I don’t recall the name of this castle. I took this picture on a training day with a tour company. It was a good day out, but I never heard from them again after I raised some safety concerns about the bus.
Castle in the North
The Bridge
This bridge is in Boyle, Co. Roscommon. It crosses the river from what used to be the Royal Hotel carpark to the alley leading to Military Road, and King House, which was once an army barracks. When I was growing up here, the barracks was said to be haunted by a Green Lady, (why, oh why couldn’t she have been a Red Lady? Chris DeBurg, that’s why not!). I remember my father, who was in the army, telling me of all the times he walked through it at night looking for her, and not a ghost in sight.
I don’t know anything about the woman in the photo, perhaps one day, if enough people share this post, she’ll be famous and have her own range of toiletries.
Meanwhile, King House is now a tourist attraction and cultural centre.
You can find more information here.
Introducing Clarence Houlihan
Clarence has a dream: to escape the world of contract killing and start a little musical theatre, for kids, so they can make something of themselves. Every job he does is money in the bank, food on the table. If he had to, Clarence could lay his hands on two million dollars, all earned.
ebook available here.
Russian Book Deal, (Maybe, Baby!)
She’s the woman of his dreams. He’s the man of her nightmares.
A publisher in Russia has expressed interest in a couple of my books, but they want to read a synopsis first. I’ve never had to write a synopsis for one of my books before, not as easy as I expected, probably as a result of me overthinking it. Anyway, this is what I wrote for Online Cupid:
When Rose Healy kissed her daughter goodbye, and left for work, she thought it was a day like any other. But Rose never arrived at her office.
She came to, shackled to a chair, in a room without windows, at the mercy of a man who insists they met on a dating website. He was looking for love and thought he had found it in her.
He had only to buy an upgrade, a paid subscription to the site, in order to contact her. When he did, he never heard from her again. Now he wants to know why.
Rose insists she knows nothing about it; she’s not part of any dating site. But he has her personal information, and pictures of her in the nude.
Is Rose telling the truth? If she is, then who sent her pictures to this man, and why?
As the interrogation continues, a battle of wits ensues, with the balance of power shifting between captive and captor as Rose tries to find a way to get home to her daughter.
Ps. This does not mean I’ll be voting for Trump! I know I don’t actually have a vote, but I suspect that won’t stop a lot of people voting for him! Didn’t that happen with a previous President? Or am I thinking of a cartoon?
It will be interesting to see how things progress. I’m told that if I’m not careful I could be cancelled; that the book has enough triggers to make Gandhi go on a killing spree!
Online Cupid is available here.
On to the Sea
I took this on the bridge in Ring send one summer afternoon.
Work in Progress
I thought it was about time I shared some of the work in progress. This is from chapter 10.
John opened the sitting room door to find Fats Waller on TV, singing about the spider and the fly. Mary, asleep on the couch, snored along. John stood in the doorway, watching her; feeling all of the life they had shared. He had seen her sleeping many times; he had seen her sick, happy, sad, fat; he held her hair back while she puked morning sickness into the toilet. But watching her this morning he was overwhelmed with joy that she was his; that even when they fought, and in the early days there had been many fights, fights where she had thrown him out, fights where he had thrown her out; even through that, there had been the quick knowledge of love, not showy but constant, and he marvelled now at how rich that love had made them.
Train Station
Tree of Life
Trial of the Living Dead
This is the story of how I came to write my first play.
A kid whose life revolves around dope and drink discovers theatre and begins to save himself.
From the book:
Del turned to me; she didn’t ask if I was a writer; she didn’t ask what I write; she just said ‘Ok, bring something in next week?’ So there I was, embarrassed, afraid, and unable to speak. I mumbled something and she got annoyed. I agreed to write a script for the following week.
Available here. $1.99
The Man who Thought he was Charles Bukowski
This is not quite the new one. It used to be called Drinking in the Park.
After years of trying to live like his favorite authors, an old man goes drinking in the park, and discovers that what he thought of as romantic was really just grubby
Ebook available here.
