Carina McNally

[00:00:00] Carina McNally: I feel that we’re not detached from our history at all. I think we’re very, very much a product of it, even in the language we speak in today, English, even the way we live our lives daily with our ancient belief systems. You don’t realise how much everything pervades our life today. So I do feel we’re walking through our ancestors’ path. And I do feel if you want to become connected to it, you can.

[00:00:24] Carina McNally: I found that very shocking. I didn’t write—I wrote about the 1600s in the novel, but I think I was always keeping in mind this wasn’t new for these people. There were generations of trauma already there. So I hope that the depth of that understanding is coming out in the book.

[00:00:42] Carina McNally: I mean, if you read this book, I’m sure you’ll relate to somebody in there that’s had a bad day.

[00:00:48] Geraldine Hennessy: Exactly. [Laughter]

[00:00:49] Carina McNally: Or a good day. They put days in there too.

[00:00:55] Geraldine Hennessy: Today, I welcome writer Carina McNally to the Cork Creative Podcast. Carina, you’re very welcome.

[00:01:03] Carina McNally: Thank you so much, Geraldine, for having me on. Excited.

[00:01:07] Geraldine Hennessy: First off, let’s get back to your roots. We often hear that West Cork is a thin place where the past feels very present. Was there a specific story or local legend from your childhood that first made you want to be a storyteller?

[00:01:23] Carina McNally: I grew up in a house with a lot of books. I suppose my mum was a big reader. Yeah, we were always surrounded by stories and older people coming into the house and telling stories and ghost stories and all that. Really, when you grow up—I grew up in a remote area in the west of Ireland, where I used to live—there are stories in the landscape.

[00:01:42] Carina McNally: Every field, where I live now, there’s a little field and it’s a little yard. In front of my house, it’s called Leath-fhearann Eoghain. I don’t know who Owen is. Nobody knows who Owen is. He probably lived hundreds of years ago, but we know that somebody called Owen used to sow a field of small oats in there because that’s what a Leath-fhearann is.

[00:02:01] Carina McNally: Every little name place has a little story. Of course, we grew up here with the story of the Cailleach, the bull, the cow, and the calf, and Dursey Island. I grew up—I wrote a play about a magical blacksmith called the Gaibhlín Gabha, which is reputed to have come from Crow Head again out here. So yeah, just stories out of every rock.

[00:02:21] Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:21] Carina McNally: And it’s kind of seeped in my little brain and came out, coming out.

[00:02:26] Geraldine Hennessy: What drew you specifically to historical fiction for your debut?

[00:02:31] Carina McNally: Well, I’ve always loved history. It was my favourite subject in school. I always loved it. I read a lot, like I’d have read a lot of books. I started reading really about women in history. One part, like my first qualification when I left school was in media, a City & Guilds in media and journalism, and I’d always been writing, but I went off and did other qualifications and different jobs. But I suppose I’d always had a hand in the writing.

[00:02:56] Carina McNally: But I suppose about 15 years ago, and part of that kind of writing things I was doing, I was reviewing books and I was reviewing a lot for Chronos. They’re an English imprint of Inkwell Publishing in the UK, and they write primarily about women in non-fiction; small books about women in British history primarily. And I was reviewing all these books, a lot of them like Stuart women and all that. And I was just kind of thinking, God, what about all the Irish women in history?

[00:03:23] Carina McNally: And then the lady that runs that, one of the editors, Sarah Beth Watkins, who apparently lives in Wexford, she asked me would I come up with a new story on Gráinne Mhaol for her imprint? And like, I was going through the years and I was wanting to do it on Gráinne Mhaol. And anyway, basically this character, Mithin, came to my mind. Here she is, an artist’s representation of her. I didn’t draw it. And she just flew out and she just came and I just started writing about her. And she’s about 100 years after Gráinne Mhaol.

[00:03:55] Carina McNally: But there was enough written about Gráinne Mhaol. But I had a voice in my head saying, what about all the women in Irish history that nobody’s written about? And, you know, all the men were killed in the wars in the 1500s and the martial law, the 1600s and all the terrible things. We lost, I suppose, nearly half our population in 100 years, really. So I was just thinking about the women that weren’t written about. And this character spoke to my mind. And now she’s out in the wild.

