SJ Watson on his childhood dream coming true when his agent secured a book deal for Before I Go to Sleep, the psychological thriller that went on to become a phenomenal international success Is it true you started roughly 20 novels while working as an audiologist before writing Before I Go to Sleep? Not exactly! I’d started a few – but with some I’d only got as far as a title or perhaps an opening scene. They were hardly novels, more ideas I ... Read the Post...
Kathleen McMahon: “I ended up abandoning that book and starting from scratch with another”
Former RTÉ journalist Kathleen MacMahon found herself in the limelight in 2011 when she landed a €684,000 advance as part of a two-book deal with Little, Brown. Here she talks about coping with the attention, quitting the day job, and overcoming 'difficult second novel syndrome'. How did you go about getting your agent, Marianne Gunn O'Connor? I had been secretly writing a novel for years, before I finally forced myself to send it to someone I ... Read the Post...
“You only need one publisher to love your work” – Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride on getting her critically-acclaimed novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing published after five years of rejection ... Read the Post...
Mary Costello – “I was just writing quietly myself in the suburbs”
Award-winning writer Mary Costello on overcoming self-doubt to complete her debut novel Academy Street. I started writing in my very early twenties… I had a couple of short stories published, but I was teaching full-time so after a while the writing slipped into the margins. I never gave it up but I didn’t send work out all through my twenties and thirties. I kept the stories to myself at home. I was just writing quietly myself in the ... Read the Post...
