This week, I thought I would carry on talking about my book series, "A Newman Adventure." Have any of you read my first novel, "An Irish Mystery"? Or is it on your TBR list? The reason I ask is that Amazon doesn't tell authors who their customers are, so if you have a copy, I'd love for you to let me know in the comments below!
🔥 The First Spark: Writing An Irish Mystery Begins
I've said in past blogs, in my bio, and on different occasions that I started writing "An Irish Mystery" during COVID, which is true. I remember having run out of books to read. One evening, I just started writing something. It began exactly like this:
It was the dawn of a new day for Hans. At last, he was getting out of this dump he had called home. The six feet by eight-foot space that has been his home for seven years is in Safford, Arizona. FCI Safford is the building his room was in. It is located in south-eastern Arizona, seven miles south of Safford, one hundred and twenty-seven miles northeast of Tucson, and a hundred and sixty-five miles east of Phoenix.
This was the very first paragraph I ever wrote for the story. I put it down and didn't think much about it again for a little while.
🏫 Writing During Lockdown: My Unlikely School Office
During the COVID period, my responsibilities at the school that I run involved going in to complete essential weekly and monthly tasks, which usually took an hour or two. Our school trust, which runs over 40 schools in the country, kept one Peterborough school open to accommodate all the key worker children. Site staff were asked to open and close this school one day a week, and my day was a Tuesday.
I used to go in for 8 am and lock up at 5 pm. In between those hours, we were told... to stay out of the way. I suppose it was the trust's way of ensuring we didn't mingle and spread anything. So, with that, I sat in a room, went outside occasionally for some fresh air, and with nine hours of quiet time, I carried on writing my story.
🧭 Finding the Plot: From Clive Cussler to Irish Treasure
I had written a whole chapter – a really rough edit, admittedly – but I didn't have a clue where the story was going. The last book I had read was by Clive Cussler, from his "Fargo Adventure" series. I can't remember the exact book now, but they always chased a treasure in one way or another. That's when it hit me. Maybe Hans was in prison because of a treasure?
That thought sent me down a rabbit hole of research, looking into long-lost treasures in the world. I marked a few down as ideas for future stories, and then I found it: the Irish Crown Jewels.
🏰 The Irish Crown Jewels and Historical Research
I researched everything I could about them: what they were, how they got stolen, and what was going on in Dublin in 1907, like The Irish International Exhibition. After reading about what could have happened to them and how they were stolen, I decided to go back and write a prologue introducing our burglars from 1907. The thing I loved about writing the prologue was looking at old maps and finding out what the city would have looked like back then. This led me to The Brazen Head Tavern; I chose it as the final meeting place because of its location and its history as the oldest pub in Dublin, dating back to 1198. Once I read about it, it was the obvious place for the exchange to happen
✏️ A Confession and a Prequel: Getting the Prison Right
The problem I now had was connecting all this to Hans getting out of prison in Arizona. The research on prisons in America was intense, especially for an Englishman that's never even been to America, let alone Arizona! But that is the good thing about the internet and Google Maps, which I use a lot.
I will confess, however, that there is one detail I got wrong. Hans's 8x6 foot cell would have been about the size of "the hole," or an isolation cell. In reality, at FCI Safford, he would have been in a shared cell, with probably 6 to 8 people sharing a room. So he would have been in a much bigger space than 8x6. I could argue his own personal domain within that room would have been no bigger, but it's a small creative liberty I took!
📬 Coming Soon: A Free Prequel for Newsletter Subscribers (Well one day)
Funnily enough, I found out this specific information last week while I was writing the short novel that will be a prequel to "An Irish Mystery." This prequel will be free to all my newsletter subscribers once I finish it. If you're interested in keeping up with all things "A Newman Adventure," follow the link here to my newsletter sign-up:
💬 Let’s Talk: Ask Me Anything in the Comments
So, you have it. This was how and when "An Irish Mystery" was born. The first name for the book I had come up with was actually "The Irish Mystery," which I changed just before I sent it off to my publishing company.
Have any questions? Want to know any more details? Just ask me in the comments below. I will always answer.
Until next time.
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