VIRTUAL TOUR - *OF DUBLIN* - STOP #1

I kick off my virtual tour of lit blogs at Rich Rennicks' A Trip to Ireland site today. Rich is an Irish writer based in North Carolina.

A sampler from the interview: 'People/critics always seem to want all fiction to be the novel, or to aspire to be the novel. This is messed up thinking. We need to accept that short can be good. Short is good! Comparing novels to short fiction is like comparing eggs to bacon. They go well, side by side, but they are not each other.'

Read the interview here and see Rich's review of the chapbook from yesterday here.

Rich says, 'I'm happy to do what I can to spread the word about good Irish writers.' So, if you are an Irish writer with a recent publication contact Rich via his site here.

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Launch is this Saturday, btw. 9th November, 6pm, Tosnú Art Gallery, Brackernagh, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway. Launch speech by writer Maureen Gallagher. Food and wine will be served. The chapbook will be for sale and I will sign. All welcome!

1st REVIEW OF *OF DUBLIN & OTHER FICTIONS*

The first review of Of Dublin and Other Fictions is in, big thanks to Irish ex-pat Rich Rennicks of the A Trip to Ireland blog. Read it here.

NEW REVIEW AND 'QUIET' BOOKS

North Carolina based Irish writer Rich Rennicks has just reviewed my novel YOU, which came out three years ago (I can hardly believe it's been three years). Rich reviews it on his blog A Trip to Ireland. I love this about the internet - there is no two-week window for your book to get noticed; there is endless time and scope and space.

A small quote from the review: 'YOU is a quiet, surprising novel, that captures a young girl’s growing perception of the world quite beautifully.' Cheers, Rich, much appreciated :)

As an aside, 'quiet' is a word I often hear about my work. It gets me a bit knicker-knotted because I don't quite get what it means, except I feel I am being told that it is not altogether a good thing to be 'quiet'. The feeling I get is that publishers/reviewers/agents really want fiction a bit more shouty than mine and that's what will make a book a big hit, as opposed to the minor hits that I've had. Anyway, I think, as an introvert, quiet is where I'm at and will continue to be at for a long time to come. For what it's worth, Mr Rennicks didn't seem to think 'quiet' was a negative but others have (agents/publishers who have rejected my work in the past). Anyway, with a publisher I like for my last two books and my next (New Island) and a new agent on the foreshore also, this 'quiet' irritation may belong to the past.