Welcome to my website
hello
I’m Nicola, an author, screenwriter, ghostwriter, editor and playwright living in Co. Louth, Ireland.
If it’s got words in it, I’m interested. (But it’s the silences that count).
You can make anything by writing
-C.S. Lewis
Personal Background
Who am i?
I was an avid reader and writer from a young age and living in a quiet rural area in Louth, left plenty of time for both activities. I sent off a story to An Post’s children’s writing competition aged 11 and was rather impressed when I came second overall in Ireland and received an luminous yellow dinosaur t-shirt as a prize, which I wore proudly to mass and blinded the priest.
At 14, I sent off a ghost story to the RTE Guide and was published in the children’s section, receiving £5 for my pen and paper endeavours. Even then, I thought that was a bit of a low ball pay day, but turns out, that’s writing for you! That same year, I won the best essay prize in school and another year after that.
All this prize-winning put a little thought into my head. Maybe I was good at his writing lark. Maybe I could do it as a …. career?
(No, my parents said, please considering banking).
Learning
Taking up the pen
I chose to study journalism in Dublin City University, because at that time, it was the only job I knew of where you got paid to write. I interned at the Sunday Business Post and worked for a short time in local magazine and news journalism, before taking a role as a political press officer.
While working in Dublin, I began to take courses at the Irish Writers’ Centre and it was here that I finally found my tribe. Through our excellent tutor, I was introduced to a whole liteary world I previously knew very little of. We concentrated on the short story and I began to study and again enter competions.
Later, after I moved out of Dublin, I began to blog and this regular daily writing set up led me back to an idea that had formed all those years ago when I was reading and writing as a child.
I wanted to write a book.
And then I just wrote a book and it was really easy, the end. No. Only joking. It was not really easy, but I did write a book. And then another one and another one and … you get the idea.
inspiration
History
All of my novels are based on historical fact. This is partly due to my love of research and my fascination with people’s true life stories and events. My novels span the late 19th century, the 1916 rising, the roaring 1920s up to World War 2.
Connection
To date, most of my novels have been about stories from my local community; stories I’ve found in local archives and newspapers. My book Adele was an expection to this and my new novel, based on a Victorian British serial killer has also moved outside my local region.
Research
I spend months and sometimes years gathering up the facts behind my characters and often take trips abroad to complete my research. It can be hard to know when to stop researching but there usually comes a time when the urge to write takes over the urge to read.
Screenwriting
thinking telly
After publishing a few books, I realised I was growing more and more interested in writing for screen. I decided to undertake training in screenwriting and began to do my favourite old thing: entering competitions to prove my writing worth.
Luckily, like An Post, I was somewhat successful with this, the pay day increased and no longer was I rewarded in toxic t-shirts.
And so, I decided to become a screenwriter.
Again, Easy!
Freelance Work
going solo
With the combination of my publishing endeavours, my success in screenwriting and a growing client base, which had developed quite by chance, I decided to go fully freelance and pursue writing full-time.
I now work across a range of projects, from writing residencies and ghostwriting, to hosting and presenting events, talks and interviews, editing, developing and mentoring, alongside writing my own books, screenplays and plays and working with production companies or invidual writers on screen projects.
I very much enjoy this varied work and I get to meet and collaborate with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds all over the world.
If you would like to work with me you can contact me through the contact form on this page or through my agent Nicky Lovick at WGM Atlantic.