COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH ...........FOUR DAYS TO GO

Grace Moran loved to wear Sybil Connolly designer dresses.

Dublin designer Sybil Connoly designed the most beautiful clothes. She was  adept at reworking traditional Irish fabrics and styles – including peasant blouses, flannel petticoats and shawls – to give them contemporary appeal and glamour. Perhaps her most distinctive contribution to fashion was pleated handkerchief linen – as worn by Jackie Kennedy in the official White House portrait – it took up to nine yards of Irish linen handkerchiefs to create one yard of the uncrushable pleated fabric that pioneered.

Here is an extract from The Judge's Wife when Emma finds a Sybil Connolly dress  among all the boxes taken down from the attic of her late father's house in Parnell Square, Dublin. The designer dress  hinting at the glamour of the woman she never knew.

 

 

 

Placing the outsize rectangular box on the floor, she eased the top off gently, her hair tumbling down, blocking out her face, her hands trembling. A cloud of dust blustered up around her as she pushed back the cover and pulled on layers and layers of white tissue paper, which piled up and crumpled around her.

A dress, ivory, ruffled with lace and inlaid with satin ribbons, was folded neatly. Emma lifted out the dress, standing up so it unfurled to the ground in a hurried whishing whisper. Layers of pleated frills were topped with lace and interwoven with pale-blue ribbon. The skirt spread out in tiny pinched pleats, a series of Chinese fans fluttering their messages. It was heavy to hold, the taffeta underskirt setting the pleated ruffles in place. Emma held it to her, swaying from side to side. The whoosh of the linen as it swept across the carpet made her swing faster and faster, the room twirling until she felt dizzy. Falling between two boxes on the couch, the linen spread around her as if it owned her.

She felt at home here, probably for the first time. All the times she had dreamed of her mother, wanting to feel her comforting presence, her soft touch, all the times she imagined it. Passing her hand over the linen, she disturbed the fabric and a faint hint of perfume waved around her. Pulling the nearest box on the couch, she nudged the cardboard flaps open. A bundle of silk scarves lounged like sleeping snakes.

Placing her hand into the well of colours, she heard the klssss of the silk as it moved, disturbed after years locked away. Not checking what she was picking, she pulled, latching on to one long scarf. It slithered out in a haze of royal blue, green, purple, the colours bouncing in the light, throwing bars of colour at the mirror over the mantelpiece. Crumpling it to tame it around her neck, she pushed the linen dress aside and jumped up to look in the mirror. Settling her hair on top of her head, the scarf complemented her long, graceful neck. Then, abruptly, she let her hair fall down.

There was no going back to Australia, but what life could she make here among the forgotten treasures of a long-dead woman? Opening two more boxes, she tumbled out the contents, sifting through the clothes and losing track of time, only stopping when she heard the chat from the people standing at the bus stop outside the window. Peeping out the window, she saw a man finish his bottle of Coke before leaning over the railing and letting the empty bottle smash to the basement.

Cross, Emma ran to the door, but the man was already boarding a double-decker. 


“You will have to put up some sort of netting. They don’t care about anyone.”
Angie Hannon, on her way home from Mass, was carrying a small white box. “I stopped off at the Kylemore and got you some cream slices: they go lovely with a cup of tea.” She hopped up the steps and placed the small box in Emma’s hands. “Don’t worry, I won’t be imposing myself. I am off out with the women’s club today.”

Emma smiled and made to go back inside. Angie called out softly, “Your skirt: it is a Sybil Connolly isn’t it?”


Emma spun around. “How did you know?”


“Anyone with an eye for fashion could not miss a Sybil Connolly. Sure, didn’t she bring linen from the bog to the city?”


“I found it in the house.”


“Look after it. A vintage treasure, it is.”

“I didn’t realise.”

“I always heard your mother was a right looker and stunning in Sybil Connolly.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Emma’s throat tightened and pain flared through her that so many knew her mother and she did not even have a faint memory: a favourite name or nursery rhyme, a touch, a look. Anger swelled inside her at her father and she wanted him to be alive so she could cross-examine him, demand answers.

Angie Hannon called out to Tom Harty’s wife and Emma, taking advantage of her distraction, slipped back inside her front door.

