Success Story

I wrote the first draft of The Ballad of Mary Kearney in 2016 and invested in a TLC report the following year with Lesley McDowell, a report I go back and read even now. Lesley really got what I was trying to do, encouraged me in what was unique about my writing but showed me ways in which I could make my novel, structurally and as regards voice, advising me also on comparative reading. I didn’t get an agent with this book, though I got some very encouraging feedback, but I did with the next one. Since then I have had five of my five historical novels published plus three novellas (under my own name and pseudonyms) and twenty short stories, but in that time I periodically revised Mary Kearney as I continued to believe in the book, and it will be published by Histria Fiction in the US in January 2025. I am now proud to work for TLC, providing feedback to other writers, as a TLC Editor.