Ask the Author: Colm Herron
Answered Questions (4)
Colm Herron
How and why my early hidebound conformism transformed into fierce anti-authoritarianism
Colm Herron
I dedicated The Wake to Nuala because she did a really flattering portrait of me in oils. And it’s now there on my website and on the back cover of my novel. (Don’t everybody rush at once. Flattering is a relative term). She got very little money for her efforts but I hope she is consoled because no longer can people say about me: “He’s no oil painting.” Actually, I’m very proud of her and I’m making a promise here and now that I’ll pay her a lot more if The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) makes me rich. So there it is in writing.
Nuala was in fact around the same age as Jeremiah when I began the novel. But this was not an impetus. The spur was to get myself into another novel. I’d been in the first three so I wanted to keep it going. In this way (though in no other way) I suppose I could be compared to the late Alfred Hitchcock who liked to have at the very least a walk-on part in his movies.
To get to the last part of your question: "Do you think you could have written this novel before you were a parent?" The answer is no and the reason is that I would have been afraid to explore existential questions.
The influence of my wife Fidelis was paramount here. She encouraged me to think outside of myself and to question everything the high and the mighty said. She supported and shared my growing agnosticism in matters both religious and secular. And she told me I was funny. “You’re comical,” she would sometimes say. “Get that thing you just said down paper and you’ll have them rolling in the aisles” (Like mother, like daughter. They both flatter). I asked her if she meant the aisles of our local church. She said she did not.
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*The Wake* on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017CCHRNG
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Nuala was in fact around the same age as Jeremiah when I began the novel. But this was not an impetus. The spur was to get myself into another novel. I’d been in the first three so I wanted to keep it going. In this way (though in no other way) I suppose I could be compared to the late Alfred Hitchcock who liked to have at the very least a walk-on part in his movies.
To get to the last part of your question: "Do you think you could have written this novel before you were a parent?" The answer is no and the reason is that I would have been afraid to explore existential questions.
The influence of my wife Fidelis was paramount here. She encouraged me to think outside of myself and to question everything the high and the mighty said. She supported and shared my growing agnosticism in matters both religious and secular. And she told me I was funny. “You’re comical,” she would sometimes say. “Get that thing you just said down paper and you’ll have them rolling in the aisles” (Like mother, like daughter. They both flatter). I asked her if she meant the aisles of our local church. She said she did not.
_______________
*The Wake* on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017CCHRNG
_______________
Colm Herron
We’re like peas in a pod. Well, not quite I suppose. For a start, both he and I were certain that people who practised extramarital sex were bound for hell and those who practised it with bisexuals had an especially hot corner reserved for them. For Jeremiah, these rigidly held beliefs were severely tested when he fell in love with a charismatic bisexual girl called Aisling and began to sleep with her. So from then on every moment of his life quickly turned into a crumbling precipice that he could fall from anytime and end up, or rather down, among the damned.
However, what happened during the wake (of the title) and what came after caused him to look again at his absolute principles. It took Colm Herron a lot more time than Jeremiah to begin to question the sexual morality that we Catholics were taught in the Sixties and Seventies. Most Catholics then, men especially, thought of sex as both very desirable and very shameful. And it took Jeremiah quite a while to understand that, in genuine relationships, sex should not be a thing apart but rather a part of the thing called love. For Colm Herron it took much longer.
Added to this was the fact that Aisling was a fiery political activist and Jeremiah was anything but. In fact he was deeply cynical about the motivations of those with strongly held political convictions that he felt could bring bloody revolution and great misery. In short, he was both a pacifist and a conformist. But Aisling was an idealist whose commitment to personal freedom and civil rights in Ireland and abroad brought her into conflict with the state and Church authorities. I, the author, wavered between the two. And I still haven’t come to a conclusion about, for example, when violence is justified.
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"Women and Freedom"
A new blog post that deals with themes from The Wake:
http://www.colmherronpublishing.com/#...
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However, what happened during the wake (of the title) and what came after caused him to look again at his absolute principles. It took Colm Herron a lot more time than Jeremiah to begin to question the sexual morality that we Catholics were taught in the Sixties and Seventies. Most Catholics then, men especially, thought of sex as both very desirable and very shameful. And it took Jeremiah quite a while to understand that, in genuine relationships, sex should not be a thing apart but rather a part of the thing called love. For Colm Herron it took much longer.
Added to this was the fact that Aisling was a fiery political activist and Jeremiah was anything but. In fact he was deeply cynical about the motivations of those with strongly held political convictions that he felt could bring bloody revolution and great misery. In short, he was both a pacifist and a conformist. But Aisling was an idealist whose commitment to personal freedom and civil rights in Ireland and abroad brought her into conflict with the state and Church authorities. I, the author, wavered between the two. And I still haven’t come to a conclusion about, for example, when violence is justified.
___________________
"Women and Freedom"
A new blog post that deals with themes from The Wake:
http://www.colmherronpublishing.com/#...
____________________
Colm Herron
The kind of novel writing I do is a bit like taking off all my clothes in public. For example, the first draft of the first novel I wrote, For I Have Sinned, was - rather appropriately - like a public confession. By the time I'd completed the fourth and final draft I'd modified the thing a fair amount but after it was published I still shied away from asking people what they thought of it. That would, I feared, have been inviting derision from them. Likely put-downs such as “You mean to tell me that when you were sixteen you thought it was sinful to want to go to bed with a girl!” sprang to my fevered mind but never happened because I made sure to keep a very low profile.
I have moved on a fair amount since then and am now a little bit of a veteran, if having written four novels makes one a veteran! But I still cringe a little when I go back and read some of the things I wrote in that first novel. The only saving grace was that I knew my words were describing not only me but the majority of boys and girls that grew up in Catholic Ireland in the Sixties and Seventies. A place and time where murder was a sin but not as sinful as sins of the flesh.
The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) is different. This one is a slow striptease. (I hasten to reassure anyone of nervous disposition that I'm speaking metaphorically here!) No, this novel is different from anything I have done before. Here I am writing about the twenty-seven-year-old Colm Herron, except that I disguised myself as a young Irishman called Jeremiah Coffey who considered himself quite modern but was in fact a right-wing Christian with some very unchristian attitudes. Yep, that was me.
_________________________
Brand new edition of The Wake:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017CCHRNG
_________________________
I have moved on a fair amount since then and am now a little bit of a veteran, if having written four novels makes one a veteran! But I still cringe a little when I go back and read some of the things I wrote in that first novel. The only saving grace was that I knew my words were describing not only me but the majority of boys and girls that grew up in Catholic Ireland in the Sixties and Seventies. A place and time where murder was a sin but not as sinful as sins of the flesh.
The Wake (And What Jeremiah Did Next) is different. This one is a slow striptease. (I hasten to reassure anyone of nervous disposition that I'm speaking metaphorically here!) No, this novel is different from anything I have done before. Here I am writing about the twenty-seven-year-old Colm Herron, except that I disguised myself as a young Irishman called Jeremiah Coffey who considered himself quite modern but was in fact a right-wing Christian with some very unchristian attitudes. Yep, that was me.
_________________________
Brand new edition of The Wake:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017CCHRNG
_________________________
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