Authors [ M ]

Marian Murphy,

Author of Take Two, Millions!, Making It Home

 

 

I never wanted to be a writer. It just never occurred to me as something I could do. What I wanted to be – if had to be anything at all – was a reader.

I’ve always loved reading. There were hundreds and hundreds of books at home when I was growing up, and I got through them – the ones I wanted to, anyway – by the time I was fifteen or so. (Which is just as well, since it was around then that I discovered MEN – well sixteen-year-old male adolescents – and realised for the first time, that there was a bit more to life than books…)

I read everywhere – in the bath, on the bus, on the grass beside the tennis courts at school (a much better way of spending a summer afternoon than tearing after a silly little ball) and as I walked home from school, if I was on my own (my mother used to worry about that one, but whether because she thought I’d walk into lamp-posts, or because of what the neighbours might think, I never quite worked out.)

I had no notion at all what I wanted to do when I left school – there wasn’t much call for people who just wanted to read all the time – so I jointed the Civil Service, and went to college by night to do a BA in English and then an MA, with no other plan in mind than to get my hands on all those books…

By then I had discovered travelling with a capital T – there was a big world out there and I wanted to see as much of it as I possibly could. By the time I finished College I’d been to Scotland , France , Italy , Germany , Greece , Holland , Belgium ( Brussels , of course, like every self-respecting Civil Servant) as well as Canada , India and Thailand . And I spent every minute I could exploring every corner of Ireland with friends, and coming back again and again to Connemara, the setting for TAKE 2, my first novel. The wonder is that I ever had time to pass exams!

I eventually ended up in a Civil Service job that seemed made for me – plenty of travel (if it’s Tuesday it must be Paris . And don’t come to work without a passport /toothbrush) and creative writing opportunities by the zillion (“The answer is no, but the Minister has to speak for an hour”).

I was A Writer, though I didn’t yet realise it.

And I might have continued very happily in this vein had I not met Liam, The Man In My Life (at a French class, just like all the best Agony Aunties tell you). In between holidays in London , Paris and Naples he asked the Big Question – promising that life would get even better, and that being married wouldn’t have to get in the way of all the things I still wanted to do. Which is just as well, because just about then I decided – based on weekly stints for a couple of years with the Simon Community – that what I really wanted was to be a social worker. And, fortunately, Liam is the most supportive and understanding man going, and didn’t bat an eyelid when I told him this involved two years in Cork starting after the honeymoon. CIE made a fortune out of me for those two years – and we still somehow found the time, and money, to get to Greece , and I went to America . This getting married lark had a lot going for it!

And then I got a job in Dublin as a social worker and lived happily ever after, only thinking once about how interesting it might be to write a book (based loosely on my Grandfather’s life, he’d fought in the First World War and often talked to me about it, and he was from Limerick, and for some reason nobody had ever written a book based in Limerick – yes, it was THAT long ago). And then Luke, now aged 9, came along, and that put an end to that. Then we had Michael, now 7, and moved to Wicklow to our own wonderful little half-acre (lots of grass to mow, but Liam does it, that’s the deal) and I began working part-time to be with the boys, and got the notion of running a B+B based on a friend’s advice – she said I’d make a fortune…

Don’t ever, EVER believe anyone who tells you running a B+B is easy, and you’ll make a fortune. Maybe you will, if you have ten spare rooms and don’t mind working 48 hours a day and having people living in your kitchen and taking pictures off your wall and saying they like them, can they have them…

We had 2 spare rooms, and a granny flat which we let as a self-contained apartment, and in all we had about ten guests before one of them put the heart crossways in me by nearly – accidentally – setting fire to the place, and I decided I really, REALLY wasn’t cut out for this. And I’d recently joined a creative writing class and found myself, one day, thinking about a particular guest and why he’d come to our little place in a top-of-the-range BMW, with a girl who looked about old enough to be his daughter, and then I realised that there were stories there, right under my nose.

And, no, I didn’t use them, except for the fire – too much of the Civil Servant and social worker in me (I know, boring!) – but instead I found myself thinking about what MIGHT have happened, and where it might have happened – a little cottage in Connemara, which I would have bought twenty years ago if I’d had the courage of my convictions, and the money – they were looking for £4,000 and it’s worth about £250,000 now! – but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be, and I got a book out of it instead.

And out of the book I got a cast-iron excuse to travel a bit more – my heroine takes off to New York and well, I couldn’t just let her go alone, could I?

I was speculating about Africa or Singapore for part of the next novel, which I’ve already begun to work on, but the Visa card finally buckled under the strain so I’m settling for Paris – this time, anyway…

And after that, well – who knows? I’ve always wanted to go to Africa …