Brian Kirk's Blog

On Wednesday 19^th December my friend and fellow writer Valerie Sirr tagged me in an on-line blogging chain called The Next Big Thing. It’s a series of questions about writers’ next projects. The idea is to draw attention to writers and their blogs and to lead readers to writers they might not have come across before.

My thanks to Valerie for thinking of me! You can check out Valerie’s blog to read about her Next Big Thing, a collection of flash fiction or short short stories which may be called ‘The Creases in John McCormack’s Shoes’ or ‘Swedish People’s Homes’. Many of these stories have been published already and you can read some online – there are links on Val’s blog post. Interestingly Valerie uses everyday conversations and low key events as the jumping off point for many of her stories.

My Next Big Thing:

I’ve spent most of last year working on a novel, but my current work-in-progress is a full length stage play.

What is the working title of your book?

The play is called Story.

Where did the idea come from for the book?  

I was doing a play writing workshop in Rua Red over two years ago with the writer and director Tracy Ryan when the first scene emerged. Two of the characters came from an older, failed short story, but the idea of writing about the craft of writing in a realistic working class framework became the basis of the play.

What genre does your book fall under?  

Well it’s a stage play – would work in the Abbey or the upstairs room of a pub!

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?      

The older mother character could be Billie Whitelaw reprising her role in The Krays or maybe Sue Johnston. The main character is mid to late thirties – he’s the writer and alcoholic – could be played by Aiden Gillen maybe, if he let himself go a bit. He’s always too well turned out.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?  

Man tries to improve his actual life by manipulating narrative and character and action in imagined life – with dubious results.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  

I began writing it straight after the workshop in May 2010. A 50 minute radio version of the play was shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor Award with RTE in 2011. I tend to work on a number of projects at the same time so it got left for a while. I completed a longer stage version earlier in 2012 and sent it out to a number of theatre companies and received some positive feedback, so in 2013 I hope to finish the play and address some of the shortcomings that remain.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?   

It’s realistic drama that has tightly written dialogue, but also contains some monologues by main character which warp time and space and reflect his own internal turmoil. Conor McPherson would influential, but family is also at the heart of the play so I could name O’Neill and Pinter among many other influences.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?   

I suppose it was the workshop with Tracy that forced me to find a subject and made me cannibalize old characters – Declan in particular – in order to write a scene for the next class. I suppose because I had written about this guy in a story already I knew quite a bit about him: I knew Declan was intelligent, but a waster and a drunk, and I knew he had a kid who he had abandoned. That was a start. At the end of the course Tracy had actors read through our scenes, which was a great spur also to get the dialogue pitched right. And of course there was the support of the other writers on the course, people like Eileen Casey, Louise Phillips and Thom Moore.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?  

I find going to the theatre extremely stimulating. I lived in London in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, so I was lucky enough to see a lot of quality drama at the National and many other theatres at that time. From time to time I tried my hand at drama with mixed success. In the nineties I had a half hour radio play shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor Award and in 2010 my one act stage play And the Word was Made Flesh was runner up in the From Page to Stage Playwriting competition run by Dublin Public Libraries. My first full length stage play, In the Dark, was longlisted for the Maguire International Playwriting Competition in 2010.

Hopefully I’ve learned a bit over the years and can make this play into something that people will want to see.

When and how will it be published? 

Who knows, but I’d love to see a production or even a rehearsed reading at some point in the future!

I’d like to tag James Lawless, novelist, poet and great all-rounder for The Next Big Thing. Look out for his post on Wednesday 9^th January 2013!

James Lawless, biography

James Lawless was born in Dublin and is the author of the well-received novels Peeling Oranges (2007), For Love of Anna (2009), The Avenue (2010), Finding Penelope (2012) and an acclaimed study of modern poetry Clearing The Tangled Wood: Poetry as a way of seeing the world (2009) for which he received an arts’ bursary. Awards he has won include the Scintilla Welsh Open Poetry Competition, the Cecil Day Lewis Award, the Sunday Tribune/Hennessy and Willesden Herald award nominations, the WOW Award and a Biscuit International Prize for short stories. A collection of his poems Rus in Urbe was published in 2012. You can read more about the author at www.jameslawless.net

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The year is almost over and 2013 will bring the usual plethora of broken resolutions no doubt. Why not start the year in a positive fashion by signing up for a course at the Irish Writers’ Centre – details here. There’s a workshop for every taste imaginable next year with a huge range of excellent writers on board, including Mike McCormack, Alan Jude Moore, Mia Gallagher and Eoin McNamee.

As well as brilliant courses the centre is a hub for writers in the region and plays host to many readings and launches through out the year. Always worth a visit.

