The sun is shining here in Ireland and
life is beginning to feel real again!
PRE ORDER HERE FOR DELIVERY ON 29 JUNE
Hello everyone
I hope this finds you well and beginning to get back into the world some kind of way. It’s been a bizarre few months hasn’t it? Here in Ireland we are in Phase 2 of the re-opening of our country and while we must of course be very cautious, it was so nice this weekend to see people around the streets, getting ice-creams and drinks and sitting outside in the sunshine with small groups of family and friends. I keep thinking that for us in the northern hemisphere at least, it is summer. The idea of the Corona virus in the winter and all it entails is such a terrible prospect but fingers crossed we can get a handle on it before then.
I swam in the sea yesterday, first time in the ocean since Australia and to say it was a different experience to the warm waters of the Antipodes is to slightly understate the case! Brrrr… but it was lovely. (or at least lovely to get out!!)
In book world, I’ve been a bit lazy this week. I live in a cottage in the middle of the country and while that’s idyllic in many ways in terms of broadband I might as well live down a well. It’s never good, but with everyone working from home and the demand on the service so intense right now, well it’s challenging as they say!
An internet engineer was lost the other day and called to our house looking for directions. Now I don’t know if you’re familiar with Stephen King’s book, Misery, but in it an obsessed fan essentially kidnaps an author and holds him prisoner, forcing him to write to her whims. Well, in the movie of the book the sinister, obsessed fan is played wonderfully by Kathy Bates, and I have to admit the idea did cross my mind. If I could just get him to stay and fix my internet….you’ll be relieved to hear I fought the urge and do not currently have an internet engineer tied up in the cottage, but I won’t say I wasn’t tempted! 
Anyway, I’ll plough on. The new book, The Hard Way Home is due for release on June 29th, so not long now, and I know many of you will be glad to be back with Liesl and Erich and their family again. I really hope you enjoy this one. The first two books in this series, The Star and the Shamrock and The Emerald Horizon have been enormous successes for me, for which I’m so grateful, and while that is unequivocally fantastic, the pressure to keep up the standard is significant. I hope I’ve done it. The new book will be available in paperback and large print as well as ebook of course.
If you’ve not read either of them you can get them here:
mybook.to/TheStarandtheShamrock
So, thanks again for sticking with me, I hope you and yours remain safe and that we all get back to some version of normal safely and soon,
Le grá agus buiochas,
Jean