[00:04:20] Geraldine Hennessy: So you’ve written for Cyphers in a woman’s way. How does your approach change when writing a short story versus a full novel?

[00:04:28] Carina McNally: You know, I was writing short stories a good few years ago. I haven’t actually written a short story in ages. I think the short story is a kind of an art form that you have to be very clued into. When you’re writing short stories, obviously, I’m sure I could go back and write one, but it would take me a while. It’s very concise. In a way, I think when you’re writing and you’re concentrating on something, you’re kind of sucked up in the moment. So in that way, it’s different.

[00:04:53] Carina McNally: Of course, the difference with the novel is like I’ve never really had an editor to help me with a novel or with a short story. It was there. The novel is very different. I mean, you can write all you want. You write the story down. But it’s not a solo project. It’s like—when I had my story written, I was probably on the fifth or sixth draft, or seventh or eighth, even. And then I had a developmental editor read it for me and say, look, chapter 10 is not great. There’s nothing there. They won’t write anything for you, but you need more input into a novel. Whereas a short story, I think you’re better off just to have a style and do it on your own.

[00:05:32] Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah, perfect. Okay, as a historian and a guide on the Beara Peninsula, you literally walk through history every day. How does that connection to the landscape help you see the scenes in your book?

[00:05:45] Carina McNally: I suppose one of my favourite historical walking tours I do is on Dursey Island. And no matter how many times I go there, the different people I bring there, it’s really interesting because everyone has their own interest or their own specific interest in different parts of Irish history. Because when you go to a place like Dursey, and it’s probably like many islands, you know, you have all the prehistory, the name places named for our pre-Christian gods, then you have all the Viking history. Viking is a Norse name.

[00:06:11] Carina McNally: Then you have, we’ll say, the Elizabethan Wars. You have the famine, the War of Independence, like early Christianity, the Skelligs. Like you have all these whole layers of history and you’re actually—you can understand the layers of history when you’re basing it in one place and it becomes very real.

[00:06:31] Carina McNally: So I feel that we’re not detached from our history at all. I think we’re very, very much a product of it, even in the language we speak in today, English, even the way we live our lives daily with our ancient belief systems. You don’t realise how much everything pervades our life today. So I do feel we’re walking through our ancestors’ path. And I do feel if you want to become connected to it, you can.

[00:06:54] Geraldine Hennessy: Very good. And what was the most surprising or unexpected thing you uncovered during your research for the novel?

[00:07:02] Carina McNally: When I started researching the novel first, I didn’t know I was researching it. I was researching Gráinne Mhaol. And I never really read or learned much about the 1500s in Ireland. I was actually shocked at the trauma that the people suffered. The amount of martial law, just the slaughter. The monasteries, the destruction of our culture. I found that very shocking. I didn’t write—I wrote about the 1600s in the novel. But I think I was always keeping in mind this wasn’t new for these people. There were generations of trauma already there. So I hope that the depth of that understanding is coming out in the book.

[00:07:39] Carina McNally: I suppose the level of trauma people suffered in those times. I actually didn’t—I don’t want it to be a depressing book because I think there’s a lot of healing in the book myself, but it was about three days after the book was launched. It was in the shops and everything. And I was driving my car home to the supermarket at Castletownbere. And I actually felt tearful and I didn’t know why. I was thinking about the character because she’s out there now. I didn’t actually realise how much trauma she had lived through.

[00:08:14] Carina McNally: I think I was writing the trauma and living it with her. And now that she’s out there, it’s like kind of a release. But I didn’t write it as that. It’s not a depressing book because she finds healing. But yeah, I think just the trauma. I was feeling that trauma myself. I just can’t understand how those people were still here.

[00:08:25] Geraldine Hennessy: I know. It’s quite unbelievable, isn’t it?

[00:08:28] Geraldine Hennessy: Yeah. And speaking about trauma, like in your role as a part-time social care worker, you’re often meeting people at very pivotal or raw moments. How has that proximity to real-life vulnerability shaped the way you build the soul of your characters?

