A-Z Blogging Challenge - C is for Connemara

Continuing my theme of people and places in my novels, today we visit Connemara where my six ‘Mist Na Mara’ novels are set.

On my first ever visit to Connemara about fifteen years ago, I was fortunate that it was a beautiful autumn day, and I fell in love with the wild open countryside, the dozens of small loughs (pronounced like the ‘lochs’ in Scotland), and the Twelve Bens, a range of steep-sided bare mountains.

Connemara is the western part of County Galway and is an area of about 12 square miles, bounded on the east by Lough Corrib, on the north by Killary Harbour, on the south by Galway Bay, and on the west by the Atlantic.

Although I’ve been to many other areas of Ireland since then, Connemara was the place that captured my heart, and I’ve visited it several times. Most times I’ve been very lucky with the weather, but even under low cloud, Connemara is still beautiful.

On my first visit (and on subsequent visits, too), we went along Sky Road, near Clifden. This is a scenic drive along (and up!) a narrow peninsula which skirts Clifden Bay and rises to a viewpoint overlooking several small islands and beyond them the wide expanse of the Atlantic stretching into the distance. I’ve used the views from Sky Road several times in my novels because I love it, and my (imaginary) ‘Mist Na Mara’ house, which features in all my Irish novels, overlooks Clifden Bay.

Here’s an excerpt from ‘Irish Inheritance’ when Dan (a lawyer) is driving American artist Guy and English actress Jenna to Connemara to visit their joint inheritance for the first time:

“We’ll be on an ordinary road between Galway and Clifden, so I won’t be able to drive as fast,” Dan said. “Quite apart from which, I’m sure you’ll want to admire the scenery.”

Not long afterwards, Guy let out a low whistle. “Hey, you’re right. It’s as if we’ve crossed an invisible line into a completely different landscape.”

Jenna agreed. After the gentle green fields of central Ireland, they were now driving through the wild open countryside of Connemara, uninhabited apart from sheep and lambs. New vistas appeared at every twist and turn of the road—clusters of bright yellow broom, small brooks rippling over stones, breeze-whipped lakes at one side of the road, low green hills with rocky outcrops on the other, and the occasional ruins of stone cottages. A range of sharp peaked, green-grey mountains dominated the view ahead of them.

“What are those?” she asked Dan.

“Na Beanna Beola, the Twelve Bens. Ben means mountain here, the same as in Scotland. None of them higher than two and a half thousand feet, but they’re quite dramatic, aren’t they?”

Guy nodded. “They sure are. It’s an awesome view.”

(All my books are available from Amazon  or from Tirgearr Publishing )

A - Z Blogging Challenge - B is for Betsy

Continuing my introduction to some of the people in my novels, today we meet Betsy, who is the heroine of my ‘work in progress’ which is set in the mid-19th century.

Betsy is, in fact, my great-great grandmother. Baptised as Elizabeth in Liverpool in 1825, she was obviously known as Betsy as this is the name shown on the 1851 and 1861 censuses. In 1844, she married John, a mariner, who became a captain with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, commanding, at different times, the company’s paddle steamers, Ben-my-Chree, King Orry, Mona’s Queen, and Tynwald between Liverpool and Douglas in the Isle of Man.

SS Ben-my-Chree 1845-60

My grandmother's brother Joe (Betsy’s grandson) once told me his mother had two younger brothers, who were sailors. However, when I started researching my family history, I discovered that Betsy and John actually had nine children. The first died when he was 11 weeks old, the second survived to the age of 15 but was killed when he ‘fell from aloft’ on a ship returning from Australia to England in 1861. The next 3 children, all boys, died aged 6, 4, and 2, and were buried at Braddan Cemetery in the Isle of Man between August and November 1854. Since Isle of Man death certificates at this time don't show the cause of death, I can only assume there was some kind of epidemic.

My great-grandmother (also named Elizabeth) was the only daughter, born in 1856, and her two younger brothers were born in 1858 and 1864 (with another dying in 1860, aged 9 months.) This certainly indicates the truth about high childhood mortality in Victorian times, but it must have been heartbreaking to lose so many children.

Betsy’s husband died in 1871 but she lived until 1906 when she was 81. Sometime in the 1870s she moved with her daughter to Colne in East Lancashire. I have yet to find a reason why she made this move, since she was born and bred in Liverpool and lived in the Isle of Man during most of her marriage to John. Her daughter Elizabeth later married a local cotton weaver, and Betsy ended up living with them and their family of 9 children, in a small terraced house on the outskirts of Colne. One wonders where they all slept when there were only 2 bedrooms!

