Getting Started

by Sheila Connolly

I’m supposed to be starting to write a new book, with a deadline of February 1.  But “starting” is such a slippery term!

This new book will be the third in a series, which means that the setting and characters are already established, although I have the option (and maybe even the need) to introduce a few new ones.

A plot might be helpful. That’s not to say that the plot doesn’t change during the course of the writing, but I need a starting point, a hook, a key, a precipitating idea that starts the story rolling. It doesn’t have to appear in the first chapter, although it should be close to the beginning, else the writer spends a while meandering around admiring the scenery and introducing the characters (for some readers, not for the first time). Note:  the body doesn’t have to be appear in the first chapter either, although that does make a striking start, giving you the opportunity to explore the who and the why immediately.  Who is this person covered with blood, and what’s he doing lying on my floor?  I’ve ever seen him before!

But I do write murder mysteries, therefore there should be a murder. That means I have to decide what concept is worthy of killing someone for. I assume the cast of characters—both official and amateur—will be able to solve it, but I have to give them a crime to solve.

All this sounds as though I know what I’m doing; that I plan ahead and know where a story is going to go when I first open that first file or type “Chapter 1.”  I don’t.

I sent off edits to two books last week, so those books are essential done, save for some proofing.  Sigh of relief.  Now, what do I do with some free time?  Worry—about getting the next book started.  But after writing quite a few books, I’ve discovered something:  if I wait for it, the book starts demanding to be written.  It’s not a conscious process, but if I turn my attention to something else (like polishing the furniture or raking leaves), a scene will start jelling in my head.  I have to work from the beginning, although I do visualize snippets of what will follow, so the first scene is first to emerge, like an (old-fashioned!) photo materializing on the paper in a tray of developer. 

And that’s where I am right now.  I “see” the opening scene, and I see how it leads to the one that follows and the one after that.  No body yet, although I think I know who dies, and the new character that will lead us to the murder appears up front.  That first chapter is a tricky one, because I have to fill in just the right amount of backstory (who are these people and why should I care? sez the reader) and also kick off the action so the story moves forward.  I have to make sure that I don’t depart from the personalities of the existing characters—a person can’t have been morose for the entire last book and suddenly become cheerful, or not without a good reason, which would probably be a clue to something.  I have to remind readers why they liked the last book in the series enough to pick up this next one.

I know the scene in my head is the place to start because it won’t go away. I have to set it down.  It’s almost a physical itch, to put my fingers on the keys and get started, and writing anything but that chapter just won’t do.

So, in the third County Cork book (still nameless), Maura Donovan is sitting at the well-worn kitchen table in the century-old cottage in Ireland that she inherited, trying to figure out how she can possibly afford to keep her pub running on the paltry profits she’s been making over the past few months—and she doesn’t know that the answer is sitting on a barstool at the pub waiting for her.

Coming November 22

Listening to the Irish

by Sheila Connolly

Long before my County Cork series saw the light of day, I started taking Irish language classes at a local Irish cultural center.  The classes were offered by an organization called Cumann na Gaeilge, which translates to Friends of the Irish.  I spent five years of Thursday nights trekking to the center, and emerged with a rather rudimentary knowledge of contemporary Irish, plus a few memorized poems and songs.  No fault of the instructors—it's a notoriously difficult language to learn.  In truth, mostly I went to listen, since both my primary instructor and more than half the people in the class were Irish-born (which does not necessarily mean that they learned the language in Ireland in their early years), and I wanted to absorb the speech patterns and inflection.

Due to internal conflicts, Cumann na Gaeilge split apart in the past year, and my former instructor founded a new group, Ar dTeanga Dhuchais, which means Our Native Language, to offer language classes.  Somehow I found myself agreeing to be treasurer of the new group, mainly to keep some contact with the language.  Recently we held a meeting at an Irish pub in Boston.

I was the only American-born person at the table of five.  I knew two of the people there, and the other two were strangers to me.  I mostly listened, and after a while I wished I'd had a recorder with me, because what I saw unfolding was exactly what I've tried to include in my irish-based series.