[00:08:46] Carina McNally: You know, I haven’t actually thought about that. It’s quite an interesting question because I definitely do feel like when you’re writing—for me, writing now, it’s a character. I don’t know. It’s fictional. It’s in the 1600s. It’s a Cromwellian era. But, you know, you can’t help but bring people’s vulnerabilities, illness, maybe your own insecurities with the way you felt over the time into your writing. It’s just normal. It’s just human. I mean, yeah.

[00:09:12] Carina McNally: I mean, I would have come across a lot of situations in my own life. And yeah, maybe it’s a healing of those kind of traumas that comes into the writing or the reality of like life isn’t always great, is it? And I have some like really wicked characters in there as well. You know, traitors, and you can bring that. I mean, you know, people do let you down over life and people do throw twists and turns and people disappoint you. And, you know, like there’s a line in the book saying, you know, you can’t always expect people to turn out the way you wish they would, or you hope them to. That’s not life.

[00:09:48] Carina McNally: So I think all of my experiences of different people are in there. But I remember there was a nun teaching us in the school long ago, Mother Ida. And she said something to us. We were only like 15 or 16, looking out the window like daydreaming. But I never forget what she said: that often the most personal hurt that we feel as human individuals, it’s actually one that we all can feel, you know. So, I mean, if you read this book, I’m sure you’ll relate to somebody in there that’s had a bad day or a good day. They’re good days in there, too.

[00:10:18] Geraldine Hennessy: And you recently worked with the Strive Theatre on your first play, The Crow’s Old Gold. How did it feel to see your words move from the page to a live performance?

[00:10:29] Carina McNally: First of all, I couldn’t understand how they learned it all off by heart in a couple of weeks. I was astounded. I said to Kieran, you know, in Strive, I said, they’re not going to learn that off in three, two, three weeks. They will. They will. And they did. So that was the most amazing thing to me. But it was fantastic. I could not have been more happy with Damien Punch and Judith Ryan. They were just incredible.

[00:10:57] Carina McNally: They came down and performed. They actually practised up in the Lehanmore Community Centre. And they could see Crow Head from there where the play was actually written about. So I think that’s very special for them. And yeah, I was just delighted. It just couldn’t—and I got great feedback for that. The play travelled and it’s not travelling now, but the director of Strive is Kieran McArtan. And I think he’s looking to get it going again. Maybe looking for a tour. It’s kind of related to Cavan as well, because that legend exists here in the Beara Peninsula and in Cavan.

[00:11:34] Geraldine Hennessy: I can imagine, it must be like, wow.

[00:11:36] Carina McNally: Oh, I was. I was. And like it’s nothing without it being embodied. You know, I felt like I did only half the work and then they took it from there.

[00:11:47] Geraldine Hennessy: Well, yeah, they took your words and they made it real. It’s like watching your book being adapted into a film. Like it must be a little fun to see the people who portray your characters.

[00:12:05] Carina McNally: I think that’s so cool. Yeah, it was. And I also felt, you know, that the amount of goodwill, you know, that people have—they hear that, they go to see the play. And I felt that very uplifting as well. But people really love the arts. They think it’s great that you did that. So happy that story is written down. And I felt that very—I felt that lovely as well. There was very good feedback and positivity. And people want the stories. They want to learn. They want to bring things back to life.

[00:12:33] Carina McNally: And that’s really nice. I think in the world that we live in, especially where it’s so digital and everything is on your phone, like sometimes there’s an extra quality like plays and books, and they just bring that extra little bit to the world. I think. Yeah, I do.

[00:12:48] Carina McNally: I think the tactility of books is very important for us, considering we spend so much time on screens now as well. I’m mindful. Absolutely. Definitely.

[00:12:58] Geraldine Hennessy: And what was the steepest learning curve you faced when transitioning like prose or journalism to writing dialogue for the stage?

[00:13:07] Carina McNally: I had written the bones of that play. I’d written the story and I had done a lot of research into this character for the play called The Crow’s Old Gold. So it’s about the legend of gold buried at the end of Crow Head by this magical blacksmith. And then when I was researching into this guy long ago, of course, I realised that it goes back to the Tuatha Dé Danann god of blacksmithing. We knew so there was lots of layers to uncover. But I had all this research done and I had the story.

