A-Z Blogging Challenge - G is for Guy

Here’s my imaginary interview with Guy Sinclair, the hero of Irish Inheritance.

I’m at Dublin Airport, hoping to catch Guy who has just arrived from New York. Oh, there he is! Guy, can you tell us why you’ve come over to Dublin?

(Guy stifles a yawn.) Yes, of course, although you’ll have to excuse some incoherency. I managed to sleep for a while on the flight, but these overnight flights are a killer, aren’t they? Anyway, yes, I’m here to visit a Dublin lawyer, Daniel McGrath.

Why?

Good question. My New York lawyer has told me I’ve inherited a half share of a house here in Ireland from some 90-year-old dame who died last year.

You don’t know who she is?

No, never heard of her before. Someone called Helena Keating. She named my grandmother in her will, and, as my father died a few years ago and had no brothers or sisters, it seems I’m the only living descendant of my grandmother.

Where’s this house?

I don’t know and, to tell you the truth, I’m not really interested in it. I’m only here because the lawyer insisted I had to see it before making any decision about it. It would have been much easier to stay home and simply instruct him to sell it.

You said you had a half share in the house. Do you know who has co-inherited it with you?

No idea. My lawyer didn’t have that information. Maybe it’s someone who’s as mystified as I am about all this.

If you want to sell the house, presumably this other person will have to agree to that?

Good point, but I’m hoping there won’t be any problems about that. I’d much rather have the money than a house in Ireland.

 

Well, I wonder who is Guy’s co-inheritor – and whether he will change his mind about selling the house?

 

Irish Inheritance

English actress, Jenna Sutton, and American artist, Guy Sinclair, are thrown together when they find they’ve jointly inherited a house on the west coast of Ireland. Neither knows their connection to their unknown benefactress, but set about unravelling the intriguing tale of a 19th century love affair. Despite their personal reasons for not wanting romantic involvements, Jenna and Guy are both aware of their growing attraction. When local property agent, Eve Callaghan, appears to have her own agenda, friction builds over Jenna and Guy’s decision about the house and its contents. Will their Irish inheritance bring them together - or drive them apart?

Reviews:

U.K: “Once this book had its hooks in me, I read from beginning to end, non-stop. I could not break away. The sense of mystery and drama is brilliantly balanced and the characters are believable, likable, and compelling. The scenes, as they are set in the mind's eye, bring a magical quality all of their own. It is one of those stories that, when you realize it is drawing to a close, you feel you want to make it last somehow. There are not enough stars available - this is the best story I have read in a long time.”

 U.S.A: “A beautiful story within a story, so much more than a romance. I loved the historic puzzles that ultimately link the lives from another time to the present day characters. And a mysterious Irish estate with its own secrets that ultimately draws all the characters together. The journey uncovering family histories, long forgotten, propels you through the story as much as the modern day characters and the relationships they forge. I very much enjoyed my first trip to Ireland via this book.”

 

Irish Inheritance is currently FREE on Amazon.

All my books are available from Amazon  or from Tirgearr Publishing  

A-Z Blogging Challenge - F is for Finny

Adam Finlay, known as Finny, is an example of how a ‘minor’ character can unexpectedly develop into a major role-player in a story – and is one reason why I am a ‘pantser’ and not a plotter! 

Finny first appeared in Irish Deceptions when Ellie (see yesterday’s E post) went into the local school to drum up some support for her new dance and drama school.

Here’s the introduction to Finny:

“That was fantastic.” Brona grinned as she led the way along the corridor at the school on Tuesday morning. “Showing a DVD of a street dance team was an inspiration.”

Ellie laughed. “All credit to you for suggesting we offer street dancing.”

“No, the credit’s yours for showing how dance can be dynamic and exciting. Even Adam Finlay was impressed.”

“Which one was he?”

“The boy with the spiky blond hair. They call him Finny and he’s a real handful. I kept my eye on him, ready to yank him out of the room if he misbehaved, but you hooked him when you showed that routine. His eyes were as round as saucers.”

“And he took an application form at the end. Do you think he’ll join the class?”

“I’m not sure, but a lot of the others showed interest.”

At that point, I had absolutely no idea of the part Finny was going to play in the rest of the story, but he did join the street dance class, and then surprised everyone (including me!) by displaying other talents, which led to … No, no spoilers!

Finny is a lively, cheeky, streetwise thirteen-year-old who stole my heart. So much so that he reappears in a larger role in my next novel, Irish Shadows, when he is given the opportunity to meet his father (who abandoned his mother before Finny was born). This causes a rift between Finny and his mother, but in the end the 13-year-old learns the truth and displays a maturity beyond his years in dealing with the situation.

Maybe one day, once he becomes an adult, Finny will be the hero of one of my novels! Hmm, that's given me an idea ... :-) 

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

A-Z Blogging Challenge - E is for Ellie

Eleanor ‘Ellie’ Vaughan is the heroine of my novel Irish Deceptions, whose career as a professional ballet dancer ended because of a car accident in which her knee was badly damaged.

Why did I, who has never had ballet (or any dancing) lessons, choose this occupation for my character?

