Ask the Author: Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Answered Questions (12)
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Hi Scott. Thanks for getting in touch. All the Finfarran books work as standalone novels as well as part of a series, and my US publishers HarperCollins have released The Transatlantic Book Club and The Month of Borrowed Dreams in reverse order to how they came out in the UK and Ireland. The audiobooks are produced for HarperCollins. I don't know if they intend to release one of The Month of Borrowed Dreams, which they'll publish next year in the US and Canada, but I imagine they will.
All the best to you from Ireland,
Felicity.
All the best to you from Ireland,
Felicity.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Hi Betsy.
The order of publication will differ slightly on either side of the Atlantic, so I've a feeling I'm going to be answering this question quite a lot! I'm glad you'd like to know, though. :)
Here in Europe, Finfarran #4 is The Month of Borrowed Dreams, and it came out this summer. Book #5 in the series, The Transatlantic Book Club will come out next year.
In the US, the order is
#1 The Library at the Edge of The World
#2 Summer at the Garden Café (just published)
#3 The Mistletoe Matchmaker (2019)
#4 The Transatlantic Book Club (2020)
and then The Month of Borrowed Dreams (2021), which will make it book #5 over there.
The order of publication is decided by my publishers on either side of the Atlantic. They series is written so that the order in which the books are read isn't vital, as each works as a stand-alone and different books take different characters' stories forward. I'm greatly enjoying this because it allows me to step sideways and explore different themes and different aspects of Finfarran life, as well as its history, and feedback on my Facebook Author page is letting me know what people like.
Do come over and join the conversations there, if you haven't already done so. You'll be very welcome! All the best, Felicity.
https://www.facebook.com/fhayesmccoy
The order of publication will differ slightly on either side of the Atlantic, so I've a feeling I'm going to be answering this question quite a lot! I'm glad you'd like to know, though. :)
Here in Europe, Finfarran #4 is The Month of Borrowed Dreams, and it came out this summer. Book #5 in the series, The Transatlantic Book Club will come out next year.
In the US, the order is
#1 The Library at the Edge of The World
#2 Summer at the Garden Café (just published)
#3 The Mistletoe Matchmaker (2019)
#4 The Transatlantic Book Club (2020)
and then The Month of Borrowed Dreams (2021), which will make it book #5 over there.
The order of publication is decided by my publishers on either side of the Atlantic. They series is written so that the order in which the books are read isn't vital, as each works as a stand-alone and different books take different characters' stories forward. I'm greatly enjoying this because it allows me to step sideways and explore different themes and different aspects of Finfarran life, as well as its history, and feedback on my Facebook Author page is letting me know what people like.
Do come over and join the conversations there, if you haven't already done so. You'll be very welcome! All the best, Felicity.
https://www.facebook.com/fhayesmccoy
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
I've been planning to put up a photo of it on my Facebook Author Page, Cindy. Do come over and check out the page for updates and ongoing stories about my work. ~ All the best, and thank you for your question, Felicity. x
https://www.facebook.com/fhayesmccoy
https://www.facebook.com/fhayesmccoy
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Good question - and the answer is I don't know! I deliberately left it open because I thought I might come back to it in a subsequent book in the series. Then Oliver became a member of Hanna's library book club in Summer At The Garden Café, where his idiosyncratic approach to books and reading offered new scope. So the dog book storyline got put on hold.
These things tend to re-emerge in their own time and place, however, so the search may continue!
Did you like him? He's one of those peripheral characters I get very fond of, so I've a suspicion that he'll return in a future Finfarran book. He hasn't appeared yet in book four, though, and I'm working on that now. But who knows - your reminding me of him might prompt something ...
These things tend to re-emerge in their own time and place, however, so the search may continue!
Did you like him? He's one of those peripheral characters I get very fond of, so I've a suspicion that he'll return in a future Finfarran book. He hasn't appeared yet in book four, though, and I'm working on that now. But who knows - your reminding me of him might prompt something ...
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Hi Maire,
Great to know you're enjoying 'The Library at the Edge of the World' ( I think you put a kind comment on my FB Author Page the other day as Gaeilge?).
Readers often ask if I write more in London or Ireland but I suspect that only someone like yourself who knows Corca Dhuibhne would make that perceptive comment about the difficulty of staying indoors there! The short answer is that I write each day wherever I am - including on the plane on days when I travel to and fro. Normally, I'd spend roughly half of any given month in each place so, when you're working to deadlines, it's a matter of keeping up a daily discipline.
The long answer, of course, is that while we have little flat in an inner-city block in London we have a house with a garden in Corca Dhuibhne, so there's a lot more pressure to keep one's eye on the screen when you have vegetables needing weeding and grass wanting cutting just outside your window. Not to mention music in the village and neighbours dropping by to talk! On the other hand, there are galleries and concerts to go to in London, and neighbours to chat to there as well. So, in a way, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.
The seasons and the weather make a subtle difference too. In terms of fetching and carrying and cleaning and clearing, keeping an open fire going in winter takes an inordinate amount of time, especially when compared to switching on central heating in a flat ...
I hope you'll get back to Corca Dhuibhne soon yourself. You must have had pretty good weather for your recent trip, though there was a northerly wind there for a while that was a bit unusual.
All good wishes and many thanks for getting in touch.
Beir bua.
Felicity.
Great to know you're enjoying 'The Library at the Edge of the World' ( I think you put a kind comment on my FB Author Page the other day as Gaeilge?).