[00:13:31] Carina McNally: But, you know, I was kind of going for a monologue and putting on different voices, but I was really lucky to receive funding from Creative Ireland, Creative Places, West Cork Islands. And because a lot of my story was based out in Crow Head and Dursey near there, I had funding to engage a dramaturge called Eideen O’Donoghue, who lives in Cork City. She’s a quite well-known Cork theatre person and Eideen came down here and we workshopped the play.

[00:14:06] Carina McNally: Basically means we read it out and we thrashed it out in our voices. And then like she’d say things like, “Do you think that he’d really sound like that? Or would he sound like her?” And I’d say, “No, he wouldn’t.” Well, you know, I’ll change up the voice to get the dialogue—you have to create completely different characters. And when you’re reading it yourself, it’s not always that easy to hear. So like somebody like Eideen comes along, reads it out and says, “Swap it up.”

[00:14:31] Carina McNally: You know, so we had great fun workshopping the play. She came for four days. And then I rewrote and I think we workshopped again over Zoom maybe twice or three times. So that was really interesting. So that’s what I mean, like moving away from the short story or the journalism, which is totally like you just write whatever kind of factual.

[00:14:44] Carina McNally: Whereas moving into this is—I learned that writing isn’t a solo project. It doesn’t have to be like the solo project. You need people to look and say—you need feedback and opinion. Nobody writes anything for you, but you need that feedback. And I suppose that must help in just when you’re just writing a book or whatever, like that extra perspective, you know, when you’re writing then like a prose piece or whatever.

[00:15:09] Geraldine Hennessy: Totally. Because when I went back then to do the last drafts of my novel after reading the play, I was so clued in about these different voices. You know, for Mithin, like, you know, they were already different in the book, but I kind of put another layer of difference on them.

[00:15:20] Carina McNally: Absolutely. So it’s an extra benefit, I suppose, to. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Like I’ve been writing comedy for years, pantomime for my local panto group here. And I actually love writing comedy—like I love it. But like these were more kind of serious projects.

[00:15:43] Geraldine Hennessy: You’re drawing the different sides to your personality, Carina.

[00:15:43] Carina McNally: Oh, yes, just great and silly stuff. Yeah, these aren’t that silly. I hope not anyway.

[00:16:07] Geraldine Hennessy: And as the head of PR for Mercier Press, you’ve seen countless books launch. Like, did that behind-the-curtain knowledge make the release of Mithin more or less nerve-wracking for you?

[00:16:19] Carina McNally: Well, one thing that I have been writing this book for eight years, on and off, before I ever started working for Mercier Press. So what I did learn—now, I had sent it off in the early days to a couple of publishers and they weren’t interested, though I had interest from On Stream Publishing, Roz Crowley initially. That’s why she launched my book in Elizabeth Fort last week or the week before last. But she’s kind of scaled down her publishing now.

[00:16:45] Carina McNally: But what I learned from her is like the book wasn’t ready. And then as I was getting—I do not deal with the submissions of Mercier, but I’m doing admin for them. So I am looking sometimes at submissions if they come into the info. And I might have a look and I have flagged one or two. But what I realised, I was not going to be giving the manuscript to Mercier because I knew it wasn’t ready. And there’s no point—it’s just wasting your time because they can’t start telling you to go back and rewrite the whole book unless it’s like some crazy, crazy work of art altogether.

[00:17:17] Carina McNally: So what I did is on my own time, I had already engaged a developmental editor. I got a large report. I went up to Tipperary. I locked myself in a room twice for a week working on that report. Just—you don’t have to act on everything in the report. Some things I didn’t agree with, but generally I did. And I didn’t give it to Mercier until it was ready. Okay. Like I didn’t say to the submission editor a few years ago, “I’ve got this brilliant book here.” Like I knew that wasn’t going to work.

