Octocon took place just a few weeks ago. We were back in person for the first time in three years and in Croke Park too. I had a really fun weekend despite all the tiredness I had been feeling from changing jobs just a few weeks before.

Over the weekend I got to talk about what it meant to write about non-human societies, and how we make collaborative worlds through role playing games, and memorably to pitch a company (Three Goblins in a Trenchcoat) to the venture capitalists of Mars!! It was also fun to learn how to pick locks and generally interact with other humans! And one of my favourite things is getting some of the individual works of art and craft in the trade hall. And also books… so many more books

The only disappointment was not getting the stuff with book 2 done in time for a launch at the con.

I had only volunteer in the last few months coming up to the con, mainly because of just not having the time, but this year I’m starting the cycle as secretary to the committee - I look forward to being the iron fist behind the bureaucracy (when I can remember).

You can already sign up for Octocon 2023 here.

I’ve already mentioned how the pandemic tanked my reading habit, and I’m slow to chastise myself for anything like that these days. I’ve been letting it come back in its own time. This weekend I’ve come back to it with a vengeance, reading Fire and Blood - George RR Martin’s history of the Targaryens thats the basis for the new House of the Dragon show.

I’m not going to rehash all the opinions on Game of Thrones. I really liked the books (mostly) and was disappointed with the end of the TV show, and further disappointed by the continual wait for the latest book in A Song of Ice and Fire. On the other hand, I really don’t think I could personally bring myself to continue a book series I started writing in the 90s so honestly, George, I get it! Last weekend I watched the first episode of House of the Dragon and missed having my smug bookreader knowledge, so I got myself a paperback and I’ve been reading it all weekend.

My superpower, or possibly superflaw, is that when I’m reading I’m a speedy and persistent reader. So the only reason I haven’t already finished it, is I had to do some pre-scheduled social interaction yesterday. I think I’m at about page 500 of 700 or so, so I expect to finish in the next few days.

Aside from wanting to be ahead of the show, there’s another urgency, because another fantasy juggernaut is about to land. The Rings of Power tv show starts next week and dammit if that isn’t going to push me to want to reread all of the Tolkien.

It’s not all sword and sorcery though, in recent weeks I’ve really loved Sandman as well…. here’s where I admit the other side of my superflaw: I can’t really read comics. I think it’s a stage I skipped in my reading development and so comics confuse the hell out of me. I persisted through a few of the classics my friends told me I’d love, but I just don’t get the enjoyment… and definitely part of it is the speed. I’ve been told to let it wash over me, and my brain is roaring “we could have read 20 pages in this time”. Not the world’s greatest tragedy, of course, but I really enjoyed Gaiman’s novels and I wanted to read this masterpiece that was Sandman. I even asked my friend to show me how to read comics, as I thought my confusion was based on not knowing whether to look at the pictures or read the words first. The question that broke me was when I asked “is it always left to right, top to bottom?” and she said “not always, sometimes it’s the opposite, or a spiral”. And that is when I gave up trying to read comics!

The netflix show presents a great opportunity for me to engage with the material. I loved the show and I got totally sucked into it. My distracted brain just settled right into it. And episode 11 made me smug that I had written 2 whole books, without having to kidnap anyone! Of course I asked my friend where it differs and we’ve had some great chats about it…. and you know, that itch is still there, I still want to be a smug book reader, so maybe I’ll go and get a complete set and sit with it until my brain adjusts.

Although I think it’s likely I’ll be just over here reading Tolkien until at least Christmas!

I haven’t really used my mailing list much. Mainly because I’m personally sick of the interminable spamming I get when I sign up to something. I want to know when there’s news, not have a daily intrusion on my already overfull inbox.

The worst offender I had recently had been sending me daily emails and then there was one with the subject line “I’m so sorry…” and the text was “…that you’re about to miss out on this special offer!”. That earned them an unsubscribe!!

So here’s my promise: I will not spam you with frequent lifestyle tips, provocative questions, or special offers! Even if you want them!! I expect to send out emails about the next book release date and details of the launch and that’s about it.

You can sign up here.

And if you don’t sign up, you can probably still find out that information here, or from twitter.

In solidarity with people with overfull inboxes everywhere!

Having started some intense scribbling in my notebook for book 3, I decided to maybe reopen the draft and start to write some stuff in - this usually takes a bit of time to built up steam, and the draft starts to take shape.

Holy hell batman! I opened the draft document not really sure when I’d last opened it… and there’s a date at the top: January 2020. January 2020, remember that?

The year didn’t start well for me… I got a huge steam burn on my arm from a new kettle and me not being fully awake as I reached over it, yes over it, to get a tea bag (it has since been moved)… and as we all know it got worse from there!!

