The Seventh Body by Catherine Kirwan, inspired by the discovery of the skeletal remains of six men on a building site in Cork in 2021, is out now from Hachette Ireland. The book launch takes place at Waterstones, 69 Patrick Street, Cork on Wednesday 12th March at 6.30pm – all welcome.
I’m lucky enough to have a writing room, a box room that’s always there, ready, untouched by anyone except me. I call it my study. Now, at the end of book four, it looks much the same as it did at the end of books one, two and three, despite some half-assed efforts to ‘clean as I go’ this time. There are peeling post-its and torn paper scraps sellotaped to the walls and hanging from shelves. Near the window, across from my armchair, there’s a poster-sized sheet of white card covered in cryptic multi-coloured marker scribbles like ‘Delay X reveal’ and ‘MORE on Y’ and ‘Details ++ on Z in later section’. Someday soon, I’ll tear the notes into even smaller pieces and put them in the recycling bin, but I’m not ready to do that yet.
I always leave the study door open so that, when I’m passing, on my way to bed or the loo, I’ll see the perma-mess and think about the novel and what might come next in the story. And four books in, it’s bound to get easier, right?
Wrong. But I’ve got other general use pieces of paper that help, sellotaped to the wall around my desk, a tiny three-cornered built in structure (barely more than a shelf) on which sits an ancient Mac-mini that works fine for typing but is mercifully terrible for internet time-wasting, a full-sized (newish) Apple keyboard and, at head height, an Acer monitor so old it doesn’t have a camera. The general pieces of papers say things like, ‘I’ve done it before I can do it again’ and ‘The writing life is mostly about stamina’, the latter a quote from Deborah Levy that I found especially useful this time but which might not work as well for me the next.
Because what I’ve discovered is that every book is different and that doing what I did before exactly how I did it then might not work this time. It’s something the great Val McDermid – she of the fifty plus books – said when I interviewed her some years ago at Cork City Library. She said you have to find the way that works for this book and she’s right.
I had the initial idea for ‘The Seventh Body’ in late 2021. I didn’t even note it down – I didn’t need to because it stayed with me and never left. I wrote a one page pitch for my publishers – which thankfully they liked – and started work in autumn 2023.
Progress was agonisingly slow. I was writing a new lead character, whose final fixed name I couldn’t find for ages and about whom I knew nothing. And I’d taken on the challenge of a complicated police procedural with a ton of archaeological detail, about which I also knew nothing.
Looking back through my digital files, I see that things started to improve around Christmas. That was when I changed the tense of the story from past to present. A small thing, you might think, but it made a massive difference to me that, as I was making the story up as I went along, and learning about the case in real time, my lead character was learning about it simultaneously. Her name is Alice McCann, by the way, and she couldn’t be anything else now.
By June, I had a book-length first draft that I sent to my editors but I knew myself that the novel was very far from finished. Over the summer, I worked and worked (and got crankier and crankier because the book took forever to get right) but I’ve got a good office chair – that I bought a few years ago in Houston’s on Marlboro Street in Cork after trying every other chair in the shop first – so I was well set up for the long hours at my cramped little desk.
In late September, I sent the second draft to my editors and that’s the version we’ve been line- and copy-editing and proof-reading ever since. I really hope you like it.
And soon I’ll strip the walls of post-its and sellotaped notes and start again . . .
(c) Catherine Kirwan
About The Seventh Body by Catherine Kirwan:
When parts of a human skeleton are discovered, building work on a derelict site in Cork grinds to a halt. In the following days, an archaeological excavation unearths seven bodies.
Six are men who died centuries ago. The seventh body is different – female, and much more recent. What began as a historic find is now a crime scene.
Detective Garda Alice McCann is determined to track down the killer, even though she knows her superiors don’t want her anywhere near such a high-profile case. Not after what happened before.
But, at every turn, her investigation reveals more questions than answers, more lies than facts. And someone powerful is watching her every move. Can Alice uncover the truth before she’s taken off the case – and before the killer strikes again?
Order your copy of The Seventh Body by Catherine Kirwan online here.
And read more from Catherine Kirwan on Writing.ie here.
The Seventh Body by Catherine Kirwan, inspired by the discovery of the skeletal remains of six men on a building site in Cork in 2021, is out now from Hachette Ireland. The book launch takes place at Waterstones, 69 Patrick Street, Cork on Wednesday 12th March at 6.30pm – all welcome.
