books

Currently I’m working on two children’s books for The O’Brien Press, to be published in Ireland in 2007.

My first print commissions were tv and radio spin-offs published in BBC, Appletree Press, and Oliver & Boyd book series. Then, in 2000, Element Children's Books commissioned Fairytales, Myths and Legends, which re-tells and explores the nature and purpose of archetypal stories.

Changeling, my first novel, was written after months spent in development hell on a well-paid tv drama that never got made. When I emerged, the writer Maeve Binchy, a wise woman and a good friend, sent me this e-mail: NOW SIT DOWN AND WRITE WHAT YOU LIKE. So I did.

I started with three things - a teenage character’s hatred for her dad’s new baby, a motif from folklore, and an Ordinance Survey map of the area in which the book is set.

The process was exhausting, exhilarating and satisfying. It reminded me that a writer only uncovers what a work’s about by going through, and completing, the act of writing it - and that only then is it possible to identify and craft the elements that make its story resonate with meaning. I'm now working on rewrites and looking for a publisher.