[00:17:45] Carina McNally: And I saw the way they deal with the submissions and they just send the best of back saying it’s not ready. So I just, you know, like you have a better chance to get published if you present with some kind of a polished manuscript. Now, Mercier did come back to me and I did have to change things—like one of my characters disappears mid-book and I was told the emotional arc of the reader… oh, oh, oh! I had to go ahead and write somebody back in.

[00:18:12] Carina McNally: So like it wasn’t like they said, “Well, we’re ready to go.” No, no, no. So there were changes. But like, yeah, I mean, I would definitely advise anyone who’s writing a novel and they’re serious about it—a fictional novel, especially; non-fiction is different—but you really need to get… I mean, your brother can read it or your mammy can read it or somebody and they’re going to say, like, it’s great. Sometimes my own family read it. I got sensational feedback. It really helped, but really you have to send it off to somebody who—that’s what they’re doing for a living and can read it and be absolutely cruel and say, look, it needs a bit of restructuring. And that’s important, you know, before you send it in. That’s my advice to writers.

[00:18:55] Geraldine Hennessy: And just seeing the business side of publishing, like the marketing, the reviews, the sales—does it make it harder to keep the creative side of your brain pure when you sit down to write your own work?

[00:19:06] Carina McNally: I work part-time for Mercier and I work remotely. I tend to deal with—like I would have come across you before you would have come across me. I would have put Thaddeus on your show. Thaddeus Ó Buachalla who wrote El, he’s a Cork City person, and Rebecca Murphy was on. So I’d be doing that. So I was quite busy with two books before I launched my own book. So it would—I mean, it does now. Somebody else was doing the marketing for my book in Mercier because that wouldn’t have been apt for me.

[00:19:35] Carina McNally: So it does. I mean, it’s a hard business. I mean, we brought out three novels alone, Mercier, in May. And I don’t know, are you a fan of Books Ireland magazine? But you can go in there and see all the releases in this country alone. I mean, there’s a lot of competition. I mean, it’s hard to make money out of the arts, you know. But you just have to keep going.

[00:19:54] Geraldine Hennessy: Okay. And how do you manage the switch between promoting others’ books and finding the headspace to write your own?

[00:20:02] Carina McNally: I have been working on this book a long time, Geraldine, eight years—two years on, two years off. So sometimes I would just not work for a week. At the end, I was like taking time out and just totally focusing on the book. But because I’m working part-time, it’s easier for me. Like I wouldn’t be working every day. I’d probably be checking emails every day when you work with the press—you have to. But yeah, I was kind of making time on my own away from everybody. I had to have a fuzzy brain. So yeah, I was kind of locking myself away and saying today I’ll do this.

[00:20:39] Geraldine Hennessy: Absolutely. And Mercier Press is like a Cork institution. From your PR perspective, what do you think is the secret sauce that makes Cork’s creative community so distinct from the rest of Ireland? How do we differentiate ourselves from all those other ones up there?

[00:20:51] Carina McNally: We do. And I mean, like, Mercier is an absolute champion of, well, Irish writers, but they love Cork, of course. I think, you know, a lot of it is to do with the culture of an organisation. I don’t know when I was doing the social studies, we learned a lot about that. You know, the culture of organisations and the top-down and everything. So like the culture of Mercier is amazing because there’s a huge pride. Family-run business. Mary Feehan is still running it and she’s the director. John Spillane is still involved; he’s a director. They have so much pride in Mary’s heritage. Her parents started it.

[00:21:20] Carina McNally: And she’s got so much interest in history. I mean, Mercier is amazing. I mean, they were nominated for the Prix Voltaire five or six years ago in London, only European publishing company ever. Mary is still publishing books and no one else will publish about the north of Ireland. The Reavey Brothers now—one of our books, The Reavey Brothers, is up for a true crime award in London in June. You know, it’s like stuff that not everybody in the North wants to read. Not everything Britain wants to read.

[00:21:50] Carina McNally: So like there’s this kind of like a power behind it and a pride. I love that about it. And also, you know, just giving—it’s a smaller company, so it’s able to give people a voice. We definitely have a more personable relationship with our writers and everything like that. There’s no doubt about it. Absolutely. Because it’s not one of the big five, you know. They are an indie publisher.

[00:22:13] Geraldine Hennessy: It suits your personality.