I didn’t write a novel in lockdown… actually my work became super busy. I work in research and even though I’ve never worked in virology or public health there was a huge pull of researchers from various disciplines working together. Research calls were coming thick and fast in those early days and I got stuck into the research development work around that. Its probably just as well that I was busy because in our first lockdown I spent nearly 100 days just me and the dog - I could only bring myself to count it recently.

Fiction writing is something I really enjoy, and I write when I want to. I probably do write something every day but mostly it’s not fiction. I write fiction when I have the headspace, and can really enjoy it. The full draft of book 2 was completed in the before times. Even the edits have taken extra long mainly for reasons to do with me and my headspace!

Hopefully there’ll be a bit of a return to headspace - the sign is the exploratory scribblings. I’m optimistic that I might get some flow back to… Writing can be tough but I really love it. I enjoy the flow of the words, thinking about the perspectives of characters. Sometimes I feel absolutely amazing if I write a good sentence, or sentiment. It’s like a runner’s high, except without all the sweating!

Octocon, the Irish Science Fiction Convention, is coming in just a few months.

I think a lot of people are looking forward to an in person convention this year (although there’s going to be lots online as well. One thing that really stands out to me is that its supported by UNESCO City of Literature. Science Fiction and Fantasy Fiction are often left out of conversations on literature. Like any genre, there are all different types of SFF fiction, and literary fiction is definitely in there, although not often recognised.

Octocon is a great place to explore literary and other themes in SFF. I’ve really enjoyed many of the panels and events. I even chaired a panel in 2019 which was like group comedy. It was at the end of the day and the panelists all seemed to let loose with their most hilarious takes, and the biggest challenge to my moderation was stopping laughing long enough to ask questions!

The organisers of Octocon are working to make an inclusive con so there’ll still be lots of online activities, and the covid precautions are more stringent than I’ve seen in a long time. I’m hopeful that it will be an eventful convention only in good ways.

As you may have guessed, I plan to be there. I’ll update more as programme stuff comes out.

Register here!

This month I’ve finally had a break from my very busy job, and had some time to get back into fiction land! This month I’ve been having fun drawing my characters and exploring the idea of Bookstagram.

I’m always impressed by how people visually represent books on social media, so I’m giving that a try. Like most fantasy writers there’s lots of nerd stuff around my house so I’ve been gathering them together and working on the visuals… of course it resulted in me organising a lego orc tea party. I’ll add some of them to the gallery as I go.

I’m also in the pre writing stage for book three, which mostly involved scribbling in a new shiny notebook…. the quality of the paper helps with the ideas… or something!!

You can find me on instagram and twitter @mairebro for the ongoing saga of me trying to take nice pictures of my books!!

For now…. for now, I’m still on twitter https://twitter.com/MaireBro . I’ve liked Twitter from the start. In fact I knew about it quite early but didn’t allow myself to join until 2011 because I was trying to finish my thesis, and I knew I’d find it a delightful distraction. Perhaps unusually I like to follow people with low numbers of followers (like me!)* as well as some big names and institutions.

It used to be fun and then it became a hellsite and I hung on in there. There’s book stuff and some lovely connections and people who make terrible jokes. I also follow some people who give me a different perspectives, people from marginalised groups or people who have lives so profoundly different to mine that our paths would likely never cross. I’m not sure what’s happening next, so we’ll see.

I still nominally have a facebook account, but I haven’t been on facebook in about a year, and even then when I checked it for the first time in months I found it unusable and unrecognisable.

I’m on Instagram as well https://www.instagram.com/mairebro. That’s mostly pictures of Ted and of me wearing the same dress for 100 days** I have found that their ads have taken an aggressive turn recently and so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stay on IG.

Back in the day I was a blogger - I had one for years… so maybe I’ll blog more, or shout my random thoughts and terrible jokes out the window instead of social media. If you want to be kept in the loop you can sign up to my mailing list https://www.mairebrophy.com/follow. I use it sparingly, but I will announce book releases etc through it. If you want to contact me, you can also do it here https://www.mairebrophy.com/contact … or you can shout your thoughts out your own window!

Book 2 is still coming… I’m actually finishing the last read through of the first edits today - life got in the way for a few months there!

*There’s another twitter account @MaireBrophy, which is also me, but its my work stuff about academia and research

** that should probably be it’s own blogpost

As I mentioned in my last post, Book 2 is in the prepublishing process now… so what can you expect?

The second book is set in the same world as the first book, but it would also be possible to jump in at this point too if you haven’t read the first one (but obvs go and read the first one!). Book 2 has some new exciting features, including Characters With Names and Moar Dialogue.

I really enjoyed writing this book, even though it took longer than the first one. A lot of people told me they felt for the main character in the first book in spite of everything. The characters in this new book might deserve that empathy more and I’m excited for you all to meet them!