First a stranger (Irish) walked up and started a conversation with Seamus, one of the men at the table, asking if they'd met before.  They hadn't, but it turned out that Seamus's brother had worked in the same union as the newcomer (all but one of the men are now retired from one or another of the building trades).  Then there ensued a long conversation amongst them men about what other contacts they shared, covering a few decades.  There was a strange aside when the newcomer was somehow reluctant to reveal his surname, at least until everyone (or at least the men) had established his bona fides.  (It turned out to be Keneally.)  And then this segued into where each had come from and when (but not why) and who and what they knew back in Ireland.

And I'm sitting there still as a mouse, gobsmacked (another good Irish phrase—"gob" means mouth in Irish) by what I'm hearing, because it's exactly what I wanted in my book, and here I am hearing it like it was a script, or something I wish I'd written.  These men are decades removed from "home," and yet they're still talking about where they came from.  Not on a grand level, but about details—about waiting for the tides, and curraghs (a kind of small boat I'd only read about), and harvesting kelp not for food or fertilizer but to dry and use in weaving. About neighbors helping neighbors when the seas were too rough to travel to the mainland from the little islands off the west coast. About families maybe none of them knew, but they knew about from others.

All the elements I've seen in Ireland—as an American outsider—were there:  the attachment to the land, the connection to a network of people, the way of establishing not "if" but "how" they connect with an Irish stranger. All rolling out in front of me, unasked. 

I'll be in Dublin again on Sunday. I can't wait.

A Brand New Bag

by Sheila Connolly

The black hole. See my problem?

This past week I purchased a new purse. I have one that is serviceable, although items like my keys tend to disappear into the black depths, requiring much embarrassing scrabbling in public and/or small nervous crises.  But this is a special purchase:  I need a new bag for a trip to Italy.

When I first started traveling, as a young woman, I was warned to hang on to my bag (which held my passport and money, if not much else—I didn't have a credit card for years).  Conventional wisdom said: Keep it tucked under your arm at all times; don't set it down on a counter while haggling with a vendor; never flash what cash you had. Pickpockets and purse snatcher abounded, especially in Italy.

I did have my purse stolen once, but that was in London—by someone who had to climb across the façade of a building on a busy street to come in through my third floor window while I was taking a bath down the hall.  I didn't see that one coming.  That necessitated making a police report (a lovely sympathetic bobby came to the B&B and talked to me in the kitchen over the classic cup of tea), finding the US Embassy and getting a new passport, and after I'd moved on to France with my new passport, wheedling a rental car company into letting me have a car despite the fact I had no driver's license.  The French were very accommodating, and I didn't even have to bribe anyone.

I have also been accosted by gypsies in France, including one small grubby boy who kept saying "donnez moi un sou" and was rather annoyed when I didn't.  For your information, the sou hasn't been currency in France for quite a while, and it never was worth much.  It had devolved into a stock phrase for panhandlers. Anyway, I didn't open my purse.

Back to the bag.  The first thing I wanted was a shoulder strap, a long one so that I could wear it across my body, thus keeping my hands free.  Funny—there aren't that many bags with functional shoulder straps available these days, although there are some with very decorative shorter straps.

I also wanted pockets that zipped—and I got that with a vengeance.  The new purse has six outside zippered pockets and one interior zippered pocket, plus two open pockets, one for the ubiquitous cell phone.  And (drumroll, please) it has its own umbrella, which lives in its own little inside pocket that snaps shut.  Once I saw that I was sold.

The best part is that all the pockets and the interior are lined with a bright, cheerful print fabric—not like my current black pit of a purse.  I might even be able to find something (and will take along one of my mini LED flashlights in case I do need to search)!

The thing should also be indestructible, because it's not real leather—it's a believable fake.  My grandmother would be appalled:  in her world, ladies carried leather bags and wore leather shoes, preferably matching.  She was a woman who had more than one real alligator handbag (it was a long time ago, and I didn't keep them). But this handy (and inexpensive) fake leather bag is something I don't have to worry about.  I can drag it through puddles and carry it in the rain and it will probably fare better than I will.

