mapped in my head. Over Harold’s Cross Bridge. My old jogging path. I used to jog along with music driving me, pumping on one of those CD players and then later with an iPod, so tiny in my hand.

The morning-time rush was calmer by the water – the swans, the ducks and the drunks not so harried by traffic or appointments. Past Portobello. Middle-aged men sat alone on benches by the water, reading the paper and swigging on their first cider of the day. I used to shoot music videos in my head as I ran, the beats in my ears narrating everything around me, all those daytime thoughts and worries sucked into a three-minute video. Jesus, it seemed like such an epic time ago. How fresh and excited and completely lost I had been.

Suddenly the city and the canal became a blueprint, a memory-print. The whole stretch seemed so scratched and scarred and glowing – virtually leaking back-bits of me into the glinting autumnal water. My mind and memory, or whatever it was that I was losing, for at least those short minutes, was at my command again.

The fact that these moments had come up for air created something very close to an out-of-body experience for me. I questioned why there was still space on my blueprint for this man and me to lie out that night on the now-gone pontoon, he after cycling me on the crossbar by all the red-brick houses, showing me where his father had grown up and telling me how his mother was so strong. That there was still room for summer pints with him outside The Barge and chats that changed what you thought about things and made you want to do new things and do things better.

Jesus. I tried to snap back, to be present, but my brain, having lost these things for so long wanted to linger a while … someone once told me a wonderful word for it all. Palimpsest. Layer upon layer of manuscript and paper lie one on top of the other, each page borrowing the indentations of the page before and lending snippets of its own markings. It was strange, the marks that were left and the indents that were smoothed away to nothing – no logic there at all, it seemed. And no logic to where and when my mind will slip and when it will soar …

Leeson Street. His old basement flat, where we had danced and giggled and held each other. He played music I had never heard before, music that I fell in love with and could never quite listen to again. The flat’s peeling yellow door and a flash of myself in a bus window, peering at the door, eyes stuck on it as the double-decker pulled away over the bridge.

And now for my favourite stretch – the leafy patch from the Bridge down to Baggot Street – the locks silent, stubbornly holding the water in, the fiery leaves, the proud swans, the padded silence. I was always aware that the city was living, pulsing, working all around me on this stretch, yet something about it seemed defiantly unhurried, quiet.

Suddenly, I desperately wanted to turn right back or walk on by. I didn’t know who I was going to sit with. I could not quite fully jigsaw this man into my past. I did not know what to say to him or what I should be remembering. How rude not to be able to properly share the past with him. How sad, this forgetting.

-----

100 Stories for Haiti comes out TOMORROW! It costs £11.99 + P&P. You can pre-order your copy of the paperback: http://www.100storiesforhaiti.org/buy-the-book/

The ebook will appear on Smashwords for instant download. Please watch www.100storiesforhaiti.org for details.

Thanks, Nuala! One of those Generous. Talented. Passionate. Writers.

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

I have a story in/on World Literature Today a classy-looking magazine produced by the University of Oklahoma (O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, yeow!). The start of the story is in the print mag and the whole lot is available in handy PDF format online here.

The story is called 'From Life' and it was to be in Nude but it's a long story and the book was too big in the end, so instead it will appear in the reprint of To The World of Men, Welcome where it will fit nicely. It's set in Dublin and Paris, pre Celtic Tiger, when Dublin was lovely and scruffy and Paris was...well, Paris!

GOODBYE UNCLE JOHN

 

My sister Úna as a child, with John's hat and a fish and Rory, the dog

The final proofs of my novel You are gone back to the publisher as of half an hour ago. I'm quietly delighted. I spent all day yesterday with them, roaming around my homeplace in Mill Lane in Palmerstown in west Dublin, which is where the novel is set. I laughed and I cried re-reading the book and all I can hope for, I guess, is that my readers do the same.

While working on the proofs yesterday I got a phonecall to say my uncle John had died. John is my Ma's brother and, like both of my parents, he was born and bred in Mill Lane. He was self-taught at all the things he was good at and interested in: fishing, boating, shooting, fixing vintage cars, drawing, collecting. John had a mischievous streak but he was basically a kind person, old-fashioned in his ways. With his hobbies and interests, he made my childhood down by the river in Mill Lane richer and I thank him for that. John was always very interested in my writing, urging me to try to get stories on BBC radio, which he loved to listen to. I think he would have gotten a kick out of the novel being set in our homeplace. He had a peaceful death, in the company of his brother and sisters. Ar dheis Dé go raibh sé.