Christine Breen's Blog

Niall and I are participating in a writers’ festival on the Greek island of Kalymnos in the Southern Aegean in September ’23. Visit here for information….

To coincide with the publication of IN KILTUMPER A Year in an Irish Garden, a new edition of HER NAME IS ROSE is available as a . Also available as an ebook.

Niall Williams (and I, the organiser) are hosting our Kiltumper Writing Workshops online during the Pandemic. Currently we have 20 writers from around the world participating in the inaugural one. Next one will be in late March ’21/April.

We’re holding three workshops during this Summer of 2020 — now that lockdown has eased in Ireland. See Niall’s website for more information on how the workshops are run. The dates are: August 14th-17th, September 4th-7th, and October 30-November 2nd.

Nine writers from Ireland, the UK, and Australia found their way to County Clare on the May Bank Holiday Weekend. It’s a bit like finding Brigadoon. No road signs only landmarks. The small shed with the red tin roof, the fork in the road, the long slow upward hill… Three full on days of workshopping their writing with Niall and lunches back here in Kiltumper each day. We’ve yet to host a workshop without everyone not wanting the weekend to end, but going away happy after that final cup of tea and brownies and short bread and some biscuits called Tim Toms which the Australian writer brought with her.

Lunch at Chez Williams’

Workshops are a thing we do twice a year, in late spring and in autumn. Niall is not only a natural born storyteller but also a wonderful teacher, and the workshops give him an opportunity to share what he has learned after nine novels. (I’m head chef, sous chef, chief bottle washer, and organiser. And answer any questions about my own experience with the publishing world. )

We meet writers from around the world and for three days they share in the life that Niall and I have created here. Now that everyone has gone, taking the bank holiday’s stunning sunshine with them, it’s back to writing (we’re working on a screen play for a television series) and back to the garden… If we hold another workshop it will be around Halloween 2019. Meanwhile Niall has a new novel out in September: This Is Happiness

The front garden in late April

Early morning in Annamaghkerrig at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre

Two weeks in Annamaghkerrig at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Co. Monaghan in the pink, Lady Guthrie’s room overlooking the lake…What did I do for two weeks while waiting for TWO BLUE MOONS to find its home? I wrote the feature film treatment for my first novel  HER NAME IS ROSE (had been optioned for 14 months with Company Pictures but as a 3 part TV serial, now it’s a feature film project). It’s being pitched as I write.  Could be a game changer. Will be a game changer. And, I copyedited a writer’s second novel. As a writer, it’s so useful to copyedit someone else’s novel. It’s an honour to be let into the world of another novelist. Thank you, Brian.

A sidenote to any editors reading this. A track record? Imagine . . . you’ve turned 60, you’ve written a novel, you’ve just found out you have Stage 3 Cancer . . .  And, you as the writer are held responsible for the track record of your debut novel? How does that work? Why is it always the novelist and not the publisher? Anyway, it is what it is.

Writers write. Just saying….

 

The Year of Two Blue Moons is finished….

You work yourself into a frenzy, you live: eat, sleep, dream with and about your characters and then one day they’re gone. Off to another reader. To an agent perhaps if you’re lucky enough to have one and then you wait. And hope. And hope some more that the agent will like it as much as you do.

The letting go of your characters is harder than I thought, this time around.

What is it about? The Year of Two Blue Moons is  a contemporary novel set on an island off the coast of New England with some of the action taking place in  New York.  Its main character is Ally Winmann, single, 42, a healer, who’s desperate to have a child.

Her own family have been broken apart by tragedies leaving her estranged from her father, Josiah, a NYC lawyer.

By the end of the first chapter a surprise visitor will trigger an explosion of the cocoon she’d been building around her life and send her on a journey where she will have to heal the past.

My better half, novelist, Niall Williams, says, The Year of Two Blue Moons is a novel

Okay these aren’t blue but I spotted them in a London shop window last week. Auspicious.

about family, American family, the messiest kind. It’s about an afternoon in June that shatters a privileged youth. It’s about accidents and chance. It’s about a woman who craves to make her own family, and a brother who almost destroys his. It’s about escaping to an island, and a nephew who comes to find the missing part of his family. It’s about a healer who has to learn how to heal the past.

It’s the most true and emotional thing I’ve written. These are real people with big awkward messy complicated relationships, which, in real life I know something about. It’s also about death and loss and grief and guilt and birth, and ultimately, joy.

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Company Pictures have re-optioned Her Name is Rose as a possible 3-Part television series. Niall Williams has written a screen treatment and the project is making the rounds in the UK & US.

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Breathe.

