'I tried to use the lessons I'd learned about the craft of writing from years of reading wonderful writers and from inspiring teachers...' Writer Kathleen Murray introduces her debut novel, The Deadwood Encore.
The Deadwood Encore tells the story of Frank Whelan, the seventh son of a seventh son, who by now should have inherited his father's legendary healing power, but still hasn’t managed to graduate beyond small-time skin afflictions. He already feels adrift when his twin Bernie reveals a life-changing decision that calls into question everything Frank thought he knew about his place in the family. So he takes off on a road trip from Carlow to Wexford with his best friend Hopper to try and find a few answers.
My own writing journey began back around 2006 in the Irish Writer’s Centre. I signed up for a beginner’s writing class with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. At the time, I was working in residential services for children around Dublin. I thought the stories I’d write would be full of crime, addiction, official corruption and neglect. An Irish version of the gritty American fiction I loved; James Ellroy, George Pelecanos. But what came out on the page were weird stories; a kid who could magically disappear poems; a man who adopted an apple child; a holy well polluted by verbal profanities. Not rainbows and unicorns, admittedly, but not far off. Nuala wrote at the bottom of one story, 'Brilliant, more power to your oxter’, and that was enough to keep me going for a while. As everyone knows, writers can live forever on occasional praise and vapours, though they might live even longer on a guaranteed basic income.
Years later, I wrote the first scene of what ended up being The Deadwood Encore. It was set in an A & E, where two brothers Bernie and Frank Whelan, were at loggerheads with each other. Some serious beef between them. Drugs? Land? Smuggling rare animal parts? No. I tried all that, but it turned they were from a loving family and still lived with their mother in Carlow. Only through the process of writing and rewriting did it become clear to me why Frank felt so threatened. He was grieving in a very unconscious way for his father and his identity was still based on those around him. He wasn’t himself yet. As I got to know the Whelans, their everyday love for each other became apparent, despite the exceptional changes they were going through.
As everyone knows, writers can live forever on occasional praise and vapours, though they might live even longer on a guaranteed basic income.
I had spent a week at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, an arts retreat, mostly just myself and Frank meeting on the page, day after day. I liked Frank despite his insecurities and uncertainties. On my last day there I sat down to tidy up my week’s work and Frank’s father arrived to steady the ship. He brought a sense of calm and zest for life, even if he was dead or a figment of Frank’s imagination (who you might argue was a figment of mine though he had gone well beyond me). The Deadwood Da began to speak; he wasn’t sure why he was in the middle of Frank’s story but he was willing to go along for the journey. For me that’s really the essence of writing, being free enough to go along for the ride even when you haven’t a bogs notion what’s in store.
I wonder ( and people ask me) about different elements I might’ve brought into this book; music I listened to; loves and losses I experienced; stories and places I knew; the bigger picture of identity and belonging in Ireland, especially for those who are marginalised or othered. I tried to use the lessons I’d learned about the craft of writing from years of reading wonderful writers and from inspiring teachers. But anything I brought to the writing, mostly forgotten now, was eventually superseded by the reality of these people; Frank and his twin Bernie; his parents the Mater and the Deadwood; his best friend Hopper.
And Puffa, whose story was the beginning before the beginning and the reason everyone needed to be there. The last part of the book, the only pages that reflect her voice, are fragmented, illogical, because that is all that remains of her life. Yet when words falter, she’s there listening out for news of her lost child, the Deadwood at her side and at last the telling takes them home.
The Deadwood Encore is published by Harper Collins
