Adele to launch her ‘emotionally tense story of love, loyalty, betrayal and revenge’
IT HAS BEEN a whirlwind of a year for Arklow author Adele O’Neill, who prepares to launch her second novel ‘Behind a Closed Door’ tomorrow night, Thursday.
Adele launched her debut novel ‘Brothers and Sisters’ last year to great acclaim and is still on Cloud 9 following its unprecedented success.
‘I am still overwhelmed by how well it received. It made Number 1 in Amazon in Australia and Number 4 in Canada. The book reached number 16 here at home and in Arklow, it was an Easons Number 1 for four weeks, thanks to the local people who kept it there,’ Adele explains.
Adele will unveil her new novel at a launch event at Arklow Golf Club and guest of honour is RTE Gold DJ Rick O’Shea, whose radio show has the biggest book club in the country with over 14,000 members – great exposure for a newly published author.
‘Rick enjoyed Brothers And Sisters and was very encouraging and supportive. He’s very involved in the literary scene and there isn’t much he doesn’t know about Irish books so it’s a great honour to have him coming down to launch ‘Behind a Closed Door’.
Following the publication of Adele’s
debut, which coincidentally has been shortlisted for the Annie McHale Debut Novel Award, critics were keen to assign a genre to her work, something which somewhat surprised her.
While there was a crime within the plot, she has never considered herself a crime writer. However, this has proven a popular move with readers, who particularly enjoyed the characters of Detectives Kelly and Kennedy, who will make an appearance in ‘Behind a Closed Door’ and indeed Adele’s third book – currently a work in progress and entitled ‘When the time comes’.
‘When the time came to promote my book I must admit, I was a little surprised to find my book slap bang, right in the middle of the crime genre with crime writers I had come to admire and revere and I didn’t feel worthy of sitting alongside them,’ she says.
‘The market apparently and had the market not intervened and labelled me and my books, (against my will), into the crime category, as a debut I would not have been on the radar of all the wonderful readers both at home and around the world, who made the book a number one Amazon Bestseller.
With this in mind, Adele embarked on her second novel with a greater sense of ease and enjoyed the process much more.
‘I suspect the popularity of crime is due partly to the fact that it offers the reader a unique insight into human behaviour, how we interact with the world and the consequences to society when people behave beyond the norm. That and being able to vicariously experience danger and suspense through my character’s lives without being in any real threat is the real appeal. This catharsis is also why crime fiction is so popular for the reader as well and I am honoured to be involved in it in some small way. If I was to have any label, Crime Writer is a good one to have, in my opinion.’
Pitched as ‘an emotionally tense story of love, loyalty, betrayal and revenge’, ‘Behind a Closed