Publishing in a Pandemic
I don’t recommend publishing a book during a pandemic. I underestimated how sad it would feel not to have a book launch or to be able to chat about the book with people at talks or festivals, in museums or just over a coffee or a glass (or two) of wine. I’ve really enjoyed doing all the interviews and writing pieces for newspapers, but it’s a bit like talking into a void and one of the main purposes of writing The Darkness Echoing was to spark conversations about our history, our museums and our heritage. I hope that I get to have those conversations when the world opens up again and I can resume my laps of the country.
It’s also been a challenge promoting a book that deals with quite a lot of suffering and death. There’s lots about crime and punishment, about starvation, emigration and death. But it’s not as miserable a read as that sounds. There’s lots of black humour in it (and there might even be some jokes). One of the things I celebrate in the book is the Irish love of a good funeral, our determination to celebrate a life well lived. And talking about good deaths and great funerals at a time when we can’t celebrate lives in the way we might like is difficult. And I know at first hand what it’s like no to be able to attend wakes and removals and funerals as my Grandmother (not the one who laid herself out) died in the middle of the first lockdown and I watched her funeral though the lens of a webcam and a mobile phone - not a tradition I’d like to continue.
If you’re not already sick of hearing me harp on about the book here are some other bits and pieces I’ve been up to over the last week or so.:
I had a chat with Claire O’Brien on ‘Encore’ on Midlands103 where we talked about Nana (she’d be delighted with her posthumous fame!), Thomas Walker and World War I and what we think we know about our past. You can listen back to it here: ENCORE
Chris Cusack gave the book a lovely review in the Irish Times and described it ‘as thought-provoking as it is informative and entertaining’. REVIEW
In the Sunday Independent I got to talk about ghost stories - particularly my dad’s frightening experience as a child in Athlone and my own ghostly encounter in the National Museum in Dublin: Ghost Stories