[00:22:13] Carina McNally: Oh, thank you. Yeah.

[00:22:26] Geraldine Hennessy: Writing a novel—well, you mentioned it there about working multiple roles—it’s a marathon. Like what was the biggest wall you hit during the writing of Mithin? And how did you push through it? Was it just the time or?

[00:22:40] Carina McNally: No, about—I wrote away a draft of it. It took me about… now, you see, I’m not one of these people. I actually am quite a disorganised person, so I’m not the person up at six o’clock at the desk or anything like that. I’m just like—I wish I was. I’m just like quite disorganised. So I was writing it here and there and bits. But of course, the biggest block is that I read it about three years after I had started it and I opened it and I said, “This is a heap of… nobody will ever want to read this.” And it was put away. Lack of confidence in my own writing.

[00:23:11] Carina McNally: Then I don’t know what hit me another two years later. I kind of took it up again and I said, “You know what? This is actually bad. Maybe somebody would like to read it.” And then kind of giving it to my mum and my sister actually—they were my kind of first editors, developmental editors. So they said that it was good. And then I suppose when Roz Crowley saw potential in it, it really gave me the confidence. A lack of confidence in my writing and kind of wondering who’d like to read it. I think as we get older as well, I think part of it just goes like, who cares? If they don’t like it, they just… you know, like you just have to.

[00:23:45] Carina McNally: And a lot of the time it’s just we are our biggest critiques. Like sometimes you just have to get out there and it’s even just giving it to your mother or giving it to your sister. You just need someone else to say, “It’s actually good.” And that is just that little bit of confidence to go see.

[00:24:00] Carina McNally: I also, you know, I suppose just to talk about the actual book itself, I think it was kind of good it took me so long to do because I had been reading a lot in between and I cleared up a lot of Irish mythology with plants and the mythology around the plants. And I was kind of collecting all this information myself over the years. It was kind of going into my brain or if I’d be somewhere, I’d pick up a book or, you know, so I was kind of layering it up and I was able to weave it in.

[00:24:31] Carina McNally: Even though I took that two years of not writing anything, whatever was going on, whatever I had been reading and learning, when I took out the next draft, I said, “Oh, I can put that in there. Oh, I can put that in there.” So I was kind of weaving. You might have been doing it all the time, but it was in the background of your mind all the time. Yeah, exactly. So I was. Yeah. So I love Irish mythology as well. So I was kind of like—I was reading away that and then it ended up in the book. Somehow I’d say, “Oh, well, how did it turn into a deer?” I said, “How did that end up on that page?” I can’t remember putting it in, but it did.

[00:25:07] Geraldine Hennessy: And looking back at your first published piece versus your work today, what’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about the patience required for a creative career?

[00:25:17] Carina McNally: The patience required for… yeah, you do need patience. I mean, it’s very hard like to say, “Oh, I’m going to write this now to make my fortune.” Like, you know, God’s like—you need to be interested in what you’re writing about. You need to maybe know a little bit about what you’re writing about or why you’re writing it. Like I kind of in a way—you can’t write that writing for yourself unless you’re writing a journal; obviously you want to write for other people. But I had patience with it because I thought I would like to write stuff that I would like to read myself. So it was kind of a journey for myself. A labour of love.

[00:25:54] Carina McNally: Rather than like, “I’m going to write this now and it’s going to be this huge seller on Broadway and I’m going to have a brand new car or something.” It doesn’t really work like that. Maybe ask yourself why you’re doing it. And that gives you—if you can answer that, it gives you the patience or maybe the reason to write. You have to enjoy the process and not be miserable. Yeah, it can be lonely.

[00:26:12] Carina McNally: And another thing is you have to kind of surround yourself with people that kind of support it as well. You know, absolutely. As you will have. I mean, there were times when I was writing a lot and like I’d be given out to by my family, “You’ve done the computer again,” you know, this kind of stuff. And then you’d have to say, right, stand up for myself here. Well, that’s it. Exactly.

[00:26:49] Geraldine Hennessy: And given your PR expertise, what’s the one thing that Cork creatives often overlook when trying to build their own professional brand?

