{"id":310493,"date":"2026-02-21T22:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T22:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/310493\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T22:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T22:04:14","slug":"when-i-was-getting-so-anxious-about-book-publicity-i-had-to-examine-why-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/310493\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018When I was getting so anxious about book publicity, I had to examine why\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jen Bray<\/a> doesn\u2019t strike you as the kind of person to get nervous before an interview. A former political correspondent with The Irish Times and current political editor with The Sunday Times Ireland, Bray has interviewed taoisigh, navigated live primetime television as a guest on The Late Late Show<\/a>, and anchored podcasts<\/a>. She has carved out a role in the public eye for most of her working life. <\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s something different about this interview, as Bray herself concedes. She has arrived at this city-centre Dublin<\/a> hotel \u2013 dressed in fashionable black, with wide-framed glasses \u2013 to talk not about politics, but about herself: her story, her life, her writing. \u201cI\u2019ve been mentally preparing myself to open up,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I was getting so anxious about book publicity, I had to examine: why am I so anxious?\u201d<\/p>\n

The fear is coming from a specific place, which we\u2019ll get to shortly. But first there\u2019s the question of her debut<\/a> novel The Lies Between Us<\/a>, a marvellously twisty matryoshka doll of a crime story, with shades of Agatha Christie<\/a> and Liz Nugent<\/a> in the stylings. <\/p>\n

Three warring sisters: former garda Lucy, novelist Susannah, and unhappy middle sister Tara \u2013 are meeting for a peacemaking dinner in Dunmore East<\/a>, where their mother has a holiday home. But when Susannah disappears, and a body of a woman is found on the shore nearby, the family are drawn into a mystery that has its roots in a dark and complicated past.<\/p>\n

The book has already won praise from her peers (\u201cOutstanding,\u201d said Jane Casey<\/a>. \u201cSo satisfying,\u201d said Marian Keyes<\/a>) and scored the ultimate compliment: rights have been sold to publishers in Germany, Poland and the all-important United States, something many Irish novelists would give their eyeteeth for. \u201cIt means the book being available to this huge audience,\u201d Bray says, of the deal with Pegasus Books. When her agent rang to tell her, \u201cShe was like, \u2018You\u2019re getting published in America.\u2019 I was like, \u2018What the hell?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Edel Coffey: \u2018I didn\u2019t touch my book deal money for a year. I was afraid they\u2019d made a mistake\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

They say luck is when preparation meets opportunity, and it couldn\u2019t be more true than in Bray\u2019s case. Technically The Lies Between Us is the 37-year-old\u2019s fourth novel; three others reside in her bedside drawer. Growing up in Dublin and Wexford<\/a> (her family moved close to Gorey<\/a> when she was starting secondary school), her instincts toward writing were always strong. \u201cI\u2019ve always felt really compelled to write fiction and I remember being a teenager thinking I want to write: I want to be a fiction author but also a journalist. Which one can I get financially independent in quickest? And it was a journalist. I thought I\u2019ll work on the other thing in the background. It just took longer than I thought.\u201d <\/p>\n

It took 15 years, many rejection letters and one sympathetic editor \u2013 Patricia Deevy at Penguin Sandycove, who heard Bray on The Irish Times\u2019 Inside Politics podcast<\/a> talking about a novel she was writing, and asked Bray to send her the manuscript. Bray is excited today: this is the beginning of the book promotional trail. But she has qualms too. <\/p>\n

As the Irish novelist Kevin Barry<\/a> once remarked, \u201cwhen you write fiction, you\u2019re giving yourself away. There has to be something about yourself coming out to make it real and good.\u201d The Lies Between Us is not directly autobiographical, but the character of Lucy has some experiences in common with Bray. Lucy is attacked on the street as a young woman in New York, a crime that changes the course of her life.<\/p>\n

When Bray was 21 years old, she was also the victim of an assault on O\u2019Connell Street in Dublin. She had been on a night out with her cousin Sarah and her work colleague Neil. They\u2019d found themselves in McDonald\u2019s at the end of the night. Waiting in the queue Bray realised someone was trying to get into her jacket pocket. When she moved away, the woman \u2013 in her late 20s with her boyfriend lingering nearby \u2013 threatened her, saying there would be people waiting outside for her.<\/p>\n

\"JenJen Bray: \u2018The hours in political journalism are crazy and the pressure is insane\u2019. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien <\/p>\n

When the three friends tried to get into a taxi, Bray was pulled back out by the hair. The woman punched her in the face, then Bray was thrown against a wall by the woman and her boyfriend, and the woman pulled out a rusty Stanley blade. \u201cI felt something cold on my face and when I looked down, it was blood.\u201d While she was on the ground, her attackers started trying to rob her again, feeling in her pockets. \u201cI had a cheap little phone and my apartment keys, and that\u2019s it, and they took that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bray takes off her glasses to trace the white line where the now barely visible scar wends its way beneath her left eye. The woman had taken the blade from the top of her nose, cut beneath her eye and in a semicircle down her cheek. \u201cI had emergency surgery in the Mater,\u201d she says. \u201cThe surgeons were amazing. It was really bad. I thought, \u2018That\u2019s it. I\u2019m destroyed\u2019.\u201d After five hours of surgery, with six surgeons present, Bray woke with a massive bandage covering half of her face. <\/p>\n

