A book, a baby and a fairytale cottage

The key to my success is this: I am a child in an adult's body. When I was young, I used to camp out in my room in the smallest of towns in northwest Indiana and devour books. That was the beginning of my bibliophilism. Edgar Allan Poe and Jane Austen were the main culprits of my enslavement to reading, but little did I know that they would show up again when I began to put pen to paper.

There were long lasting side-effects from reading profusely, but the most recurring one was my overactive imagination. I discovered that I daydreamed my way through River Forest High School, and by the time I entered Smith College in Massachusetts, my mind was teeming with story lines that were hastily jotted down in the margins of my notes.

I couldn’t resist the idea of taking courses on classical, Shakespearean, and children’s literature where I absorbed strong characters, magical backgrounds and lyrical voices. The way lines flowed lured me in and captivated me, like Homer’s sirens or Grimms’ gingerbread house.

I saw blank pages as a canvas waiting for splashes of colour to make it an original piece of art. I realised that I could immortalise people who are dear to me and express emotion in a way that I couldn’t articulate any other way. To speak to a face is intimidating, but to have all the time in the world to delve into my head and find the perfect words is so liberating.

Discussing characters and complicated plots in my college courses really helped me to harvest my own characters and plots, providing my ideas with more depth than just surface descriptions. Instead of a girl with blond hair and blue eyes, my character became a girl with a past, a girl with a complicated relationship, a girl with intertwined emotions. This girl grew and developed into an unfortunate gypsy girl who, despite the tight-knit gypsy nation that she belonged to, just couldn’t find sanctuary due to her mother’s stigma.

As I struck gold with this character, it became clear to me that this girl's life was in my hands, and unfortunately for her, Poe was my influence. It was in this way that my book Snake the Gypsy slowly and gruellingly came into existence. Within my time of filling in line after line of Snake's life, my own life took a huge and exciting step. I married a man from Co Mayo after meeting him at NUI Galway where I studied during my third year of college.

With an ever persistent voice now in my ear, I had no other choice than the send in queries for publication. Luckily, and frustratingly, for me my husband has a knack for driving me to better myself, and eventually an email from Black Rose Writing returned with a contract to publish Snake the Gypsy .

My inner child was doing cartwheels and back flips. Literally. It was shortly after the wonderful news that I presented my husband Aidan with even greater news of my pregnancy. Isabella Maeve O’Boyle was brought into the world in the same year the book was, but Isabella channelled through me an emotion that I could never hope to translate into words.

Each day of her life is a new page of her story, and instead of writing it, I am merely a secondary character. I can only hope that her story is similar to Peter Pan because every child should believe that they can fly. Thankfully she is living in the right country for fairy tales and myths. In fact, our thatched cottage is straight out of a fairy tale with so much history and character living within the walls.

There is no limit to story ideas when I’m perched in a thatched cottage in the Irish countryside with an adoring puppy at my feet and a hot cuppa steaming on the table. In fact, the newest story has already wiggling it’s way out of my head with creepy crawlers, enemies and allies, and a war to end a war. I’m itching to find out which insect comes out victorious, but until then, I think I’ll make myself acquainted with the heroes of the story.

Snake the Gypsy by Mikal O'Boyle is published by Black Rose Writing, priced £15.95