But it needs to be sturdy, because my bags usually average about eight to ten pounds in weight.  What's in there?  Wallet (ID, credit cards, health insurance card), small notebook (hey, I'm a writer!), usually a camera, cell phone, keys, cash (the coins to fall to the bottom and get forgotten), about a dozen pens, Tylenol, antacids, tissues, often a book to read, in case I have to wait somewhere, now and then a tablet computer…the list goes on.  I think I'm permanently tilted from carrying this accumulation on my left shoulder for decades. But I'd bet that if I walloped somebody in the head with it (especially with that nice long strap), the guy would drop in his tracks!

Sometimes I envy men:  they stick a wallet in their back pocket and go.  I don't know how they do it.

Languages

by Sheila Connolly

Recently I realized that could say "I don't know" in five languages. English obviously, but also French (je ne sais pas), German (Ich weiß nicht), Spanish (no sé), and Irish (níl a fhios agam). It's good to know that I can be ignorant in sooo many different countries!

I started thinking about languages because I'm going to Italy in June, with a group of college classmates.  I have been to Italy before—exactly once, in 1972.  I didn't speak Italian then, and I don't speak it now.

In 1972 I was traveling with a friend, who had a peculiar independent streak and decided to take off on her own, leaving me sitting in the middle of the Roman Forum.  I could have panicked, stranded in a place where I didn't know the language.  I didn't. I looked around:  it was a beautiful day, I was in an incredible place, I had the map (she didn't!) and money in my pocket.  What did I have to complain about?  So I had no way of communicating with most of the people around me—what did it matter?  In the end, it didn't. It was surprisingly liberating to find out that I could cope just fine.

I know probably as much Italian as anyone who goes to Italian restaurants and watches Italian movies, or movies set in Italy.  I'm good at obscure food terms.  I can say useful things like "where is the church?" or "how much does that cost?" but that's about the end of it.

I've always been good at languages (thanks, I think, to a Swiss nanny I can't even remember, who spoke only French to me), and I can understand languages better than I can speak them, which means I nod a lot during a conversation and say "yes" in whichever language is appropriate (oui/ja/si/tá).  But I have also acquired some handy phrase books, which I plan to read…sometime.  Maybe on the plane on the way over.

My husband has been to Italy since I have, maybe ten years ago (it was a business conference in Florence).  He passed on to me a handy Berlitz phrase book, which I've been reading on and off lately.  Its original publication date was 1970, and our copy was its 19th printing, in 1995.  I have a feeling that not much was altered from the original 1970 version, and I'd guess that one drew heavily on earlier ones.  It's a weird snapshop into a different world of travel.

For example, early on it tells you how to call for a porter for your luggage when you land.  Facchino!  Wait, are there still porters in airports? Will they come if you call? Not long after there is a handy phrase if you want to ask, "could you drive more slowly?"  (Think any self-respecting Italian taxi-driver is going to agree to that?) On page 27, we are instructed how to ask for a babysitter/secretary/typewriter. There is an entire section on Difficulties, in case any number of things in your hotel room don't work. Okay, that could be useful.

If you can find your way to a restaurant, the book tells you how to say, "I'd like some more," followed by "may I have some more, please?" and not much further down the page, "where are the toilets?" (A phrase that remains useful and appears every few pages in the book!)

I find the section called Relaxing particularly charming.  "Is there a sound and light show on somewhere?" If you're seeking a nightclub, you can ask "is there a floor show?" and "is evening dress necessary?" (Who are these people??)

And then there's the Dating section, which I present to you in the order given:

Do you mind if I smoke?

Would you like a cigarette?

Do you have a light, please?

Why are you laughing?

Is my Italian that bad?

Of course, there is no information on what to say if you've made it past smoking and introductions and laughing and would like to negotiate more amorous pursuits, although there is a line for "I'm on the pill" in the medical section.  Still, one might want to bookmark the page with "call the police!" or maybe just "Stop!"

