Tracy Fahey's Blog

I'm a positive psychology junkie. So when I got a copy of Roxie Nafousi's Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life, I couldn't resist a try. In August I had the lovely surprise of finding out my novella, They Shut Me Up, had been nominated for Best Novella at the British Fantasy Awards, which would take place at Fantasycon in Chester in October.

'OK,' I thought. 'Here's a GREAT opportunity to manifest.'

'Step 1. Be clear in your vision,' writes Nafousi. So I wrote down 'Best Novella' and the date of the awards weekend in Chester on a slip of paper. Then I tried Step 2, focusing my thoughts to 'remove all fear and doubt,' but that felt a little ego-centric, so I moved on to Step 3. 'Align your behaviour' it commanded, so I added 'award winning' on a slip of paper to my altar and lit some candles (to be clear, the candles were not part of any step, but they seemed appropriate).

Now my kitchen table was starting to look rather worrying.

After Step 3 the manifesting process broke down a little as the chaotic car-boot sale of my mind started getting bored and reading other books. Step 4 was 'Overcome tests from the universe,' but the universe seemed very obliging (apart from the misaligned flight route that had me booking a sucession of plane, tubes and trains to slowly process to Chester, like some kind of ancient knightly quest). I picked up again at Step 5 -'Embrace gratitude without caveats.' At this stage I was starting to riffle through the pages to skip ahead, but I did stop to project gratitude towards those who had nominated my novella. (To be honest, I think I was meant to be practising bows and graciously acknowledging applause instead, so perhaps at this point you'd like to consult the official Nafousi text). And then I lost focus due to an exciting new project landing, so my 7 Steps faded out of practice.

But my weird kitchen altar stayed, despite its resemblance to something uncovered by detectives in a brooding crime drama. From time to time I thought Best Novella and nodded, and told myself this was Peak Visualisation.

And off I went to Fantasycon for a lovely weekend of hanging out with friends, talking nonsense, listening to some interesting panels, and picking up some work.

Oh, and I didn't win Best Novella.

'So much for manifesting,' I thought, and spent the rest of the awards ceremony in a haze of badly-concealed giggles as Ali Littlewood and I plotted an imaginary sequence of wrathful, and truly terrible, bad-loser behaviour. (Unknown to me, my brain was still at work, following Step 6 - 'Turn envy into inspiration.')

On Monday, as the plane touched down on the tarmac at Shannon airport, I switched on my phone to an email with the subject line 'Congratulations - you have won Best Novella!'

What? I blinked. For one awestruck moment, I was convinced that I’d manifested so hard that I’d fractured the universe and created a different timeline.

But no. The Best Novella award was for an unpublished work 'What Happens At The End,' which I'd submitted for the Paul Cave Prize for Literature 2024. Which is a very lovely award, run by literary agent Tim Saunders and created to honour veteran publisher Paul Astley Cave-Browne-Cave.

Right weekend.

Right award title.

And Step 7? 'Trust in the universe.'

There you go. Get hold of the book. Prepare your kitchen tables. MANIFEST.

PS. Sincere apologies to Roxie Nafousi who writes very plainly that the first step in manifesting is 'Be clear in your vision.'

It's been a strange and frantic time, transitioning from two years as a freelance writer back to academia. It's been amazing to be back teaching, but I'm also releanring how to be part of a large organisation again, and to accept the different speed of movement. And with that, some sacrifices, like cutting out a lot of my writing time. But there' s also the joy of the new, like a recent trip to Antwerp for the INTERREG Europe, Let's Cooperate launch. We stayed in diamond district, took the Eurostar, made a swift side pilgrimage to HEMA, my Mecca of notebooks. But amidst all the clamour, a notification arrived that a book I'd contributed to, Future Folk Horror: Contemporary Anxieties and Possible Futures, edited by Simon Bacon, had been longlisted for the Justin D. Edwards Memorial Prize. Daringly for an academic collection, Simon had asked me to contribute a short story, and a companion essay. So my little 'Buried' from New Music For Old Rituals went in, and so did a contextual piece 'Buried: Folk Horror As Retrieval.' The finished book is a thing of beauty, even down to the cover illustration by Gemma Files, and a richly deserved nomination for Simon, the hardest working editor in all of Gothic-land.

And if that wasn't enough, when I came back for a quick weekend between Antwerp and Malta, I got an email to say that the short story ('The Woman In The Water') I'd submitted to the London Independent Story Prize, had been shortlisted. When it came, I celebrated with my friend Ilari who was visiting from Finland - a beautiful reminder of friendships forged during the wonderful Saari Residency of 2023.

