Hello everyone,
I hope wherever you are in the world, life is going well for you. The summer is in full glow here in the Emerald Isle and we are loving the sunshine on our damp old bones. Ireland is very green as you know, but there’s a price to be paid for that lush green landscape and boy, do we pay it! On the West coast there can be up to 225 days a year that are deemed ‘wet days’.
But we are like goldfish us Irish, short memory spans, and once the sun comes out we forget the rain. I remember one time when I was a tour guide, sitting in the bus with a man who’d hurt his ankle the day before and so was taking it easy. There was just him and me and the driver in the bus as all the other people were out sightseeing. Anyway it started to rain, a sudden downpour, and this man thought it was very funny that all the tourists were prepared with raincoats and umbrellas while the Irish in their summer clothes ran frantically in all directions, holding newspapers over their heads for protection. Rain comes as a shock to us every time! You’d think we’d expect and accept it but no, we don’t.
So I’ve been doing a little housekeeping and some of you might have read a little novella I wrote a while ago now called Letters of Freedom? It’s about a woman who grew up in a children’s home in Dublin, believing a version of her past that she never thought to question, but as an adult, she gets a Facebook message from a stranger that suggests that her entire existence is predicated on a lie. It’s a trilogy and it tells Carmel’s story as she unravels an extraordinary story of her past and realises that we are all a product of our environment, and hers wasn’t true, then who is she? Well I decided to rewrite it as a full length novel, I felt there was more to the story, and the shorter format wasn’t telling it as well as I would have liked, so I did some major surgery and now it’s a full length book.
Now, since you are my lovely, loyal readers who have stuck by me all this time I feel it’s only fair to give you a free copy of the updated version, whether or not you purchased the original, so here it is, just click the link to get a free ebook.
I’m sorry I can’t extent the free book option to print, but if you don’t have an E-reader, kindle or whatever, you could download a PDF version to your computer.
It’s book 1 of the rewritten Carmel Sheehan Series and I hope you like it. The story is in essence the same as the original, but it’s told better (I hope!) and fleshed out a lot.
Apart from that, I’ve had my two shots of the vaccine and feel fine, but life still feels far from normal. This new variant is a worry. I had planned a trip to Florida in September for a writer’s conference but since no EU citizens can enter the USA at the moment, it’s looking less and less likely. I’m so disappointed as I love to travel, and the last time I was on a plane was March 2020 when my family and I were ejected from our beloved Australia because of the virus. I was sure then it was all a storm in a teacup, how wrong I was. Probably just as well we didn’t know what future awaited us back then. Ireland is still quite restricted, still no indoor dining, or concerts or sports events, and most people are still working from home. We got our European Digital Certificates recently, a sort of Covid Passport, which apparently allows free movement within the EU for people who are vaccinated, so we might try to get a few days in Italy later in the summer but we’ll have to see. I guess there are worse places than Ireland to be stuck!
My daughter starts secondary school next month so it’s a flurry of preparations here, not to mention the demolition of our house, and the care of my folks, so it’s a busy time for me.
Have a great week, and enjoy the free book,
Le grá agus buiochas,
Jean xxx