Reflections on art, process,
memory, and the long road
between drafts.
Writing Process
Murder in the Shadows: Why
Poe and Berlioz Make Perfect
Partners
Both men were outsiders, romantics, obsessives. Both transformed personal anguish into revolutionary art. Putting them together in 1830 Paris—solving murders while the seeds of detective fiction take root—felt inevitable.
Historical Research
From Symphony to Stage:
The Berlioz-Smithson Love
Story
The true story behind The Dream Was Too Beautiful—how an Irish actress’s Ophelia drove a French composer to madness, genius, and one of music’s most radical symphonies.
Craft & Mythology
The Morrigan's Game:
Finding Celtic Gods in
Modern Cork
The Celtic gods never left Ireland. They’re only waiting in the shadows. Notes on weaving ancient mythology into contemporary fantasy.
Writing Process
One novel began with Berlioz. The other began in a Cork taxi with a driver named Pat Winning. Both came from the same place—a composer’s ear that can’t stop listening for what isn’t being said.
Character Inspiration
A taxi driver’s rant. A bartender’s silence. A wellness instructor’s terrifying calm. How real people become fictional characters—and where the theft begins.
Music & Story
Every book in the Trilogy begins with the same word. It wasn’t planned. But each time it means something different—silence, discord, absurdity. One word, struck three times.
Music & Story
Before I wrote novels, I wrote music. Orchestral pieces, chamber works, a concert and comic opera. That training never left—I hear my sentences before I see them.
Character Inspiration
Kurt Vonnegut said everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. That’s not a flaw in the human character. That’s the fix. Meet the janitor who maintains reality.
Character Inspiration
The accent, the attitude, the stubborn insistence that it’s the real capital of Ireland. Why a city that refuses to take anything seriously became the center of the cosmos.