Womens Fiction
A Moment Like This, Anita Notaro
"Anita Notaro, best selling author and past winner of the Popular Fiction Irish Book of the Year always says that there is no novelistic equivalent to going to the gym …you just have to knuckle down and do your 1,000 words every day, there is no shortcut. The worst thing that you can do is to put your work aside and say ‘ah sure I’ll come back to that when I have more time.’ You’ll never have more time. No time like the present." *
And the present turned out to be a very precious time for Anita and her family. In 2010 Anita was diagnosed with dementia, as her husband Gerry McGuinness revealed in a moving appearance on Friday's Late Late Show. Gerry explained to journalist Sarah Cadden for The Independent, that Anita's symptoms began in the spring and summer of 2010, "It started with her forgetting things, things she had said or things other people had said. Then it was significant events like deaths or anniversaries, which Anita had always been on top of, as a classic oldest child, "the boss of all of us". And then she became slightly childish, slightly repetitive. She started singing -- nursery rhymes -- just a little bit too much. She stopped watching documentaries and started watching, well, things that were easier viewing, let's say. She'd have a croissant for breakfast instead of something healthy, or egg fried rice instead of a proper dinner. She started wearing favoured clothes -- the dresses and high heels were all put away and it was jeans and favourite comfy boots all the time." At the time Gerry thought their relationship was going wrong, but as the symptoms progressed he realised it was something more serious.
This Is How It Ends, Kathleen MacMahon
The name ‘Kathleen MacMahon’ has been on the tips of literary tongues since April 2011, when the award winning RTÉ journalist picked up a €684,000 advance and a two-book deal from Little, Brown at the London Book Fair for her début novel, This Is How It Ends. MacMahon’s love story between an Irish architect and an American searching for his roots soon became a worldwide hit, with sales in 25 countries across the globe. Marése O’Sullivan spoke to her for writing.ie to find out what it was like to write with a famous author for a grandmother, how her day job has influenced her fiction and how she procured one of the top agents in the country.
With the huge success of her first novel, the moment that MacMahon realised she wanted to be a writer has faded into oblivion. “It was so long ago that I can’t even remember,” she reveals, “but it was a long time before my notions of being a writer solidified into a concrete idea for a novel.” Her grandmother, Mary Lavin, was also very familiar with literary success, having written many novels she was regarded as a distinguished short story writer before her death in 1996. The niece of Caroline Walsh, literary editor of the Irish Times, MacMahon in her acknowledgments Kathleen thanks her aunt, among others, for her wise counsel.
A Family Scandal, Zoe Miller
Zoe Miller’s fourth novel A Family Scandal is a Bord Gais Energy Book Club ‘Book of the Month’. The novel tells the story of the Morgan sisters and how they deal with the aftermath of the mysterious death of their rock musician father. Hazel Gaynor spoke to Zoe about her writing career.
‘I’ve been writing since I was young,’ Zoe explains. ‘I still recall standing in a library at age seven, filled with wonder at the shelves of books, knowing that I had found my life’s passion. I scribbled away in copybooks for years, and I was first published as a freelance writer, with articles and short stories. Eventually I realised that if I wanted to write a novel I was going to have to carve out the time somehow. There were lots of hiccups along the way but Guilty Secrets was published in 2009, Sinful Deceptions in 2010, Rival Passions in 2011 and now A Family Scandal.’
By night Zoe is a busy author, but during the day she works as a training specialist in communication and personal development skills. How does she juggle the two? ‘I fit my writing in around my day job which means I have very little free time - and minimum household chore time – (yay), but it’s great, all I ever wanted to do was write! Like most other women I have a normal, busy life behind the scenes and my juggling act is around the day job, writing novels, and keeping home and family ticking over!’
Sarah Webb and The Shoestring Club
Sarah Webb is the international bestselling author of no less than nine adult novels and numerous titles for children. From her background as a bookseller, Sarah maintains that she will only continue to write for as long as she enjoys it. With the launch of her new novel, The Shoestring Club it would seem that enjoyment is still very much a part of the writing process! “The Shoestring Club is about two sisters, Julia and Pandora Schuster, who lose their mum at an early age and who used to be close as twins but now have a rather strained relationship. At the beginning of the book Julia finds out that her ex-boyfriend and her ex-best friend are getting married, and her life starts to quickly unravel. I started thinking about The Shoestring Club quite some time ago, and it evolved over the past three years. I wanted to write about two things: what it means to be a sister and also about what happens to a person later on in life when they encounter something traumatic and upsetting as a child. In the book, Julia, the younger sister (she’s 24) is deeply troubled by something she sees when she's nine.”
After concentrating on the hugely successful ‘Amy Green’ series for young readers in recent years, has Sarah found it difficult to move back to adult fiction? “To be honest it was at first, yes. I enjoy writing the Amy Green books so much and still do. I'm working on book six at the moment, the last book in the series and I'm going to miss the characters so much. But I have a strong idea for another series for young readers, ticking over at the back of my mind, waiting to be shaped and formed into a proper book proposal.”
Ciara Geraghty Talks to Sarah Webb
Women's fiction author Sarah Webb chatted to Ciara Geraghty to find out more about her writing day.
Ciara, can you tell us about your latest book and where the idea came from?
My third novel ‘Finding Mr. Flood’, is out in paperback at the moment. It’s about Dara Flood, a young Dublin woman who works in a dog pound. She says the most interesting thing about her happened before she was born. Her father went out for a packet of cigarettes and never came back. 27 years later, Dara’s sister – Angel – falls ill and urgently needs a kidney transplant. Dara employs the services of failed-policeman-turned-private investigator, Stanley Flinter and together, the pair of them set off on the trail of the elusive Mr.Flood....
The funny thing about ‘Finding Mr. Flood’ is that the story is inspired by a segment on an Irish radio phone-in show I heard years and years before I ever thought about writing. A woman rang in to the station, distraught. Several days before she rang in, her husband – a lorry driver – pulled up outside their home. She was waiting at the front door. She told him that a piece of flat-pack furniture had been delivered that day and she needed his help to lug it up the stairs. He said he’d park the lorry up the road where he always parked it, and be right back. He drove up the road and she never saw him again.
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