I’m a novelist and journalist from Ireland, currently mostly based in London but bouncing around quite a lot. I’m 33 and published my first novel in 2021 after a few years of essays and opinion writing. I live with my friend Stan and my cat Miso.

I completed a first draft in about 10 months and then spent the next six or so months editing and revising it with the help of my editors. It was a much more concentrated timeline than with my first one because that wasn’t contracted, so I just wrote it in my quote unquote spare time as and when I could, over about three years. With Ordinary Human Failings I had the luxury of writing it more or less full time, so I felt a lot more involved day to day, it was less of a struggle to get back in the mindset each time I went to work as it was my life for that time. I really appreciated that intensity.

I felt the general pressure of hoping not to let down my publisher and my readers but in terms of doubting what I had the freedom to do I did not feel any restrictions. My publishers were very open to whatever I fancied trying and didn’t make me outline it in huge detail before I began, which was a blessing as so much of it was worked out as I wrote rather than in advance. It was a scary few days between sending it off and hearing a response as I hadn’t shown it to anyone as I worked, but that aside I’ve felt very supported and grateful to be trusted with my instincts.

Quite a lot. I felt passionate about trying to capture some of my hometown which I love so much and where many of my loved ones still live. Maybe one day I will write a book set in places I have never lived, but for the moment this habit seems to serve me well, giving me a base level of authority and confidence to begin from when I’m not sure of much else

The phrase ordinary human failings was used in an email from a seminar leader in university to a class which included a friend of mine, Fiona. We both found the phrasing funny and striking and it stuck with me over the years. It came to mind as I began to write this book, when I realised I was trying to slowly unveil the fairly routine disappointments which most lives accrue, but which can sometimes combine through time and circumstance to become something altogether darker and more explosive.

I think it’s a part of the general difficulty we all have in conceptualising other people as completely real. The minds of others are so opaque and unknowable most of the time that when we witness an action which seems inexplicable or mad or evil, we naturally need to project difference into the other in order to tolerate the idea that humans can behave this way. We do it to protect ourselves from the suspicion that we too may be capable of monstrous behaviour.

I don’t know! I think I’m interested in how material reality and language intersect – the fallibility of language but also its power to shift reality in a meaningful sense. There are facts, of course, but I agree that truth is a more nebulous concept which can be moulded by its viewer and those given the power to describe it.

It’s something I’ve found horribly compelling for quite a long time, the total ruthlessness which characterises much of British tabloid media. It’s not completely different from the tabloids of other countries but it does feel particularly, gleefully brutal at times, serving the exhausting and demoralising classism and racism in this society. Things are perhaps not as extreme as they once were, but you can still see the underlying vitriol toward immigrants and poor people. It’s fascinating to me because many tabloids purport to be there to serve the working class, quote unquote ordinary people but in fact work hard to do the opposite. The individuals who do this compel me, which is why I wrote the character of Tom, the hungry hack[er] following the story, but who I hope we can still see as a human being in his own right.

I certainly didn’t set out to write an quote unquote issues novel but I did vaguely have in my head that through this story I would be able to communicate deeply felt concerns of mine about how the media treats its victims and also about how we as a society regard children who do terrible things. I was conscious that if I had a mission with this, it was to work to create real rounded characters who might suggest the complexity of people we readily dismiss or demonise. I felt a sort of peace and satisfaction when I felt I had achieved this. I think I have learnt that it is possible to communicate convictions about the world around us without (I hope) being preachy or patronising. And, more personally, I learnt I can write a more traditional sort of novel in the third person which has little to do with my own life, which was a welcome relief.

I feel a lot for them, enduringly. I started to cry the other day while reading a section about Richie aloud at an event. During each of their sections I felt so much protective energy toward them, taking them to their lowest places but also counterintuitively wanting to help them. They’re still very alive to me now, I think of them.

That there is one! I released Acts of Desperation during a lockdown so there were no in person events, and I love meeting and talking to readers and other writers so I am really excited to see some parts of the U.K. I am not familiar with and to speak with people about their impressions of the book.

I have a few events in New York and am then lucky enough to do some international festivals which is a first for me. I feel very humbled to be able to see the world through my work, and I find that each new place I visit becomes useful to me, suggesting a new place I might be able to set something in future.