This is all pure entertainment for me, because the trip is being organized by someone else, starting with picking us all up at the airport, through where we're staying (one villa, one vineyard), driving us around, feeding us, obtaining tickets for museums and so on.  I don't think I've ever been on a trip where someone else did all the planning, but I intend to wallow in it, while taking pretty pictures of Florence and the Ligurian coast.  And eating a lot—at least know what to order.

Ma io non parlo italiano.

The Jersey Shore

by Sheila Connolly

I will shamelessly piggyback on Sharon's lovely post from earlier this week, about family photos.  I am thanking my lucky stars that no one in my family was quite so obsessive about cataloguing our family on either side, because we fall far short of her tens of thousands of images.  Of course, that's a mixed blessing, because there isn't much for me to look at going back.

My engineer father was the primary photographer in my family (my mother professed an aversion to all things mechanical).  That does not mean my father was particularly good at taking pictures.  He wasn't documenting anything.  He often preferred artsy scenes of sunrise to family groups.  And when he did take pictures with people in them, he had a persistent habit of focusing on their faces, which means that people's feet are often cut off, and we get a great view of the ceiling in a lot of places.  I do understand—I have to fight the same tendency myself, because it seems almost rude not to "look" people in the eye when you're taking their picture.

Recently I was asked to submit a short essay for an anthology whose proceeds (if it's published) will go toward rebuilding the Jersey Shore, hard hit by Hurricane Sandy.  Since a lot of my happiest early memories go back to Long Beach Island, I was glad to participate.  Of course the first thing I did was to go searching for the photographs from that era, which proved to be challenging. We had 8-mm movies (I have those, and the projector and screen to show them, not that I ever do) and snapshots, and by our last years there I had a camera too, and took my own clutch of bad pictures. 

The pictures were scattered among those my grandmother had saved, those in albums my mother had assembled (giving up when I was younger than ten), and those I had taken.  They were oddly faded and curled, and even the negatives weren't much use, since modern negative scanners favor the 35mm format, not the old square negatives.

But I wasn't making a picture book; I was looking for images to trigger my own memories.  There weren't many photos, but there were enough.  I was pleased that the pictures corroborated what I recalled:  those were happy days.  No television allowed at the Shore, so I read—that's when I got into Nancy Drew.  Nobody back then worried about skin cancer, so we spent long hours on the beach, coming back bright red.  I spent a lot of quality time with my father, and he taught me how to body-surf.  I can't catch a wave now without thinking of him.  

We drank brightly-colored nameless sodas and we ate a lot of lobster.  I collected shells, and once I found the carcass of a horseshoe crab (which my mother wouldn't let me keep). One time after an overnight storm I railed against the trash that had washed up on the beach (luckily in those days we didn't even know about medical waste), and marveled that by the next day it had disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Nobody labeled the pictures, so I had to do some guessing about when they were taken.  Luckily back in those days Kodak printed the date on the processed photos, so that helped a little.  We didn't entertain a lot, so there aren't many mystery faces to puzzle over.

Once, many years ago in France, I spent an afternoon sitting on a family's shaded lawn, and the entertainment consisted of pulling out boxes of family photographs and postcards, handing them around, and commenting on them.  I wasn't related to that family in any way, but they assumed I would be want to be included, and in a way I was.  People should do more of that.  We should share pictures not merely to identify who the smiling faces are, but to recall the events they depict and the memories they evoke.  That's how we keep our families alive.

Reading in the Dark

by Sheila Connolly

This past weekend my community lay smack in the path of the Blizzard of 2013. I wasn't worried about the house:  it has weathered plenty of storms before (including the disastrous Hurricane of 1938), and we'd just had a new roof installed and any hanging tree limbs removed, to make our insurance company happy.  What I wasn't prepared for was living without the benefits of power for a couple of days.

