IRA

Official White House photograph by Pete Souza; Photo credit: Wikipedia

I is for Irish…as in there is some innately mischievous and clever about an Irishman. Perhaps it’s the accent, perhaps it’s the stereotypical inclination to drink and scrap and tell wry jokes. My father comes from Irish stock and he certainly fits the mold, minus the accent, being from Virginia bootlegger stock. His mother’s maiden name was Gillespie which is the root of my pen surname, Gillian. (Claire Gillespie dot com had already been nabbed.) Her ancestors came to America, as did many other Irish, during the potato famine.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Irish and Ireland, so much so that my urban fantasy novel in process, My Fair Vampire, features a multi-centuries old Irish vampire named Donovan, who is challenged with teaching his new prodigy from New Mexico all the ins and outs of vampirism. My other in process novel, Sins of Our Mothers, features a rather nasty bunch of IRA zealots from the eighties.

Sadly, I’ve yet to visit Ireland. It’s definitely on my bucket list though. From the lush green countrysides to the busy cities, from the quiet villages to the boisterous pubs–I wanna see it all. I want to hear the ancient language. Believe it or not, I once audited a class in Gaelic when in college. I guarantee you I was the only business major in attendance. LOL

Look at all the famous Irish actors too: Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Michael Fassbender, Gabriel Byrne, Ciaran Hinds, Richard Harris, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Stuart Townsend, Stephen Rea, Cillian Murphy, and that doesn’t even count the ones of Irish descent who aren’t from Ireland.

Musically, we have the Brennan family–Enya, Maire and siblings from Clannad.

I’ll leave you with this single from Maire:

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Oh, and only six (6) days until my debut novel, The P.U.R.E. releases!

Hottest Irish Celebs! (radiotaylor.wordpress.com)
IrishCentral.com Now Reaches 1 Million Unique Visitors per Month (prnewswire.com)

Welcome to “Six Sentence Sunday”. Thank you for visiting and especially for any comments you might leave me.

This six comes from my 2010 NaNo novel that’s still unfinished though it earned me a win last year. Sins of Our Mothers, currently at about 60k words with perhaps another 20k to go, is about:

An American woman, Neely Shaw, is arrested twenty five years after her involvement with a group of Irish terrorists and their British kidnapping victim. She’s extradited back to England. In a series of interviews, conducted as Neely’s trial unfolds, her interviewer, Siobhan, learns that the victims and criminals aren’t nearly as black and white as the press would have the public believe. And Neely is guarding more secrets than just those of a criminal nature.

In this six, Neely has just arrived at a London jail for processing and interrogation. Neely speaks first, then the Crown’s interrogator, Siobhan Feeney.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of bail here is there?” She knew it was a stupid question before she’d uttered the words, but she had to at least ask.

Siobhan made a scoffing noise, the nice young woman from earlier that morning long gone. “Slim to none. You’re a flight risk, Neely. You fled the country after the crime and have been so good at hiding, it took us twenty five years to find you.

Be sure to check out the host site, Six Sentence Sunday, for links to more tantalizing snippets from some very talented writers.