Some books, it seems want to be written, others put up a struggle. Learning to Fly is my first novel and thankfully I would say that overall, it fell into the first category.
It was during the first lockdown and as we all remember how the world went very, very quiet. I found myself sitting at home drinking coffee, watching in the mirror the line of my roots growing wider and wider, my judgey inner supervisor hissing in my ear ‘now what?’ The phrase ‘angels in the laundry basket’ had been rattling round in my head for some time. It didn’t make any sense but then neither did anything else at that moment in time so it was as valid a place as any to start my novel.
Up to that point I’d written mostly for theatre with seven plays produced including for BBC Radio 4, RTE, Off-Broadway and had written for television soap. Now, as anyone who’s ever written a play knows they range from about 7,000 words for a one-act up to say, 15,000 for a two-act, give or take. A commercial novel is about 100,000. That is a MARATHON. Oh yes. And as anyone (not me) who has ever trained for and run a marathon knows, the process itself changes you in ways quite different to what you expect. The truth is I had no expectations at all at the beginning, just a phrase and a lot of time.
Plotting took a week. The first week of May. My training is in screenwriting so I started out thinking in terms of the three-act structure…
- The world before.
- The inciting incident… etc.
I also borrowed the structure of an existing myth to help give a solid framework on which to build the present-day world of my story, although in retrospect it was less necessary than I’d envisaged at the outset but it did afford me some security and confidence in ploughing ahead. And confidence, wherever you haul it up from is one of the most vital things you can have.
The novel is in the category of Women’s Commercial Fiction and tells the story of kind-hearted, stay-at-home mum, Lucia who finds herself taken for granted by her ungrateful daughters, patronised by her glamorous best friend and cheated on by her architect husband. At forty-six and forced to move out of her charming suburban home and into a dingy flat above the railway tracks, she wonders, is this the end of the line?
Following a botched attempt to end it all, she comes to only to realise that she’s not alone …
I stayed very close to my original plan although the book did gather momentum as it went. I was constantly challenged to expand myself. How do you know what an angel thinks? How do you write an armed robbery? The closest I’d ever come was years ago writing a gangland scene for Fair City where somebody got their finger chopped off.
All in all, the nearest I can compare it to is a downhill ski run that lasted for four-and-a-half months. Very relaxing.
The point of view is mostly from Lucia, however three other characters, Lucia’s daughter Emmaline, her ex-husband, Jonathan and the angel, Dariel have sections written in the close third person.
And, yes, it did come together and yes, I was happy with the final result. One final plot twist came as I was out walking the dog in the dark, the final dialogue presented itself in the same way. Get a dog. Or a cat. They will shed on your furniture but they will save your sanity and be your creative muse.
At that point I was advised by Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin of Inkwell to send my manuscript to a beta reader, Mary Stanley. Bless her heart, she pointed out a couple of jumps in the narrative which I needed to fill in but did say that she’d thoroughly enjoyed it. Phew! The re-writes took about two weeks after which I began sending it out to prospective agents. A thoroughly daunting task. Many submission instructions on agent’s websites are filled with dire warnings about what will happen if there are any mistakes or gaffes in your submission. Rightly so, I suppose to deter time-wasters, but as a result I developed a morbid paranoia that overtaken by panic I would involuntarily jab the ‘’send’’ key delivering some poor editor a half-written pile of shite. That didn’t actually happen in real life.
Despite my fears I was taken on by Ger Nichol of The Book Bureau, who has always believed in my book.
This is where it gets tricky. My agent submitted the manuscript to all of the publishers and got lots of lovely replies, lovely. A couple said it was too similar to something already on their list, others loved the book but were worried about the angel (but seriously, no angel, no book) and the lady at Avon was sweet and said she could see herself coming back in due course if it was still available. Who knows? So, between the jigs and the reels I decided to self-publish.
Dear readers, I will save you the pain of this learning curve but in the end, I went to Chenile Keogh of Kazoo books who produced a beautiful edition of Learning to Fly which I was able to read aloud to my ninety-five-year-old mum, much to her enjoyment, even if I did have to skip over the naughty bits.
I do love a happy ending. Learning to Fly came out at the beginning of September and received lots of media coverage, it has five stars on Amazon and was described as “A gorgeous read” by Liadán Hynes in the Sunday Independent. It has also been included in IMAGE magazine and RSVP book clubs and is on their Christmas book list. Its currently available on Amazon, UK or any EU site in print and on Kindle. Distribution to large bookstores is an ongoing issue but I’m hopeful that supply to distributors can by resolved by employing the services of Ingram Spark print-on-demand service. So far Hodges Figgis are carrying it. Like I said, it’s a learning curve!
(c) Isobel Mahon
About Learning to Fly:
When the ground’s cut from under your feet … there’s only one thing for it …
Things are looking pretty grim for kind-hearted stay-at-home mum Lucia. Taken for granted by her ungrateful daughters, talked down to by her glamorous best friend and cheated on by her architect husband, Lucia thinks things couldn’t get much worse … until she walks out of her delightful suburban home and moves into a dingy flat above the railway tracks. At forty-and-a-bit she’s wondering if this is the end of the line.
Following a botched attempt to end it all, Lucia suddenly realises that she’s, quite literally, not alone. She has a celestial being called Dariel by her side, and he’s determined to be her guide. But despite his beguiling looks and angelic nature, Dariel has a few dodgy habits of his own, and he has to sort himself out before he can get back to where he came from. Over the course of a Dublin summer, Dariel makes himself comfortable on Lucia’s sofa, and as an unlikely friendship blossoms, Lucia discovers that there’s more to life than she’d ever imagined.
Order your copy online here.
