“How could I?”
I did what you do.
I told the truth.
Always a real bad idea.
Said I’d always intended to kill her… almost did in book three but felt she wasn’t involved enough yet in either Jack’s or the readers’ emotions.
How cold is that?
I gave up explaining that I was experiencing a parent’s worst nightmare…
the loss of
a child.
Nope.
Didn’t wash.
The sixth Jack… Cross, I went for broke and already, we’ve had all the shite about writers going too far and I was mentioned as the prime perp… The crucifixion, a year before, in Belfast, they had done exactly what I described.
Jack’s surname was a personal joke; Taylors Hill is the snotty area of Galway, a place
Jack would never have been allowed to visit.
I never expected Jack to go global… In my view, he was too Irish, too parochial, too damn perverse to have a wide appeal.
But I wrote him as he was whispering in my ear, and the first book, it was like I knew him.
And I do.
Alas.
The alcoholism is based on my late brother, a man of true warm spirit, my best friend, and he died a vagrant in the Australian outback, so I knew of what I wrote.
And when they come back at me about Jack being so angry?
Gee, wonder where that comes from.
The Irish, we laugh and drink our merry way, fueled by Guinness and Jameson and
never a worry in the world.
What a load of bollocks!
I fucking hate that.
Alcoholism has destroyed the best and the finest of our race, as Jack is fond of quoting.
Most of our literature applauds the culture of drinking.
Jesus Wept.
I thought,
“What if there were a series of books showing the sheer havoc and misery that drink causes?”
Whoops.
Wouldn’t play well if you wanted Irish Awards or the Irish Tourist Board to endorse you.
And they having serious Euros to invest in the appropriate Irish writer.
And you know, I said, like I’ve said to me cost so many times,
The fook with that.
Here’s the irony… Seven books in, the tourist board calls me, would I be open to showing Japanese tourists Jack’s Galway?
If that isn’t irony?
I was thinking, maybe have them beaten up with a hurly, get a real taste of Jack’s city.
Our national sport is hurling, a cross between hockey and homicide, and it’s fast, brutal, skillful, and I grew up with it.
A perfect hurly is made from ash, honed by an artisan, and sometimes has metal bands on the end.
It’s a little like a Louisville slugger. I have two of those, sent to me by two of the best writers in mystery today.
A hurly has a swoosh like the slugger and that same lethal intent.
When I was in Texas last year and got to hit a few, they asked,
“Where did you learn to play ball?”
I didn’t.
I played hurling.
I’m asked,
“How much of me is in Jack?’
The rage and reading.