Readers often ask if I write more in London or Ireland but I suspect that only someone like yourself who knows Corca Dhuibhne would make that perceptive comment about the difficulty of staying indoors there! The short answer is that I write each day wherever I am - including on the plane on days when I travel to and fro. Normally, I'd spend roughly half of any given month in each place so, when you're working to deadlines, it's a matter of keeping up a daily discipline.
The long answer, of course, is that while we have little flat in an inner-city block in London we have a house with a garden in Corca Dhuibhne, so there's a lot more pressure to keep one's eye on the screen when you have vegetables needing weeding and grass wanting cutting just outside your window. Not to mention music in the village and neighbours dropping by to talk! On the other hand, there are galleries and concerts to go to in London, and neighbours to chat to there as well. So, in a way, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.
The seasons and the weather make a subtle difference too. In terms of fetching and carrying and cleaning and clearing, keeping an open fire going in winter takes an inordinate amount of time, especially when compared to switching on central heating in a flat ...
I hope you'll get back to Corca Dhuibhne soon yourself. You must have had pretty good weather for your recent trip, though there was a northerly wind there for a while that was a bit unusual.
All good wishes and many thanks for getting in touch.
Beir bua.
Felicity.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Hi Beatrice.
Glad to know that you enjoyed The Library at the Edge of The World. You could well have been in Mary's class at Muckross. I didn't go there myself but both Mary and my sister Ann did- both of whom were older that I, and are now, sadly, deceased.
I haven't been down Belmont Avenue for years but I had a music teacher who lived there when I was at school, so I remember it well. I'm glad to hear about your local histories as, of course, I remember Donnybrook well too. I must look out for them.
Many thanks for getting in touch.
All good wishes,
Felicity.
Glad to know that you enjoyed The Library at the Edge of The World. You could well have been in Mary's class at Muckross. I didn't go there myself but both Mary and my sister Ann did- both of whom were older that I, and are now, sadly, deceased.
I haven't been down Belmont Avenue for years but I had a music teacher who lived there when I was at school, so I remember it well. I'm glad to hear about your local histories as, of course, I remember Donnybrook well too. I must look out for them.
Many thanks for getting in touch.
All good wishes,
Felicity.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Hi Peggy,
How lovely to hear that you enjoy my work. Having published two non fiction books, Enough Is Plenty: The Year on the Dingle Peninsula (the illustrated sequel to The House on an Irish Hillside), and a second memoir, A Woven Silence: Memory, History & Remembrance, in 2015, I have a novel coming out in June this year. It's the first of two, commissioned by Hachette Irl, and it's called The Library at the Edge of The World.
If you'd like to keep on eye on my current and upcoming work (there's another novel coming out next year), do check out my FB Author Page and my website/blog. And, of course, you can always contact me here as well.
All good wishes,
Felicity
How lovely to hear that you enjoy my work. Having published two non fiction books, Enough Is Plenty: The Year on the Dingle Peninsula (the illustrated sequel to The House on an Irish Hillside), and a second memoir, A Woven Silence: Memory, History & Remembrance, in 2015, I have a novel coming out in June this year. It's the first of two, commissioned by Hachette Irl, and it's called The Library at the Edge of The World.
If you'd like to keep on eye on my current and upcoming work (there's another novel coming out next year), do check out my FB Author Page and my website/blog. And, of course, you can always contact me here as well.
All good wishes,
Felicity
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Gosh, there are so many! You find great pubs and places to eat in Dingle town but I often like to go for places back west. No one visiting the area should miss the museum in Ballyferriter, which has a lovely café and bookshop, and it's always worth keeping an eye out for pubs with the sign 'Ceol Anocht', which means 'Music Tonight' and pretty much guarantees a real night of traditional music. In The House on an Irish Hillside I write about the Pottery Café in Dún Chaoin, which has the sign 'Ionad Ceardaíochta' (meaning Craft Centre) outside it. I also mention Louis Mulcahy's Pottery, which also has a lovely coffee shop. You could check out An Café Liteartha Bookshop in Dingle town too: and keep your eye out for An Canteen restaurant in the same street in Dingle - it has a sign ouside which reads 'Ar scáth a chéile a mairimíd', which is the old Irish proverb I use as one of the chapter titles in The House on an Irish Hillside. It means 'We live in each other's shadows' and expresses the restaurant's commitment to local produce and mutual supportiveness beween farmers, growers, fishers and food providers. I love it because localism and communal supportiveness is a characteristic I greatly admire. ~ Best, Felicity.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Enough Is Plenty really has been inspired by readers' messages, Likes and comments on The House on an Irish Hillside's Facebook page, on Twitter and on my blog. I love the way the internet allows that kind of interaction with readers. And I'm always amazed by the generous ways in which readers are prepared to interact and give feedback.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
My next book, Enough is Plenty, will be published by The Collins Press in Spring 2015. It's illustrated on every page with my own photos and covers the cycle of the Celtic year on Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. Readers of my memoir, The House on an Irish Hillside, are enjoying the photos I've been posting on that book's Facebook page and say they want to read more about the peninsula's cultural inheritance and the life my husband and I lead there, so in one sense the new book is a sequel to the memoir. It's at the copy editing stage at the moment.
I'm also writing another book which will be published next year by The Collins Press. It's called The Absence of Memory and, like The House on an Irish Hillside, is a popular non-fiction title.
I'm also writing another book which will be published next year by The Collins Press. It's called The Absence of Memory and, like The House on an Irish Hillside, is a popular non-fiction title.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Keep on writing.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
I find that deadlines concentrate the mind wonderfully!
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