Writer MacDonald ‘thrilled’ after signing major deal for two novels

Cork-born writer Siobhán MacDonald has just signed a major book deal for her two gripping psychological thrillers.

The world English rights deal was negotiated by Exhibit A Books for the acquisition of Twisted River, expected to be released in October, and Blue Pool, due out next year.

Siobhán’s agent, Isobel Dixon, who negotiated the deal, said her first novel, Blue Pool, had already been snapped up by a German publisher.

Twisted River, set in Manhattan and Limerick, is about a dream holiday house swap that goes horribly wrong. Blue Pool is about four students who spend a weekend in the Burren, Co Clare. One mysteriously disappears.

Siobhán, who is married with two grown-up sons and lives in Limerick with her husband Neil, is thrilled with the deal.

“To debut with such an innovative and dynamic publisher is an enormous thrill for me,” she said.

Exhibit A publishes books in the US and Britain in both paperback and e-book formats.

Siobhán, the eldest of six children, grew up in Bishopstown, Cork. The family later moved to Limerick where her mother, Catherine O’Donoghue, was a well-known speech and drama teacher.

Siobhán won a scholarship and was advised to study electronic engineering in Galway because it was the 1980s and it was a way to get a job, though she says she would have preferred English, history or politics and “writing was always my first love” .

She worked as a technical writer in Scotland for 10 years and France for one. She started writing her first novel in 2007 and has now written three.

“I like writing psychological thrillers because I like a book that holds my own interest and something that is a page turner.

“I try to write the books that I am interested in myself. I have written the first chapter of my next novel, which is also a psychological thriller, because people have lots of different sides to their character and I enjoy peeling back the layers.”