Most middle-class citizens in the United States are used to their electric-powered creature comforts, like lights and television and dishwashers.  Of course we can survive without them (as long as we're not stupid enough to burn down the house or collapse from carbon monoxide poisoning from unventilated generators or gas stoves), but we've lost the knack of managing things like light and heat.

When my house was built, around 1870, it had a coal furnace and gas lighting.  Any time we renovate, we find the gas pipes (no longer connected, I assure you) behind walls and running between floor joists.  The heating was passive:  you stoked up the furnace and let the hot air rise, without benefit of fans or pumps—and you fed the furnace by hand from the bin in the basement.  Temperature regulation consisted of opening or closing a vent using a simple chain and pulley system which ran from the living areas through the floor to the basement. 

Municipal electric power didn't arrive in my town until the 1890s. This house was close enough to the center of town that electrical connections probably came early, but electricity initially was used sparingly within the house.  We still have a fuse board in the basement (no, not connected to anything) with a handful of circuits, one of which was devoted solely to the toaster (the label is still there).  Rooms had one or two outlets at most. I'm still amused by one in the dining/sitting room, where the plug is smack in the middle of the floor, presumably for a table lamp.

But what coping with a storm drives home to a writer is how hard it would have been to read before electric power.  Assuming, of course, that you wanted to read, but the dim light would have made it equally difficult to do anything useful like mending clothes or darning socks.  Admittedly I'm talking about urban or suburban dwellers—there are good reasons for farmers to retire when the sun goes down.  Farming is hard work.

But, gentle readers, imagine reading a book by the light of a flickering fire or an oil lamp or candle.  Try it yourself:  it's not easy.  The problem is compounded because the print in books and newspapers back in the day was ridiculously small, made worse by the fact that corrective lenses were not necessarily available or accurate, even with Ben Franklin's invention of bifocals in 1784.  It goes a long way to explain why people read out loud: one person, perhaps the one with the best eyesight or the best spectacles, claimed the seat closest to the light source and read for the benefit of the gathered family.  The added benefit was that everyone remained in a single room for this pastime, which meant you could get away with heating only that room.  It was kind of efficient, if you think about it.

One small loss associated with the decline of this mode of entertainment:  ladies' poetry.  There was a time when newspapers or magazines needed content, and many a gentlewoman could pen a pretty piece that would be printed.  No doubt there were strict conventions (not unlike contemporary genre fiction):  limitations in subject matter, language, length, and so on. Sad subjects were allowed so long as they were uplifting.  Humor was permitted, as well as some elements that we would consider politically incorrect these days, like ethnic caricatures. But I would venture to guess that most pieces were constructed so that a family could share an edifying moment together by the warm fireside and retire happily.

I was very happy when our power returned!

And one very happy announcement:  my newest release, Buried in a Bog, is #14 on the New York Times Mass Market Bestseller list!

Lá Fhéile Bríde

by Sheila Connolly (or maybe today it's Sile ni Conghaile)

Tá lá atá inniu ann lá Bhríde. Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Ireland.  She's the female counterpart of St. Patrick, but she gets far less publicity, at least outside of Ireland. People don't go out and over-imbibe green beer in local pubs to honor her.  More likely, they'd drink milk, since she was a dairy-woman in her early life—and the saint you'd appeal to if you want your cows to produce a lot of milk.

It's great fun to read the online descriptions of St. Brigid, because they're all over the place.  The serious Catholic ones give us one story:

She was born sometime in the mid-fifth century to a pagan father (Dubthach) and a Christian slave mother (Briocsech) and was contemporary with St. Patrick. Dad's wife thought maybe Brigid's mother was a bit too tempting, so she had her sold along with Brigid, but with the promise that the daughter would be sent back to dear old Dad sometime later.  When Brigid was ten, she joined him, and he put her in charge of the dairy, but she insisted on giving most of the milk away (seems she kept giving lots of stuff away).  Dad then handed her to Dunlag, King of Leinster, who when he handed her back ten years later, told Dad to free her, which he did.