Blue. Brown. Breath. White. Brown. Breath. Green. Brown.

Fifty strokes out to the cool center of the lagoon. Spearing the water in perfect rhythm like a metronome, one hand after the other. Spearing like forked arrows. Each cupped palm diving, pulling her forward.

Counting strokes. Alternating breaths. Then, green blue white brown. Mouth a crooked OH as her chin turns to suck in the air now blue. Left right left right. Now white. Now green. Counting backward from nine and down again. Opening her eyes  under water she only sees the brown of the lagoon. When she reaches her destination – the dead center – she stops. Her legs hang down to where the sun hasn’t penetrated, where the water numbs her legs.

Treading water, quivering, she turns, flips around fish-like. Her body remembering its turning because a body holds a memory — a memory she’s held from countless turns in swimming pools. Here, she turns without a wall to guide her, tumbles like a seashell rolling in a wave and swims fifty strokes back, concentrating only on each stroke, each breath, each kick propelling her. Only that. Her body moving.

Eight . . . Nothing matters. Everything matters. Listen to your body. She is emptying her mind.

Cupping. Diving. Pulling. Kicking. Focusing on the centerline of her spine. Straight, keeping her hips from turning. Not thinking but feeling cold stiffen her hands. Four . . . Three … Two . . . One . . .. She counts once again down from ten. And swims. Breathes to the right. And to the left. Her mouth twists to catch only air. She strokes ten more laps. Water flowing, soothing. Making her feel flexible, weightless, free.

She’s finished.

She always feels that she’s left something behind when she comes out of the water. And she turns back to see just the shrub oak leaves on the horizon forming a pattern against the sky. A language of their own. She listens to the leaves rustle. She is going to be late for her next patient. A man with cancer, losing his hair. Cancer frightens her. It’s so fucking random.

She stands in the shallow, sandy edge of the tidal pond. Loosening her arms and circling wide in a kind of Qi Gong posture she calls Scattering the Debris. Eyes closed she imagines the flotsam and jetsam of abandoned rubbish pooling in clumps after a storm. She circles her arms and her hands move aside the waxy plastic shopping bags, a blue rope, bird feathers, a clear plastic baby’s bottle, a girl’s  orange nylon bathing suit, a green Frisbee. Thigh-high in the water, moving her arms, clearing a space, dismantling the debris. She stands one moment longer. Breathes and counts, and leaves the lagoon.

There are two things in life she wants to be good at. One is swimming.

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Breathe.

Blue. Brown. Breath. White. Brown. Breath. Green. Brown.

Fifty strokes out to the cool center of the lagoon. Spearing the water in perfect rhythm like a metronome, one hand after the other. Spearing like forked arrows. Each cupped palm diving, pulling her forward.

Counting strokes. Alternating breaths. Then, green blue white brown. Mouth a crooked OH as her chin turns to suck in the air now blue. Left right left right. Now white. Now green. Counting backward from nine and down again. Opening her eyes she only sees the brown of the lagoon. When she reaches her destination – the dead center – she stops. Her legs hang down to where the sun hasn’t penetrated, where the water numbs her legs.

Treading water, quivering like a fish, she turns, flips around. Her body remembering its turning, a memory the body holds, a memory she’s held from countless turns in swimming pools. Here, she turns without a wall to guide her, tumbles like a ball and swims fifty strokes back, concentrating only on each stroke, each breath, each kick propelling her. Only that. Her body moving.

Eight . . . Nothing matters: She is emptying her mind.

Cupping. Diving. Pulling. Kicking. Focusing on the centerline of her spine. Straight, keeping her hips from turning. Thinking how cold her hands are. Four . . . Three … Two . . . One . . .. She counts once again down from ten. And swims. She breathes to the right. And to the left. Her mouth twists to catch only air. She strokes ten more laps. Water flowing, soothing. Making her feel flexible, weightless, free.

She always feels that she’s left something behind her when she comes out of the water. And she turns away. The shrub oak leaves make a pattern against the sky. She is going to be late for her next patient. A man with cancer, losing his hair.

She stands in the shallow, sandy edge of the tidal pond. Loosening her arms and circling wide in a kind of Qi Gong posture she calls Scattering the Debris. Eyes closed she imagines the flotsam and jetsam of abandoned rubbish pooling in clumps after a storm. Plastic shopping bags, blue rope, bird feathers, a floating baby’s plastic bottle, an orange child’s bathing suit, a green Frisbee. Thigh-high in the water, moving her arms, clearing a space, dismantling the debris. She stands one moment longer. Breathes and counts, and leaves the lagoon.

There are two things in life she wants to be good at. One is swimming.

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