On the day I first imagined Molly Coyle and the reapers and all the rest of the stuff I write about now, Ireland was the furthest thing from my mind.
I was on a walk with my wife, who felt more than a little irritated that we were outside when we had a couch and a big-screen television in our apartment calling our names. This was before our daughter was born, so there were only the two of us, making the most of each other's company.
As we strolled, my wife fretted that the overcast sky would open up and dump "liquid sunshine" on us. Which, of course, it did. We marched along the sidewalk, my wife glowering at me from between soaked locks of hair as I told myself something more than sopping wet clothing needed to result from our walk.
And something did. I got my first glimpse at a notion that became the basis for twelve urban fantasy stories, nine of them in my native Oregon and three of them (and counting) set in distant Ireland.
I'd never attempted urban fantasy before that point, despite reading in that subgenre and loving it. Suddenly, the time felt right for a change of pace. My initial concept quickly evolved into something like the one you might recognize today: a young private investigator (that would be Molly) works in a grungy office, accepts a bad case, and loses her life over it. Those events had to transpire, I knew from the very beginning. But I didn't know a lot more about Molly. She kept her cards close to the vest.
While I tried to figure out who Molly might be, I realized she pretty much had to be Irish. A name doesn't get a lot more Irish than Molly (at least, not a familiar one that's easy to spell). When I was a kid, we had a Doberman with that name. I thought the name would fit my new protagonist very well indeed.
With the name chosen, I gave her red hair... because that also seemed Irish. And I gave the characters around her traditional Irish names, because a theme was developing. Pretty early on, I realized that a lot of her story was really just backstory dating back to events in Ireland that played out around the time of her birth, well before Chronicles of an Amateur Reaper began.
So, I had my Irish hero. And she had Irish relatives. Some seriously important events had transpired in Ireland that cast shadows too long to escape forever. So... why Ireland? Why wasn't Molly English, or French, or Canadian? She could have been any of those nationalities, probably. But there were two big reasons she always felt Irish to me.
The first reason is that Ireland is fascinating, just in general. It has all sorts of monsters and lore. I don't want to say too much here, but there's a lot to explore. I liked the idea of being able to draw from a deep well. It can't hurt to stack the deck, right?
The second reason is my Irish heritage. Maybe that's part of why the country and its lore have always appealed to me. My grandmother on my mom's side was the daughter of Irish immigrants. So, I'm something like a quarter Irish. It's the biggest part of me that isn't German. Writing about a strong woman like Molly and making her Irish felt right. It just did.
And I don't regret that decision, or the places it has figuratively taken me. Though I've never been to Ireland in reality, I almost feel like I have. These days, you can research a whole lot by pulling up Google Street View. Digitally, I've wandered the streets of the neighborhoods in Dublin that I write about. I've looked at the buildings, the bricks, the walls, the beautiful forests in the middle of town. The city is magnificent, more than I imagined when I first went to work on Death's Arrival.
In a sense, Dublin is a character itself. It's even more important to my second series than Salem was to the first. The difference this time around is that although I know the Willamette Valley reasonably well from living in Oregon all my life, I have to use my imagination when I write about Dublin. I've dived down so many research rabbit holes, because authenticity is part of the experience I want to offer readers. And because gaining the knowledge to provide some of it is just plain fun.
If you've read my books and there's something about Dublin I haven't touched on that you think would be really cool to see in the next book, let me know. As I write this post, I already have the fourth book planned through to its conclusion, but no definite ideas for how large parts of the book after that one will unfold. I'd love to hear from you!