Arts Week with Judy Murphy

“Unwanted attention is just that. It’s unwanted,” says author Lucy O’Callaghan, whose experience of being stalked a decade ago helped inspire her second novel, Obsession.

What Lucy had initially assumed was an attempt at friendship from a lonely but harmless man turned into something much more sinister. He became someone who turned up everywhere she went and even went so far as to park outside her family home on a winter’s night, texting her from there.

Yorkshire-born Lucy is a longtime Galway resident, having met her husband Niall, who’s from Oranmore, when they were in college in Wales. Living in Kilcolgan for about 20 years, they have three adult children, the youngest of whom has just done her Leaving Cert.

Lucy has been writing since childhood and recalls that her earliest experience of putting pen to paper was with her father, who was also a keen writer. That was when she was aged about seven.

A graduate of English and philosophy, she ran a pre-and after-school in Kilcolgan until it shut during Covid. The closure of that door led to another one opening for Lucy, who had always continued to write, although not for public consumption.  She had penned books for her children, which they illustrated. And she was involved in writers’ groups, mostly when Niall was travelling for work. When he was at home, it was family time, she says.

Then Covid came and he was at home constantly, as were their teenage children.

That’s when she began taking her writing seriously.

“I decided I was going to focus on it and get on with it.”

Having joined an online group, Lucy “found her tribe” and, encouraged by friends, she sent three chapters and a synopsis of what became her first novel, The Lies Beneath, to Poolbeg Press. That was done “the old-fashioned way”, by post. which is how the Dublin publishing house operates. She was thrilled to get an email the following day asking for more. The Lies Beneath was published last year as part of a three-book deal.

Her second novel, Obsession, just-published, has a plot that’s based on stalking, something she’s unfortunately too familiar with.

“About 10 years ago, a man in the locality started following me around the place,” says Lucy, adding that, initially, she didn’t recognise what was happening, simply thinking he was lonely.

“Because I was running a business, my phone number was public. He’d text me constantly and his texts tended to be questions, things I had to answer. But I didn’t think that much of it at first.”

However, over time, she realised this behaviour wasn’t normal. The volume of texts rocketed and when she’d drop the children to school, he’d be there.

Pictured: Lucy O’Callaghan began to take her writing seriously during Covid. PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY.