I wrote a series of novellas for a specialist readership who admired female body builders. The trilogy was very well appreciated and had a loyal fan base. In the last of the trilogy I was tempted to kill off my heroine Rachel. The last lines of ‘Rachel’s Might, are thoughts that might be her last.
I had enough howls of protest to reconsider her end and so resurrected Rachel. The result is full size novel published as a paperback for the first time. (eBooks will follow later.)
Rachel’s Resurrection is a little less focused on those special interests and is a much more rounded novel that anyone can enjoy. (It stands alone and a reader need not have read any of the trilogy.)
This romantic/political/thriller should please a wider readership. It is very much centred on ideas of female empowerment and recovery from trauma.
No apology for the long break between blog posts. It was deliberate policy to retreat from all social media activity. We have been distracted by the enforced need to find a new home or nest as we call it. Our long-term lease on our place at Killoscully was not renewed. It was understandable, the landlords’ daughter needed the house, but it was a blow for us. We were settled and happy there. The idea of having to move was unappealing to say the least. No it was horrific!
Our new home in county Clare.
We have gathered a lot of stuff over the years, much of it was resistant to the idea of downsizing. (I simply can’t part with books or art.) We toyed with and explored the idea of buying an old cottage to do up. That proved a painful search with our limited budget. Everywhere we found was either much too small or had issues that would have swallowed vast amounts of time and money – so rental it had to be. The rental market here in Ireland is under great strain and prices have skyrocketed. We needed to stay within reasonable traveling distance of beloved B’s place of work at the University of Limerick. Long searches on-line were discouraging, but eventually we found the right place at the right price. The cottage is much smaller than our previous place so we had to be ruthless and dispose of a lot of stuff, even so, it was and is a very tight fit. I spent all of October shifting what remained by turning the camper Rocinante from old charger to a packhorse pulling a trailer.
The last week was a trial when I ripped a muscle in my calf and could no longer lift or even walk. I spent a painful time watching beloved B toil over the last weeks work. We rented a man with a wee lad with a van to move the beds and big sofa right at the end. At the beginning of November we were in, mostly sorted, and utterly knackered.
The Blue Pool at Glengarrif.
B’s birthday celebration had had to be postponed for a week as it fell on the day after the final move. We planned a few days escape to a hotel and spa to recover. Our new favorite restaurant in Kenmare Kerry, the Limetree was booked for the birthday dinner. Fab scallops, followed by Hake for B and Salmon for me. We went to the ever lovely Glengarrif where I bought a walking stick to help me hobble to the Blue Pool to take in the beauty. We drove back over the spectacular Healy Pass and spent an hour in the spa pool, B swimming, and me submerged in the Jacuzzi being massaged by hot water to ease the gympoid symptoms.
The Healy Pass.The new place of work.
I
have set up a new work station and have now gotten back into writing. My latest
is a novel following my FBB heroine Rachel, whom I’d tried to kill off in the
last novella of the series. That was met with howls of protest by a loyal fan
base – so she had to be resurrected. Thus the title: ‘Rachel’s Resurrection’.
I’m glad I left her end ambiguous so this resurrection was possible. I am enjoying writing the new adventure which sees her seeking revenge for the… oops – nearly a spoiler there. Anyhoo she’s back as feisty and dangerous as ever, but will have a total change of path and try to renounce her life as a spook. I expect to publish it around February 2020.
I finished the second in “The Butterfly Effect Trilogy’. This will be: ‘Lauren The Butterfly Effect.’
The MS is with my editor Miriam for it’s final work and I hope to publish it mid-October.
The great challenge was finding a model for the cover, Lauren is an athlete and very muscular but also beautiful. Finding a suitable model and photographer has been difficult but I struck lucky in the end. The model is Olivia Moschetti and the photographer Tyler Porter both from Colorado. I’ve played around with the image a little to give the golden skin and hair described in the text but I am very pleased with the results. Olivia is closer to the younger Lauren than any other model I’ve seen.
This is the final cover as it will be on the paperback.
This book is out now for ebook and paperback on Amazon.
I was within two chapters of finishing my latest work: Bonny. The Butterfly Effect.
I was up to about 110k words and aiming for 130k. But I was straining. It was like pulling teeth and I knew that meant there was something wrong.
Usually when I’ve got the creative buzz on, the words flow easy – I get into the zone and it just flows. Not this time.
I stopped writing and pondered. Then I put it on the back burner and bubbled the thing for a week. Then one morning I woke up with an ugly truth there in my consciousness. I needed to do great slaughter to my babies. Lots of them. Infanticide no less.
I was struggling because the story had taken a wrong path. I was forcing it down plot paths it didn’t want to go. Trying to make it conform to certain ideas I’d had when the thing was in the creative gestation period.
It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done – I threw away two thirds of the text. Killed most of it. I’m in mourning now and cannot go back to the remains of the corpse unit that grieving is done. Continue reading →
This blog is addressed to all who follow this blog or are readers of my novels:
Thank you, have a great Christmas if you celebrate it, and have superbly joyous 2014.
The Butterfly Effect.
Next year I will release the new trilogy to be called: The Butterfly Trilogy. The first – ‘Bonny. The Butterfly Effect’ will be published at the end of January. Those of you who have read any of the Daniel Series or The West Cork Trilogy will be familiar with Daniel, Lauren and Bonny. The butterfly effect suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in a jungle in Indonesia can change the conditions locally and thus bring about ever growing ripples of change in weather systems, such that a cyclone can be deflected thousands of miles away.
This cause and effect idea fascinated me.The ‘what if’ idea. I started the new Bonny at a point in the first novel – ‘Conflict’ and changed one small thing; the first flap of the butterfly wing, the first ripple. Instead of dying and leaving Bonny at the mercy of her violent father, her mother sends her to live with her uncle Raymond in Canada. Continue reading →
I had a kind of brain storm a few days ago begining with the words: What if.
Bonny-Ann voluptuous woman.
I was looking at the image of the character Bonny that I’d created on Photoshop some time ago for a possible cover. It was never used. The Daniel series, in which she was a main player, is finished. I thought I’d said farewell to her. But what if? What if Bonny had never met Daniel and Lauren? What if she’d taken a very different path? What would her story be then?
Bang! Bonny’s back. The plot was suddenly there almost complete. The idea excited me and it did the same for B when I told her so… I’m now writing two novels at the same time. Continue reading →
What I do when I’m blocked? After ten novels in three years without any hesitation, I am finally faced with the infamous writers block. Not serious, I can still write but I seem to have lost the flow, it’s like pulling teeth and I am not confident I have found the right voice for this book. I’ve been working on the second in the history trilogy: ‘Beloved Warrior’ and have had two attempts to get going. The first I rejected when I noticed the soapbox beneath. I was having a rant, not writing a compelling novel. The next attempt got going and flowed the first chapter nicely then, thump, blocked. I usually deal with this by stopping and doing something else, in this case, editing the 5th Daniel novel: Daniel’s Grip. The ‘Warrior’ is till bubbling and I am immersing myself in WW1 history reading. Fuel for later.
I find if I try to force it I can produce work but it’s usually indifferent and gets scrapped. I must be patient and wait for the bubbling and simmering to produce the magic spark of creativity that will reignite, or should that be unblock, the flow.
This is the second cover design for Daniel’s Grip, the next in the Daniel series to be published soon.
David Rory ONeill 