A little bit of background: I was born in the beautiful market town of Listowel in Co Kerry, (host to the famous Writers’ Week Festival every summer), and my growing-up years were spent mainly in Limerick city. After leaving school I qualified as a teacher and taught in Dublin for a handful of years, taking a few breaks along the way – two years teaching English in Zimbabwe (wonderful), three years working as an advertising copywriter in London (exciting) – until finally in 2001 I decided to try my hand at writing a book, something that I’d been thinking about for years. I took another break from teaching and flew to San Francisco, where one of my brothers lived, and it was there I wrote my debut, The Daisy Picker. To my delight, it won a ‘Write a Bestseller’ competition that Tivoli, a new Irish publishing house, was running to launch itself, and my prize was a two book deal. I returned to the Irish classroom and wrote in my spare time, and in 2006, with two published books and another just completed, I signed up with Hodder Headline Ireland, Tivoli sadly having folded. In 2008 I took a deep breath and gave up teaching to become a fulltime writer, and so far, so good. As I write this, several books later (my most recent, the twentieth, came out in June 2022) Hodder Headline have become Hachette Books Ireland and I’m still being published by them. Over the years I’ve been translated into Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, Italian, Russian, Slovenian and Polish. I’ve also been published in the US and distributed in Australia and New Zealand, and somewhere along the way I found time to write three books for children (see books page), and I’m planning more. These days I divide my time between Limerick city and Miltown Malbay in West Clare. I take breaks from writing to drop into schools and chat about being an author, and to tell stories to tots in libraries. I’m so grateful to everyone who’s played a part in getting me to the stage where I can earn a living from writing, from my wonderful publishers and my excellent agent Sallyanne Sweeney (contact details on the press page) to my faithful and lovely readers. I’m so delighted if you’ve read and enjoyed any of the books, and hopefully there’ll be lots more to come!

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