In other news, my story The Girl in the Window is now available as a download for iPhone at Ether Books. The app is free from iTunes App Store and the story costs a mere 69p. Go on, treat yourself!

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In recent months, through the medium of Facebook, I’ve come across a brilliant resource for writers and readers of Irish literature.

The Irish Literary Times website provides up-to-date coverage of Irish literary news and events in a magazine format via articles available online. The aim of the site is to promote Irish literature as widely as possible. The site contains a “Suggest” button where relevant articles can be suggested for inclusion. The articles should be very recent and must contain the link to the website they came from.

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Before you go and get caught up in all the craziness that is Christmas, have a look at some story and poetry deadlines that are coming up soon. The only advice I ever give that I actually believe in is to keep sending stuff out – work on it if it needs more work, don’t if it doesn’t, but just send it out again. If you throw enough crap at the wall after a while some of it is bound to stick.

So anyway, here goes.

Stories:

Fish Story Prize – deadline 30/11/2012 .

Willesden Herald – deadline 21/12/2012.

The Moth Short Story Prize – deadline 31/3/2013.

Labello Press Short Story Comp – deadline 21/12/2012.

Ropes Literary Journal – deadline 14/1/2013.

RTE Radio 1 Short Story Comp – deadline 21/1/2013.

Bear in mind also that The Stinging Fly has changed submission guidelines with effect from 2013.

Poems:

Gregory O’Donoghue Prize – deadline 15/12/2012.

The Ballymaloe Poetry Prize – deadline 31/12/2012.

Fish Poetry Prize – deadline 31/3/2013.

Ropes Literary Journal – deadline 14/1/2013

There are also plenty of journals and magazines looking for poems on an ongoing basis. The best of them are Bare Hands Poetry, Burning Bush 2, The First Cut, Outburst and Can Can but there are many others I’m sure.

In other news I will have a poem, First Kiss, in Bare Hands Issue 13, and my story Back to Love (which appeared in Issue 10 of Wordlegs) will be translated into German and will feature in Issue 3 of WortMosaik Literary Magazine.

I’ve also been invited to the presentation of 2012 Michael McLaverty Short Story Award at the Linen Hall Library on 29th November. So tentative fingers crossed there.

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South Dublin Libraries‘ Red Line Book Festival starts this week on 13th November and runs to Saturday 17th November.

This year they have expanded what was previously a single Readers’ Day into a festival proper with a huge range of events over the course of the week in a variety of locations. You can download the full programme of events here.

I’m looking forward to hearing Colm Keegan, Eileen Casey and Louise Phillips read from their new work on Wednesday night at 8.15 in the Civic Theatre. Before that in Rua Red there is a reading of work by local emerging writers read by South Dublin actor groups.

Also on Saturday next Readers’ Day proper will be held at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, hosted by the irrepressible Dermot Bolger as usual. Among the writers present will be Gerard Donovan, Michael D. Higgins and Anne Enright. I’m hoping get to some or all of this – certainly to Gerard Donovan whose novels Julius Winsome and Schopenhauer’s Telescope have to be among the best new novels by an Irish writer in recent years. Go check them out, seriously.

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The Long Story Short, Literary Journal is the brainchild of writer and poet Jennifer Matthews. It’s an online magazine that caters for the longer short story (4,000 words plus) which is often outside the word limit set by many editors and competition administrators. When you are writing stories regularly you can sometimes find yourself automatically producing stories that come in somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 words because subconsciously you know that it will be hard to place a longer story.  In recent times the opportunities for writing and publishing short short stories or flash fiction have greatly improved, but not so for the longer story.

Hats off to Jennifer for doing something to right this imbalance. And so far the quality of each story has been excellent. This month sees the third publication, a story called The Underground by Dave Lordan. The first story published was Misbegotten by Julia Van Middlesworth former Sean O’Faolain competition winner,  and the second, The Rainy Season by Charles Boyle. These are all well worth reading – and free which is a bonus!

Jennifer Matthews is an accomplished writer and poet in her own right and was recently shortlisted in the 2012 Bridport Prize.

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My good friend and fellow writer James Lawless is launching his new novel Finding Penelope next Tuesday 30th October 2012 at 6.30 pm in Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street. The novel is published by Indigo Dreams in the UK. All are welcome to share in the celebration and take a glass or two of wine.

Author Carlo Gebler had this to say about the novel: “I thought Finding Penelope was brilliant. I loved the heroine, Penelope Eames, a modestly successful romantic writer who is a sort of everywoman of our times and a wonderful mix of insight, diffidence and foolishness. I also relished the milieu in which Finding Penelope is set, the expatriate Anglophone world of the Spanish Mediterranean, where lonely English widows and gangsters and Irish novelists and aspiring starlets all get jumbled up together and make a fine old mess of their lives in the process. This is a really, really fine piece of sharp, precise and accurate work. A novel that will give deep, literary pleasure.”

