Best-selling popular fiction author, Roisin Meaney is celebrating the launch of her 22nd novel titled ‘Moving On’.
Ahead of a whirlwind book promotional trip to Dublin, the Miltown Malbay based writer took time out to talk to The Clare Champion.
Having moved lock, stock and barrel to county Clare in 2023, Ms Meaney has strong family roots in the county with both of her parents hailing from the Banner.
“Mam was born in Kildysart. She is now 96, and was a primary teacher before she got married… Dad was from out the road in Lavalla near Ballycorey, and they met at a local dance. We spent our childhood summers at dad’s home place so I would be very familiar with that part of Clare.”
Her father was a primary school inspector so the family first lived in Listowel, county Kerry until she was six months old, and then when he was transferred out of Kerry to Tipperary town she lived there until the age of eight before spending the rest of her childhood in Limerick.
“Then I moved to London city, and that’s where I bought my two houses – not consecutively of course.
“I had a cottage in Miltown Malbay which I had bought as a holiday home in 2017, and then I decided to downsize and forgo one moving to Miltown in 2023… Miltown Malbay is totally home now; I love Clare and I love Kerry,” she said.
Listowel born, she is drawn to its Writer’s Week in the north Kerry town, which she has attended over the years.
“I am delighted to be on the programme for this year’s Listowel Writer’s Week. It’s something I have been nagging them about for years,” she laughs.
Moving on to ‘Moving On’. It is her 22nd novel – something she says she still finds hard to believe. It centres around a hopeless romantic and big dreamer called Ellen who have moved on from her home town, and the story is built up around two different countries she lives in and her three great loves.
“It is a stand-alone book so it is not part of a series – it is totally separate.
“It was a hard book to write mainly because it spans 40 years of a woman’s life. She is aged 20 at the start, and she is nearly 60 at the last part so there’s a lot of story in it.”
The idea for the novel evolved from a conversation Roisin had with her publishers when they thought of having a natural break in the story, and so she decided to put in a break every time the protagonist moves house. “Every chapter starts with her unpacking, and so the story moves along all those lines.”
“As I was writing Ellen’s story, I didn’t know how much of me I was putting into her. For example, I gave her some of the same jobs as I had done.
“I put her into London where I had lived in my 30s. I didn’t realise it until my mother, who is a proof reader for my books, said it to me.
“I went back and thought ‘janey I have put an awful lot of me in’. There are bits of me in every part of the character… Ellen is mostly me.”
The other similar aspect of Ellen’s character, is that she is embarking on something totally new in her 40s – exactly the same as what Roisin did at that point in her life when she left her advertising career to start book writing.
And personality wise, the character also loves reading, and works in a bookshop in Galway – a job Roisin always wanted to do.
“I made the bookshop my perfect bookshop. While I never lived in Galway personally, I would know it well.”
It is her first time with a UK publisher, and ‘Moving On’ is the first book of a two-book deal she has with Hachette Books.
While publishers generally prefer a three-book deal from their writers, Roisin felt differently about agreeing to those terms.
“I found I was under pressure in I had to write three books so I can handle a two-book deal, but not a three,” she explains.
She reveals that generally she likes to write sequels because she gets to develop her characters enabling new things to happen to them, and introducing lots of new characters.
Clearly loving what she does for a living, every day she thanks “whoever it is” responsible for that happening to her.
Travel is also something Roisin also adores. She spent two years in Africa and another year at various writers’ retreats including a “gorgeous” one in southern Spain run by a Danish couple in an old olive mill. And do these locations inspire her stories?
“I don’t think the specific places have found their way into my stories, with the very exception of Valentia Island.” She stayed there once in a B&B which was a converted stable to juggle an idea she had, and to give herself a much-needed jolt which it did.
“The location really grabbed me. I went in November which was really quiet. It was a fabulous, charming and beautiful island.”
Although she used the island as inspiration for a location, she changed place names because she was afraid to get details wrong and offend someone.
California is another place that inspired her.
Working in advertising in London, an idea to write a book sparked in her, took root, and grew for a number of years before she went to San Francisco moving in with her brother who lives there, to write her first book. Afterwards, she put a scene in that city in her second book, because she knew it so well.
“San Francisco is a very atypical American city, and it is lovely to walk around. It was exactly what I expected it to be.”
As for her next book, Roisin is not resting on her laurels. She has just passed the half-way mark as part of a current deal with Hachette with her first draft deadline on April 7, and she is hopeful it will come out this time next year.
Sharon Dolan D’Arcy covers West Clare news. After completing a masters in journalism at University of Galway, Sharon worked as a court reporter at the Sligo Weekender. She was also editor of the Athenry News and Views.