So, to be shortlisted for writing

is a massive thing. It's not just the external validation - that's always nice, but the most important thing always for me is that I'm happy with my own writing - it's more of a Sign. A Sign that I'm are the right person, in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing.

And that right thing? - writing.

So as we move softly into the slow green budding of April, I'm feeding my mind and body with goodness and granting it the time to do what it wants, to blossom into drifts of words. To bloom.

Huge thanks to all involved in the Ennis International Fantastic Film Festival for hosting the Irish book launch of THEY SHUT ME UP. In the beautiful environment of the Temple Gate Hotel, I was interviewed by film maker and director of the Ennis Book Club Festival, Martina Durac, in a conversation that spanned folklore, feminism, bodies, geography and agency. Thanks also to the amazing Ennis Bookshop, a beautiful independent bookshop, for organising the book signing.

I also spoke on a panel about folklore and film, introduced The Wicker Man in ARC cinema, and presented the award to Irish short film Lamb in glór.

If you live in Clare and want a physical novella copy, support independent bookshops, by popping in to the Ennis Bookshop for one of the remaining signed copies, or to the gorgeous Banner Books stores in Kilrush and Ennistymon.

Happy reading!

The Season of the Witch is upon us. I'm excited and very much looking forward to the Irish book launch of THEY SHUT ME UP as part of EIFF, the Ennis International Fantastic Film Festival in partnership with the beautiful Ennis Bookshop- it's such a wonderful gift to have festivals and bookshops like this in Co. Clare.

Now, the UK launch of THEY SHUT ME UP was tremendous - after ten years of writing, there's still the thrill of launching a book in tandem with horror luminaries like Ramsey Campbell,Stephen Jones, Tim Lebbon and Ian Whates. And PS Publishing were so warm and kind, it felt like joining a new publishing family. As for the beautiful people who bought my book -well, you are all very wonderful.

But now, I'm excited to get to talk about this novella in its place of origin - my adoptive home of Co. Clare. Since I moved here, I've been fascinated by the local folklore, by the feeling that stories bubble just under the skin of the landscape. Historic women of the locality like Máire Rua, Biddy Early -they've stood out to me in all their defiant glory as archetypal, fearless, older women- true descendants of the Hag.

So come join me and Martina Durac, filmmaker and creastive director of the Ennis Book Club Festival, as we discuss women, voices, power and agency at the brilliant boutique festival of EIFF. I'll also be speaking at a panel on the influence of Irish folklore on horror and fantasy movies at 11am on the 28th, and introducing The Wicker Man, one of my favourite movies, in ARC cinema at 9pm that night.

Check out the full line-up here, book tickets for the launch here, tickets for the panel here, and tickets for the film screening of The Wicker Man here.

So far I’ve looked at some of the physical factors around THEY SHUT ME UP – the research venues, the settings, the writing process…

But in this final post I want to talk about the inspiration behind this novella. Without leaking any spoilers, I can say that this volume is one of the outputs from my last two years of research into the Hag and her descendants. I’ve been fascinated by the indomitable spirit of older women in Irish mythology. The mighty Cailleach pre-dates canon Celtic mythology; she is older than the gods of the De Danann, more primal, a literal and metaphorical giant, shaping the Irish landscape, anointing kings. Looking at older women in successive epochs of Irish culture, I was struck by their place in the tribe as elders, medicine women, wise women, teaching generations of women their skills, sharing their knowledge.

The place of the women in Ireland was struck a hammer blow by the theocratic origins of the Irish Free State; and a resulting constitution that limited women’s role in society to the home.[1] Hand-in-glove with it came the rise of the Marian movement, encouraging women to aspire to the impossible role-model of virgin mother. Childbearing outside marriage could be punished (and was, up till the 1990s) by incarceration in Ireland’s infamous Mother and Baby Homes.

In global terms, older women became invisible. Literally. They disappeared from prime roles on TV, in movies, in modelling. The entire beauty, diet and even a significant part of the wellness industry became focused on magnifying the cognitive dissonance of female ageing, and societal expectations of maintaining a youthful appearance.

Until recently.

Women are starting to rebel. To confront this idea of ageing as somehow shameful, and instead, embracing the power of iconic figure of the Cailleach and other figures from global mythologies of older women. Books like Sharon Blackie’s excellent Hagitude investigate the transformative female agency that can be restored through re-examination of myth.

