Two Cork writers hit TV jackpot with stories of love

Will you be aiming Cupid’s arrow at a loved one on St Valentine’s Day?

Or will the ‘cost of loving’ crisis - hotels, restaurants, bubbles, and chocolate have all soared in price in recent years - cool your ardour?

A survey last year by Aldi put Cork at No.7 in a list of the most romantic counties in Ireland, and the fact the big day falls on a Saturday this year will mean more of us will engage (hint, hint) with the orgy (ahem) of love.

Flowers are always a popular choice as gifts, of course - and this week we in Cork have cause to hand bouquets to two female authors from Leeside who have become experts at writing stories around the St Valentine’s Day themes of love and romance.

Because Catherine Ryan Howard and Chloe Walsh’s passion-filled stories are to be turned into two blockbuster TV series on a top streaming platform.

The small screen version of the racy and gripping novel 56 Days by Ryan Howard lands on Amazon Prime on Wednesday, while that same TV company announced this week it is to film a TV production of Walsh’s romantic drama series Boys Of Tommen.

For both writers, it will be a first foray onto the small screen.

How’s that for a winning double for Cork’s cultural scene!

The literary coups are a sign of how healthy the women’s fiction market is in Cork and across Ireland. Just a glance at the top 20 current best-selling books will underline how this ‘matriarchy’ of writers are surfing a wave of popularity

Readers here and in other countries such as the UK and the US are lapping up novels - especially with a romantic backdrop - set in the Emerald Isle - and the TV companies are following the money.

But the two Cork writers don’t produce Mills & Boon-style love stories for readers to sigh and sob over their lattes - far from it, they write serious works of fiction with twisting and compelling plots and complex characters. Don’t insult them by labelling their work with the lazy term ‘chick lit’.

It will be fascinating to see how their TV series are received - and Ryan Howard and Walsh will be hoping their big TV breaks will catapult them into the literary stratosphere.

In the eight-part TV version of 56 Days, Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia head the cast as Ciara Wyse and Oliver Kennedy who, after bumping into each other at a supermarket, embark on a whirlwind romance during the pandemic lockdowns in Dublin in 2020.

However, 56 days later it’s all over, and the only thing to show for it is a dead body in Oliver’s apartment.

Due to the nature of the injuries sustained and the condition of the corpse, the authorities struggle to identify who it belongs to - did Oliver end up killing Ciara, or was it the other way around?

“Catherine’s book gave us a sexy, emotional, thrill-ride of a show where everything pays off in the end,” promise series creators Lisa Zwerling and Karyn Usher.

56 Days, the fifth novel by Ryan Howard, who grew up in Grange, won the crime fiction category in the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards and was named by the New York Times in its best thriller of the year round-up.

She has spoken of how her lifetime love for books was fostered from her early days in Cork.

“When I was in Junior Infants in St Columba’s, Douglas, the teacher would sit up on her desk and read books aloud to us, holding them facing out so we could see the pictures. After school, back home, I’d line up all my Barbies on my bed, climb up on my dressing table and ‘read’ books to them in the same way.

“I work with a picture on my desk of me, aged 8 on Christmas morning, 1989, typing on the typewriter I’d asked Santa for. I think once I knew it could be your job, I knew that that was the job I wanted to have.”

Now a best-selling author of eight novels, Ryan Howard, 44, and now based in Dublin, publishes her next one, Buyer Beware, on July 16

The other Cork author set to see her name in the lights of TV world is Chloe Walsh, from West Cork, who has been writing and publishing contemporary romance for more than a decade.

The Amazon Prime adaptation of her series, The Boys Of Tommen, set in a private school in a fictional Cork town, will be shown in more than 240 countries,

It follows the forbidden love story of Johnny Kavanagh, a star rugby player, and Shannon Lynch, a talented but painfully shy new girl at Tommen College.

Both teenagers are hiding secrets; Johnny, a potentially career ending injury and Shannon, a troubled and violent homelife. Through their secret, highly charged connection, the two teens from opposite worlds battle against the odds and find a way to save each other.

The romantic drama series will be adapted for the screen by the producers of three series with an impressive track record - The Summer I Turned Pretty, One Day, and Twilight.

Walsh is a No.1 New York Times best-seller, and her success has been partly attributed to its riding the wave of popularity of literary works on TikTok.

She focuses heavily on the mental health dynamics of her characters, shining a light on important, real-life topics that are close to her heart.

Walsh said she was thrilled the series has been green-lit for the television series.

“The response from readers around the world has been over-whelming, and knowing that everyone behind this production and book shares my passion for telling this story authentically means the world to me,” she said.

As Cork celebrates St Valentine’s Day, let’s raise a toast to two Cork writers whose passion projects are really putting the Rebel County on the map.