About the book

33 year old romance novelist Penelope Eames moves to Spain to avoid her oppressive father and drug-addicted brother, Dermot. When she meets Ramón, a young Spanish school teacher, she is immediately attracted to him and feels the happiness that eluded her all her life may at last be hers. However, she receives a distress call from Dermot saying he is at the mercy of Charlie Eliot, a pimp and drug dealer on the Costa. Ramón, whose mother was killed by a drug addict, tells her to have nothing to do with Charlie Eliot. Penelope must decide: is she prepared to compromise herself with Charlie Eliot and jeopardise her chance of happiness with Ramón for the sake of her drug addicted brother?

About the author

James Lawless was born in Dublin. His first novel Peeling Oranges (2007), a paternal quest set in the Liberties of Dublin and Franco’s Spain, was highly praised by Gabriel Byrne, the Hollywood actor and cultural ambassador. Lawless is the author of two other well-received novels For Love of Anna (2009) and The Avenue (2010), and an acclaimed study of modern poetry Clearing The Tangled Wood.  His first poetry collection Rus in Urbe was published earlier this year by Doghouse Books. James lives in Co. Kildare, Ireland, and is a full-time writer.

If you can’t make it along to the launch you can purchase a copy of Finding Penelope online at Indigo Dreams.

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Jack Kerouac died 43 years ago today on 21st October 2012

I haven’t seen the new movie of On The Road yet, and probably won’t any time soon.  I’d rather remember the books and the poems as they were.

Here’s a flavour of the man.

On Tears

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Under Thirty is a new and unique non-profit project that nurtures and showcases young Irish fiction at home and aboard. It provides writers access to a panel of experienced writers, literary scholars, editors, and publishers, who work entirely voluntarily to review submissions and provide feedback and encouragement to the country’s aspiring writers.

The project opened in September 2012 and is seeking submissions from new young writers all over the country and from Irish writers abroad. The deadline for the inaugural issue is midnight on November 7th, with the publication at a special event in December 2012. For more information, and to make a submission visit http://under-30.org/, and join the conversation on social media: w.facebook.com/underthirty and www.twitter.com/underthirty.

“The most promising submissions are published in our journal, available as an e-book, and as a printed book – an award is given to one outstanding new writer in the form of a scholarship or writing retreat.

Our current focus is on young writers who are resident in Ireland, and Irish writers abroad. In 2013 we will expand the project to the UK and USA, and include writers of younger children’s literature of any age.”

Check out the website to find out more about this excellent project and to get information on the panel of reviewers (which I’m delighted to be part of). All writers who submit will also receive anonymous feedback on their work – for this who are serious about writing this is reason enough to submit I reckon. So get writing and submitting now…

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Red Ribbons by Louise Phillips went on sale on 3rd September and was launched very successfully at Hughes and Hughes in St. Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre on 5th September becoming a top ten best seller in its first week of publication.

You can find links to all of the other blog tour interviews on Louise’s blog here. Reviews have been excellent so far and there was a brilliant and extremely positive review on RTE Radio’s Arena programme by Arlene Hunt which you really ought to listen to here.

You can and should order your copy of Red Ribbons here or from any good bookshop!

Before we start with the questions, here’s a brief insight to the novel and a short note about Louise:

About Red Ribbons

THE SERIAL KILLER

A missing schoolgirl is found buried in the Dublin Mountains, hands clasped together in prayer, two red ribbons in her hair. Twenty-four hours later, a second schoolgirl is found in a shallow grave – her body identically arranged. The hurt for the killer is on.

THE CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGIST

The police call in criminal psychologist, Kate Pearson, to get inside the mind of the murderer before he strikes again. But the more Kate discovers about the killings, the more it all feels terrifyingly familiar.

THE ACCUSED WOMAN

As the pressure to find the killer intensifies there’s one vital connection to be made – Ellie Brady, a woman institutionalised fifteen years earlier for the murder of her daughter Amy. She stopped talking when everybody stopped listening.

But what connects the death of Amy Brady to the murdered schoolgirls? As Kate Pearson, begins to unravel the truth, danger is closer than she knows…

About the Author

Louise Phillips returned to writing after a 20 year gap spent raising her family, managing a successful family business, and working in banking. Quickly selected by Dermot Bolger as an emerging talent, Louise went on to win the 2009 Jonathan Swift Award and in 2011 she was a winner in the Irish Writers’ Centre Lonely Voice Platform, as well as being short-listed for Bridport UK Prize, the Molly Keane Memorial Award, and the RTÉ Guide/Penguin Short Story Competition. In 2012 Louise was awarded an Arts bursary for literature from South County Dublin Arts. Other publishing credits include many literary journals and anthologies, including New Island’s County Lines. Louise’s psychological crime novel, Red Ribbons, is published by Hachette Books Ireland, and her second novel, The Doll’s House, will be published in 2013.

