Fever, my first novel, was published by Parthian Books in November 2007. I am currently working on my second novel, provisionally entitled Gunk, set in London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo and glittery island resorts.
Fever is a book I wrote ten years ago and stowed away. I finally decided to publish it in 2006, as its presence in the bottom drawer prevented me from getting anything else done. It's a looking back on a youth spent in the borderlands of the Irish Republic while the Troubles were fizzling out.
I set Fever in Dundrug, Ireland's Las Vegas, a fictional town but recognisably one of those small resorts that line the North-West seaboard and which, during the seventies and into the early nineties, worked as a kind of safety valve cum playground for people from the Nationalist communities of Northern Ireland who, come the July marching season, sought to stay clear of the annual tensions bubbling up in the province.
That's the background which, I hope, gives a new twist to this rites of passage tale about an adolescent Goth punk, something of a fish out of water, looking for a sister soul as the short Irish summer plays itself out. There's doubtlessly some nostalgia involved, but mainly it's a comic take on youth, fascinated by the fact that as teenagers we can be emotionally inept and still have downloaded a hell of a lot of info on the world.
Fever's way into the world has been slow and steady. A year after publication it was described by 3am magazine as a stunning debut novel.
These reworked press releases from Wales Online and The Irish World are very kind, and this piece from Gwales is fair enough.
Elsewhere the Big Issue said "an intelligent and absorbing debut", while The Irish Independent said - "a sparky first novel". Adjectives such as "spunky", "sparky" "quirky" abound in other piece written in the Irish Examiner or Planet International. And indeed, I'm grateful to all of them.
This, by the way, is my website where you can see much of what I do.
Whereas this is my blog where you get to see the same things but differently.
Bothering the Geese
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Page 1 of Fever, and no mercy for wingéd beasts