The Same Ear
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Headless Horseman terrifies because he has no head. The Irish dullahan terrifies because he does—he carries it. What happens when the Devil offers him a deal?
The Celtic gods never left Ireland. They’re only waiting in the shadows. Notes on weaving ancient mythology into contemporary fantasy.
Eleven real Poe stories are hiding inside the novel, woven into the Paris of 1830. A reader’s guide to the Easter eggs—and the game of finding them.
I told my friends I wanted to write an opera. One of them said, “Just buy the book.” I took that as a challenge. Two operas, two novels, and a trilogy later, I still haven’t bought the book.