Virtual Book Tour…novelist Orna Ross

Orna Ross (real name Áine McCarthy) spent fifteen years as a freelance features journalist in Dublin and London before she decided, at age 40, if she was going to write a novel, it was time she got started. As her biography states "I thought it would take me about two years…but I underestimated the challenges of writing fiction with two small children at home - and also didn't realize…that I was going to write what effectively was three stories in one." It was five years before Ross finished the 668-paged Lovers' Hollow.

She had an equally long struggle finding a publisher, dealing with an agent who couldn't generate any interest. Ross finally took it on to find a publisher herself, eventually signing with Penguin for a two-book deal. This process piqued her interest in publishing and the struggles of other writers on the road to publication. She soon founded the Font Literary Agency & Writing Centre in Dublin. Currently, she is the director of the Writing Centre.

Lovers' Hollow is the story of 38-year-old Jo who returns to Ireland for her mother’s funeral to find that she has been left a suitcase of papers and letters from the past, unearthing family secrets of love and revenge, happiness and duty, and even a murder that has haunted three generations. The novel reached #2 on the Irish bestseller list and has received impressive reviews from across the United Kingdom. Ross' second book, A Dance in Time, will be released in the September and she is working on her third novel.


Over the last week 3 Questions…and Answer readers have had the opportunity to leave questions for Ross about Lovers' Hollow, writing and publishing. Here are her responses:





What led you to the story of Lovers' Hollow?

ROSS: My great-uncle was shot in the Irish Civil War, in an incident very like that described in Lovers' Hollow -- though the reasons attributed in the book are entirely imagined. What is the same, I think, is the sense of secrecy that surrounds Jo's family history. Not that half the things that happened in hers happened in mine but my father’s uncle was shot in the Irish Civil War in an incident very like that described in the book.

Nobody in the family ever talked about this. Our village was still divided about this conflict 50 years on, with families not speaking to each other, when I was growing up there. The silence that swirled around the topic drew me to it. It’s the same with any fiction I have written since. Wherever there is silence, there is pain and concealed truth and that draws me -- like a magnet.

How was the title chosen?

ROSS: I had a different title - Going Under - which seemed to me to encompass the state of mind of Jo, the heroine, when she returns home, and also referred to the excavating, digging down, that she had to do. Both through the family papers that her mother left her and back through her own motivations and behaviours in the past. But the publisher said it was too depressing a title, so they changed it. Somebody along the line also said that the word "love" in a title increases the possibility of sales three or fourfold. I don't know whether that is true.

Lovers' Hollow refers to a spot in the novel where the couples meet to be together. It is also the scene of a murder on sinking sands. It was mentioned only in passing at first but once the title was settled on, I wrote it in more, setting scenes that were originally planned elsewhere there instead.

Do new authors have a lot of say so in the title?

ROSS: It depends on the publisher. At Penguin, my publisher, there is "author consultation" -- but the publisher reserves the right to make a final decision. It's the same for jackets.

How much did you deviate from the original story outline of Lovers' Hollow?

ROSS: Completely, utterly and totally! The only thing that remains the same is that past shooting during the Civil War. The other death, though, was the one that came to really take over my imagination, a much more mysterious, secret murder that arose out of a different divide -- that between men and women.

How long has this story been in your head - from the original thought to publication?

ROSS: When I was 14, I said to the girl who sat beside me in school that I was going to write a novel about my family's experience in the Irish Civil War. I was 45 when Lovers' Hollow was published.

When you finish a novel and send it off to be published do you have regrets, second thoughts, a desire to re-write, change things, etc.?

ROSS: Absolutely. I am a compulsive fixer. All my best thoughts are second thoughts. If I was to write Lovers’ Hollow now, I think I would do it quite differently. Thank heavens it is published and set between two covers -- so I've had to drop it and move on.

Your story involves the Irish Civil War. How much research was involved in the history of the conflict? Did you find and read real papers written by families affected by the war?

ROSS: Yes I did. I read absolutely everything I could get my hands on. It involved visiting army barracks, old newspaper libraries, veterans who were alive during the war... There is also a contemporary (1970s & 1990s) front story which required research -- trips to London and San Francisco and lots of reading there too, as Jo’s life negotiates her own freedom struggles and intimate wars with lover and family.

Are you happy with the cover art? The story seems much deeper than what the cover leads you to believe.

ROSS: I agree. I think it's a nice image but I'm not sure that it reflects the theme and concerns of the book that well. People seem to like it though -- especially the all-important trade. It is the bookshops that now set the agenda for jackets. Their sense of what will sell.

I have not read the novel yet but in reading a review it seems to have a Romeo and Juliet type story running through it. Were you influenced by the play directly or is it a case where this is such a common thing that it seemed natural to write about it?

ROSS: You can't write anything that Shakespeare hasn't written already! I did know that it was a Romeo and Juliet style story but it has a distinctly modern take and a very different ending. Yes, this is a very common story but of course each individual experiences it differently. Writers will always be attracted to write about the power love has to disrupt...everything.

When you finished researching the topic of the Irish Civil War how do you keep focused on the story at hand and not go and develop other story ideas? It would seem that many ideas would spring forth begging to speak.

ROSS: You are right. That conflict, like the American Civil War, which I am currently researching and writing about, yielded so many stories. Many of these amazing, riveting stories remain as yet untold but only this one was mine. I think, really, that it is a case of the story choosing you rather than the other way around.

I read one review of this novel that compares it to Gone With the Wind. How do you feel about this?

ROSS: Flattered, obviously, and wondering when my David O Selznick is going to appear! I am an admirer of Margaret Mitchell's achievement and I can see similarities. Both books are big reads that set intimate family and love tensions within a larger social conflict. Jo is a flawed heroine, and as selfish in her way as Scarlett is in hers -- but the big difference is that Jo moves. She is not the same one at the end of the novel out she is at the beginning. And my book weaves backwards and forwards in time to mirror and interconnect her story with the story of her family’s past.


3 Questions…and Answers would like to thank Font Literary Agency & Writing Centre and Orna Ross for allowing us to participate in this Virtual Book Tour. We'd like to thank our readers to for contributing their questions.