This year I am writing two novels with an Irish connection. The first is After the Tempest, the working title of the sequel to The Tempest Murders. Neither book has been picked up by a publisher yet but I know it will be just a matter of time. It always is.
These novels are considered slipstream novels. They begin in a particular era but flash forward to the present day. As the suspense unfolds, the reader begins to see the connection between both eras - realizing, as the main characters do, that the experiences they are having have deep roots that reach back hundreds of years.
The Tempest Murders begins with The Night of the Big Wind, which occurred in Ireland on the Day of Epiphany, January 6, 1839. There was a religious sect that believed the world would end on this date; and when a freak hurricane raced across the Atlantic and slammed into Ireland, many of the island's inhabitants thought the world was indeed ending.
The Atlantic Ocean washed across Ireland from west to east, all the way to the Irish Sea. The waters rose and the wind was so strong that homes were ripped from their foundations and flung hundreds of yards away.
And during this storm, an Irish constable, Rian Kelly, learns that the love of his life has disappeared - at the hands of a serial killer.
Thus begins a mystery that unravels in the present day as Hurricane Irene bears down on the North Carolina coastline... And a serial killer with the same physical description as another two hundred years earlier is on the loose.