[00:26:50] Carina McNally: I would say liaising with people, with other writers. Go to events, build up a network. It’s very important. I mean, I’m not great on social media right now. I do PR, but I create a lot of content as in—I create like… I get people on TV or maybe on the radio. I haven’t managed to get on that much at all yet, but I will hopefully, podcasts, whatever. I don’t actually run the Instagram page or the Facebook page. So I hand that over to the lady that does.

[00:27:18] Carina McNally: But, you know, obviously that can be important, but just be out besides that at all. Build up a network of creative people and people who are supportive to your work, because there were days when you think, “I can’t do this. It’s not good.” There will be days you will have no confidence in your abilities. And it’s just surround yourself with people, like-minded people in the arts. And it’s great. And that will lead to more contacts and more and more contacts because people in the arts, people like to be creatives, like to be around each other. And we support each other. Absolutely. Because as you say, it can be lonely. Yeah. I do notice that. Does that answer your question exactly?

[00:27:59] Geraldine Hennessy: Absolutely.

[00:28:00] Geraldine Hennessy: And like you wear many hats—you’re a historian, PR head, writer, and social care worker—how would you protect your creative energy while balancing so many roles?

[00:28:10] Carina McNally: Okay, so I’m back working in social care now. I worked as a social care worker for years, but I am working on a relief basis. So like if somebody’s sick, or they’re going on holidays, I’m called in. So that’s kind of sporadic. But I mean, I was there yesterday. I’m going next week. You know, I can be there a lot if I want, really. But I try now in the summer maybe not to do much of that because most of my historical writing would be in the summer. So I’d probably concentrate on that and step back from the social care and go back into the social care.

[00:28:46] Carina McNally: I enjoy working in social care. A lot of that is because there’s a team there. And I was always working in teams. And when I’m working remote, it can be like, you know, a bit lonely or you don’t have that team. You know, people are working different times. People are working remotely, can’t pick up the phone to a colleague and ask a question because they’re probably not working the same times as you. So when I go into social care, I have a team and I kind of enjoy that, you know. But you like social as I established as well. I do. I do. Yeah, I do.

[00:29:12] Carina McNally: So like when I’d be in social care, I wouldn’t be talking about my creative side at all. Like, you know what I mean? I wouldn’t be talking about my novel or anything like that. But they did—some of them did come to my launch in Castletownbere. I was very pleased. Fair play. Very good. My colleague—I met with a colleague yesterday. She told me she’s reading the book. So, very good. Very good. Did you see all these potential readers?

[00:29:34] Geraldine Hennessy: And with the book now in the world, what’s next on the horizon? Are you going to focus more on theatrical work, another novel, or something entirely new?

[00:29:44] Carina McNally: Well, I’ll tell you now, the next kind of project I’m thinking of doing is with Mercier. And I will write something for it myself. But I’m hoping to kind of coordinate like a book of stories written by women—an anthology, I suppose you could call it—about how the Cailleach or how our ancient goddesses, or the Cailleach in particular, resonates with them in their day-to-day life. And a few well-known people now who’ve agreed to sign up for that. No spoilers.

[00:30:16] Carina McNally: But I’m hoping to coordinate that story. So I think that will be interesting. Then, you know, some well-known people and some younger women as well to bring a little bit of wisdom out in the world and coordinate that. So I’ll probably write a story for that myself. Very good. But I have no big writing project at the moment. This is your baby. You need to give yourself a bit of a rest.

[00:30:45] Carina McNally: Exactly. I need to rest and see how she’s going to go, how she’s going to do. Baby number two, then, will be on the way. Yeah, exactly. So that’s my next plan. So I have to have a meeting with Dee Collins at Mercier about that. And I’ll throw some names into the pot and we’ll make a plan. Very good. Sounds good.

[00:30:58] Geraldine Hennessy: Well, thanks so much, Carina, for chatting with me today on Cork Creative.

[00:31:02] Carina McNally: Thank you for having me.

[00:31:04] Geraldine Hennessy: And if you want to find more about Carina and her new book, you can find links to her socials on corkcreative.ie. Thank you so much. Bye.