BEGINNER’S PLUCK: Ciara Hegarty

CIARA has always written. But she started in earnest when her second child went to nursery school.

“The book just evolved,” she says. “I didn’t have a particular plot, and the characters simply arrived. I got to the end. It was all on scraps of paper. I typed it onto the computer and had 75,000 words. I thought, ‘this is book size’. I sent it off, and the first publisher accepted it.”

The debut is set in Ireland. With Irish parents, Ciara spent all her holidays in Ballybutler, near Midleton, Co Cork.