When writing the first book I was thinking about the nature of evil and how it can be so mundane, and how we cope with trauma and memory. This time I was thinking about what is left behind, what can you build when you don’t know what to build, and different types of friendship and kinship and found family.

More to come…

After the World is currently on Netgalley, so if you’re a member you can read and review it here!

It’s really only since publishing my own book that I understand the importance of reviews, especially for self-published and indie published books like After the World. Books published by traditional funders have access to marketing on a totally different scale (including exclusive access to many book awards). Self and indie published books rely much more on the internet equivalent of word of mouth, and slow growth of readers over time.

In a way it’s wonderful, as a reader I love the wider variety of books and stories available to me. But even as a reader it’s hard to find the next book I would like to read. It might be too much to expect everyone (even me!) to review every book we read, but I try to make an extra effort to review books from self published and independently published books. So that’s my appeal to you, to get those reviews up on Amazon, goodreads, local lamp posts, and any other place that makes sense!

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I updated here. I sent the draft of book 2 to my publisher in February 2020 (I think) and then, of course, all hell broke loose. What can I say at this point that hasn’t been said a million times. On the one hand my natural introversion made some aspects of the pandemic ok. Getting a dog the year before turned out to be a master stroke. Young Teddy made all the difference, particularly in that first lockdown where I spent about 80 days entirely by myself.

But the main point I want to make here is that book 2 is not a product of the pandemic. I didn’t take the opportunity of the very stressful, and yet somehow very boring, once in a century disaster to write a book. Although I will confess that early on I did bake a good bit of bread! Mostly I’ve found it impossible to write. I’ve barely been able to read. I have read a total of 2 books since March 2020, which I think is a lifetime low for me since I read my first book at age 6*.

My job also got very busy - I work in research, and many of the solutions for the things we have been facing have come from the rapid response and collaboration in research. And then I changed jobs right in the middle of all this too. And somehow managed to get even busier!

But back to book 2, we’re getting back on track of the pre-publication process, which always tends to be very slow, but it will eventually get out there. There are exciting things to come!

The draft of book 3 is still just a few pages and an inexpertly drawn map right now.

*Actual distractions I have used include: destroying a shrub, removing a lot of questionable wallpaper, building a lego city, playing with my dog, watching/rewatching a continuous rotation of sitcoms and taskmaster

It just took a year but I’ve finally finished the first draft of my sequel to After the World. The draft began when I was taking a winter break in France last year. I had a month off last December and I made a great start into the draft, but this year has been extremely busy for me personally and professionally and so the subsequent writing periods were pretty patchy as I tried to carve out time.

I had it in my head to get the draft done by May, a year from the release date of After the World, but I slid past that and then getting my puppy Teddy in the summer (which any of you who are following me on instagram will have seen) was brilliant but time consuming. So when it came to November it seemed like NaNoWriMo was a good opportunity to drive through the draft to the end.

As you can imagine I’m totally delighted to have finished the draft and it’s off to my proof reader and the people who read my raw(ish) work. I’m trying to give my head a break from thinking about it so I can be fresh when I come back to the draft.

One stand out difference between this point on After the World is that I have an idea for the next book in the series, but I’m giving myself a little writing break before I start on that because I still have quite a lot of books sitting in my to be read pile.

Because of the imprint of Worldcon in Dublin in August, this year the Irish National Science Fiction Convention, Octocon, is just going to be a one day affair. It’s on the 13th October, and the programme has just been released and it looks like a fun time.

I’m going to be there on two panels.

The first is Selling Your First Story - From Pitch to Publishing as a panellist. We’re talking about letting your work out in the world for the first time. That’s at 12.

Later in the day I’ll be moderating a panel on What Can Heroes Get Away With? I’m really looking forward to that panel discussion.

All around that are a nice selection of fun panels and workshops. I’m planning to hit all the ones were you make things! Hope to see you there!

You can find the full Octocon schedule here.

World con is the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the world. And this year it’s in Dublin.

I’m so excited that I can announce that I’m part of the line up. It’s a real blend of my writing and professional life. Science and technology are a big part of the programme, alongside literature and media, and there’s even an academic programme running in parallel. While I’m mostly talking about things related to books and writing, I get to moderate a panel on AI with one of my colleagues from the ADAPT centre.

My book will be available for sale at the Books Go Social desk and I’m even down for an autographing session! The schedule is below. I hope to see you there!

Introduction to Irish SFF

15 Aug 2019, Thursday 14:00 - 14:50, Wicklow Hall-1 (CCD)

This panel is the ideal starting place for anyone unfamiliar with Irish SFF. There will be a brief overview of the genre as a whole and how it relates to Irish culture and history, as well as reading recommendations. Later in the convention there will be panels covering the topic in more detail from a variety of viewpoints.

Nick Larter (M), Máire Brophy, Jack Fennell, Ruth Frances Long

Does an AI need a body?

