{"id":298203,"date":"2026-02-14T19:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T19:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/298203\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T19:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T19:13:10","slug":"i-didnt-touch-my-book-deal-money-for-a-year-i-was-afraid-theyd-made-a-mistake-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/298203\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I didn\u2019t touch my book deal money for a year. I was afraid they\u2019d made a mistake\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a rainy day in a rainy month in Dublin<\/a>, Edel Coffey sits in a quiet corner of a city-centre hotel, dressed all in black, but emanating sunshine. The author, until recently books<\/a> editor of The Gloss<\/a> magazine, and a regular contributor<\/a> to these pages, is explaining the concept of a shadow artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s where you know, deep down in your heart, that you\u2019re a writer, a singer, or whatever the creative thing is that you love. But you kind of approach it, because you\u2019re too afraid to go directly for it, or you don\u2019t think it\u2019s for you,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Coffey, whose third novel, In Glass Houses, is published this month, spent many years circling the thing she loved. A lifelong bookworm, she dreamed of studying English at Trinity College Dublin. But when the time came, she obeyed her head, choosing communications at DCU. She went on to build a successful career in journalism, working variously as a reporter, columnist, editor and radio presenter\/researcher for several media outfits, always orbiting the world of books and arts, even doing a stint as a books\u2019 publicist, but never the thing itself: writing novels.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the hilarious thing. I had lots of opportunities,\u201d she confesses.<\/p>\n

About 2009, one of the \u201cbig-five\u201d UK publishers (an industry term for the dominant publishers in the market: Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) approached her looking for a book. <\/p>\n

\u201cI went and had lunch with them in London,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThey said: this is the editor you can work with, so just deal with her directly. And I went home. And I didn\u2019t write it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether she was \u201crigid with fear\u201d or \u201ccompletely creatively dead\u201d, she is not sure. Nevertheless, the offers kept coming. Some time later, another English editor got in touch, on the lookout for a young journalist to write autofiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, they were like: we\u2019d love to work with you. And again, I went off and was like: I can\u2019t do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her creative energies were instead channelled elsewhere. For much of her 20s and early 30s, alongside her day job, she played in bands: singing, playing guitar, often finding herself on the same bill as Booker Prize-winner Paul Lynch<\/a>, then in a Muse<\/a>-like ensemble of his own.<\/p>\n

\"EdelEdel Coffey: ‘I think I\u2019m actually always talking about class, simply because of my background and my life.’ Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s such a crossover, actually, I\u2019ve noticed, between certain people my age in Dublin who played in bands and are now writing novels,\u201d she says, listing the likes of Patrick Freyne, Anna Carey and her one-time bandmate R\u00f3n\u00e1n Hession, author of the recently adapted for TV Leonard and Hungry Paul, among others, but, to her, forever Mumblin\u2019 Deaf Ro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0R\u00f3n\u00e1n Hession: \u2018I\u2019m basically psychological quirks stacked inside a trench coat, passing myself off as a human\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Aged 37, Coffey had her first child and moved from Dublin to her husband\u2019s hometown of Galway. Within 18 months, she had two daughters, as well as two stepsons, and life moved through a key change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the first time in my adult life that I had not been working at a crazy pace,\u201d she says. \u201cI had a really tough time stopping. I completely identified myself as a journalist. I know it\u2019s not very woke or progressive to identify completely as your job, but I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

She felt the simultaneous widening and narrowing of opportunity: work and social calendars emptying, but motherhood consuming all her attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, okay, it\u2019s two-pronged. First, I was terrified that I would never write the book because I have no time here; the children had just taken over my life completely,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd second, I really missed that creative, intellectual engagement with writing I\u2019d had through my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

I feel like [life] is a computer game in many ways \u2013 you get through this level and then you get on to a harder level; you level-up<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Edel Coffey<\/p>\n

In this strange conundrum, a tentative beginning took place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t happen overnight. I didn\u2019t start writing the book until my youngest daughter was in Montessori, so she was nearly three. I just remember being very frustrated that I hadn\u2019t done this yet, and this awareness that if you don\u2019t do it now, you\u2019re probably not going to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Letting go of ideals of perfection, brilliance and optimal conditions, she wrote in short stints \u2013 as she waited for school pick-up, for example, or instead of looking at social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I opened a social media app, I used that as a kind of a trigger,\u201d she says. \u201c[I\u2019d say], okay, instead of doing this, you\u2019re going to write. [\u2026] That\u2019s how I did the first book. It was a process of sheer frustration with myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Breaking Point, an emotional yet pacy thriller about an overburdened mother\u2019s tragic mistake, secured Coffey a six-figure, two-book deal. It was acquired in 2020, just months after the death of Coffey\u2019s mother, and published in early 2022. The experience was a surreal one, Coffey says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the book deal coming and it being so big, to my mind, and feeling completely terrified and numb. It\u2019s that thing of being scared when good things happen. I think it\u2019s very common. I didn\u2019t touch the money for a full year, because I was afraid that they\u2019d made a mistake and I\u2019d have to give it back.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Her Place, an ingenious take on the \u201cother woman\u201d trope, followed in 2024, and In Glass Houses, the first in another two-book deal, is published this month.<\/p>\n