 

 

COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH   .......     FIVE DAYS TO GO

 
I was chatting to Gavin on ClareFM this week about The Judge's Wife. Have a listen. (tap on the red section below)It starts about fifty seconds in.
Also very nice to be a KEY READ FOR JULY IN IMAGE MAGAZINE.

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COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH.........SIX DAYS TO GO.

Six days to go and these beautiful books have arrived from Black and White Publishing.

The Judge’s Wife, a novel by Ann O’Loughlin; I turn the book over in my hands for the first time. There is no sweeter moment.

Every morning I get up early and write when the house is still and even the dog stays asleep. Some mornings the characters in my head are talking so fast, it is hard to keep up with them. Other mornings, we trudge through the sentences; the characters in my head fighting to change the plot.

That is how a book is written word after word, paragraph after paragraph, page after page and chapter after chapter. There are the best days when they fingers soar across the keyboard and the days when every sentence is a hard won battle.

There are days when you think you will never write ‘The End’; maybe you don’t even know it yet. And there are the rewriting days, when it feels you are in a different novel altogether. And then there are days like this, when you open a box and you hold the copy of the novel for the first time.

The Judge’s Wife by Ann O’Loughlin. I pick it up and flick through the pages. They are all there; Vikram and Grace and their beautiful love for each other. They fought hard in my head and won their place on the page.

The Judge’s Wife   goes out on to book stands across the country in the next few days. My only hope is that you, the reader enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing the story of Grace Moran and Vikram Fernandes.

When you reach the end I hope you may be able to answer that question posed on the cover,‘Can a Love Last Forever?’

 

 

COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH ........... SEVEN DAYS TO GO

 

The inspiration of the coffee estates of South India.

 

My time in the coffee estates in the hills of South India were a beautiful inspiration as I wrote The Judge’s Wife. Here peace comes dropping slow. I hope you enjoy this extract from the novel where Vikram Fernandes, on the balcony of his apartment in busy Bangalore city longs to be back among the Robusta coffee plants and his plantation. My time in the coffee estate in Chickmagalur will be forever in my heart. Ann 

 

The rising clamour of the city encircled Vikram, sapping his energy. How he longed to be back in Chikmagalur, where the air was heavy with stillness and workers concentrating stooped low; where the mountains high and strong, held up blue umbrellas of mist to the sky. The orange flash of a rat snake flitting across a path, the sound of chopping and pans on the fire in the kitchen as the cook prepared the food for the day, the low, far-off hum of conversation from the line of stone dwellings where the workers lived.

The family estate house was old and battered-looking, with stone walls and floors over which rugs were strewn to take away the sharpness of the cold in winter. Built to service the hectares of the coffee estate, it had changed little over the decades. The only obvious luxury was the early-morning coffee ceremony, after Vikram had gathered his workers and sent them off for the day, his instructions ringing in their ears. Thick black coffee and steaming-hot milk were poured into small china cups from tall silver coffee pots. Vikram’s father had insisted on this ritual and his son saw no reason to change it. The china cups, first brought to the house by his mother, had seen better days and were chipped in places, but Vikram never had the heart to throw them out. Instead, he ordered his servants to handle with care, and they did, because nobody wanted to upset the boss.

How he wanted to be in his big old chair on the covered porch at Chikmagalur, where he could look out over the drying grounds and terraces, past the tall trees giving pools of shade, to watch the hills and clouds fight for the sky. This was where peace dropped slow. Whether the sun baked the ground or the monsoon rain spattered or tore down on top of them, Chikmagalur was his place apart.

His favourite spot in the bungalow was the sitting room, where he could sit quietly, the green hills on guard. The furniture was dowdy, the circular brass table in the middle gone green in places from old coffee stains, where he had spilled his cup too many times as he reached across for his newspaper. In one corner was a stack of weeks-old newspapers about a foot high, on the walls were photographs, worn, creased in places and sepia-brown.

He wanted to be there when the white flowers in the Robusta coffee plants unfurled, putting on a show, breaking into the mist, which clung in gossamer swirls to the trees. There was nothing as lovely as when the first blossom revealed itself: a reminder of the frail beauty of life, before the monsoon rains battered the hills, flooded the roads and cut off the mountains from each other.