The house where the family of 12 lived in 1891 and 1901

My great-uncle Joe, who was 15 when his grandmother Betsy died, told me she was very much the ‘matriarch’ of the family and always spoke her mind.

The story I’m writing is based on these facts about Betsy, and also on information I’ve discovered about her husband John from the Isle of Man newspaper archives and the minutes of the Steam Packet Company – combined with plenty of my own imagination about their first ten years together from 1845 to 1855. I've had to take some liberties with dates to fit my story, and also with names since the same names crop up regularly in Victorian families, which would only lead to confusion for readers of a novel!  

I don’t have any photos of Betsy, but here is one of her daughter Elizabeth. Since several of Elizabeth’s children resembled her (including my grandmother), I like to think Betsy may have looked liked this, too.

A-Z Blogging Challenge - A is for Alice

 A is for Alice

Welcome to my blog and also to this year’s April A-Z Blogging Challenge. During this month, I’ll be introducing you to some of the places and characters in my novels.

The first is Alice Vernon, an ageing actress who first appeared in ‘Irish Intrigue’ and also, briefly, in ‘Irish Deceptions’.

 

About ten years ago, I visited the village of Cong in County Mayo, where some of the movie ‘The Quiet Man’ was filmed in the 1950s, starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. A cottage there is called ‘The Quiet Man’ cottage. It wasn’t the cottage used in the movie – that is in ruins now – but part of it is furnished like the original. When we were asked to sign the visitor book at the end of our visit, I happened to notice a signature at the bottom of the previous page – Maureen O’Hara. Yes, she had visited the cottage the day before we went there, and we were told she visited Cong whenever she was in Ireland.

You know when something strikes a chord in your imagination? Maureen O’Hara’s signature did that for me, and I knew that I would include this somewhere in a future novel.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m writing ‘Irish Intrigue’ and my heroine, an actress, visits a small cottage in Ireland used in a 1949 movie and sees the signature of an Oscar-winning actress, Alice Vernon.

At that point, even I didn’t realise the role Alice was to play later in the story. I first introduced her during a location filming scene when Charley, my heroine, was fooling around with her co-star (not the hero of the story):

Before she could stop him, Josh had spun her around, put his hands around her waist, and flung her over one shoulder.

“Josh, stop it!” she squealed, and laughed as she beat her hands against his back and kicked her knees on his chest.

Charley’s laughter came to an abrupt stop when she caught sight of a figure on the hotel terrace overlooking the lawn. She screwed up her eyes. Surely it couldn’t be—?

A second later, she knew it was. Her mass of curly auburn hair was now white and much shorter than she’d worn it when she was younger, but her oval face was the same, and she stood tall and erect in a dark green trouser suit.

“Put me down,” she breathed urgently. “Please put me down.”

“Why?”

“There’s someone on the terrace—”

Josh swung around and unceremoniously dumped her on her feet again. “Oh, my God. It’s Aunt Alice.”

Charley stared at him. “Aunt Alice? Alice Vernon’s your aunt?”

I intended to base Alice Vernon on Maureen O’Hara, but she had different ideas. Almost as soon as she spoke, she ‘became’ Maggie Smith (or rather the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey). I could see and hear her, and she eventually took an important role in helping my hero and heroine to sort out their problems. I really grew to love her as she developed during the story.

So did my readers. One reviewer wrote: Alice is a character who will touch your heart.

She certainly touched mine. If you asked me for my favourite ‘secondary’ characters, I think Alice would head the list. 

(All my books are available from Amazon  or from Tirgearr Publishing )

Irish Shadows

IRISH SHADOWS, the fifth of my Mist Na Mara contemporary novels, will be released this week, so here’s a reminder of the beautiful part of Ireland where it is set.

Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland, is a wild area of County Galway. Its name comes from Conmhacne Mara, meaning “descendants of Con Mhac of the Sea”. It is a broad peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean, and stretching from Killary Harbour in the north to Galway Bay in the south.

Connemara is renowned for its inspiring scenery, ranging from the Twelve Bens to Roundstone Bog. The coastline is broken by many small inlets and narrow peninsulas, and there are numerous small islands off the coast.

