Category
Creative Writing: Excerpts
Posts In This Category Are Excerpts From My Books
Friday Fiction: Iseult Gonne and Lucien Millevoye Take Tea
Maud and Iseult Gonne are living in Normandy, taking refuge from the war in Paris, when they hear that John MacBride, Maud’s husband, has been executed. This leaves Maud frantic to get back to Ireland. She dispatches Iseult to London, to fetch their friend, the poet Willie Yeats.
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Maud Gonne hears of John MacBride’s Execution
The story has shifted to 1916. Maud and Iseult are living in Normandy, as the first world war wages and in Dublin, Irish freedom fighters have organized a botched insurrection. Many of their Irish friends and acquaintances were involved. This extract describes what happens when Maud Gonne hears of John MacBride’s Execution for his part.
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The execution of John MacBride: Ireland’s Easter Rebellion 1916
This is a scene reimagining the execution of John MacBride, Maud Gonne’s husband, for his part in the 1916 Rising. His death was to change life for Maud and Iseult forever.
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If you read this speech at the start of a novel, would you read on?
It’s Friday Fiction here on the blog, so I’ll be blogging Dancing in the Wind, Book Two in the Yeats-Gonne Trilogy here with weekly extracts in the Friday Fiction slot.
I’m thinking of opening Dancing With The Wind with one of Maud Gonne’s fiery political speeches.
Question: Would you read on if this was what you found in the first pages of a book?
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Friday Fiction. In The Hour First Chapter
Friday is Fiction day on the blog. Here is the prologue to In The Hour: The Third Book in the Irish Trilogy.
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Friday Fiction: A Historical Literary Dinner with Ezra and Dorothy Pound, WB Yeats, Iseult Gonne and Georgie Hyde Lees
This is an extract from Dancing In The Wind, the second book in my WB Yeats trilogy. It is narrated by a working-class Irish Parisienne, Rosie. Iseult Gonne has been dispatched to London by her mother, Maud Gonne, to get her longtime friend and one-time suitor, WB Yeats, to come to France and escort her and her family to Ireland. There the 1916 freedom fight has resulted in the execution of the revolution’s leaders, and further suppression of the Irish people, by the British government. As somebody who laid the groundwork for this revolution, Maud is anxious to be there at this important…
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“Just Do It”: Friday Fiction: 2018 Week 47
Friday fiction: Just Do It is an extract from After The Rising, my first novel and the first book in the Irish trilogy. Jo has left Ireland for London and is drinking too much and achieving too little. Something has to give, and in this extract it does. I’m in Natalie’s kitchen, crouching on the floor, unable to move. Darkness is fondling the windowpane, which means it’s late, but I have no idea how long I have sat here like this. In my right hand, I hold a kettle, full of cold water, but I have no memory of filling it. My…
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“Just Be Yourself” Friday Fiction: 2018 Week 46
Friday fiction: Just Be Yourself is an extract from Below The Fall, the second book in the Irish trilogy. Jo has ended up in San Francisco, by way of London and hasn’t been home in ten years. She has quite drinking and friends, job, lifestyle have all been transformed. Ireland, Rory O’Donovan, and her twisted family history have never seemed further away. Now read on: Richard and I sit at our table in Mani’s, drinking “love bombs”: alcohol-free cocktails of passion-fruit juice, wheatgerm and ginseng. We are both dry, one of the many things we have in common. This makes…
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Friday Fiction: Sneak Peek of my Forthcoming Novel: Dancing In The Wind
Excerpt from: Dancing In the Wind: Chapter 3 The story so far: Having rejected, and been rejected by, the poet WB Yeats, Maud Gonne has decided to marry another. In this extract, she breaks the news to her daughter Iseult, whom she has placed in a convent so she can work on her Irish political activist projects. The story is narrated by Rosie Cross, an Irish working woman with various links to the Gonnes. Now Read On: ~~~ Soeur Therese is a simple Auvergnat, seven years older than Iseult, and not much taller. The poor girl has a trio of…
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My Next Novel, In The Hour: A Sneak Peek at the Earliest Most Invisible Stage of the Process.
I always have different projects at different stages of development. I’m currently at the earliest possible stage of the final part of my Irish trilogy, In The Hour. Here’s all I know so far and I’ll keep you posted as more unfolds. SETTING: Like the first two books in the trilogy (each of which can be read as a standalone novel) it is set in San Francisco, California and Wexford, Ireland. It is now 2010 and Jo Devereux is a single mother, living with her son Richard, the baby who was born at the end of Before The Fall. MORE…
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