Emer Rohan, author of Between You and Me, due February 2026, on her long but rewarding journey to publication . . .
A couple of years ago, I took a work personality and behaviour-profiling assessment. Everyone in the company did, with the very sensible objective of improving company-wide expectations, communication, understanding, etc. Now, I know myself pretty well – I know I don’t like surprises (good or bad), I despise when people change plans at the last minute (my family can attest to that) and find confrontation difficult. I have all the traits of the Green personality: a little introverted, patient, mainly easy going, sometimes stubborn, reluctant to upset the status quo. All fine by me. Greens also hold a grudge – yes, I can, grudgingly, put my hand up to that one too.
So far, so accurate. Except. There were words like passive. Predictable. Undemanding. And they stayed in my head, these words, the mantra to my life. I was very sure that I did not want to be, of all things, passive.
My final resting place in this wheel of behaviour was to be characterised as The Supporter. To be fair, I was in a support role at the time. The word itself isn’t the problem. My sons are proud Liverpool supporters; my husband, an avid tennis fan, is an Alcaraz supporter. No problem there.
But the thought of spending my life as The Supporter. Period. That’s a little depressing.
I am a passionate supporter of my kids. I have three sons and I’ll support them endlessly. My husband too.
Finish writing the damn book!
But I decided then and there that I would not be the support act in my own life. I would embrace my stubborn streak and finish writing the damn book.
Because I’d had an idea for a novel. One that wouldn’t go away; and I had that feeling of excitement and dread in the pit of my stomach that told me it was time to take the plunge. I googled ‘how to plot a novel’ and found something called the Snowflake method. I followed that and mapped out a story. And then I began writing.
And so, during Covid, at 4pm every day, after the kids had finished their schoolwork, I wrote. I started writing at night. I’d stay up till three o’clock in the morning. And I loved it.
I refused to let anyone read it. I refused to take a class or join a writers’ group until I’d reached the end. Then I started taking classes – I started with Masterclass and listened to Margaret Atwood, James Patterson, and Judy Blume. I discovered that the writing community is awesome. Supportive and generous with its feedback, gentle in its critique. And I thought, maybe I can do this.
So I signed up for more courses, got constructive feedback, rewrote my novel, met writers and got more feedback, rewrote it again, paid a wonderful editor for a manuscript assessment and learned an enormous amount about plotting. I went back for a line edit and learned even more about writing. By then, my book was unrecognisable from how it started out.
I queried agents and while I wasn’t successful at the time, those agents who did reply with kind and encouraging words gave me the confidence to chalk that manuscript up to a learning experience and start another.
More learning, more feedback, more editing
When I thought I was ready to query my second novel in April 2025 – having gone through more learning, more feedback, more editing, and I felt I was done – I realised that this was something I wanted to do on my own terms. I wanted to give it to readers directly, hear from them, and write the next one. I gifted myself the investment of setting myself up, not just to sell one book, but to become an author. The company who is bringing my manuscript to life is called Design for Writers (designforwriters.com) and provides a custom-designed, end-to-end package which includes everything from manuscript assessment, line editing, formatting, typesetting, cover design, website design and production, mailing list setup, and six months of coaching. They are brilliant.
I didn’t always feel confident pursuing writing. I wrote my first ‘novel’ aged 16, a 5-chapter story about a teenage girl with an awful stepfather (I’m still obsessed with family dynamics). I wrote it during night-study, at school, and one break time the boy next to me showed the story, specifically a racy scene, to all his friends. I was mortified, and that was the end of that.
When I was visiting Dublin universities, I went to the open day at Trinity College and loved it. I went to the talk on English studies but while I was browsing, a fellow prospective student talked about reading Chaucer (I had no idea who that was) and James Joyce. I was reared on Malory Towers, pony stories, and Maeve Binchy. If the grandness of Trinity hadn’t already given me imposter syndrome, that conversation certainly did.
So I studied what I was best at, French and German, which kept me in the word-and-language sphere and found my way into the world of recruitment, where I still work in a support role.
At 25, on a solo gap year in Australia, I bought a laptop. I never got past chapter three of anything. This was in 2005, still the age of dongles and internet cafes, and definitely not of free wifi, and so I never actually googled ‘how to plan a book’. Ironically, it never crossed my mind to go and buy a book on the subject, either. I probably would have felt too embarrassed to take myself so seriously.
I turned 40 during Covid. I’d spent over a decade living in England, raising children, hopping from part-time job to part-time job, working around crèche and pre-school and primary school. I felt ready to do something just for me. Most importantly, I was no longer afraid to fail. And so, my debut novel, Between You and Me, will launch on February 6th, 2026, and I can’t wait.
(c) Emer Rohan
www.facebook.com/emerrohan.author
About Between You and Me by Emer Rohan:
Kerry Langley never saw it coming.
The company founded by her late father is under siege – targeted by a ruthless hostile takeover. At the helm is Izzy Holt, Kerry’s former best friend who vanished from her life two decades ago.
As Kerry fights to protect livelihoods and legacies, her teenage son Theo is confronted by two strangers whose secrets rock his world to its foundations and threaten the people he cares about most.
With Kerry consumed by the war at work, Theo is left to navigate a maze of lies, loyalties, and hidden agendas. Both mother and son must decide who to trust – before their family is stretched to breaking point, and betrayal destroys everything they hold dear.
A gripping and emotionally charged family drama that will appeal to readers of Lisa Jewell and Liane Moriarty.
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