15 Aug 2019, Thursday 20:00 - 20:50, Liffey Hall-2 (CCD)

Does an AI need a body, or do we need to see an AI in a body to recognise it is ‘alive’ or sentient? Why are we so obsessed with assigning gender, or gender characteristics, to an entity that is basically a software spark in a hardware system that doesn’t rely upon organic reproductive systems?

Máire Brophy (M), Dave Lewis Maquel A. Jacob, Manny Frishberg

Well-meaning vs ‘plain dealing’ villains

19 Aug 2019, Monday 12:00 - 12:50, Wicklow Room-1 (CCD)

Villains come in many different guises. Characters like Marvel’s Thanos do terrible things for what they believe to be good reasons, whereas The Other Mother from Coraline is alien and terrifying. Do certain genres lend themselves to different types of villainy? Are villainous women held to a different standard than their male counterparts?

Russell Blackford (M), Máire Brophy, Lauren Roy, Paul Anthony Shortt (

Autographs: Monday at 10:00

19 Aug 2019, Monday 10:00 - 10:50, Level 4 Foyer (CCD)

This week we released the last ever Irish Writers Podcast. You can find it here. After a raft of interview episodes it was fun to finish on one of our rambling chats. The podcast will only hold a special place in our hearts, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to get together for recordings, as our lives all diverge in different ways. It’s been a really great experience.

The WIP that i began in France is continuing nicely and it looks like it will be longer than the first book. I’m in the meat of it now and it’s a lot of fun to write. I’m spending a lot of time on goblins at the moment, so throughout my notes are little drawings and maps as I try to figure out where everything is. I drew a map for the last book as well. It isn’t in the book because the reader doesn’t need it, but as a writer I want to be consistent in my descriptions. That map has been long lost in the course of several house moves, but at least all these new maps are in the same notebook!

Little sketch of a goblin in my notebook.

This year I launched a book. Hooray! Most of After the World was actually written in 2015, so you’d think by now I’d have a follow up! You and many other people! I’ve been told it’s the best thing you can do to sell your book, write another one. I’d love to say I have the next one lined up and ready to go, but alas and alack, this is not the case.

There’s lots of reasons, of course, but they all have a common thread - time. So I am delighted to be off work for the next month, and finally getting time to sit down and write my next book. It’s been on my mind, and I have made lots of furtive scribbles in a very special notebook. As a affirmed pantser, these scribbles don’t take form until I get a run at it.

I’m away this week in a little French town all by myself, like some sort of proper writer (or the plot of Love Actually!), to get a proper start on my next book. I did my edits for After the World here too last year, so I think it has good vibes. I have also learned that the key to never feeling lonely while travelling by yourself, is to have something you’re avoiding doing. I’m interested to see how my work displacement activity will manifest itself this week. I hope to go for lots of walks by the sea, and eat cake! The suffering us writers go through for our art, unimaginable!

I’m over on Women Writers, Women’s Books talking about my writing life, and the connections between my academic background, podcasting and fiction writing.

I’m a somewhat self-hating twitter user. I don’t like what it’s become but somehow I can’t quit. Or find a good replacement. I decided to finally join instagram, because I’m before a trend or after a trend, but never actually on trend!

You can find me here. So far so good. I’m trying to remember back to my early days on twitter when looking for people to follow. In general I’m not wild about following celebrities (not that I don’t follow a few) but the best enjoyment I’ve got out of twitter over the years was finding other people like me to follow - people with similar lives or interests, or just people who were interesting in every day kind of ways.

It’s going to take me awhile to find that balance on instagram. but so far I’m enjoying the pretty pictures.

For the moment it’ll be random things I see, but I expect in the next year to increase my cake and dog content!

I got a lovely email this morning from Emer G. Emer told me she's left a copy of After the World in the library of the Queen Mary 2. So if you're travelling the high seas, you might find something interesting to read! I wonder how many miles it will travel!

The launch event for After the World is done, and I'm still processing! For me it went by in a blur. I've no idea how many people came, but I know the room was packed, and we sold out of copies. Author Ruth Long introduced the book speaking beautifully about empathy and engaging with the other, and how fiction demands that of us. 

When you write a book, you're mostly in a little cocoon with it. A few people might read it but they're with you on the journey so you. It's a strange thing to see it through someone else's eyes, especially when they've only seen the end product. And certainly choosing to write in the first person pushes empathy on the reader - which of course they are free to reject! In an odd way it pushes empathy on the writer too. Trying to work out what's behind someone's eyes, even if they're someone you invented, can't help but have an affect on you. No wonder authors tend to like our characters even when we don't mean to!

Last Friday I featured in a Q&A on From First Page to Last.

Janet posed me some interesting questions in this one - this is the first interview where I talk about how academic writing relates to fiction writing,