Author Gaye Maguire introduces her debut novel, Blood Mothers, and how she went from a day job with the national broadcaster to a new career killing people for a living... in print.
If, for any reason, the Gardai examine my laptop, or retrieve my Internet search history, I'm in big trouble. Where to source untraceable poisons? How long does it take a body to decompose in the Irish Sea? What guns do armed Gardai carry?
Then there are the emails to friends of friends who know stuff - like the price of cocaine in Dublin - but it’s not what it seems.
I’ve been obsessed with reading and writing crime fiction ever since I graduated from Enid Blyton to my mam’s Agatha Christie books, at age nine. Producing promotions and writing copy for TV, my career for decades, helped to hone my creative skills. If you can tell a captivating story in thirty seconds with a handful of words, eighty thousand feels like luxury.
There's no winning formula, but it seems crime readers love original plotlines, pace, action, a mystery, fascinating characters and twists, lots of twists.
Crime fiction is having a moment, outselling every other genre in commercial terms, and Irish writers are riding the crest of that wave. Luckily, those brilliant authors are also accessible, through classes and workshops, seminars and festivals. For people who live and breathe murder and mayhem, they’re the nicest bunch you could meet, and generous with their expertise. In this way I’ve been studying to be a writer for years. There’s no winning formula, but it seems crime readers love original plotlines, pace, action, a mystery, fascinating characters and twists, lots of twists.
The idea for Blood Mothers, my debut novel, came to me in a creative writing class in the early 2000's. Ideas are easy. In your head they unfold in glorious Technicolour, if only you could BlueTooth them directly onto the page! Forging them into an edited manuscript, and getting it published, that’s about learning the craft, putting in the hours, and not giving up, and you have to love it. Oh and coping with rejection, that’s a skill in itself!
I’d been writing in fits and starts, but it took a pandemic to get the novel finished and ready to send out to agents and publishers. I got lots of positive feedback, a few flat refusals, but no cigar. Then, as luck would have it, just as my twenty years in RTÉ was coming to an end last summer, I was introduced to Inkubator Books – who specialise in crime fiction. Within a few weeks I’d signed a four-book deal to bring my heroine, Detective Sergeant Kate Hamilton, into print. My page-turning murder tale, rooted in Ireland’s cruel treatment of unmarried mothers and the illegal adoption racket, was finally between the covers of a real book. It’s the realisation of a lifelong dream, and so worth all those midnight hours.
Next in the series is another twisty story called Dark Waters. Due out in June 2023, it’s about our over-sharing, social media-obsessed society, where sharks lurk, just waiting for the scent of young blood.
Blood Mothers is published by Inkubator Books and is available exclusively on Amazon in e-book, hardback or paperback.
