WRITER AS GERBIL

I feel like a gerbil running on a wheel. A rather large gerbil, mind...

I am finished final edits on Novel 2, The Closet of Savage Mementos and am just awaiting final proofs before it goes on its merry way to the printer. Whoop! There will be launches in Dublin and Galway in April. In the course of this last edit I discovered (thanks to Deirdre O'Neill, my lovely editor) that my obssesion-words while writing it were hover, grunt and manic. Ahem.

It's weird the way your relationship with a manuscript changes the closer it becomes to being a book. Doubly odd on this one, maybe, because it was inspired by very personal events in my life when I was a mere 22 year old. So I love the novel, then I don't, then I want to bury it, then I want to tell people about it constantly because I feel so affectionate towards it. Mostly, I want to see the final cover and, then, the final book. Maybe then I can start to 'own' it.

Meantime I am rewriting Novel 3, Miss Emily, using a list of suggestions from my editors in Penguin USA and Penguin Canada. It is close work and enormously rewarding. I am plunged back into Emily Dickinson's world and it is a place I am very happy to go. I heart research.

In the midst of all this I am enjoying the buzz around the spring issue of The Stinging Fly (I edited the fiction section) which came out this week and will be launched in March. And I'm looking forward to taking part in the Publishing Day at the IWC next Saturday, the 8th March. It promises to be a great event. The Penguin Irl Director will be there as well as a UK literay agent, poetry experts and there will be a writers' panel, which I am taking part in.

I'll be on Arena on RTÉ Radio 1 on Monday night reviewing Bark, the new story collection from wonder-writer Lorrie Moore. Oh, Lorrie, please be my BFF. (Does anyone else become convinced they would get along brilliantly with all their favourite writers?)

Also I am busy prepping for the launch of After Garbally, by Group 8, the exhibition by my artist collective here in Ballinasloe on the 14th March. It's full steam ahead with preps for that at the moment.

There are a hundred other things waving flags in my general direction and I'll get to them anon, so if you are waiting for something from me (a blurb, an edit, a hello) hang in there, I'll be with you soon!

3 DAYS TO GO ON FUNDIT!

 

Our FundIt campaign continues. 3 days to go! Only €590 to raise! Please help if you can.

IRISH PEN DINNER - PICS & AFTERS

Sebastian Barry

My husband and I went to the Irish PEN Dinner to honour Frank McGuinness on Friday night. He received the 2014 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature. The event was held in the very swish surroundings of the Royal Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire and we had fun getting dressed up and sallying forth. We were welcomed with a delicious glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and we sat in the beautiful Formal Bar, saying hello to the (few) people we knew and spotting the celebs among the guests.

Frank McGuinness

I don't personally know Frank, but I'm a member of Irish PEN and was happy to be there on his big night. Sebastian Barry, a long standing friend of Frank's, gave the award speech and it was theatrical and moving, as you might expect. (Sebastian B, who seems to be getting younger as the years pass, however he does it, has a novel out this year - The Temporary Gentleman.) He called Frank, 'the fullest example of a gifted man' with 'an admirable and exemplary biography'. He also said he was 'the perfect example of the artist and the man'.

Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin, Vice Chair of Irish PEN and Director at writing.ie

Frank thanked the Abbey, other theatres, his agent and all of his publishers, singling out his poetry publisher Peter Fallon as 'a gentle leader'. He spoke of Íde Ní Laoghaire, his editor at Brandon, and said she is 'the most wise and watchful and, in the best possible sense, threatening of editors'. By the time he thanked his parents (no longer living), saying 'I salute you tonight' the whole room was dabbing at their eyes.

Me enjoying wine in the Formal Bar

We were at the young people's table (it seems!), though as middle-agers how we ended up there I do not know. It was lovely to chat to the fabulous youngsters at our table (mostly MA candidates from UCD), one of whom has also just secured a deal with Penguin. We both vowed to get penguin tattoos on our ankles ;)

At each PEN event an empty chair is placed in the room to symbolise writers who can't be present because they are imprisoned, detained, disappeared, threatened or killed.

