Cork author: My novel is like my fourth child

WHAT could State Assistant Pathologist Dr Margot Bolster and Blarney author Michelle McDonagh possibly be discussing over coffee?

“We were discussing how to bury a body, which is quite a complicated process!” says Michelle, who is mum to Lucy, 14, Jake, 12 and Kiana, 10, and has just published her debut novel, There’s Something I Have To Tell You.

“I emailed Margot during the course of my research for the book, and she was very generous with her response and her time,” she adds.

“Alan Crowley, crime scene examiner, walked through my fictional crime scene with me, and he advised me on what would happen in real life. He was great to share his time and expertise with me.”

Michelle did in-depth research for her novel.

“A farmer, Brendan O’Connell, whom my husband knew, was kind enough to give me a tour of his slurry pit and an in-depth explanation of how it all works. Not a request he gets every day of the week, I suspect!”

Michelle is a city girl at heart.

“I was amazed at the size of the slurry tank; it’s a really huge tank that is so dangerous, so lethal, used every day on a working farm.”

Michelle, with impressive research under her belt, found time to write her two-year project at home and in a local car-park!

“I didn’t want any distractions,” she explains. “And sometimes my husband, Greg, who works from home, can be more noisy than the kids! I often took my laptop to a local car-park for some peace and quiet so I could do some editing!”

There’s Something I Have To Tell You is a cleverly plotted whodunnit with a fantastic cast of characters.

“Or you could call it a whydunnit,” says Michelle about the thriller set on a family farm, Glenbeg, in her native Galway, where rumours swirl and secret tensions bubble away in the background. The plot is compelling.

When the bodies of wealthy matriarch Ursula Kennedy and her farmer husband Jimmy are pulled from the slurry pit, shock ricochets through the family and community. Everyone has questions, including the gardaí. Was this a tragic accident? Or is there more to it than meets the eye?

Their son, Rob, once destined for a high-flying career, is now involved in the family business. He seems distraught about his parents’ deaths, but rumours soon spread about a blazing row he had with his mother before she died.

Rob’s wife Kate had a difficult relationship with Ursula. Life will certainly be easier now, without her every move being controlled by her imperious mother-in-law.

Meanwhile, Christina the victims’ fragile daughter, is carrying a private pain she’s never been able to speak about.

As vivid memories rush back of another tragic death on the farm some 16 years earlier, a toxic secret is set to come to the surface, one that has been simmering for decades.

Michelle has been writing as a journalist since she left the then University College Galway in 1994. “Writing fiction is a whole other kettle of fish!” she says. Michelle got going on her novel as her 50th birthday loomed.

“I spent more time talking about it than ever actually writing anything. It has always been my dream to write a book.”

It is like her fourth baby.

“Yes! It is like a fourth child,” agrees Michelle. “It’s a bit like sending a child out into the world to be judged and hoping people will be kind. Happily, most of the reviews have been positive and warm. I see it on shelves in bookshops with my name on it, but it still seems surreal.”

How did she make her dream come true?

“Over the years I did a number of creative writing courses and read countless books on writing,” says Michelle. “Even though I spent a hell of a lot of time [more] talking about it, than ever actually sitting down at my desk and writing.”

Greg, Michelle’s husband, spoke about it too.

“He made a show of me at our wedding 15 years ago,” says Michelle. “Greg told everyone I was a novelist-to-be!”

And she was. Michelle is now working on her second book, a dark family drama set between Galway city and Connemara.

Where does she get her ideas from?

“I get lots of ideas from reading the papers and listening to radio, and stories people tell me,” says Michelle. “Truth really is stranger than fiction in my experience. I’m fascinated by the stories behind the headlines.

“I covered court and inquests for years myself as a journalist and while there are always all kinds of rumours and gossip in the wake of a tragedy or suspicious death in a small community, it’s often not until the court case or inquest that some of the truth starts to emerge. But nobody, apart from those living behind those closed doors, ever knows what really went on.”

As a child, Michelle read a lot.

“I was such a bookworm. My father was a big reader and he brought myself and my sister into the old library in Galway every Saturday morning as children to get books. He had so many dark crime thrillers on the bookshelf at home that we joked he’d never meet another woman. My mother, Lucy, died at 56. I dedicated the book to her.”

Michelle, like many authors, writes about what she knows. Her dad suffered from Alzheimer’s and in this book, Jimmy is in the early stages of the disease.

“Jimmy is drifting into the grey world of Alzheimer’s,” says Michelle. “He is different to my dad, who was jolly.

“There is a small bit of Christina in me; I think I’m less neurotic. She goes through her own struggles with anxiety and depression.”

Ryan Tubridy likened There’s Something I Have To Tell You to John B. Keane meets Agatha Christie.

“I’ll take that!” says Michelle.

An experienced writer for more than 25 years, including 12 as a staff reporter at the Connacht Tribune, she has crafted a distinctly Irish crime thriller that relates to all Irish people with a relationship with the land.

What advice would Michelle give to other would-be novelists?

“You need to make yourself sit down and write and keep writing, one word after another, until the book is finished,” she says. “As the author Neil Gaiman said; it’s that easy and it’s that hard.

“There is no point in waiting for the right time for inspiration to strike, or as Gaimen says, for elves to come in the night to do it for you; just sit down and start writing.”

Michelle did just that. She just sat down and started writing.

“For two years I was dipping in and out between working and home-schooling. Fiction writing is a different creativity.”

Michelle, like most journalists, is nosy by nature.

“I know if I’d nine good reviews out of ten, the one bad one would stick in my head. I’m too nosy not to though, and fortunately, they have been positive so far.”

There is another budding writer in the household.

“My youngest daughter, Kiana, 10, also loves writing little stories, as I did at her age,” says Michelle.

Who knows? Kiana could yet follow in her mother’s footsteps. Then Greg would have two women in his life to boast about!

There’s Something I Have To Tell You, by Michelle McDonagh, is published by Hachette Books Ireland. Available now