It’s now a great pleasure for me to host this interview with my friend and fellow writer Louise who has made a huge impact with her first novel. So let’s get down to the hard questions.

What are the main things you learned about novel writing while working on Red Ribbons? And does your experience make writing The Doll’s House easier?

I learned that the first draft is simply that. Don’t expect it to be a work of literary genius – simply expect to have a beginning, middle and an end. I also learned that writing over a short time frame suited me better. The first draft of Red Ribbons, took 4 months and believe me, I wrote every available moment I had. I needed every available moment to get it done in that tight timeframe. But something happened within the intensity of the writing over a shorter more intense and intimate spell, the characters became alive and stayed alive, because I hadn’t discarded them for reality. I wasn’t completely happy at the end of the four months, I knew the work still needed a lot of editing, but that was okay, I had the starting point. I will do exactly the same with The Doll’s House. I have some work already done on it, but come October 1^st, reality will be put on hold until the manuscript is done.

Will you continue to write poetry and short stories as well as novels or do you see yourself now as primarily a novelist?

I think I’ve always seen myself as primarily a novelist, in much the same way as despite taking a 20 year gap from writing, I knew I would write again. The short story format is a marvellous discipline, and yes, I will definitely write short stories again as some literary expression is best suited to this medium. As for poetry, well I don’t know. I never considered myself much of a poet, but then again, you should never really say never!

You were part of the Lucan Writers Group for many years. How valuable is it to have a forum to bring new work to?

I can’t speak for other writers, but for me, it was essential. I’m not saying groups have all the answers, in fact sometimes the advice you’re given can be way off base– but you have to learn that too, learn to trust your own instincts, to listen to advice, and then pick the nuggets that work for you, and in so doing, help to turn a piece that isn’t working, into something with possibilities. We all know writing is a solitary exercise, and if you find the right group, it can be a wonderful way, not only to nurture your creativity, but also to share time with people who have the same passion for writing that you have. And the real bonus is, you make great friends along the way. The writing journey is often filled with doubts and insecurities, and some fair minded writing pals are always good to have close by.

Did you let people see early drafts of your novel work-in-progress? How did their comments help form the finished work?

I’m going to now contradict the answer to the last question, because when I was writing Red Ribbons, I didn’t show it to anyone, at least not until the end of the first draft. I think it’s very hard bringing extracts from a novel to a group, as it’s impossible to appreciate the extract fully, without knowing the work up until that point. Also, having spent quite a while sharing work either in groups, or just other writers on an individual basis, I made the decision that this time, I would go it alone – just me and the characters, and it worked in a crazy kind of way.

A lot of people don’t understand the work an editor does with an author. What was your experience of working with an editor?

Well I got extra lucky as I had the opportunity of working with two editors. The first was Ciara Doorley, Commissioning Editor with Hachette, and then Rachel Pierce. Ciara was great right from the beginning, because she totally got what Red Ribbons was all about, and even though time was spent in the editing process, the soul of the novel never really changed. I would describe the first stage of editing as general suggestions and advice, but always ensuring any adjustment were a means of enhancing the script. The second stage, where along with Ciara, I also worked with Rachel Pierce, was more structural editing, and it was a fascinating stage for me. We didn’t agree on everything, and this was important too, because it was only when certain elements were questioned, that I fully realised why I had chosen one way over another. Some of the editing was hard work, but it was great fun too, and I learned a lot from both Ciara and Rachel, and I’m very happy that at the end of the day, even if not everyone might agree, the work is a better story because of it.

Is there any one piece of writing advice you have been given over the years that stands out?

Find your own writing space, emotionally and physically, even if it’s the tiniest corner, in the tiniest room.

From what I can see Red Ribbons would be ideal for a TV or Film adaptation. If you were given the opportunity would you write the screenplay yourself or would you let another writer take it on?

Actually, I don’t think I would. I’ve done some work with scripts, and loved it – the joy of working with pure dialogue rather than prose, the speed, the power, the sheer ability to change something completely by the use of half a dozen words, but, even so, I think the answer would be, no. Apart from the amount of work involved, and my desire to concentrate on novel writing right now, just as I don’t believe any two readers ever read the same book, I think another writer/writers could bring more to the work, filling it with even more possibilities, provided of course, the essence remains.

Congratulations again Louise on your huge success with Red Ribbons!

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