BOOK PROMOTIONS INTERNATIONAL AUTHOR FEATURE
BRIAN O'HARE
Hello everyone! Recently we took some time out to chat with author Brian O'Hare about his life as a writer and retired college Director. Read on to learn more about his interesting career and his award winning books.
Q: Welcome to the L.O.V.E. blog Brian! Let's get started with getting our readers acquainted with you. We see that you hold several educational degrees, including a PhD.. What inspired you to seek a doctorate?
A: After I finished my Masters, I was talking to one of my lecturers. (I was a young teacher at the time studying part-time while I carried on with my job.) "I suppose you think you have learned it all now that you got a distinction in your Masters," she was saying. (This is not a boast; I say it to make a point.) My reply was, "The only thing I have learned over the past two years is that I know nothing about anything." "Oh, dear," she said. "The only thing that will satisfy that thirst is a PhD.."
It so happened that another lecturer from Northern Ireland and myself had been co-opted by the Department of Education to leave our jobs for a year to do research for them in colleges and training centres in Northern Ireland, the Midlands in England, North of France (Paris), south of France (Marseilles), Germany (Cologne) and in Holland (various cities ...small country). On my lecturer's advice, I was also able to use that research as a basis for my Ph.D. (During my year researching for the Dept. Ed., I discovered that colleges in particular were reluctant to take on board a new pedagogy that had been designed for the less able adolescents of post-school age.
Many books and circulars were sent to them, but their response in practical terms was abysmal. That lead me to write (after five years of study) a 100,000 word document entitled: Resistance to Change ...for which I was awarded a PhD..
Q: That's amazing! During your time at the college, did you ever work with students who were interest in writing fiction?
A: No, I didn't. That was never my area of expertise.
Q: Oh, okay. Well, you have done some extensive writing yourself, particularly in the Mystery and Police Procedural genres. Can readers find any elements of real cases in the novels that you've written?
A: No, apart from some sections in the the third volume of the Sheehan series (The Coven Murders) and the strange thing is that there is a massive, mass exorcism written in that book which is beyond belief. People will easily believe the rest of the fictional stuff in the book but they will probably scoff at that. Yet the entire scene, and its essential details, is based on one of many similar and factual experiences that a friend of mine (about whom I wrote a book: The Miracle Ship) has experienced, many times and almost word for word. He was the basis for a major character in the book.
Q: Wow! What an honor for your friend to be featured in one of your books. Can you tell us about any awards that you've won as an author?
A. I originally wrote academic books, biographies and a memoir. My first foray into fiction was an Irish Contemporary novel called Fallen Men which won an IDB Award in 2013 and Top Medallist honours for Contemporary Fiction in the New Apple 2015 Summer Awards.
The Miracle Ship won New Apple Top Medallist winner (Religious Non-fiction category), 2014 Awards
The Doom Murders, a detective story set in Belfast and the opening novel of the Inspector Sheehan Series, won an IDB Award, 2014, a New Apple Award 2014 (Mystery Category), and a bronze medal in the Readers Favourite 2015 Awards.
The second novel in the Sheehan Series, The 11:05 Murders, won the New Apple Outright Medal Honours Award for excellence in Crime Fiction and also a Pinnacle Excellence Award in 2016.
(The Coven Murders, third in the series, has only just been published, {end-Feb 2018] so no awards yet.)
Q: Congratulations on all of the awards! That's quite a list of accomplishments. Now that they know a little more about you, how can readers keep in touch with you or get to know more about your books?
A: The following sites contain info and my books (and a bit about me):
My website: http://brianohareauthor.blogspot.co.uk/
My Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/brian.ohare.96
My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/brianohare26?lang=en
and also at my publishers: http://www.crimsoncloakpublishing.com/visit-our-shop.html
Thank you author Brian O'Hare for taking the time to share with our readers and THANK YOU READERS for taking to time to learn more about our featured author! Your shares and comments are welcome.
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