Jamie O’Connell has worked for O’Brien Press, Gill Books and Penguin Random House, has studied and taught creating writing at UCD and was on the committee of Dublin Book Festival from 2014 to 2016. His short stories have been published in a number of journals and featured on RTÉ radio. He has set up blackwaterwriting.com, a website offering mentoring and editing services. Diving for Pearls, his first novel, is set in Dubai where six very different people are touched by the death of a young woman found floating in a marina.

ON HOME

My home is Kenmare. My partner and I joke about how I “accidentally” moved here. In March 2020, I visited Kerry for the St Patrick’s Day weekend when the national lockdown was announced. For three months I lived out of my weekend case. During those months, I edited Diving for Pearls at the kitchen table, next to some free weights and a rowing machine. And I was happy. So, over the summer, I packed up my apartment and, with a few suitcases and about 400 books, I returned to Kenmare for good. I commandeered the spare bedroom as my new study. It has a south-facing wall of windows that looks out onto the spire of Holy Cross church, beyond which is Kenmare Bay and the purple-cream slopes of Mucksna Mountain.

ON ROOTS

My roots will always be in Ashgrove Cottage, my grandparents’ home overlooking the Blackwater River in North Cork. In my mind’s eye, in that little stretch of valley it is always a sunny day in May. I can see the luminous green that is the new growth of grass, the white-pink buds of the sycamores, and the dappled light of the oaks that cover the narrow roads that travel between Ballyhooly and Killavullen. I think of my sisters and I picking apples from the ancient trees on my grandparent’s acre of land. I recall the sour taste of aged gooseberries taken from the overgrown beds. It is where I was happiest as a child and the reason why I named my creative writing business Blackwater Writing. That valley holds a magic for me; it reminds me of the love of my grandparents, which I carry with me always.

ON WRITING

When I was eleven, I saw an interview with Maeve Binchy and the idea of becoming a writer was planted in my head. It was the year Windows ’95 arrived. I remember learning to type, endlessly keying A.S.D.F. A.S.D.F while a cartoon chameleon was rewarded with flies for every key I typed correctly. After learning these basics, I began to type my first “novel”. By the age of 13, I had completed the book, Death of a Doll, totalling 64,000 words – not bad for a pre-teen. It was (unsurprisingly) awful. I have been learning my craft ever since. A quarter century has passed as well as a million unpublished words (which I consider my apprenticeship) and now my debut novel is published.

ON MY DESK

On my desk I have a bonsai; I treat it as a sort of Christmas tree. Hanging from its branches are a friendship bracelet that my nieces and nephews made one summer; a sterling silver Ichthus (fish), a replica of the one that hung from the mirror in my grandparent’s Morris Minor, and a rainbow bracelet which my partner John gave me at Pride 2019. Beside the bonsai is a burner for rosemary oil, which wakes up my brain on foggy-headed days, a diary with my daily to-do lists (I suffer from severe “tickboxery”, to quote Pandora Sykes), as well as books I am currently reading: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, Sacred Monster by Stelios Galatopoulos and Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson.

ON WHAT’S NEXT

I am close to completing a draft of my new novel, which is quite different to Diving for Pearls. Set in the mid-20th century, it follows the life of a singer. Besides writing, I am in the process of setting up an online course in publishing and creative writing. I feel blessed to have worked in the publishing industry for a decade, as it has given me insights to the business of books, which most writers never get to see.

Diving for Pearls is published by Doubleday, €15.99.