Brigid went on to found the first religious community for women in Ireland, on land given to her at Kildare by the same King Dunlag (there is still a Cathedral church of St. Brigid on the site, although it dates from the early 13th century), which flourished, and led to the establishment of many others all over Ireland. The convent became one of the greatest centers of learning in Europe, no doubt assisted by the school of art (which in those days meant illuminating manuscripts) that she also created. It should be no surprise that she is the patron saint of scholars. When she died, she was buried with St. Patrick (except for her head, which for some reason is in Portugal). Not too shabby for a poor peasant girl.

But if you choose to take a less mainstream religious view: 

Another source says she "became a vestal virgin in service to the Brid, goddess of fire, and eventually she ended up the high priestess at the pagan sanctuary of Kil Dara, built from oak, which was sacred to the Druids, but somewhere in there she converted to Christianity. However, over the centuries Brigid kind of got muddled with the pagan fire goddess Brid, and the pagan holiday Imbolc got folded into a Christian holiday, and they both marked the beginning of spring.  Time for feasting (eat a lot of milk and butter!).  Light candles or fires.  Hang those rush crosses (known as St. Brigid's crosses) over your doors and windows to protect your house from fire and lightening. 

On one of my trips to Ireland, over a decade ago, a friend and I found ourselves visiting a Brigidine nunnery (yes, they still exist, more than 1,500 years after Brigid set up the first one).  It was an unforgettable experience.  Most of the nuns were elderly, with few young replacements coming along.  They were unspeakably thrilled to have visitors, and after giving us a full tour of the building where they lived, including their archives, they insisted we stay for tea and cakes and bread and jam, and then a group of them clustered around to watch us eat. It should be no surprise that I'm incorporating part of this in a book.

But Brigid makes a good role model, whichever way you look at her.  Reading between the lines, she was determined, she knew her own mind, she took a broad view of things, and she got things done. Smart woman!

My first book set in Ireland, Buried in a Bog, comes out next week.  Naomh Bríd, beannaigh mo leabhar.

Rapturous Research

by Sheila Connolly

Recently I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times written by Sean Pidgeon, a writer as well as a reference publisher for John Wiley & Sons.  Given his day job, it should be no surprise that he is much invested in literary research, but he was surprised to find that it had a formal name:  research rapture.  He did some online digging and formulated this definition:

…the delightful but dangerous condition of becoming repeatedly sidetracked in following intriguing threads of information, or constantly searching for one more elusive fact.

Sound familiar, writers? Pidgeon was talking primarily about writers of historical fiction, but I'm convinced it applies to any fiction, or at least to those writers of fiction who have a fondness for facts rather than pure invention.  I'm one of them.  Yes, I confess:  I am a research addict.

The Internet makes it far too easy—all those links, like breadcrumbs forming a trail to that one perfect fact that you really, really need for your work in progress. 

I'm still in the midst of writing the second book in my County Cork Mysteries. In it there's a murder at a manor (I swear I wrote the original version of this long before Downton Abbey premiered).  I'm writing about a real town, and I've seen the local manor—from the outside.  Now, this is not historical fiction, nor do I have to stick to "only the facts" about the place.  I don't expect to see the interior; I could, but currently it's a Catholic retreat house, and I daresay the interior in its current state would not fit well with my story.

It has not been difficult to find the history of the family that owned the place when they first enter into my story, in which the last descendant is still living there (not true in reality:  the last descendant died in 1983), going back to the 17^th century.  This I derived from multiple websites, starting with that of the retreat house, and then wandering through sites that discuss Irish social history and others focused on architecture.

One of the most intriguing and relevant tidbits came from the Census of 1901 (also available online), which shows the details of the house that year.  For example, this was clearly the Big House of that townland:  where most residences in that townland had two windows in the front (a basis for valuation in those days), the Manor House had 17.  Where the other houses had mainly between six and 11 rooms, the Manor House had 25.

