Memoir

The Diviner: Joe Cassidy

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:52:03 +0100

Divining, simply put, is the art of locating hidden things. Joe uses his divination skills in particular to search for geopathic stress – water and energy lines – near houses and on land. This energy, if left untended, can cause physical and emotional problems for people. He uses traditional techniques to locate problems and correct them. He also works on problems caused by curses placed on houses or the destruction of ancient sacred sites. His healing – of people and animals – is...

One Front Infront of The Other, Teena Gates

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:49:27 +0100

So how to write a book; to take those random thoughts and heartfelt emotions and translate them into a story that will grab other peoples’ hearts in the same way that they grab yours? I had lost 12 stone while trying to reach Everest for the Hope Foundation and street kids in Kolkata, India. But in doing so, I had been given the gift of hope myself and a second crack at life.Could I share that and help others to believe they could do it too? As a journalist, ...

Dead Man Talking, Mark Heffernan

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:03:45 +0100

The project became all consuming as problem after problem delayed the opening of the club. Mark told me, "it was on my mind from the moment I woke up to last thing at night, there was no time for anything else." Mark's DJ business began to slip, and with every penny invested - and used - in the new business, Mark and his partners realised they needed another cash injection to get the club open. Mike Bridgeman was approached as a possible investor. He liked what he saw and handed over a cheque for...

My Journey With Angels by Patricia Buckley

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:31:48 +0100

“I never saw it as a burden,” she says, “It was natural to me. They made me happy and I felt alive and euphoric when they appeared. It was harder when I didn’t see them and their light.”

When Patricia’s brother John died suddenly, over two years ago, she says he spoke to her from the Spirit World and told her it was time to finish writing the book she had started months earlier, telling her it would be healing, not only for her and the family but for other families too.

Patricia ope...

Patrick McGinley - That Unearthly Valley

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:51:54 +0100

In other words memoir writing must inevitably result in condensation. In making sense of your life and in identifying causes and their effects, the danger is that you will falsify the true relationship of events. Since you cannot set down every tittle-tattle and fiddle-faddle that has ever happened to you, you are obliged to do a spot of editing. If you are not scrupulously careful, you will find yourself telling the story you most wish to hear. Since direction and shape a...

Catherine Barry: Charlie and Me

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:36:16 +0100

Her creativity was destined to be aired however and this itself became part of the healing process. She explains, “I entered Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of thirty, and met Charlie Gallagher who became my 'sponsor'”. A writer himself (of short stories and radio plays), he was instrumental in encouraging her to get published. She tells the story, “One day, we were sitting in my living room and he noticed a poem hanging on my wall. It was a wedding gift I had received. He asked me who had ...

Tony MacAulay: From the Shankill to the Silver Screen

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:16:42 +0100

Tony had experience in writing poetry and radio scripts in his work with the BBC, but memoir was a new departure. His most important piece of advice is to ‘visualise the era’. Tony used old photographs and home videos his father taped to ‘trigger memories of events, clothes, music and culture’. These old videos proved invaluable to Tony, sparking memories that became chapters, such as the ill-fated Westy’s Disco trips. Tony recommends this approach to budding memoir writers, citing visu...

The Will to Succeed

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:50:05 +0100

So how does a Mum with two children, (a husband and a cat) manage to produce three bestselling novels, a bestselling memoir and fight a deadly disease?

It was during a stay in hospital that Emma first pen to paper: “I began writing in 2006 while I was in hospital recovering from surgery. Having a double mastectomy and having my ovaries removed was a bid to rid my body of danger, and as you can imagine a myriad of emotions were zooming through my head, so as a spleen venting exercise I began to...

The Governor: John Lonergan

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:36:39 +0100

Lonergan’s first endeavour to record the experiences of a prison boss began many years before The Governor reached the shelves of our book stores. This attempt was based around the 15 governors that went before him. However after six frustrating months of garnering what was essentially useless information he gave up. Lonergan was disappointed that most of the men he spoke to appeared to be so conditioned by the establishment that they would not talk to him freely about their experiences. T...