Jo O'Neill

Once a projects director, I hung up my construction helmet in 2024 to settle in England and start a new journey as a writer. What a time I am having!

 I have always written but the odd satirical short story or poem was all my career left me time for. Then one day I woke up in the early hours with an almost complete plot for a novel in my head. I got up and started writing, and entered the complicated, infuriating, exhilarating, exhausting world of novel writing.

There I was thinking that writing a book involved getting the words out then sitting back feeling pleased with myself. Now I know that the first draft is a quarter of the work (at best), that just because I like what I have written doesn't mean readers will, and that there are days when I cannot find a sentence, alternating with days when I write for twenty hours straight.

Now my work is ready to read, and I hope it means something to someone. Whether rooted in the past or the present, the common themes of my writing are psychological drama and human resilience - what is behind the choices we make? and how do we grow individually and collectively?