…over and over again. I progress towards publication at the end of August and an autumn launch oscillating between these two moods. Thanks again to all of you who have supported me in small and big ways. I could not do this without your support.

So, since my last blog, I’ve signed off the manuscript and the cover with Troubador and these are in production as I write. There was a final twist with the cover. 

At the very last moment, I had the notion to run it past my brother Mal at Imagine Media Productions. He has the equipment and the experienced eye to better assess what was being approved. He immediately got the ingenuity in Bill Allerton‘s design and could also see how it could be enhanced using the Photo Shop files Bill had sent to me. He started with an enlargement and a cut and crop of the base photograph. This photo of millworkers is on my website. And here is an image of the final cover.

BELFAST SONG COVER

I was also delighted to finally message Margaret Ward on Facebook. (You have to remember I’m very new to the possibilities on FB). In 1981, she gave a talk, The Irish Women’s Workers Union, to the Irish Labour History Society Annual Conference. Thirty or so years later, I took myself to Belfast for a week as part of the early stages of research into what was to become Belfast Song. Sitting in the central library in Royal Avenue, I read a paper by Margaret in which she mentioned that when James Connolly worked in Belfast as a trade union organiser, he was involved in helping women millworkers in a dispute with their employer. That reference inspired my imagination to create the opening chapters of my novel.  

If you would like to read more about the women who helped shape Ireland, you might want to check out Margaret Ward’s book Unmanageable Revolutionaries: women and Irish Nationalism 1880-1890, an expanded and updated version of which has been published by Arlen House.

My final piece of big news is that I heard yesterday from Pauline Kersten, the Education Centre Manager at Conway Education Centre, that I could launch Belfast Song at the education centre from 1-3pm on 20/9/24. 

I am dazed with delight to have as a venue such a supportive education centre located in the historic building of Conway Mill, which was a flax spinning mill like the one in which the women at the centre of Belfast Song worked. 

And that would not have happened except that my sister-in-law, Siobhan Marken, volunteered to visit possible venues in and around the Falls Rd on my behalf, discovered that Conway Mill had appointed an Education Centre Manager, that they held book launches at the centre and provided all contact details. As I said at the beginning, I couldn’t do this without all the support I’ve been given.

Watch this space for the continuing story of publishing Belfast Song.