Essays & stuff I don't want to forget

This article first appeared on the Writing.ie website in September 2015.
The Backstory of a Book.

It’s been a year since my debut collection of short stories Greetings, Hero was launched to the world. My tales of drifters and deviants incapable of accepting any “central source of validation” were a long time in the making. The oldest was written in the Staatsbibliothek on Unter den Linden in Berlin, during a bitterly cold winter. Some were written in Poznan, one in Prague, and several in Dublin. They were written slowly, left to mature, inspected, pruned with a buzzsaw to meet submission wordcounts, rejected, reconstructed, lost in virtual space, found again, re-edited. Subjected to the above cycle a few times, and perhaps somewhere along the line accepted by a magazine in Ireland, the USA or the UK.

Colm Keegan & myself are teaming up to give a 6-week course in creative writing. Enhance your creative/critiquing skillset and knock your writing into shape.
writersworkbenchdublin@gmail.com

Six-week course, Wednesday 7pm-9pm. Starting Feb 6th. This course takes a hands-on approach covering:
Creativity,
Finding your voice,
Style,
Structure/plot,
Pace,
Dialogue,
Punctuation,
Editing

Schematically Keegan will cover the ‘Creative’ aspects and O’Reilly the ‘Critiquing’ – but the main reason for two instructors is for variety. Held at Block T creative hub, just a minute walk from Fatima Luas stop. Or 5 minutes up from James Hospital / 10 mins from Heuston station.
Contact: writersworkbenchdublin@gmail.com
It starts Wednesday Feb 6th at:
Block T artistic social enterprise
8 Basin View
Dublin 8
Limited places €130

I’ve had no less than four stories in The Stinging Fly over the years. Big thanks to Declan Meade for being a thoughtful editor and for bringing readers so many interesting new stories over the years.
So now I’m delighted to have a story in this anthology to celebrate 20 years of The Stinging Fly.

The ‘stinging fly’ of the title is an allusion to a passage in Socrates’ defence speech in court where he was charged with impiety.

” I was attached to this city by the god — though it seems a ridiculous thing to say — as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company.”

My story Contract was chosen for #StorySunday in London’s fantastic Litro magazine in Dec 2016.

Click the link here to go to the story. (I love old-skool internet days.)

Contract

…. Clives tries desperately to fit in with the caring & whimsical atmosphere of his new office job

Mike McCormack and myself are teaming up for a mini-tour of London, with two dates signed up at bookshops.
I’m immensely grateful to Anthony Cartwright for playing a key role in instigating the readings. His own fourth novel, Iron Towns, came out in May.

Anthony will be discussing the books with us on the nights:

• Tues August 2nd 7:30 pm at Bookseller Crow on the Hill, Crystal Palace
• Wed August 3rd 7:00pm at The Quaker Bookshop, Friends House,, Euston Road 173-177

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1995), Notes from a Coma (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship.
His latest novel Solar Bones came out recently.

Anthony Cartwright has worked in factories, meatpacking plants, pubs and warehouses and with London Underground. His debut novel, The Afterglow won much acclaim – and a Betty Trask Award in 2004. His second novel, Heartland, was published by Tindal Street in May 2009 and praised by Jonathan Coe, David Peace, Catherine O’Flynn and DJ Taylor amongst many others. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4. How I Killed Margaret Thatcher, a bitter-sweet comic novel that captures the intensity of early 1980s Britain through the eyes of an unusual 9 year old Black Country boy, was published in 2012. His latest novel is Iron Towns.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Anthony Cartwright for taking an interest in the book and proposing the readings to bookshops he knows. I don’t know Anthony personally and have never met him, so it all came as a great surprise to receive such a boost out of the blue. I hope to equalise the debt – and I don’t mean by endless FB postings recommending Anthony’s books.
I hope one day to pass on the goodwill and be able to offer a debut writer whose book I have admired (perhaps one that hasn’t a big PR campaign behind it), an unexpected helping hand.