Stephen King said something along the lines that a writer is trying to paint a picture in the mind of the reader.
Painting the setting is part of that. You are trying to drop the reader into an area – or, for me, drop them in and wade them through.
The canal (the Grand Canal in my case) is the setting for my novel, a particular stretch of it actually. The canal is a character in its own right. As the publication of Black Water nears, I want to start putting up some images from the canal and its environs, to give a sense of its beauty and grit (and the blurred line between both) and kinda set the scene for the story.
So..
Take a seat
meet the swans
admire the graffiti
stroll under the bridges
take in the scorch marks
pop down for some shopping
jump on the Luas
and meet the author…
driving this God damn novel over the line…
About Cormac O'Keeffe
2018 was a special year for me: my debut novel Black Water was published. It was a long and bumpy ride, as a quick glance over my posts will show!
'Black Water' is a crime novel set in Dublin's gangland, along the evocative Grand Canal.
You'll also find some photography on this blog, particularly snaps that relate to my novel.
There are also some book reviews I have written, both fiction and non-fiction, many of them published in the Irish Examiner, a daily national newspaper in Ireland. I work as security correspondent there and have specialist interests in crime, drugs, policing, the justice system, communities and human rights.
Both my personal life and my professional life have fed into my novel, or, rather, have been poured into it.
My novel was granted a literature bursary by the Irish Arts Council in September 2014 and my journalistic work has won multiple awards from the Law Society of Ireland over many years, most recently in 2015.
Cormac O'Keeffe 