Dublin Book Festival

The Dublin Book Festival is bigger than ever this year, running from Thursday 2nd March until Sunday 6th.

There are three things I really like about this year’s programme.

The first is that there is, quite literally, something for everyone. Whether your thing is prose or poetry, crime or literary fiction, history or comedy, the programme is jam packed with household names. They have events for kids and young adults, walking tours and tea parties and even a session with everyone’s favourite Dragon, Bobby Kerr for those who are more interested in ‘books’ of a different type.

The second thing, is that almost all of these events are free. For the ones that do carry a cost, that cost is a very reasonable €5 which you get back by way of a book token for the festival book shop. The cost of readings and workshops in this country has long been a pet peeve of mine and it’s great to see a festival that’s so accessible to everyone on all levels.

And the third? The third is that I’m delighted to say I’m part of the programme this year and will be lining out with other ‘Fresh Voices’ Paul Soye, Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Liam Carson at 4pm on Sunday 6th March in City Hall. There’ll be readings and discussion with our chair Sinead MacAodha, so should be a lot of fun. Hope to see some of you there!

http://www.dublinbookfestival.com/

Moments

Before I was published, I’d often imagine into the future; what it would be like to get a book deal, to see my name on the cover of a novel, to see that novel on a bookshop shelf. These daydreams would usually come when I was at some difficult stage of the process, times when I was trying to avoid actually doing any writing at all.

Since I’ve been published, I’ve noticed that people often ask me about those exact moments I used to imagine. Usually, they have a smile on their face, urging me to tell them stories of elation, euphoria, of a world shattering into a billion starry molecules all around me. And sometimes I tell them that, or something like it, even though it’s not one hundred percent true.

The truth is, that while I remember each of these moments with a startling clarity - the Wednesday August evening when I got the e-mail, the Saturday morning I met my editor outside a McDonalds to take possession of my first copies - as well as elation, there was relief and disbelief and fear. And even as each event was happening, there was something else going on too, a tiny gap between the way I was actually feeling and how I was expected to feel. A gap big enough for the dreaded ‘should’ to squeeze through, as in: should I be feeling more than this?

Today, I received delivery of the paperback format of that same novel, The Other Boy. The paperback release is a low key affair, a new cover, bigger print run – no publicity or launch parties here. I was on the phone, still in my running clothes, when the courier rang the doorbell and I ate my breakfast, answered some e-mails and played a Facebook scrabble move before I rescued the box from the hall and sliced through the brown tape.

The first thing I noticed about the book was how nicely it fit into my hand; chunky but not too big, the cover matt and soft and grass green. When I turned it over, my name was there, right at the top. I sat down on the couch, read a bit in the middle and I remembered writing it. I flicked to another section and smiled, I remembered writing that too. And that was when it finally hit me, 10 months after being published, a year and a half after getting the deal, that this was actually my book, a book I’d written. The kind of book I might even buy.

I’m writing this in Starbucks. There’s a floor length window with the sea outside and today it’s rough, white peaks of waves on grey water. I like writing here because it’s a nice distraction to glance out at it, between paragraphs, when I run out of words. Today, I’m glancing at something else as well, my novel, the paperback, on the table, next to my cup.

It’s silly, I know, self indulgent, to carry it around like this and tomorrow it’ll be back on the shelf where it belongs. But just for today, I’ll keep it close and enjoy the unexpected tingle of elation that seeing it unexpectedly seems to bring.

Seapoint Literary Supper

This is a bit of a shameless plug but I think it's an event some of you might be interested in. Dubray Bookshops and Seapoint restaurant in Monkstown - home of amazing seafood and their legendary rosemary and parmesan fries - have started a literary supper evening on the first Thursday of every month.

The idea is simple. For €28 you get to enjoy a 3 course meal, a glass of wine and a reading and Q&A session with an Irish author, who, on Thursday 3rd February, happens to be yours truly.

Spaces are limited (genuinely so, as you can see in the photo the room is lovely but not very big) so if you're interested call Seapoint on 663 8480 to book your place.

Kick off on the night is 7:30 and as well as reading from The Other Boy (which is out in paperback that day) I'll also be doing my first reading from my new novel What Might Have Been Me.

Hope to see you there!

Saying goodbye

I went to a funeral last Thursday, a funeral of someone I’d never met, someone I didn’t know. Only now, sitting down to write about it, I feel like I knew her very well.

She was the mother of a friend of mine. The kind of friend who you can have a great laugh with and a great conversation with, a friend I don’t see every week, or even every month, but whenever I spend time with him, I vow to see him more often.

We met a few years ago, when I was going through a tough time in my life, a time, it would turn out, that would mark the start of a period of great change for me. We shared a small office and the same sense of humour and a liking for chocolate muffins. But mostly what we shared was a passion for music. There wasn’t much in the office but there was an old CD player - 1990s ghetto blaster style - and we took to taking turns hijacking it every day, sharing our soundtracks with each other. And somewhere between Pink Floyd and Arcade Fire, we became friends.

