{"id":250961,"date":"2026-01-18T10:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T10:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/250961\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T10:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T10:17:08","slug":"it-was-a-massively-stressful-time-i-fell-into-a-bit-of-a-depression-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/250961\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It was a massively stressful time… I fell into a bit of a depression\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dubliner<\/a> Tanya Sweeney has a lot to celebrate as we ease into 2026. Her debut novel, Esther is Now Following You, has arrived in bookshops accompanied by the kind of pre-publicity and literary merch (badges and tote bags) most budding authors can only fantasise about. <\/p>\n

The novel is a pacy, darkly funny and original thriller about obsession and celebrity fandom. It landed her \u201cthe agent of my dreams\u201d Marianne Gunn O\u2019Connor, and what she describes as a \u201ccomfortable\u201d six-figure advance for a two-book deal from Transworld. <\/p>\n

When we meet in The Hoxton hotel in Dublin, Sweeney is full of good cheer and, understandably, the nerves that come with any debut. And there is another reason for the jitters: as a journalist Sweeney has, until now, been used to the other side of the interviewing table. \u201cIt\u2019s very strange to be the one answering questions,\u201d she says with a smile. <\/p>\n

One of the most talented and hardest working features journalists and columnists in the country \u2013 I can attest to this as, full disclosure, I was once her editor when she worked as a freelancer for this newspaper \u2013 Sweeney describes herself as \u201ca total commitmentphobe\u201d when it came to her lifelong dream of writing novels. She\u2019s been thinking about writing a book \u201cever since I knew that people could write books\u201d. Journalism and writing was the only job that ever made sense to her. <\/p>\n

From a working-class family in Blanchardstown, at the age of 11 she wrote and edited the children\u2019s page of local newspaper Newswest. Meanwhile, she\u2019d been writing stories since the age of seven. \u201cI\u2019d get halfway down the page of a copy book and start fantasising about owning a swimming pool and about being a millionaire. And then I\u2019d stop about a page and a half in, which became a motif for the next 40-odd years, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n

After an arts degree in Maynooth, she did a journalism masters at University of Westminster in London, spending time in the music industry and later completing a masters in screenwriting. Along the way, freelancing for magazines and newspapers, she took part in \u201ccountless\u201d novel- and play-writing courses. <\/p>\n

\u201cWriting a novel was like a monkey on my back,\u201d Sweeney says over coffee. \u201cI describe it as those two weeks before the Leaving Cert, where you feel you should be studying, even when you are watching TV or you\u2019re on the loo, you\u2019re thinking \u2018I should be doing something else\u2019 and then you feel guilty for not doing it.\u201d She carried that \u201cguilt\u201d around for a long time until it got to the point where she says \u201cit actually became easier to write the book than carry that around any more\u201d.<\/p>\n

The first draft of the novel was written in 2023, but she\u2019s been cultivating the idea for Esther for almost 25 years after seeing a Channel 4<\/a> documentary about a psychological disorder called erotomania, also known as De Cl\u00e9rambault syndrome. \u201cIt\u2019s a delusional disorder where you feel famous people are talking to you through the telly. It\u2019s an actual thing. We all have celebrity crushes, but in this situation it goes too far and it\u2019s almost always preceded by trauma or grief. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt prompts you to escape into your own brain, your own imagination, into something that is safe and controllable and gratifying. I\u2019d always wanted to go back to that story, and then we started to hear more about super fans, One Directioners or Swifties, and all those parasocial relationships<\/a>. I thought it would be really fun to write about that world.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think when you are grieving you\u2019re actually quite horny<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Tanya Sweeney<\/p>\n

The novel follows Esther, a Dublin woman in her 30s living in London who becomes obsessed with an up-and-coming Canadian movie star Ted Levy after walking past him in a local park. Esther Is Now Following You is a compelling portrayal of a sharply funny, often exasperating, woman in the grips of an acute mental spiral. Following a personal tragedy, Esther, who from the outside appears to have it all \u2013 a great job, cool friends and a loving husband \u2013 blows up her life to pursue her celebrity crush, which involves becoming a \u201cTedette\u201d on a fan site full of fellow obsessives and buying a one-way ticket to Canada to pursue the actor in the real world, convinced they are meant to be together. <\/p>\n

Sweeney, who has followed celebrity culture closely since she was a teenager, is unsurprisingly strong on its evolution. \u201cWhen I was a teenager you bought Smash Hits on a Wednesday and jumped in front of Top of the Pops on a Thursday. You might know some trivia about your celebrity\/musical crush like that they love red jelly beans, and that kept you going. We were blissfully unaware about most of what they were up to.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Tanya Sweeney: Make no mistake, the binge-watch cheat is a real betrayalOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