It was a lovely night of fancy clothes and not-too-fancy chatter, made all the nicer by the beautiful surroundings and glow of good feeling towards Frank McGuinness.

Date With an Agent @ The Dublin Writers Festival

In association with The Inkwell Group and Writing.ie, The Dublin Writers Festival 'Date With An Agent' is Ireland’s largest ever talent-spotting event. They are looking for 60 top quality authors to pitch their work to 5 leading literary agents keen to sign new talent.

To be in with a chance to take part in the event, submit the first 10,000 words of your  book in hard copy with a 1,000 word synopsis, a 500 word author biography and the completed Application Form (available from the Dublin Writers Festival website) and €10 entry fee (if using TicketSolve, include a copy of your ticket) – please ensure that ONLY your book title is on the pages of your submission as all applications will be judged anonymously.

Submissions to the event will be assessed by Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin and a team of consultants from The Inkwell Group. Experienced literary scouts Inkwell have assisted award winning and bestselling authors to publication and will be reading every application, matching the selected authors in each category to agents:

• Faith O’Grady of the Lisa Richards Agency (general and commercial fiction)
• Simon Trewin, Partner and Head of Literary at WME (literary & short fiction)
• Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary TV & Film Agency (crime fiction)
• Sallyanne Sweeney of Mulcahy Associates (young adult)
• Polly Nolan of the Greenhouse Literary Agency (picture books up to middle grade)

Please staple the synopsis and chapters together firmly, and the Application Form and author biography together seperately from the chapters. The closing date for applications is midnight on 27^th March, please ensure you allow sufficient time for delivery. Items postmarked up to 26^th March will be accepted.

Please note you may be asked to supply additional material.

Successful applicants will take part in a full day workshop,  (inclusive of lunch and all refreshments, this will cost €50 ). Two places will be subsidised by writing.ie for the unwaged and will be available at a 50% discount.

Day Format

The day will open with a panel discussion where the selected authors can find out what the agents are looking for, what’s hot at the moment and quiz them in a Q&A session.

Then the pitching begins.

In a speed-dating style event, each author will have 10 minutes to pitch their book and discuss their work face to face with an agent who is expert in their genre. Where relevant agents will request to see full manuscripts or make recommendations for project development.

While the pitching takes place, Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin will discuss what catches an agents eye, how the publishing process works, and give tips on creating an author profile to the remainder of the group.

10.00 Writers Arrive – coffee, meet and mingle.

10.30 Agent Panel

11.15 Q&A

12.00 Buffet lunch – meet the agents in an informal setting

1.00 Pitch event

3.30 15 minute break for coffee

5.30 Final wrap

Rules, Terms & Conditions here.

FLASH FRONTIER - CONVO WITH ETHEL ROHAN

Myself, Ethel Rohan and Dan Powell, talk about flash and stories in Flash Frontier. Thank you for having us, Rae Joyce!

EMMA DONOGHUE IN CONVERSATION - DWF - MARCH

DWF presents the fabulous Emma Donoghue in conversation with the wonderful Edel Coffey in March.

Venue: The Printworks

Time: 2.30pm, 29th March
 
Tickets: €12 / €10 concession

“Donoghue's historical novels kindle imaginative worlds from the embers of forgotten lives.”
The Guardian

"Emma Donoghue shows more than range with Frog Music – she shows genius."
Darin Strauss

‘You cannot predict literary success,’ said Emma Donoghue in a recent interview. ‘The only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.’ For twenty years, Donoghue has been doing her thing well in novels, short stories and plays set everywhere from fifteenth-century Scotland to 1970s Dublin, but it was only with the publication of Room in 2010 that she was propelled into the literary stratosphere. That novel, inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, told the harrowing story of a little boy who spends his life imprisoned in a room. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, it was a life-changing success that won her a huge new readership, but since then Donoghue has continued to plough her own path. Her new novel, Frog Music, again draws on real events to tell the story of Blanche Beunon, a burlesque dancer living in San Francisco in the stifling summer of 1876. When her friend Jenny Bonnet is shot dead through the window of a train, Blanche risks everything to find the killer, plunging herself into a world of bohemian lowlifes and uncovering the secret life of Jenny herself, a character who breaks the law every morning, simply by getting dressed.

