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LISTOWEL- BORN BESTSELLING AUTHOR ROISIN MEANEY RELEASES HER NEW NOVEL THE RESTAURANT AS BOOKSHOPS FINALLY REOPEN
BEST-SELLING author Roisin Meaney could well have been facing a publishing disaster as she signed off on the final draft of her latest novel The Restaurant.
No sooner than she’d hit ‘send’ and the WHO flagged the COVID-19 emergency as a pandemic, with Ireland on the cusp of an indefinite closure.
But, as Roisin told The Kerryman, serendipity has always been on her side and would not desert her at this hour; the bookshops reopening this week just as her novel was scheduled to hit the shelves.
There can’t be too many authors worldwide with such impeccable timing and as for the title? Well, the whole notion of a restaurant has never been more enticing.
“By the time the WHO decided that the spread of Covid-19 constituted a pandemic and sent us all into a spin, the edits were done and dusted and I was patting myself on the back and looking forward to the June publication of The Restaurant,” Roisin told The Kerryman.
“As the title suggests, it centres around a restaurant and its owner Emily, and three of the people who frequent it: little did I think that by the time it was due to hit the shelves, nobody would have set foot in an Irish restaurant – or an Irish bookshop, come to that – for the best part of three months.
“I could despair at the thought of bringing out a book in the middle of this crazy time, but I’ve decided to look on it as something serendipitous.
In fact, Roisin thinks the book couldn’t come out at a better time:
“Isn’t everyone craving a feel-good story right now, particularly one set in a place that’s denied to us? And haven’t we got a bit more time to read, and can’t books still be got online, and aren’t bookshops set to reopen anyway on June eighth, just four days after The Restaurant is released into the world? In fact, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the book is coming out at the best possible time.”
Serendipity has always ‘followed’ her, from the acquisition of her first car through to her first two-book publishing deal and far beyond.
“In truth, I’ve been lucky enough to have serendipity follow me about for many years, ever since the age of eighteen when I won a Ford Fiesta by entering a competition on the back of a cereal box. The car was sold – I was about to go to college, so I was a penniless student who couldn’t drive – but I hunted down every other competition I could find and I won lots more, including two holidays and a mountain bike. Once I entered a competition twice, putting my friend’s name on one entry, and we both won.
“The prizes in that case were air miles, and mine came in very handy – serendipity again – as I’d just a few weeks before that applied for a career break. I was planning to fly to my brother’s home in San Francisco and stay with him for a year while I tried my hand at writing a novel, something that had been in my head for a while.
“Fast forward twelve months, and as I was preparing to return to Ireland with my first draft, I heard about a new publishing company in Ireland that was running a competition to launch itself, and the prize was a two-book deal. Yes, you’ve guessed it, another serendipitous moment occurred, I picked up the prize and within a few years I was a twice-published writer, and after that I just kept going.”
“The Restaurant, my seventeenth offering, was inspired by my own love of food, and of writing about all things food-related. No great research was needed, thanks to my own stints as a kitchen skivvy waitress in various eateries, from a little café in Limerick to the kitchen of a Buddhist centre on a tiny Scottish island, and lots more in between. There’s definitely a book there if I ever run out of other inspiration.”
The grit required to see a novel through to the end is crucial:
“There’s no great mystery to writing; it’s simply a matter of coming up with an idea, developing it into a plot and then beginning the story. I think it’s the next bit, keeping at it until you come to The End, that defeats the would-be writers. Creating a book is a slog. There’s no benevolent Muse guiding my hand; it’s up to me to park myself in front of my computer each day and stay parked until I’ve produced whatever word count I set myself (normally 1,000 or so). Of course there are times when it just doesn’t come out right, and I’ll delete most of what I’ve written the following day, but thankfully those episodes are few, and I push through them and move on.
Where I write is important, and here serendipity definitely played a part too. When I was buying my house, just as I was transitioning from teacher to writer, it led me to the perfect little bungalow tucked into the corner of a quiet cul de sac.
“I write every day to the accompaniment of the birdsong that floats across from my neighbour’s trees – even in winter I crack open the window so I can hear them – and right now, with the world on pause, the birds are coming into their own, and I’m listening to them and thinking positive thoughts, and hoping serendipity guides readers towards my new baby. Stay safe.