With the advent of social media, this filter between celebrity and fan became increasingly porous to the point where, in 2010 and 2011, when the book is set, \u201cyou could message a celebrity on Twitter and there was an outside chance they or one of their team on their account would either retweet or quote tweet you. It was very unguarded. And it was a delicious time to write about.\u201d <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a scene in the book where Ted Levy\u2019s girlfriend Alice accidentally gives away her home location in an Instagram photo. \u201cI set the book at that time because this incident just wouldn\u2019t happen now. Celebrities have pulled back and it\u2019s all very stage-managed. They have teams that drip feed the public with what they want them to know, but in 2010 that wasn\u2019t happening. The filter wasn\u2019t there as much.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Tanya Sweeney: The most dispiriting celebrity interviews I have conductedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Given the huge appeal of the Netflix<\/a> show Baby Reindeer<\/a>, the novel is being pitched as that idea, but from the stalker\u2019s perspective. She says her own celebrity crushes are \u201cturbo-charged, I\u2019m blessed and cursed with an amazing imagination\u201d. In the book, Esther is grieving a tragic loss and Sweeney remembers how, when her mother died in 2011, her own crushes were \u201cso vivid \u2026 I think because I was lonely \u2026” She has a theory that people can become highly sexually charged when grieving (there\u2019s quite a bit of sex and masturbation in the book). \u201cI think when you are grieving you\u2019re actually quite horny, so I drew a little from my own crushes and imaginary relationships,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Sweeney first wrote and then abandoned the novel in 2021 during yet another creative-writing course. Around the same time, she and her husband were given an eviction notice on their rental home which led to several subsequent house moves with their toddler. (Their daughter Isola is now a spirited almost seven-year-old<\/a> who also loves writing stories in her copy books.) \u201cIt was a massively stressful time, so anything creative went by the wayside and I fell into a bit of a depression about it all. I just didn\u2019t have any creative energy or any bandwidth left over for anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TanyaTanya Sweeney first wrote and then abandoned the novel in 2021 during a creative-writing course. Photograph: Ruth Medjber <\/p>\n

A few years later, having bought a house and been employed as a staff journalist with the Irish Independent, she decided to return to Esther. \u201cA lot of journalists were writing novels and I was getting really jealous of these people. Edel Coffey<\/a> was one of them. She\u2019d had a book deal announced in The Bookseller. I sent Edel a text going \u2018I couldn\u2019t be happier for you, genuinely, but I am beyond envious and a bit sad for myself here\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n

Coffey\u2019s success hit differently because the two journalists had, over the years, talked a lot about writing novels. \u201cThen Edel went ahead and did it. And I think that was the real lesson.\u201d Sweeney gave herself a stern talking to: \u201cIt was like, you know what, you need to stop talking about it. You need to stop talking to other writers and trying to embarrass yourself into being held accountable. They don\u2019t care what you are doing\u2026 you just have to put your bum in the chair. It\u2019s really boring but that\u2019s it.” <\/p>\n

She is effusive in the book\u2019s acknowledgments about the Six Month Novel course run online by the Urban Writer\u2019s Retreat, during which she completed her first draft, sending Coffey a screenshot of her word count saying \u201cha, now I\u2019ve written one too!\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a lovely plot twist, it was Coffey who connected Sweeney to Marianne Gunn O\u2019Connor, suggesting she send the first draft to her agent. It was a Thursday in summer when Gunn O\u2019Connor called Sweeney with feedback. \u201cShe said, \u2018This is amazing, this is so exciting. I want to represent you and bring it to the Frankfurt Book Fair\u2019. I was sitting in my back yard, my jaw hanging like a lantern. It was the most exciting moment of the whole thing,\u201d Sweeney marvels. The novel never made it to Frankfurt; instead there was a bidding war before Transworld offered enough money to take it off the table. Then her own massive deal was announced in The Bookseller. \u201cI didn\u2019t believe it, I thought it was an elaborate prank being played on me. I was numb.\u201d<\/p>\n

It might have taken a while to get here, but the 48-year-old has no regrets. Well maybe one. \u201cThe only regret I have is that the books market is quite challenging now,\u201d she says. She hopes the book will find enthusiastic readers. Early signs are positive, with a slew of rave reviews online. She won\u2019t be giving up her day-job – \u201cGod, no\u201d she exclaims, \u201cI love it too much\u201d – and is currently deep into the second novel.<\/p>\n

When she looks back over those years of trying and failing to write novels, she\u2019s impressively self-aware about both her arrogance as a younger woman \u2013 \u201cI thought I knew it all when I did not\u201d \u2013 and the way she allowed, as so many of us do, the judgment of others to block her path. \u201cI obviously have a very fragile ego, once I got a lick of criticism, I was like \u2018Well, that obviously needs to go in the bin, because who\u2019s going to buy that?\u2019\u201d One memorable put-down came from a fellow participant in a creative-writing course 24 years ago. The man described Sweeney\u2019s fiction as \u201csub Sex and the City drivel\u201d. Let\u2019s hope he\u2019s reading this now.<\/p>\n

Esther is Now Following You by Tanya Sweeney is published by Transworld<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dubliner Tanya Sweeney has a lot to celebrate as we ease into 2026. Her debut novel, Esther is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1795,92139,93,61,60,709,1868,125724],"class_list":{"0":"post-250961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-channel-4","9":"tag-edel-coffey","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-magazine","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-women-writers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}