This novella, They Shut Me Up, joins with this chorus of rebellious voices. The contemporary women within its pages wrestle with the mental and physical change of menopause; a change that becomes amplified through the lens of the weird. Key to the book is the idea of revoicing; creating a space in which to re-examine female characters reviled through slanted folklore; women condemned as witches, like Máire Rua O’Brien. A stubborn and strident woman, her tenacity was transmuted by rumour into acts of warfare, witchcraft, torture and murder.

From these points of provocation, They Shut Me Up became a novella about ageing, power and the refusal to be silenced.

The worm has turned. And in national news, last International Women’s Day, our Taoiseach (Prime Minister)announced a referendum to take place to reconsider our shameful Clause 41.2. My wish is that this small novella is part of our timely celebration of Irish women past and present.

Let’s not shut up till we get there.

[1] Article 41.2 states: 1. In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. 2. The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.

The first time I saw Lemenagh Castle, I was transfixed. It was a sunny day in 2018. I’d stopped in the hamlet of Killinaboy to marvel at the síle-na-gig there, opening up her stone womb above the church door.

And then, a few hundred metres up the road- this wonder. Lemenagh. Lemeneagh. Leameneh. The castle of variant spellings, perched up on a hill above the crossroads – one road stretching back to Ennis, the other to the crosses of Kilfenora, the ancient matchmaking festival town of Lisdoonvara, the other to the magical, lunar landscape of the Burren. The crossroads in Irish culture is a threshold place; many stories of the fae are set there, especially at the liminal times of dawn and dusk. A fitting place for a strange castle.

Lemanagh is a marriage of two architectural entities; a 15th century tower house and a 17th century palatial mansion. Its tall, roofless walls are dotted with windows, impressive and unusually large, looking down over the landscape. Staring up, I was reminded of Poe’s description of the House of Usher

‘I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—'

Inside, green walls soar overhead, pocked with marks of other times; an indication of a fireplace here, a doorway there. From the windows, a view of the ribbons of roads, the slopes of the landscape. It’s glassy cool there, even in summer. That was why I shivered, I told myself.

Later, when I looked up the lore of the place, I understood the full implication of that shiver. This castle is the locus for endless stories; most of them dark and frightening. There are historical tales of a woman who would not be subdued, stories of love and pain, perceptions of treachery—and all of these wrapped in local lore, cautionary tales about the place and the woman at the centre of it.

Who was she?

I’ll reveal more tomorrow in the final blog in this series. Let’s just say I’ve waited a long time to revoice her story.

Pre-order the novella here

I've always been strongly drawn to ruins and archaeological sites as an inspiration for writing; my second collection, the folk-horror New Music For Old Rituals, started off as a photographic project based on spectral sites in the south-west of Ireland. In Ireland, there is a sense that other times and spaces are but a breath away; sleeping quietly under the surface of the earth.

Since 2018, I've been lucky enough to live in Co. Clare - one of the most beautiful counties in Ireland, and one with a very rich architectural and archaeological history of prehistoric tombs, medieval monasteries, castles and tower houses built by Gaelic chieftains, and Anglo-Irish Great Houses built during periods of colonization by English settlers. There's something so beguiling about ruins; the fractured homes, their mysterious former lives, half-glimpsed in what remains. When I decide on a location I want to use in my writing, I love to spend time exploring it and making location notes - trying to capture the sights, the sounds, the scents and, above all, the feeling of the place.

One of the locations I chose for They Shut Me Up was Dysert O'Dea castle. This 15th century tower house dominates the landscape near Corofin. Originally the stronghold of the O'Dea clan, it was damaged in the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland in 1651. Nearby is the beautiful Dysert O'Dea Abbey also known as St. Tola's Church, with the remains of a round tower behind it. St Tola was a hermit turned bishop who is now venerated as the patron saint of Co. Clare, and as a healer of toothaches. His monastery is remarkable for its Romanesque doorway, decorated with stylised carvings of human and animal heads. In the next field is one of the finest stone crosses in Ireland; the crucified Christ and a huge, stern figure (presumably St. Tola himself) on one side, abstract decorations and carvings of Adam and Eve on the reverse.

I've made several visits to these sites. The buildings at Dysert O'Dea are especially beautiful this time of the year; the mellow, low light of autumn on the rich texture of stonework. So many layers of history, but the one I'm especially interested in is the character of Daniel Neylon (d. 1639), a colonel in the English army...

Why?

I guess you'll have to read the book...

Pre-order They Shut Me Up here