About Me and My Blog

Welcome to my Blog

Since finishing the final draft of my novella Orla's Code in 2011, I have been blogging about the writing and publishing process. This blog has seen me through submissions, rejections, getting a publishing deal, and then making the decision to self-publish. 

It took three years of weekend writing to complete Orla's Code; a story inspired by my own experiences as a woman working in I.T. and it has been very rewarding to hear both men and women tell me how much they can relate to the character Orla, and her environment. After a suitable break - just long enough to forget how grueling the writing process can be - I wrote a short novel, Beverly, also inspired by real-life and my experiences with stuttering. This time around, I shared the writing process through my blog, in posts like Character Building.

Along the way I have met many writers and people working in publishing whom I have found inspiring, informative or just damn interesting. So I decided to pick their brains in this series of interviews: Virtual Coffee Interviews.

I also write poems so occasionally blog when a new poem is published, like The March Issue of Tuck Magazine has Come but Not Gone. And sometimes I just like to rant about subjects that have nothing to do with writing, like The World's First Ada.

I grew up in Dublin, Ireland and an after-school computer course settled the looming question of what career I wanted. I took a writing course as a hobby some years later - at someone else's suggestion - and to my surprise I loved it. But writing became just a visiting hobby. Some company-moves and crazy experiences later, I began to realise I was sitting on material for a unique story and as a plot formed in my head, I finally caught the bug. London is home for now, working in the tech industry. When I am not working or writing I am enjoying the city and sometimes escaping it.

You can also find me on these sites:

My real name is Gráinne Shannon and my personal website is www.grainne-online.blogspot.com. I decided to use a pen name for my fiction writing for reasons explained here.

Comments and queries are welcome via the Contact page. Thanks for your interest. I hope you enjoy taking a look around.