Blog

 Is he who he says he is?  Izzie Mallon is looking forward to celebrating Christmas on a relaxing yoga retreat. At least, that is what she’s telling her mother and colleagues. In reality, she will be shutting herself away from the festive season, and the snowstorm that has brought the city to a standstill, in… Read More

The bookshelves of Ireland are glutted with ‘How-To’ books on novel writing. The internet is another huge resource where you can find a multitude of articles laying down various rules and regulations, tips and techniques. Then when you have suitably frazzled your brain and overloaded your critical faculties on a million and one contradictory ways… Read More

In A House Full of Secrets, Vikki accepts an invitation from her good friend Niall to accompany him to his family weekend reunion in Lynes Glen, his childhood home in a remote part of Ireland.  The county of Mayo, where Lynes Glen is located, is part of the Wild Atlantic Way, one the world’s longest… Read More

Since the beginning of time, lovers and their passions have exhibited much the same sentiments as they always have. We have St Valentine, a 3rd century saint associated with the expression of love. He was martyred and buried in the Carmelite Church in Whitefriar Street, Dublin, and is commemorated on 14th February each year.  Then… Read More

What would we do without our mobile technology? Without our phones and tablets and laptops, which have become almost like an additional, invisible vein attached to our bodies, carrying a constant drip feed of disparate information, updates, likes, comments, chit chat, news, fake news intermingling with global catastrophes,  selfies and shout-outs, straight to our hearts… Read More

Families: they can be united by a shared history, or divided by secrets, eccentricities, or skeletons buried deep in the closet. At the heart of A House Full of Secrets is a divided family at odds with each other. The Blake family, Alex, Lainey and Niall, grew up in the remote and beautiful county Mayo,… Read More

Chapter Eight When I read her diary, I knew. Everything. It had the effect of pulling the plug from under the life I had known up to then, changing it completely, so that everything was sucked down into a dark and narrow vortex.   Yet when I eventually came up for air, choking and struggling, I… Read More

(prequel to A House Full of Secrets) If she was to go back to the beginning of it all, Vikki knew that if it hadn’t been for the party in Shoreditch, she might have never spoken to Niall. Only for the moment of chance that drew her out onto the balcony at the same time… Read More

The lough is still out of bounds. The forest track leading to the beauty spot where Gabrielle met her untimely end has become impassable. Fallen tree trunks, shrouded with clusters of vegetation and thick tentacles of ivy, block the entrance.   Where prisms of sunlight pierce the leafy canopy, clumps of untrammelled nettles, tumbleweed and briars… Read More

Excerpt – Vikki has arrived in Lynes Glen, Niall’s childhood home, hoping to become more than friends over the weekend. She has just finished her unpacking and is on the landing about to go downstairs to join Niall and his sister Lainey  when… She heard voices coming from below her. Quiet tones, as if anxious… Read More