“Uncle, your coffee.”

Rosa stood in the doorway holding a tray with a steel beaker, steam curling away from it.

“You were deep in thought?”

“I was thinking of the flowers in bloom at Chikmagalur. I long to breathe them in, fill my nostrils with their heavy scent. You never liked it there, my Rosa.”

“Uncle, there was nothing to do.”

Vikram settled himself deeper in his chair. “Boredom, the affliction of the young, loneliness, the affliction of the old.” Blowing on his coffee, he paused for a few seconds before noisily slurping it.

 

COUNTDOWN   TO LAUNCH    .................... DAY 8. 

 

 

THE STORY BEHIND THE COVER ………THE JUDGE’S WIFE.

     Don't judge a book by its cover. That is the old saying, but doesn't everybody initially judge a book by its cover? In three seconds flat the cover will make that decision whether a reader wants to take it in to their hands and turn it over and flick through the pages.

The cover for The Judge’s Wife had to get across that this was a story spanning decades about a beautiful young woman who lived in Dublin, Ireland in the 50s and a terrible injustice done to her which reverberated through the decades.

The cover of my first novel The Ballroom Cafe was universally loved so it was a big challenge for Black and White Publishing to come up with a match.

But I am lucky to have in Black and White Publishing a publisher who will stop at nothing to get it right. I was also lucky enough that London designer Henry Steadman  could take on the job of designing The Judge’s Wife cover.

Without realising it, you are probably very familiar with Henry Steadman book covers. Think Dan Brown and De Vinci Code, think Lee Child and  a host of other top authors.

A photographer and designer, he was the man for the job.

And what a cover he produced. It had the style of the 1950s and the promise of more. Grace who loved designer Sybil Connolly would certainly have approved and the colours and mountains behind hinted at places far away.
The minute I saw it I knew it was just right and encapsulates everything the novel is about.

  That mint green dress; that face, the background; it  all  evokes an era the era when Grace and Vikram fell in love 1950s Dublin. What happened afterwards would affect the lives of many.

I am very proud of The Judge’s Wife and of the cover. I am also honoured to be in the company of  very fine authors who have had a cover designed by Henry Steadman.

And I am thrilled to say Henry Steadman has included   the cover of The Judge's Wife in his website portfolio. Have a look and you will see why I am so excited  to be included among such great names in storytelling and writing. Find Henry Steadman at http://www.henrysteadman.com/ 

                              

NINE DAYS TO GO.......

Nine days to go before The Judge's Wife is published. I will be on here every day with a little bit of a story or news about this second novel.  Today, I am so delighted to announce that The Judge's Wife is in Ireland  going to be  one of  Easons Books of the Month for July. Meanwhile preparations are underway for the launch on June 30 with all sorts of newspaper and radio interviews lined up. Busy... busy.. busy...

Order The Judge's Wife on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Judges-Wife-Ann-OLoughlin-ebook/dp/B01CV0Y5SE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466498941&sr=8-1

I am delighted to reveal the cover of my second novel The Judge's Wife. Finally, this story I can share. 

 

Available to pre order on Amazon kindle now at a special introductory price of £1.89


Spanning three decades, this is the moving story of three women and how one great love changed their lives forever.
With her whole life ahead of her, beautiful young Grace's world changes forever when she's married off to a much older judge. Soon, feeling lonely and neglected, Grace meets and falls in love with an Indian doctor, Vikram. He's charming, thoughtful and kind, everything her husband is not. But this is the 1950s and when she becomes pregnant, the potential scandal must be harshly dealt with to avoid ruin.
As soon as she has given birth, Grace is sent to an asylum by the judge and a conniving aunt. Vikram is told that Grace died in childbirth and returns, heartbroken, to India. But it's not the end of the story. Thirty years later, with the judge dead, his estranged daughter Emma returns home, full of anger and resentment. There she finds Grace's diaries and begins to uncover a mystery about her mother that she had never suspected. Meanwhile, in India, Vikram is planning a long-awaited trip to Ireland with his much-loved niece, Rosa, who has heard all about Grace and her uncle's long lost love, so that he can stand, at last, at the grave of the woman he loved.
As secrets are finally uncovered, will they be able to cope with the biggest secret of all?