Books: 'How the dreamy Lough helped shape my debut fantasy novel'

Keeper Of The Lake didn’t begin as a traditional novel.

It started with a series of vivid dreams - recurring images of cats moving through strange, shifting landscapes.

I didn’t fully understand where they came from, but they stayed with me and gradually began to take shape.

I’m originally from Blarney and now live near The Lough in Cork. The local landscape - water, woodland, and quiet spaces - helped shape the atmosphere of the story.

I work as an English as a Foreign Language teacher at Cork English World, and writing fiction is something I pursued alongside my day job.

That distance from publishing expectations allowed me to focus on mood, pacing, and imagining how a cat might realistically experience fear, loyalty, and loss.

Keeper Of The Lake is my first novel, and I didn’t follow a strict formula while writing it. That freedom allowed the story to remain dark, unusual, and sometimes unsettling, inviting readers to see the world from a non-human perspective and to accept uncertainty as part of the journey.

For several years, I kept notes: fragments of scenes, symbols, and bits of dialogue, without a clear sense of how they might fit together.

Then, in September 2024, I finally began writing.

The first draft came together quickly, and by Christmas it was complete.

Editing took much longer, forcing me to step back and refine what worked and what didn’t, but it helped to turn the draft into a finished novel.

The book is a dark fantasy told largely from the point of view of Nyx, a young feral kitten living in rural Ireland.

After becoming separated from her family, Nyx is drawn into the Arcanium, a hidden underground world filled with dangerous trials.

The setting constantly changes, moving through icy caverns, glowing forests, and fiery tunnels, each presenting new threats and challenges.

Nyx’s journey is about more than survival. As she navigates the Arcanium, she begins to uncover hidden truths about herself and the world around her.

Some cats possess unusual abilities, including a form of shared communication known as Deepspeech.

Through these discoveries, Nyx’s sense of identity begins to shift as she is forced to adapt to unfamiliar and often hostile surroundings.

Alongside its fantasy elements, Keeper Of The Lake explores themes of trust, betrayal, and change.

Alliances are fragile, and Nyx must learn who she can rely on in a world that often feels designed to test and isolate her.

The story looks at how identity develops through experience and how difficult moments can reshape who we become.

The novel draws inspiration from Irish folklore, mythology, and dream imagery, but these influences are woven into the story rather than explained directly.

The Otherworld in the book is less a defined place and more a sense of crossing into unfamiliar territory, where the rules are unclear and certainty is hard to come by.

In the Author’s Reflections at the end of the book, I touch on how ideas around dreaming and perception influenced the writing, as well as a personal experience that encouraged me to explore these themes through fiction.

The book will appeal especially to readers aged 15 to 30 who enjoy thoughtful, darker fantasy.

Fans of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, or Watership Down may recognise familiar elements, though Keeper Of The Lake takes a more mythological approach aimed at older readers.

Ultimately, my novel is about change - how stepping into the unknown can alter the way we see ourselves and the world around us.

For me, writing it was a way of finally giving shape to ideas that had been quietly forming for years.

As a proud member of the Cork community, I believe this story will resonate with many local readers - especially young adults and fans of fantasy.

Keeper Of The Lake is available now as an eBook on Amazon and is also free to read with Kindle Unlimited. See https://amzn.eu/d/de5XfXZ