Kevin Moran’s debut children’s novel The Doomsday Club is out now, published by The O’Brien Press.
Like a lot of people, I spent a long time threatening to write. As a kid, I was constantly writing stories, drawing characters and trying to spill the imagination from head out onto a page. As I got older, these ideas sort of brewed away in the back of my mind without going anywhere. I had plenty of ideas but the discipline needed to write wasn’t something I was able to nail down in my twenties. It wasn’t until I moved home to Ireland after years of living abroad that I set myself a goal of actually doing the thing I’d been talking about forever. Even if it went nowhere, I wanted to write ‘The End’ on a book and say that I’d done it.
For the next few years, I worked on a long, epic YA fantasy. With a book like that, so much of your time is spent on worldbuilding before you can even dream of finishing a first draft. I had some luck with it, twice winning a spot in ‘Date With an Agent’ at the International Literature Festival Dublin – a one-to-one meeting with a top literary agent who has read your opening and synopsis and is ready to give you feedback. It was incredibly daunting. I babbled incoherently to the agent, doing a terrible job of explaining what my book was about. She listened patiently before holding up a hand as I explained one particular scene. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘That is where you start your story.’
It focused me and made me realise I’d been glossing over the real hook all along. It taught me that, however good your book might be, you’re selling a product and the pitch needs to grab people. After numerous rewrites and workshops in Big Smoke Writing Factory (where I met my wonderful writing group) and the Irish Writer’s Centre to hone my skills, my YA fantasy became something solid that I could be proud of.
Unfortunately, as is the case more often than people realise, the book still went nowhere. Agents weren’t biting and, over time, I lost faith in it. Luckily, I’d taken the advice to always start working on something else when you have a book out on submission. I knew I didn’t want to write anything nearly as long or weighty, and certainly not something with enormous amounts of worldbuilding. I wanted to write something with a killer pitch. Mostly, I wanted writing to be fun again. So, I began work on an idea that had been bubbling for a while, something that combined two of my favourite things: horror and humour. And I had my pitch: what if Stranger Things was set in modern-day Dublin and featured four boys who hated each other?
At the time, I was teaching 6th class in an all-boys school in Dublin city centre. As I’m sure any teacher will tell you, part of the joy of the job is meeting an endless stream of hilarious and totally unique characters. There was so much energy created by the way these very different pupils engaged with one another. At that age, on the cusp of adolescence, you tend to see pupils who are desperate to grow up and start acting like teenagers, while others just want to stay kids forever. The gap widens very quickly and makes for a lot of tension.
I wanted to explore the pressure boys feel to act a certain way, and the lengths they will go to in order to get approval from their peers, often at the expense of real friendship. A character like Jack, in particular, is one I’m sure most teachers will recognise: a boy who’s in and out of trouble but fundamentally decent, whose anger and aggression are the result of big emotions he doesn’t know how to deal with, and who feels crippled by the idea of some sort of masculine pride.
I decided to tell a story about four very different 6th class boys who are always at odds but find ways to understand one another. All, of course, while trying to harbour a friendly, seven-foot-tall shapeshifting monster who only speaks Irish, and being hunted by an ancient, body-snatching demon. It became The Doomsday Club, though that name didn’t arrive until much later.
After working on the book for a couple of years and getting plenty of feedback along the way from my amazing writing group, I was ready to submit to agents. Unlike my previous manuscript, this had some bites! Two hugely successful agents requested the full manuscript and had lovely things to say, though they both ultimately passed. It wasn’t a case of ‘this needs lots of work’ but more a case of ‘this is great but I’m not the right fit’. Which in some ways is more frustrating, but it told me that I at least had something with potential.
Then, in 2023, two things happened at once: I entered both the Staróg Prize (run by Walker Books, literary agent Polly Nolan and The Sunday Independent) and the Pitch Perfect event for Culture Night with The O’Brien Press, both of which could result in a publishing contract. I had a ten minute Zoom with O’Brien where I pitched The Doomsday Club and, thankfully, this time I knew my book inside-out and was ready to pitch it properly. O’Brien requested the full manuscript and, over the next couple of months, it was a nail-biting wait to see if they would publish it.
As I was waiting, I got the incredible news that I had come runner-up in the Staróg Prize, winning a mentorship with Polly Nolan and Walker Books. Publishing contract or no, it was incredible to get some real validation after years of effort. A few weeks later, in November 2023, I was touring Rockefeller Centre in New York. After stealing some Wi-Fi, the email I’d dreamed of came through: The O’Brien Press wanted to publish The Doomsday Club. I had a quick transatlantic phone call with them (very posh) and the ball was finally rolling. It’s been a whirlwind of pinch me moments since then: seeing the cover, getting my hands on the ARC and reading the first reviews.
It was a long journey but seeing the finished copies of my book make their way out into the world made the wait more than worth it. If, like me, you’re spending a lot of time threatening to write a book, my advice is to start now. You might not be ready but, if you get the ball rolling, one day you will be.
(c) Kevin Moran
About The Doomsday Club by Kevin Moran
Detention can wait. Saving the world comes first!
Jack and Conan’s friendship is officially dead. Stuck in detention with Yash and Jerry after an all-out brawl, it’s a terrible start to sixth class. And that’s before they witness a monstrous beast step out of a portal outside their school. When it wanders into the crumbling mansion across the road, the boys follow. They have to investigate, right?
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