The Twelve Bens or Twelve Pins is a range of sharp peaked mountains, none of them higher than about 3,400 feet, but still stark and dramatic. Hundreds of streams run down the steep mountain sides, joining up with other streams to form large and small loughs (pronounced like the ‘lochs’ in Scotland) in the valley.

Clifden, on the west coast, is the ‘capital’ of Connemara. The town was founded by John D’Arcy who inherited the estate at the beginning of the 19th century (and built a castle overlooking Clifden Bay). At the time the area was inhabited mainly by fishermen and farmers, until D’Arcy decided to establish a town and also a road to Galway (now the N59).

By 1839 the town had grown to 185 dwellings, most of them three-floored, two churches, two hotels, three schools, a police barracks, courthouse, a gaol, a distillery and 23 pubs(!), and it had a population of about 1,000. It suffered during the Potato Famine in the 1840s and didn’t recover until the end of the 19th century when a railway was built to link it to Galway.

In the second half of the 20th century, Clifden has become a thriving tourist destination. Its population of about 2,500 is swelled by tourists, hikers, cyclists, and water sports enthusiasts during the summer months. For the less energetic, there is a variety of shops from sweater shops and boutiques to antiques and art, and of course the tourist souvenir shops. Needless to say, there are also plenty of pubs, some genuinely ‘old’ Irish and others more trendy. In many of them, there is live music most evenings.

IRISH SHADOWS is released on 27 June, and is available at a special price of 99c/99pence for a limited time. Like the other books in the series, it is a stand-alone story, with a ‘new’ hero and heroine.

Will Liam and Rose be able to resolve all the shadows from the past in order to find a future together?

After a heart-breaking experience, Rose Finlay has vowed never to give another man a chance to hurt her – until Liam McKenna arrives at Mist Na Mara Arts Centre to organise an anniversary celebration event. Liam has his own reasons for not wanting to embark on a new relationship, and both fight the mutual magnetic attraction.

Shocks await them when Liam meets the boy his sister gave up for adoption twenty years earlier, and Rose’s ‘ex’ makes contact with her thirteen-year-old son. Rose also discovers a betrayal which has divided her family since the Irish Civil War in the 1920s.

Link to all major e-book distributors: http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Martin_Paula/irish-shadows.htm

Inventing Family History

For ‘Irish Inheritance’, the first book in my 'Mist Na Mara' series, I needed to invent some family history for my American hero and English heroine. They have jointly inherited a house on the west coast of Ireland, but neither of them has ever heard of the Irish woman who has bequeathed it to them. This leads them into an intriguing, and sometimes puzzling, journey into their individual family histories, until they eventually unravel the tale of a 19th century love affair.

Sorting out this family history was fascinating for me too! I’ve done quite a lot of research into my own family history, so at least I was aware of the resources that are available online and in other places.

What I didn’t know before I started was that only the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses are available. The census records for 1861-1891 were pulped, by government order, during the 1st World War, and the earlier records from 1821 to 1851 were destroyed by a fire at the Public Record Office in 1922.

This actually worked to my advantage, as it meant my characters couldn’t find out where their ancestors were living before 1901. The census records did help me, though, to see what names were popular in the early 20th century, and also to find out what streets and houses existed at that time in the Irish town of Clifden in County Galway.

Coincidentally, most of the USA 1890 census was destroyed by a fire at the Commerce Building in Washington DC in 1921. Again, this proved very convenient for me – although it must be so frustrating for American researchers!

My own research came in useful, too, when my heroine asks someone to look up information about her great-grandmother, because the 1911 census does not shown the maiden name of a wife. The heroine needs to know this, and I could easily imagine her researcher trawling through the marriage records to find one that seemed to be the right one. I say ‘seemed’ because in family history research, we can’t always assume that something that looks right actually is the correct record.

Another ‘headache’ in creating an imaginary family tree was getting ages right. I couldn’t have someone getting married when they were 12, or a woman having a child when she was in her 70s!

When I needed one couple to die relatively young, I had to search for plausible reasons for this, which was where my knowledge of history came in useful. The Spanish flu epidemic at the end of World War 1 fitted the bill perfectly, and so did the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940.

I must have drawn and re-drawn the ‘family tree’ a dozen or more times before I eventually decided it worked - and now I'm very glad I kept it, because in my 5th novel in the series, I'm re-visiting the family, and adding another strand to it. Watch this space! 

