A first novel, a book deal... and love

A GLAMOROUS divorcee has told how she found love while writing her very first novel for a book competition.

Siobhán McKenna landed a three-book deal with Poolbeg Press publishers after she penned her first novel, The Lingerie Designer.

In October of last year, TV3’s The Morning Show with Sybil and Martin ran a Write a Bestseller Competition in search of an unpublished author with an original piece of work.

After reading through the hundreds of submitted manuscripts, the judges finally decided on The Lingerie Designer as the winning book in February.

The book hit the shelves this week and Dublin-based Ms McKenna has revealed how her manuscript brought her love as well as a book deal.

“I wrote a couple of situations and I wrote a character and then ended up meeting the character in real life and I had to rewrite a little bit of the book so that it wouldn’t reflect that person,” Ms McKenna said.

“I loved writing it and, because it was inspired by a true story, I hope it will open its readers to the positive opportunities synchronicity can bring to their own lives.

“I was writing about somebody who had a coffee/wine bar and then he appeared and he is my other half now.”

Now happy with her Italian partner, Graziano, of the last two years, Ms McKenna is a big believer in the role fate plays in our lives.

“The book is actually inspired by a true story so some of the synchron-icities are coincidences in it that may seem they couldn’t happen but they actually did,” she exclaims.

A certified instructor of Deepak Chopra’s lifestyle programme, she credits positive thinking with helping her land the book deal after she attended a seminar about following your dreams just two weeks before entering The Morning Show’s competition.

Describing her book, Ms McKenna, who is the cousin of renowned actress Siobhán McKenna, said: “The Lingerie Designer gives readers an inside look at the clothing trade, as most people will never have seen it before.

“It addresses topical issues such as ethical trading, second chances, reinventing ourselves in the face of adversity and age-difference relation-ships,” she reveals.

“The story tells of these real-life situations in a humorous and enter-taining way. The final scenes see an uplifting twist, leaving the reader with the opinion: the universe really can be our oyster, if we want it to be.”