Hello!

Welcome to my new website/blog.  First off , I wish to say a huge thank you to the creative and gifted Colleen Sheehan for her work on this site and for giving it its professional gloss.  Anyone who would like support in starting up a new website, or have their Facebook or Twitter pages redesigned, their ebooks formatted or any one of a number of excellent services, click on this link.  You will not regret it.  write.DREAM.repeat Book Design

Sunday 18 September 2016

WHY DO WRITERS WRITE?

After a recent talk I gave on writing, some people waited behind to speak with me. More than one of them jokingly remarked, “What do you do with all the money you’re earning?” There are some writers, I know, who write with the hope of making money – a vain enterprise – but the great majority of writers are concerned more about finding readers. One famous writer, whose name I no longer remember, once asked to have written on his tombstone the simple legend, “He wrote only to be read.” Money for him was neither an issue nor an objective.

Reflecting further on this, I have come to the realisation that recognition, or fame perhaps, is little more a motivating factor to the truly committed writer than is money. So what drives the urge? There is simply the creative spirit that desires to bring into being something original, and there is the creative ego that yearns to share that creation. Most writers would confess, if they’re honest, to a secret wish to stand at the shoulders of everyone reading their work, to watch their every facial expression, to decipher their every reaction, and hopefully, to win appreciation, even praise, for their brainchild. So, while writing may appear initially to be a fire in the belly that must need find expression, ultimately it cannot be an end in itself. The creative ego is a hungry beast.

Saturday 17 September 2016



Something of a Dilemma

I am working on my new novel and I'm sitting here wondering about the extent to which loose plotting causes a book to take over the author's thinking rather than the other way round. (Loose plotting is my preferred mode of writing. I like surprises to suddenly emerge from the actions of the characters and I tend to allow these surprises to influence the growth and development of the plot and story.)

I am currently about half-way through writing the third novel of my Inspector Sheehan Mysteries Series in which the Inspector finds himself pitted against a coven of Satanists. It's called The Coven Murders. The book was initially intended to be a straightforward mystery but I have just now completed writing 3500 words that fit more obviously into the supernatural/horror genre. How did this happen? Where do I go from here? I think I'm going to have to run with it and see if I can marry the two genres (mystery and the supernatural) without falling between two stools.

As I have just said, I tend have to let the consequences of character action dictate what happens in my books. All right! That's how it will be. There are going to be some strange, even frightening, episodes in this new book (Black Mass, exorcisms, demons running around!!!) I'll keep you posted about further developments.

Saturday 3 September 2016


Readers' Comments. Don't You Just Love Them

A friend told me recently that my books never failed to disappoint. I hope this was something of a lapsis lingua rather than a deliberate slight. It was, perhaps, somewhat less barbed than Disraeli's comment to an author he had little time for: "I shall lose no time in reading your book." or Ambrose Bierce's less oblique judgement: "The covers of this book are too far apart."