About Colm
Colm Herron's first writing career began when he was seven. At that time he wrote stories about vampires and two-headed gravediggers and stiched them together on his big sister’s sewing machine before selling them to classmates at a penny apiece. Three years later he was telling cliffhangers to the denizens of the local gambling and snooker hall. Colm’s abiding memory is that these big wasters seemed to enjoy this weekly break from misspending their lives.
When he was fourteen he had a play on BBC Children’s Hour and at twenty-two he brought his short stories to Brian Friel, an emerging playwright. Friel told him, “This stuff’s better than what I was doing at your age. Keep it up.”
But Colm came away from these meetings unimpressed and remembers thinking, “This guy’s going nowhere. I don’t know why I came to him at all.”
Result: Colm gave up writing and decided to live instead. Meanwhile Brian Friel took off and while his plays were showing worldwide for the next thirty years and more, a story was kicking and turning in Colm’s head. That story became a novel and after some years thought he called it For I Have Sinned, a great title which drew remarkable reviews on both sides of the Irish sea.
Encouraged by these, Colm decided to reach for a place away way on past the sky and tell about the remarkable events that took place on the day that James Joyce came back from the dead. Randy as a goat and raring to write after many years of deprivation, James decides among other things to pen a novel that’s bang up-to-date, sexy, outrageous and accessible to one and all – saints, scholars and those in search of a good horny read. It’s a book that’s already in line to win the inaugural Good Sex Award at a ceremony to be held in Maynooth College, the gold phallic statuette to be presented, rumour has it, by the Catholic Primate himself.
Hello and welcome
Now listen. I'm giving Ireland one last chance. James Joyce got out to hell. So did Edna O'Brien. All the ones with talent got out, didn't they? I mean, real talent. Remember Graham Linehan? No? He's the guy that co-wrote Father Ted and Black Books and now writes The I.T. Crowd. He was told to get lost when he was here. Christ got a better welcome from the Pharisees. So he emigrated. Graham. If Christ had emigrated where would we be now? Good question but irrelevant. But Graham now, if Graham had stayed he'd probably be out busking or begging at this very moment and we'd be walking our guilt off as we brushed past him on O'Connell Bridge or somewhere.
They're all gone. Sometimes it seems that the only ones left are seven hundred and fifty thousand Chick Lit writers, a crooked government, mafia bankers, a Catholic hierarchy that's crumbling before its own uncomprehending eyes and an angry despairing populace that doesn't know whether to curse or cry.
THE EARLY INFLUENCES
The first time I fell in love was in Brooke Park library when I was eleven. She was ten and her name was Josephine and she had so many freckles on her face that she was a haze of delight. It didn’t take long for me to work out that she changed her books once a fortnight, always on a Wednesday and always between half four and five. I used to arrive early just in case, hoping she’d do the same and I’d get more of her. But she never did and it was during that twenty minutes of earliness one day that I discovered William Brown. William was the central character in the Just William books by Richmal Crompton and he made me forget my shyness and my sadness by making me laugh out loud. Laughing out loud in Brooke Park library was like yodelling in the chapel coming up to the Consecration but I just couldn’t help it. William had a gang which didn’t include girls because, well, just because. Yet there was one girl that he couldn’t shake off. Violet Elizabeth Bott was the lisping spoilt daughter of the local nouveau riche millionaire and it was Violet’s company that William was forced to endure to prevent her carrying out her threat "I'll thcream and thcream 'till I'm thick." The end of my affair came one Wednesday at the foot of page fifteen of William and the Outlaws. I looked up for some reason and realised that Josephine had come and gone. Or maybe she hadn’t even been. I turned to page sixteen and stifled a snigger.
During the next few years I moved from William to westerns. The greatest of these was by a writer called Jack Schaefer. It’s called Shane and it tells the story of a mysterious gunman who is a combination of Jesus Christ, Che Guevara and Clint Eastwood. What? You’ve read it too and you don’t agree? You feeling lucky?
Just one request before I go. Don’t read a library book when you’re in the toilet, right? Not hygienic. Read it anywhere else – bus, train, plane, wherever – but keep it out of the toilet. The very thought drives my obsessive compulsive disorder to distraction. I’m a Quaker at heart but there’s one cinema murder that I approve of. Remember John Travolta’s character in Pulp Fiction who always took his book to the can with him when he was doing his number two? And never washed his hands after? And Bruce Willis’s character who shot him between the eyes just as he came out of the toilet for the last time? Always remember that.
P.S. Saw Josephine the other day with her grandchildren. All her freckles are gone and she’s a sight. Lucky escape there.
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