Allen lands €300,000 book dealEx-Indo reporter bounces back after court case
The former Irish Independent journalist has just landed a huge publishing deal, earning a six-figure sum in the process, but Elise, her 11-month-old daughter, beckoned.
Ms Allen’s contract for her first novel, a crime thriller entitled Last to Know, is with the major British publishers Hodder and Stoughton. It is understood to be worth over 300,000 although she refused to confirm that figure yesterday.
“I am sworn to secrecy,” she said of the deal which puts her up there with the Taoiseach’s daughter, Cecilia Ahern, and a handful of other first-time novelists who have secured large advances. The agreement only covers Britain and Ireland and payment for US rights is likely to top that six figure sum. Cecilia Ahern received $1 million for US rights to her book.
Money, however, was not, says Ms Allen, her prime motivation. “The whole idea of writing a book is something I wanted to do for a long time. Now that it is done, the whole thing is quite surreal. I cannot quite fathom it myself.” She is already working on a second thriller which she hopes to complete before the summer.
It is all a far cry from the day two-and-a-half years ago when she walked out of the Independent Newspapers head office in tears, saying she had been bullied by Sunday Independent news editor Willie Kealy, and his assistant, Jody Corcoran. These allegations were strenuously denied.
The newspaper eventually settled two cases when a tribunal found that Ms Allen, now 33, had been constructively dismissed. It awarded her IR£70,500, the largest award ever made by an employment tribunal. The case also created a precedent in employment law by including compensation for stress suffered as a result of her dismissal.
That stress even told on her attempts to get down to the serious business of writing a book. “I tried to write after the court case but I was not in the right frame of mind. Anyway, I wanted to put that side of my life behind me.”
She eventually began working on the book ten weeks after Elise was born at the end of March last year. “We were lucky. We just had six weeks of sleepless nights.”
Her journey from crime correspondent to sacked journalist to successful novelist reads like a Catherine Cookson plot. Indeed, there is more than a touch of Cookson about Ms Allen’s style of writing, according to her agent, London-based Darley Anderson. “It’s John Grisham meets Martina Cole meets Catherine Cookson,” he says of Last To Know, which is due to hit the bookshelves early next year.
According to her agent, London-based Darley Anderson, the book is destined to be a runaway success. “It’s got everything needed to become a huge bestseller, including a highly promotable author. It even made me cry and not a lot of books do that.” His enthusiasm is matched by Breda Purdue, head of the newly-established Hodder Headline Ireland who will handle the book here. “It will be absolutely huge,” she said yesterday.
The novel depicts the tawdry affairs of Irish crime bosses and their high- flying lives. Set over three decades, it spans the downright seedy to exclusive Dublin mansions and jet-set resorts.
Last to Know also involves court-room battles, underhand political practices and a police force battling a new breed of criminal.
In the course of her journalistic career Ms Allen, like her predecessor, the murdered crime correspondent Veronica Guerin, covered the exploits of Dublin’s gangland.
The size of the deal is more than enough to make her former colleagues in the Sunday Independent green with envy. But, she says, that is far from her mind. “I don’t bear any grudges against any of them,” she said yesterday. “I am extremely happy. I did not want to go back to mainstream journalism anyway.”
Neither is the book the only thing she is proud of producing lately. “It’s a bit like having a baby. That was something I always wanted to do as well.”
She and Cecilia Ahern join a long list of Irish authors who have secured major deals for their first books.
John Connolly was a freelance reporter with The Irish Times in 1998 when he won a stg£350,000 deal from his UK publishers for his first book, Every Dead Thing. A $1 million offer followed from his US publisher for the thriller.
In October 2000, Co Wexford teacher, Eoin Colfer, won the largest advance paid to an unknown writer in Britain for his children’s book, Artemis Fowl. Penguin secured rights to the book in a contract said to be worth stg£500,000, and a stg£350,000 film option was secured by a production company.
However, big book deals have their drawbacks. One Irish writer who bought a house on the strength of a large advance had to sell it when his book failed to sell and he was forced by publishers to pay the money back.
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