Today, I heard his mother’s soundtrack; Mama Cass and Mozart and of course Bob Dylan. She was a young woman and her illness had been brief, barely eight short weeks between the day she saw the first signs of it and the day at St Jerome where we all stood shoulder to shoulder waving her goodbye. But she was an organised woman, with a plan in an envelope of what she wanted. And it was this plan that her two boys – two men – bravely brought to life with no celebrant, no middle man, only this rich tapestry of words and music. Without the framework of the familiar, the rhythm of rituals, there was a purity, a simplicity to it all. The sound of a life well lived, of a soul, singing goodbye.

And as I stood there, listening to her voice rise and fall in the chapel, the clear pitch of each note as she sang “The Moon and St Christopher”, I felt as if I had known her, this woman who touched so many. And I wished I had. And it made me want to work harder – so much harder – at really getting to know the people around me, and most of all, to really get to know myself.

Getting re-started

What is it about re-starting something, that makes it so hard?

I think the answer is somewhere in that little ‘re.’ Re-starting is just like starting, but without that energy and excitement you had the first time around. There’s usually a reason that you’ve stopped doing whatever you were doing and you know the effort that’ll be involved to get going again. You know the pitfalls along the way, because you’ve fallen in and peeped out from inside.

This week for me – like a lot of you, I suspect – has been a week of re-starts. Starting back at work, yoga, running, blogging, even though these are all things I enjoy, they’ve been surprisingly hard to get back into after only a couple of week’s break. And so, I decided, to get the re-starting started, I’d go easy on myself this week, instead of raising that bar, or even keeping it level, for once I’d bring it down a little notch.

And, at the end of the first week of 2011, I’m happy to say, my underachieving approach has worked pretty well. You could even say, it’s beaten my expectations.

My first run wasn’t quite as early as usual, or as long. A simple twenty minutes, rather than thirty was the carrot to get me out there and, encouraged by the fact that I could walk pain free the next day, I got the second run of 2011 in as well. Rather than go for the advanced yoga class I opted for an easier one – no inversions here! – and lying on my mat at the end of an hour and a quarter, my out-of-practice body felt the ache of effort and accomplishment that I normally feel after an intense two day workshop. Good thing I’ve saved that particular treat for next weekend then...

And, as for the blog, my deal to myself was this: I just had to blog by the end of this week. It didn’t have to be the best blog post ever, the funniest or the most entertaining or insightful. It just had to be readable and a bit interesting. A low-ish bar that I hope I’ve met, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

I promise to raise it for the next one!

A helping hand

There’s a moment right before you fall, when you know you’re going to fall.

For me, that moment happened today, on a slanty bit of path outside Blackrock Shopping centre. I knew as I stepped onto the ice that it was a mistake, could feel my trusty hiking boots unable to get a grip and looking down all I could see were my feet slide back and back and back. It seemed to go on forever and I couldn’t do anything except get ready for the impact. But it never came.

I didn’t fall because just as I was about to a hand grabbed my arm from behind, a hand that was solid and safe. When I turned around I saw a lady – a much older lady – with a stick that she’d dug into the ice. I’d never seen her before, but she was smiling out from under her fur hat. “Come on,” she said, and reached out a hand to pull me up to the top where the ice had already melted, only letting go when we were both safe and sturdy, saying goodbye as we parted ways into the centre.

If I’d been blogging every day since the weekend, I suspect the blog would have different takes on the snow. Wonder at its beauty, calm in its silence, the frustration of cancelled plans and foregone work opportunities. But now, watching the thaw through the window, the ice that becomes water, what stands out in my mind from this week is the kindness this weather brings out in people, the sense of us all being in it together.

So thank you to my lady in Blackrock for stopping me falling and to my neighbour who’s been busy all week clearing a walkway along the path and snow from my car and to the Gate theatre for allowing myself and my friend to reschedule our tickets to Jane Eyre for January instead of last night.

And as we get ready to wave goodbye to the snow, I hope that some of that kindness stays behind, long after it’s gone.

No Place Like Home At Christmas

For anyone who is torn this Christmas between putting their money towards a charity gift or a “real one,” the Jack and Jill Foundation’s short story collection There’s No Place Like Home at Christmas might just tick both boxes, at least for the under tens in your life.

This lovely hardback book has 29 stories in total, all centred around the idea of being at home for Christmas, tying in well with the important work Jack and Jill do, providing nursing support and respite for families of children with brain damage so they can receive care at home. Alongside yours truly, other contributors include Maeve Binchy, Ciara Geraghty, Niall Quinn, Eddie Hobbs, Cathy Kelly, Patricia Scanlan and, as they say, many, many more!

Why not pick it up this week and make it into a type of storybook Advent calendar to read with your kids? Healthier for the kids than chocolate and arguably healthier for the adults than spending the time watching endless analysis of our financial situation on the news!

The book is available for €14.99 in shops, or you can purchase online directly from the publishers Mercier for a special price of €13.49 on the link below...



http://www.mercierpress.ie/There%27s_No_Place_Like_Home_at_Christmas_%28Jack_amp;_Jill_Foundation%29/571/