Jason Howell
asked
Colm Herron:
Can you talk about the process of writing The Wake? What has it demanded of you?
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
_________________________
More Answered Questions
Jason Howell
asked
Colm Herron:
The Wake is dedicated to your daughter, Nuala Herron (an exceptional artist in her own right). Was she around the same age as the Jeremiah character when you began writing the book? If so, was this an impetus at all? Do you think you could have written this novel before you were a parent?
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