Cork city bookshop worker launches his debut novel

A coming-of-age fantasy adventure novel by Cork writer, podcaster and filmmaker, Daniel Heaphy, will appeal to 11 to 15 year olds.

But when the 24-year-old author from Douglas started writing his debut novel, Breanne 1975, during lockdown, he was doing it purely for his own pleasure.

Daniel thinks this was an advantage as it made him less self-conscious and freer in his approach.

“It became kind of addictive,” he says. “I cared about the characters as if they were real people. I wanted to see them through their journey. I was obsessed. Writing it was really good fun.

“A lot of the time, authors talk about having a light-bulb moment where lightning strikes and it all comes together. I didn’t really have that. The way I describe it, it’s kind of like everything I’ve ever loved to read and write growing up, blended together.”

The fantastical story, which explores a past life and has elements of time travel, is set in the fictional sleepy village of Ballycinn in Wexford. The main character, 15-year-old Breanne, is not at all happy about moving from the city with her parents to rural Ireland. However, she soon learns that there is more to the area than she initially thought. She befriends Oscar who lives across the road from her.

Their platonic friendship is very much at the heart of the story. When the pair explore some ruins on the outskirts of Ballycinn, something is triggered in Breanne. She has a series of visions. She sees a white dress, she hears clapping and a girl’s scream. There is a hooded figure.

“Breanne learns that she has the ability to remember a past life. In her past life she was a girl named Fianaid who was killed in Ballycinn at the age of 15. The circumstances around her death were never solved.

“Essentially, the book is a fantasy adventure involving Breanne and Oscar investigating Breanne’s past self’s death in 1925. However, as Breanne gets closer to learning the truth, she puts herself in danger.”

An older woman, Winona, who lives in the Ballycinn area, is the one that gives Breanne information, guiding her and acting as a kind of mentor. Winona unlocks a lot of the secrets that the two friends want to know about. With the time travel element, Winona guides Breanne into the past world.”

Is the book scary?

“There’s definitely a scary element to it. I love stories that have some frightening stuff in it. It’s creepy.”

Daniel is drawn to the fantasy genre.

“I love the escapism that comes with it. I think, very often, fantasy actually has more parallels to our real lives than we like to give it credit for. If you look at books like Harry Potter, the Narnia books and The Hunger Games, even though they’re fantastical and out there, a lot of the themes and ideas in them are relevant to our everyday lives.

“I really like telling a story that is recognisable, but doing it with a bit of a twist.”

With a Masters degree in film and screen media from UCC, Daniel says it would be a dream come true if his novel was made into a film – preferably directed by him. He has a cinematic approach to writing, explaining that he can’t write until he first sees the pictures in his head.

He is a fan of Sally Rooney, whose novels reached a wide audience when they were made into TV dramas.

Daniel’s day job is as a children’s bookseller at Dubray Book Shop. It gives him an insight into what young people are reading. And they are reading, he stresses, despite the tendency to blame social media for stopping youngsters from opening up a book.

“You would be surprised. There is this kind of statement put out that reading is dead, that teenagers don’t read. But that’s really not the case.

“I think, in a way, social media helps get books across to teenagers. There’s a huge subculture called ‘Book Tok’ where people talk about the various books they enjoy. Social media can be a positive thing; it has good benefits on reading.”

Daniel has a podcast called ‘Creatively Me’ in which he interviews creative people about their art and how they approach it.

“If I could have anyone on the podcast, it would be Stephen Chbosky who wrote The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It’s probably the book that has had the greatest impact on me. I first read it at 14 and I’ve probably read it every year since.”

While The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger is the coming-of-age book that those of us of a certain age cite as a seminal novel, Daniel says it’s stacked in the classics section of Dubray.

“The author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower was inspired to write his book after reading The Catcher in the Rye. I find that interesting; the way creative people take in different sources and pass their own creativity onto others.”

Daniel says he would love to have a long career in a number of different creative industries.

“There are so many things I wanted to say in Breanne 1975, but I couldn’t because it wouldn’t have added anything to the story.

“I’d love to do a non-fiction book, based on my podcast,” says this enterprising young man.

Breanne 1975 will be published on August 29 by Olympia Publishers, a small indie publisher in the UK.