Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Writing novel over lockdown author Pheme couldn’t refuse
A PENSIONER has attributed lockdown with giving her the focus to finish her second novel.
As normal life ground to a halt last spring with the emergence of the pandemic, Pheme Glass, 75, from Omagh, Co Tyrone, used her time at home to complete her tale of two local men fighting in the First World War.
Her latest book is the sequel to her debut novel The Blossom Or The Bole and focuses on the journey of friends from across the divide.
Although the books are fictional, they include archived newspaper reports from the Tyrone Constitution and the Ulster Herald.
Mrs Glass said she has had inquiries from readers about a follow-up since publishing her first novel in 2017.
She added: “I was about a quarter way through the second book in 2019 but I’d got a bit lazy and wasn’t focusing on it, then lockdown happened.
“It’s a macabre thought, but I thought if I die this will never get finished, so I thought I’d better get on with it.
“I got up every morning, had my breakfast and had a day’s work to do, and I stuck to that every day in my wee study.”
Completing the research initially stumped the pensioner, but a journalist at the Ulster Herald and a local librarian stepped up to help.
Mrs Glass said: “It’s been a dramatic year and to be honest it was a very good diversion for me.
“I have three daughters who were worried what I was going to do after the book’s finished because I was very enthralled with it over the last year.”
Mrs Glass said it is incredibly challenging to sell books at this time, with fewer shops, and then those that survive closed due to lockdown.
She added: “I am depending very largely on selling by mail, and at some stage the second book will go on Kindle like the first one.”