Equally interesting are the individuals listed in the Big House as of the census date.  There were three family members living there in 1901:  the widowed mother (the nominal Head of House) and her son and daughter, both unmarried.  All three belonged to the Church of Ireland (Protestant).  This family of three was attended by four staff:  a cook, a housemaid, a parlor maid, and a kitchen maid; all were Catholic. The cook and the kitchen maid spoke both Irish and English.  There was also a "Visitor" below stairs—a retired nurse from America. So there you have the sociological make-up of a family that belonged to "the gentry" of the day.  And that's the snapshot I needed for my book.

I went off on other tangents, of course.  For example:

--laws pertaining to ownership and registration of firearms in Ireland (strict)

--European Union regulations for establishments serving food (lots of forms to fill out)

--Laws pertaining to serving alcohol

--The number of surviving nunneries in County Cork (more than you might think).

Many of these diversion may result in no more than a line or two in the finished book—something like, "What about opening a restaurant?" "Forget it—too much paperwork." Others lead to questions that can best be directed to human beings rather than the Internet—things like, "how strict are you really about opening and closing hours?" (I asked—there's a lot of flexibility.)

Can readers tell if we can back up those throwaway comments with fact, or if we're just making it up as we go?

Irish Bookstores

by Sheila Connolly

I just came back from two weeks in Ireland, most of it spent in a (very comfortable modern) cottage on a windswept hill in County Cork, a mile from where my grandfather was born.  Parts of my brain and a chunk of my heart are still there, so you may be hearing a lot about it in coming weeks.

 

I quickly came to understand where the legend of the bean sí, the keening fairy woman, comes from:  the wind was relentless, howling around the eaves.  But the rain held off most days (and guess what:  when it rains, you get rainbows!), and I did all the research things I planned to do, like talking to the local gardaí (police) about the details of a murder investigation.  I guess I'm not your typical tourist.

 

But one thing that struck me over and over:  the Irish love books.  I spent a couple of days in Dublin, and I took pictures of every bookstore I entered, from large chain (Eason's) to hole-in-the-wall places selling used books.  They're everywhere.  They're well stocked, and they're full of buyers.

 

What is curious about this is that books in Ireland are expensive.  From what I saw, there is no equivalent of our American mass market paperback (the small format).  Most Irish books are published in what we would call trade format, which is larger and more expensive.  With very few exceptions, they cost ten Euros or more.  That's around thirteen dollars.  Heck, I don't pay thirteen dollars for a paperback.

 

But the bookstores appear to be thriving, and there are lots of them.  I spent the most time in the town of Skibbereen, which has a population of just over 2,000 people.  It's an ordinary market town, not fancied up for tourists.  I'd live there in a moment—it has great restaurants, an amazing year-round weekly farmers market, a long and occasionally tragic history—and more than one bookstore.

 

A department of the extraordinary supermarket sells books, along with paper goods and school supplies.  There's another bookstore down the street (note:  there really is only one main street) that has a good selection of new releases.  And there's an incredible bookstore a bit further on, called Time Travellers Bookshop, which sells new, used and collectible books.  My husband and I spent quite a bit of time there poring over titles. I should note that the owner is actually German and does sell over the Internet, and one of his assistants is Scottish, with a Welsh husband; they all opted to settle in West Cork because they fell in love with it.  That should tell you something. So, three bookstores in a town of two thousand people.  My town, population ten times that, barely supports a rack of best-sellers in the local Hallmark store.

 

It is heartening that a country full of people who are keeping a close count on their Euros still believes that books matter, and that people are willing to pay good money for them. Yes, there are also public libraries, and even at the farmers market there are used books for sale.

 

One final note, from a mystery writer's perspective:  the Irish do not like cozies.  Believe me, I looked high and low and found no more than a couple of lonely copies of Agatha Christie.  There are some great Irish mystery writers these days, but the majority of them write dark procedurals.  I'm still puzzling over whether that reflects something fundamental about the collective Irish readers' psyche, but overall I'm happy that people are reading.

The first book in Sheila Connolly's new County Cork series, Buried in a Bog, will be issued in February 2013.  It will not be available in County Cork bookstores, even in Skibbereen, which plays an important role in the book.  She may have to deliver them herself.