Irish Inheritance

English actress Jenna Sutton and American artist Guy Sinclair first meet when they jointly inherit a house on the west coast of Ireland. Curious about their unknown benefactress and why they are considered 'family', they discover surprising links to the original owners of the house.

They soon unravel an intriguing tale of a 19th century love affair. At the same time, their mutual attraction grows, despite personal reasons for not wanting romantic involvements at this point in their lives.

A local property agent appears to have her own agenda concerning the house while other events pull Jenna and Guy back to separate lives in London and America. Friction builds over their decision about the house and its contents.

Will their Irish inheritance eventually bring them together - or drive them apart? 

Available as an ebook from all major distributors - click here

'Thought-provoking and powerful'

At the end of last year, I entered my novel ‘Irish Secrets’ into the Wishing Shelf Book Awards (http://www.thewsa.co.uk/). Although I didn’t win, I was delighted to be a finalist, and to receive an overall ranking of 4.5 stars. In addition, finalists receive feedback from the readers, which is also posted on Amazon and Goodreads by the award organiser.

I was very happy with the feedback I received!

Of the 17 readers:

16 would read another book by this author.

17 felt it was easy to follow.

16 would recommend this story to another reader to try.

17 felt the pacing was good or excellent.

16 thought the author understood the readership and what they wanted.

8 felt the author’s strongest skill was ‘plotting a story’.

9 felt the author’s strongest skill was ‘developing the characters’.

Readers’ Comments:

‘An interesting look at the Irish system of baby adopting many years ago. Excellently written; sad in many parts. Books of this nature are important reminding us of how lucky we are and how terrible history often was.’ Male reader, aged 41

‘I liked the romantic element I thought that was well written; lots of chemistry.’ Female reader, aged 56

‘Well plotted with a strong romantic undercurrent. I enjoyed this very much.’ Female reader, aged 47

‘This author is best working with characters and speech. The characters develop well this way. A powerful novel looking at a very dark Irish secret. Well done.’ Male reader, aged 55

Summary: ‘Thought-provoking and powerful. A FINALIST and highly recommended.’ The Wishing Shelf Book Awards

Irish Secrets

While working at Mist Na Mara Arts Centre, Kara Stewart embarks on a search for her mother’s birth parents; she’d been adopted in the 1960s by an American couple. Kara soon realises the task is not as simple as she’d anticipated when she meets with a wall of secrecy surrounding Irish baby adoptions.

Ryan Brady is hiding the secret of his real identity, but when he offers to help Kara trace her Irish family, his attraction to her is undeniable.

As the mystery unravels, secrets drive a wedge, not only between Kara and her mother, but also between Kara and Ryan.

Can Kara and Ryan find a way to heal the rifts created by all these secrets and find love?

Irish Secrets is being re-published by Tirgearr Publishing, and is available (until November 13) at the pre-release sale price of 99 cents/99 pence! http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Martin_Paula/

When One Door Closes...

‘When one door closes, another door opens’ is a well-known saying which has certainly proved to be true for me.

The ‘closing door’ was that of my publisher, Rebecca Vickery, who regretfully announced last April that her publishing business would be closed on October 31st. The ‘open door’ belongs to Tirgearr Publishing with whom I signed a contract in August, initially to re-publish my ‘Mist Na Mara series’ of 4 books, all set in the beautiful Connemara area in the west of Ireland.

Maybe it is symbolic (and hopefully auspicious) that these four books became available for pre-order last Monday, October 30th, just one day before the ‘official’ closing of Rebecca’s business, and they will be released on November 13th – which is exactly seven months since I first learned I would need to find a new home for them.

My grateful thanks go to Kemberlee at Tirgearr, and also Christine, my editor, and Elle, my cover designer, for pulling out all the stops to get the books ready for publication in record time!

The pre-order price for each book in the series is 99 cents/99 pence. This will go up to ‘normal’ price level after November 13th, so do order now!

You can find links for all 4 books at http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Martin_Paula/

(Kindle, Smashwords, Apple, Kobo, and Nook)

And here are a couple of reviews to whet your appetite!

"Paula's description of the scenery and charm of the Irish countryside is amazing but most of all, I love the story. What a great plot, characters and setting. Could not put it down."

"I was hooked from the first page and felt that I was there with the hero and heroine. The intriguing story line is fascinating and I could not wait to find out what happened."