Thank you for dropping in. I hope that, reader or writer, you will find something to engage you and perhaps amuse you and that you may go away with a nugget or two to feed your creativity.

My first novel, Belfast Song will be published in autumn 2024. At its centre are Nan Rose Murphy and Bridie Corr, childhood friends, who have been taken on as full-time millies at a Belfast spinning mill when the story opens in 1911. They come of age against a tempestuous background of a city and a country seething with conflict – as workers struggle for a living wage, as women organise for the right to vote, and as nationalists and unionists prepare to fight each other over Irish independence from England. Then, two shots in Sarajevo in 1914 spark a war across Europe and spin them, their families, and their tight-knit community off in directions they could never have imagined.  

Here I want to reflect on the initial inspiration that impelled me to begin this story; and on the stream of inspirations that sparked characters, scenes and twists as I wrote. I also want to acknowledge and reflect on the people, events and habits that both kept me writing and helped me ‘up my game’ as I did so.

I also want to write about publishing the novel as it happens, follow my Blog here. From March onwards, as time allows, I plan to also share excerpts from the memoir I am currently writing.