Two weeks after the surgery, she returned to her job at The Sunday Tribune to try to find refuge in the newsroom. \u201cI remember feeling bad for my colleagues,\u201d she says. \u201cLike, do you look at her or not look at her? Is looking weird? I went back to work as quickly as I could, even though it terrified me to show my face. And I just kept busy. I threw myself into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also did a couple of remarkably brave things: she spoke about the attack on The Late Late Show (\u201cI nearly fainted before I went on, I got purple spots in my vision: I don\u2019t remember a single thing that happened on that show\u201d), she wrote about it, and she testified against her attackers, because even though there were many witnesses, forensic evidence and CCTV, the pair still protested their innocence. \u201cI had to testify because they pleaded not guilty, which was one of the worst experiences of my life. I remember being on the stand and thinking, I can\u2019t do this. They were right there.\u201d <\/p>\n

Until a few months back, Bray thought she had come through her experiences well \u2013 when Ryan Tubridy asked her at the time if she had got counselling, she brushed his query off. \u201cI was like, \u2018No, I\u2019m fine\u2019. And for the last decade I have been like, \u2018I am fine\u2019, until now. Until book publicity, and now I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, no, I haven\u2019t dealt with this at all\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why does she think she hasn\u2019t dealt with it? \u201cI realised a lot of it is to do with confidence. I guess I\u2019ve convinced myself that I\u2019m really not …\u201d She trails off. \u201cI think for years I just thought I was horrible or disgusting or something. I didn\u2019t realise how bad it affected me or how much confidence it took from me. It stole my confidence. So I\u2019m working on that now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JenJen Bray: ‘I think to succeed at getting a book published, you have to be obsessed.’ Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

In the novel there\u2019s an emphasis on the fork in the road \u2013 the direction a character may take that shapes their life. Bray sometimes thinks about the person she was before the attack, the bright, bubbly 19-year-old who was so determined to get into a career in writing that she kept turning up to the Sunday Tribune office on Baggott Street even after her four-week internship had ended. The editor N\u00f3ir\u00edn Hegarty, she recalls, told her, \u201cThanks and best of luck\u201d and Bray responded, \u201cNo, I\u2019ll be back here on Tuesday.\u201d She laughs, with a little wistfulness. \u201cI was a bit bratty. I was bolshie. Afterwards it was the total opposite.\u201d <\/p>\n

She wonders a lot about who she might have been had the attack not happened. \u201cWould my life have been better? Who would I be?\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Elly Griffiths: \u2018A magic trick is like a crime novel: lots of misdirection before the final reveal\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to try to find a silver lining in her story \u2013 to say it shaped her into the success she now is, but \u2013 while I know Bray only through her work (I started at The Irish Times shortly before she left the paper) \u2013 that seems patently untrue. She was already unswerving of focus. Her novel is the product of pure grit. \u201cI think to succeed at getting a book published, you have to be obsessed,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good trait for a career in journalism too. During Covid, when the book was conceived during bouts of insomnia (\u201cInstead of lying awake and thinking about death, I would lie awake and think about plot points and characters\u201d), Bray was often left exhausted by the demands of the daily job. \u201cThe hours in political journalism are crazy and the pressure is insane,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

There must have been times when she contemplated a different existence. I can\u2019t help but note that a number of her old colleagues in political journalism are now working as Government advisers. \u201cI have been offered a job as an adviser three times,\u201d she says. \u201cEach would have been an amazing opportunity on paper. And one in particular I did consider very seriously. But ultimately \u2013 and no shame to anyone who does go for it \u2013 I can\u2019t marry the fact that I spent so long writing what I hope are critical but fair pieces; to have done that for 11 years, and then one day switch around and go and advise, it jars for me.\u201d She laughs. \u201cI feel like if I was in a meeting, I would want the exclusive. I\u2019d be crying, I need to tell somebody \u2013 ideally a couple of hundred thousand readers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JenJen Bray: \u2018I have so many ideas, I\u2019m just itching to write them.\u2019 Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n

Bray\u2019s novel is dedicated to two people: her husband of 10 years Alan Sherry, who is also a journalist, and her younger brother Michael, who died in 2023. \u201cHe was 21. It\u2019s changed me completely as a person. It makes you analyse what\u2019s important.\u201d His death taught Bray, she says, that she must take risks because you don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming around the corner. It was a major reason she decided to leave The Irish Times after seven years for her new role. \u201cI remember saying to the Editor everything has changed for me, I am acutely seized with the knowledge that anything can happen and I can\u2019t not make a change because I\u2019m scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019d wonder if another move \u2013 to full-time novelist \u2013 isn\u2019t that far off. Bray \u2013 more than most \u2013 seems like someone who is actively questing for control of her future. She has already written a new novel. And she has big plans. \u201cI am so ambitious. I have so many ideas, I\u2019m just itching to write them,\u201d she says. \u201cI would love to have a book a year and I\u2019m determined to make it happen.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Lies Between Us is published by Sandycove on February 26th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jen Bray doesn\u2019t strike you as the kind of person to get nervous before an interview. A former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[615,93,631,61,60,23061,9270],"class_list":["post-310493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-dublin","tag-entertainment","tag-for-you","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-late-late-show","tag-wexford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310493","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=310493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}