The answer is because, for a purely practical reason, I needed my heroine’s career to be cut short by an injury. Not enough to disable her seriously, but enough to end her professional career. Okay, she could have been an athlete of some kind e.g. a gymnast, or swimmer, or tennis player – but at the same time, I needed her occupation to be something that would bring her to the Mist Na Mara Arts Centre in Ireland (which has featured in all my Irish novels), so dancing seemed to be the obvious choice.

Could she still teach dancing even if she was unable to perform? Research showed that this is a career transition made by many dancers, even after injury may have halted their performing careers. So far, so good.

Then came the finer details. Yes, I know the names of the most famous ballets, I even know what ‘up to 5th’ means (not sure how I know that!) – but the more complex movements in ballet? Not a clue! Google and YouTube proved useful, of course, but I needed some reassurance that I had got things right. And in this situation, it was not a case of ‘write what you know’ but rather ‘find someone who knows about what you want to write’. Fortunately I didn’t have to look very far, as I remembered a friend’s daughter has been a dance teacher for about 20 years. As a result, she and I had several phone conversations, and even more email conversations so hopefully, with her help, I got my facts and ballet terminology right.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 1, after Ellie’s friend Maria is convinced the man standing at the bar is Dan Nicholas, the heart-throb hero of a recent historical drama on television.

 Ellie stood, pulled her black jacket from the back of her chair, and stretched her arm into the top of one sleeve.

“Ellie!” came Maria’s warning cry.

She spun around in time to see the dark-haired man duck away from her elbow and spill some of his Guinness as he did so.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” she gasped, letting her jacket fall to the floor.

He flicked his hand down his thigh. “No harm done, my trousers will dry.”

As she looked up at him, a dozen confused thoughts crashed through her mind. Yes, he was definitely Dan Nicholas. The dark eyes which had enthralled millions of women on television met hers, sending a tremor down her spine, and the deep, rich timbre of his Irish voice left her lungs short of oxygen.

“I–I’m so sorry,” she stuttered again.

He put his glass on a nearby table, picked up her jacket, and smiled. “Let me help you with this.”

Her heart raced as he held the jacket for her and she slid her arms into it. She only remembered to start breathing again when she turned back to him. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

A fire of embarrassment heated her cheeks. “Apologies again for spilling your beer. I hope your trousers won’t be stained.” She glanced down at the wet patch at the top of his thigh, but wished she hadn’t when she raised her eyes and caught the amused twitch of his mouth. Struggling to salvage a few shreds of dignity, she mustered what she hoped was a calm and poised smile. “Well – goodbye.”

Outside the pub door, she blew out a huff of annoyance. “Oh lord, how to make a complete fool of yourself in ten seconds flat.”

Maria snickered. “It’s not every day you cause a star of stage and screen to slop beer down his trousers, is it?”

“First and last time, I hope.”

“But you missed an opportunity,” Maria went on as they set off along the street.

“What opportunity?”

“You could have asked him to come on Saturday.”

“Oh, sure. Excuse me, Mr. Nicholas, but now I’ve stared at your crotch, may I invite you to the taster day at the Mist Na Mara Dance and Drama Studio?”

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

 

A-Z Blogging Challenge - D is for Dublin

Dublin has featured in nearly all my Irish novels, even though the main part of each story takes place in Clifden and Connemara on the opposite side of Ireland.

In Irish Inheritance, Jenna and Guy first meet at Dublin Airport, and again at the lawyer’s office on St. Stephen’s Green. I imagined the office to be in one of the beautiful Georgian houses that border the large park in the centre of Dublin. 

They visit the Book of Kells exhibition at Trinity College, and spend the evening together in the Temple Bar area of the city, which is full of bars and restaurants (and tourists). Later in the story they return to Dublin, or rather to Dalkey, which was originally a separate town, but is now classed as a suburb of Dublin. However, it retains its ‘small town’ atmosphere, with a medieval castle, as well as a wonderful view of Killiney Bay, one of my favourite views in Ireland.

In Irish Intrigue, Charley goes to Dublin with Jenna for a weekend. They stay at a 5 star hotel overlooking St. Stephen’s Green – and every Dubliner will know which hotel I mean even though I didn’t actually name it! They also attend a film premiere at a cinema on Upper O’Connell Street. I gave it a different name, but based it on a real cinema that does host Hollywood-style premieres!

In Irish Secrets, Kara and Ryan stay at that same hotel on St. Stephen’s Green. One day, if my Irish books ever reach the bestseller lists, I might just treat myself to a night there – at about £450 (about $600) per night. Also featured in this story is Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, which is an amazing place, the final resting place of many of Ireland’s patriots or, as someone has said, everyone who was anyone in Irish history, as well as a million ‘ordinary’ Dubliners.

Grave of Michael Collins at Glasnevin

In Irish Echoes, Rachel and Elliot begin their week of visiting famine memorials in different parts of Ireland with this evocative sculpture on Customs House Quay. It shows starving people trekking along the quay to reach one of the infamous famine ships which they hoped would take them to a new life in America or Canada. Sadly, many of them didn't survive the voyage and the death toll was so great that the ships became known as 'coffin ships.'

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

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 )