Book here.

STUFF OF DREAMS - PENGUIN DEAL

Celebratory presents!

I am living my fantasy just now - Penguin USA and Penguin Canada are going to publish my third novel, Miss Emily, which is about Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid. All thanks to my supersonic agent. There was even an auction! Most definitely the stuff of dreams.

The lovely Glynne Arms, Hawarden

I received the news in Wales on Tuesday the 4th where I was in residence at the Gladstone's Library in Hawarden. My fellow resident and friend, writer Tania Hershman, bought me champagne and Creme Eggs to celebrate. Isn't that the sweetest? We then went to the pub in the village, The Glynne Arms, with fellow writers Neil Griffiths, Rebecca Abrahams, and Philip Clement, who interns at the library.

My week in Gladstone's was wonderful (beautiful food, great company, long walks in the castle park) though taking updates via phone from the USA, and chatting with various editors, had my head turned backwards. TG I managed to get done what I needed to do each day before New York woke up. It was (is) a whirlwind. And I feel utterly blessed.

There was more champagne (a magnum!) - and tulips - waiting for me at home when I got back from Wales. Myself, my husband, the kids, and my ex- raised a glass (or three) and I felt super lucky all over again. Penguin announced the deal in the USA today so I am finally allowed talk about it. Relief!

This is what Publishers Weekly wrote today in its Book Deals section:

O’Connor Channels Dickinson for Penguin

Penguin’s Tara Singh Carlson took U.S. rights, at auction, to Nuala O’Connor’s debut novel, Miss Emily. Grainne Fox at Fletcher & Company brokered the deal, and said the novel is reminiscent of The Girl with the Pearl Earring. The work is told through the dueling perspectives of Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid, Ada Concannon, as their lives intertwine. Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Canada preempted Canadian rights to the book.

Yes, I am reverting to my birth name for this book. Much easier for my North American friends to pronounce and spell, after all.

PUBLISHING DAY PANEL - IWC - 8th MARCH

The seven writers (incl. me) who are off to Italy in June will take part in a panel, chaired by Anthony Glavin, at the Irish Writers' Centre's Publishing Day this spring.

The Publishing Day at the IWC will also feature the Penguin Ireland Director, a London literay agent, poetry experts and a panel of writers.

Cost: €60/€50 members.

Date: 8th March.

Full details here.

♥ NUDE FOR VALENTINE'S DAY - KINDLE OFFER ♥

To celebrate all the lurve and sensuality that Valentine's Day brings, my short story collection Nude is US$2.51 at Amazon.com or GBP£1.53 at Amazon.co.uk for Kindle, today and for the rest of February.

The blurb on Nude: 'The women and men in Nude play out their desires and frustrations from Dublin to Paris, Delhi to Barcelona, and beyond. In these stories there are mercurial lovers, illicit affairs and mistakes that cannot be undone. And at the centre of it all is the unclothed body: in bedrooms, in art, and in and out of love.'

♥ Happy Valentine's Day! ♥

WRITING MOTHERHOOD

Mary Cassatt drawing

Karren Brady once said, ‘I think you'll find I can use my brain and my uterus at the same time.’ On that theme, writer Carolyn Jess-Cooke has started an interesting project about mothers who write called Writing Motherhood. See her Mslexia blog on the subject and join the conversation here.

PAULA CUNNINGHAM REVIEW

Poet Paula Cunningham

The new issue of Burning Bush 2 is a feast of poetry. Poems from Amanda Bell, John W. Sexton and Peadar O'Donoghue, among many more. My review of Belfast-based poet Paula Cunningham's début collection Heimlich's Manoeuvre is there on page 52. Paula was recently placed second in the 2014 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize with a poem entitled ‘The Weather in the Mournes’. She writes droll, magical, moving work.