Three books in, does she feel she is getting into a groove?<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Paul Clements: \u2018I am often asked how long it takes to write a book. Now I can say with accuracy: 33 years\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know what, life is just so much flux and change, and every time you get the hang of something, it changes again,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like it is a computer game in many ways \u2013 you get through this level and then you get on to a harder level; you level-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Glass Houses is set in the privileged world of the Manhattan elite, and with its twisty plotline wouldn\u2019t be out of place among the slate of glossy book-to-screen crime dramas dominating streaming platforms. Opening with the image of a dead body floating in a sky-high transparent swimming pool, the book is a darkly glamorous tale of how the privileged exert power to protect their own. At its centre is a luxury skyrise, home to rich lawyers, developers, old money, and a proportion of \u201ccost-rental lottery winners\u201d who are forbidden from using the building\u2019s premium facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got this almost apartheid system within the building. And I didn\u2019t know this, but this actually happened in Dublin,\u201d Coffey says, referring to a 2025 article on the website, dublinlive.ie, where social housing residents of a Grand Canal Harbour development claimed they had been denied access to amenities available to private tenants.<\/p>\n

Class and its various stratifications were a central preoccupation of Coffey\u2019s from the start.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t completely conscious of this, but now, three books in, I think I\u2019m actually always talking about class, simply because of my background and my life,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Edel Coffey: \u2018We live in a very voyeuristic world \u2026 I wonder what that might be doing to our sense of contentment\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Originally from the Dublin suburb of Ballybrack, a working-class neighbourhood right beside the salubrious Killiney, Coffey grew up very aware of how the other half live.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d walk to the train station, and pass these huge mansions. Some of the houses had peacocks. And beautiful blue roofs. Amazing, phenomenal houses. I always remember being like: wow. From your little semi-D in your council estate, to that, you\u2019re very aware of the different ways that people live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Education, work, marriage \u2013 each nudged Coffey into the milieu of the middle classes as life went on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shift in class is interesting to me,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I first started as a journalist, I wouldn\u2019t ask questions that I should have asked because I felt I would expose myself if I [did]. So, if I was told to go somewhere on a job, I might be thinking: how am I going to get to the middle of Monaghan? I don\u2019t have a car, the bus doesn\u2019t go to Monaghan. But I wouldn\u2019t [ask]. I was 22. Of course I wasn\u2019t going to have a car. But in my head, I felt quite inferior.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to overstate it,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt\u2019s not a trauma. These are small things, but they\u2019re interesting things, because where do they come from? Where does that feeling of shame come from?\u201d<\/p>\n

One day, Coffey began to think about the notion of a person who killed someone but had never been caught. This coalesced with her thoughts and preoccupations on class, and so emerged the story of Juliet Fox, daughter of a rich property developer, whose murder was never solved. Twenty years on, Eddie, a journalist whose career was practically destroyed when she tried to solve the case the first time, finds herself drawn back in to its mystery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this book is actually about morality, and how morality changes [depending on] your position in the class system,\u201d Coffey says. \u201cDoes your morality change if you know that you\u2019re likely not going to be punished for what you do, or not punished severely, or going to be able to find a way out? And then also, there\u2019s a difference when morality is applied to people who don\u2019t have privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond themes, Coffey has one major aim when she writes. She quotes a line from the digital newsletter Air Mail: \u201cWe choose our stories wisely to relieve your worldly woes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly why I read books. I read books so I don\u2019t have to think about my own life for an hour, two hours. And that\u2019s what I want to give to my readers: that sense of, I\u2019m here to relieve your worldly woes. Life is horrific. You can get back to that in an hour. But right now, I\u2019m here to entertain you.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Glass Houses by Edel Coffey is published by Sphere<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a rainy day in a rainy month in Dublin, Edel Coffey sits in a quiet corner of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[615,92139,93,631,61,60,141582,125724],"class_list":{"0":"post-298203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-dublin","9":"tag-edel-coffey","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-for-you","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-paul-lynch","15":"tag-women-writers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298203","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=298203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}