Late sittings pay off for Taoiseach's daughter

The Taoiseach's daughter says she has secured a $1 million deal with the American publisher Hyperion for a book that isn't even finished.

Ms Cecilia Ahern, daughter of the Taoiseach and Ms Miriam Ahern, got news of the deal on Thursday night, just days after she secured a six-figure sum for a two-book deal with British publisher Harper Collins.

Yesterday the 21-year-old journalism graduate said the week's events were "unbelievable" .

She told Pat Kenny on RTÉ: "I haven't slept, I haven't eaten, I can't believe it."

She finished her journalism degree in Griffith College last year and decided to work on her book PS, I Love You. It centres on a woman whose husband dies and leaves her a list of things to do every month.

Ms Ahern paid tribute to her mother, who had encouraged her to write and did not question her irregular working hours. She starts to write at about 11 p.m. and finishes at about 7.30 a.m.

"My mam was very supportive. She was saying, just concentrate on this and work afterwards."

It was also her mother who encouraged her to seek an agent. She contacted a publicist friend who put Cecilia in touch with her agent, Ms Marianne Gunne O'Connor.

The agent sent the first 10 chapters to publishers, and Harper Collins was the first to sign up with a reported €150,000 two-book deal.

Hyperion has also agreed a two-book contract. The US publisher is a division of Disney and publishes general-interest fiction and non-fiction books for adults.

In the 1990s it published A Monk Swimming, the memoirs of Limerick man, Mr Malachy McCourt, and will publish a book by the Sex and the City author, Candace Bushnell, later this year.

Ms Ahern is now trying to finish the book which will be on the shelves in the spring. "I have the last line in my head. It's just a matter of writing it," she said.

Asked if people would think she only got the deal because her father was the Taoiseach, she said: "I hope not. I don't believe it's so anyway."

Mr Ahern's name wouldn't "cut any ice" in the US, she said, "especially not with that amount of money. So it's given me a lot of confidence in my writing."

She joins a long list of Irish authors who secured major deals for their first books.

John Connolly was a freelance reporter with The Irish Times in 1998 when he won a £350,000 deal from his UK publishers for his first book, Every Dead Thing. A $1 million offer followed from his US publisher for the thriller.

In October 2000 a Co Wexford schoolteacher, Mr Eoin Colfer, won the largest advance paid to an unknown writer in Britain for his children's book, Artemis Fowl.

Penguin secured rights to the book in a contract said to be worth £500,000, and a £350,000 film option was secured by a production company.