FLASH MAG OUT NOW

Issue 6.2 of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine is now available and it has a very swish iridesecent cover. It shines!

Lydia Davis is in it (Lydia Davis - yay!), Ihab Hassan, Ian Seed, and Shellie Zacharia. My story that won the Gladstone's Flash Fiction Award 'Naranjito's Daughter' is in it too. There are reviews of collections by Dan Rhodes, David Gaffney and Peter Cherches. The mag accepts subs all the time. Word count: 360.

For further information and to order a copy, go to: http://www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine

NEW REVIEW OF *YOU*

Kim Forrester has reviewed my 2010 novel YOU on her site Reading Matters. And it's a great review, which is lovely :) Read it here.

MSLEXIA SHORT STORY COMP 2014

The Mslexia sixth annual short story competition for women writers is now open for entries.

The first prize is £2,000 and includes two optional extras: a week’s retreat at the home of early women’s writing, Chawton House Library, and a day with a Virago editor. Five other finalists will receive a share of the remaining £1,050 prize pot, and all of the winning stories will be published in the June 2014 issue of Mslexia.

Judge: award-winning novelist, short story author and scriptwriter Jane Rogers (her novel ‘The Testament of Jessie Lamb’, winner of the 2012 Arthur C Clark Award, is published by Sandstone Press). The closing date for the competition is 17 March 2014.

Full details of how to enter can be found at their website: www.mslexia.co.uk/shortstory

FLANNERY'S 'GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE'

Flannery O'Connor - image from mbird

Short Story Ireland invited me to talk about an influential (for me) short story. I chose Flannery O'Connor's 'Good Country People'. Flannery is, like, my cousin or something, after all. Keep it in the family ;)

GLADSTONE'S LIBRARY - PICS & STUFF

View of St Deiniol's church and graveyard from my bedroom window

I'm enjoying my retreat in Wales though I'm not exactly writing. Well, I am am writing but it is all non-fictiony PR stuff for my forthcoming novel: articles about my time in Scotland 22 years ago (the novel was inspired by something that happened to me).

Sophia in the garden

When I am not writing, I am reading - then ripping up - my diaries from Scotland (therapeutic!), walking in the pretty village of Hawarden, or eating. The food here at Gladstone's Library is beautiful and abundant.

Entrance to Gladstone's Library

Hearth panel: Louisa Yates (library director) Tania Hershman, Adnan Mahmutovic,
Neil Griffiths, Melissa Harrison, Peter Francis

There was also the small matter of the Hearth Literary Festival here at the weekend, which I went to, so that sucked up some writing time. Very enjoyably. I took my friend Tania Hershman's flash fiction workshop and it was fast-paced and we had to work really hard. Great fun. So I wrote there!

The Glynne Arms, a lovely pub in the village

Hawarden village, house

Bilingual road sign, Hawarden

It's hard to believe I am half-way through my stay already. My room is so warm and comfortable that I am going around in a heat-and-food induced fug most of the time. I need to buck up and write more. Novel no. 4 is calling to me ('Write me! Write me!') and there are exciting developments with novel 3 and my agent, which I can't talk about yet, but which are adding to my distractedness while here. But it's all good :)

Tania and I went to Chester yesterday - a metropolis after Hawarden

SHORT STORY PRIZE 2014

2014 INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY PRIZE

First Prize: £500 + publication    Second prize: £100

Open for entries January 1st – March 31st

Entry fee: £10 – submit up to 2 stories and receive a copy of our next issue (worth £10). £5 – submit 1 story. Stories must be no longer than 5,000 words and must be unpublished in print or online. All entries will also be considered for general publication. Stories may be in any theme or genre and you can submit as many times as you like. Online entries only. After making your payment via the Paypal buttons below, please submit your entries to shortfiction2010@googlemail.com with ‘Competition Entry’ in the subject box. The shortlist will be announced in June, the winner and runner-up in July. Please read competition rules here before entering. This year’s judge is prize-winning author Gerard Donovan, whose novels, poems and short stories have received critical acclaim.