October - On Writing

I've been away from my blog for a while, but I have a great excuse - I've been writing furiously, and, in the past week my new book has been sent on submission far and wide by my agent Lauren. (I created the logo below as part of the submission package - not sure I should be sharing it but there you go!)

The book is now in the inbetween, and I'm very nervous. Though I have now sold over 330,000 books in the UK, (according to my last royalty statement) I still feel like a novice and almost not good enough - I'm not sure why, but I do know it's something almost every author shares or at least everyone I've met. There's an uncertainty to this career, an uncertainty I grapple with daily.

This story was one I resisted, I wrote as much in my submission letter to editors, which maybe one day I'll share, but it's about life and death and grief and the paranormal and lots of adventure of course. The writing and research of this one has cemented a deep belief in the other and the veil and all the things our ancestors were much more familiar with.

I have my fingers crossed that it finds a home, I'll keep you posted.

On my hiatus, I also wrote and produced a sold out run of plays this August in Kilkenny as part of the Bare Bones collective. I think I mentioned it before when the idea was in its infancy - we put ourselves under pressure, there were a few tears and lots of stress but we got there and the experience is one I'd love to reproduce.

The plays were site specific, each written for a space in Willie Duggan, a lighting design showroom. My space was dominated by a huge Koi fish and so the play was a little quirky (as is probably my style), think Shakespearan goldfish. My two actors were friends (one my sister-in-law who'd never taken to the stage). We each had young kids, so to make life easier, our children came to all rehearsals and had a ball of a month - making the whole experience even more special.

 I posted on instagram about it and I've put a picture of the fish below - it's by a Spanish company called LZF, is about three metres long and spectacular in the flesh!