Category: Writer Interview

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Writers Chat 82 Part 2: Liz McSkeane on “Aftershock” (Turas Press: Dublin, 2025)

Welcome back, Liz. We’re on Part 2 of our Writers Chat about “Aftershock” (Turas Press: Dublin, 2025). Part 1 can be read here.

Cover image of the novel “Aftershock” showing darkened ruins of old buildings against pink and orange skies.

SG: One of the standout take aways from Aftershock was the human need for the answer to that three-letter question why! Dom Sebastião searches for technical and structural answers to the natural disasters (“nothing must be allowed to obstruct this rebirth”) whilst also mercilessly searching for the traitors who plotted to assassinate the king; Father Malagrida tries to increase his power and influence over the vulnerable by preaching that these disasters happened because of God’s wrath on the people of Lisbon (“Lisbon is paying for the sins of her people.”)

It seems these two men epitomise philosophies of the day. Were you also looking for answers through this character-driven plot which explores societal beliefs and structures in late 18th – Century Portugal? 

LMcS: I agree with you that Dom Sebastião and Father Malagrida embody two diametrically opposed world views regarding the ‘why’ of the disaster – belief in reason and science as an approach to investigating the causes; and submission to the Divine Will. This was a real polemic of the day, though in practice, many people imbued with the principles of the Enlightenment also considered themselves good Catholics. But there is no doubt that this clash of world views existed at the time. It still exists, in many parts of the world. 

What makes this question so crucial in the context of the novel is that these opposing world views not only insist on two conflicting stories regarding the origins and reasons for the earthquake happening, but flowing from that, opposing views about the response human beings should have to it. Some of the most extreme of the clergy, including Father Malagrida, insisted that believers must submit to the Will of God and pray for mercy for their sins, a position which not only did not aid the rescue and recovery efforts, but in some cases actually obstructed it. The spirit of scientific enquiry, in contrast, sets out to rebuild and also, to devise ways of safeguarding against future events of the kind. Dom Sebastião really did conduct an extensive survey – today we would call it qualitative research – that asked survivors in great detail about the phenomena they experienced. This was one of the earliest systematic data-gathering studies of earthquake effects, and a significant precursor to modern seismology. He also oversaw the design of earthquake-resistant buildings that used an internal wooden frame – not so different from the principles used today.

The other aspect of the ‘why’ of the novel concerns the motivations of some of the characters – why they acted as they did. In spite of the vast amount of documentation and information about the ascendancy of the Marquis of Pombal before and especially, in the years after the earthquake,  there are still many, many unanswered questions about how and why events unfolded as they did.. For example – why did the king, on the night of the attempted assassination, decide to travel in a different carriage? And why did the nobility misjudge and colossally underestimate Dom Sebastiao? And more – all question that came to me as I was researching and writing. I did not try to provide answers to those questions but rather, allowed them to remain, for the reader to ponder. I think Chekhov would approve of my decision – didn’t he say something about the function of art being to ask questions, rather than answer them?

SG: I particularly enjoyed the descriptive language of Aftershock which serves to illuminate period detail and the landscape of the novel. We have the lush language used to describe the earthquake (through the eyes of Dom Sebastião); in “Living The Shock,” a beautifully crafted chapter which explores the impact of the disasters through a number of characters, we have descriptions that are as strong and impactful as the fire and flood they depict:

“There must be shelter, some corner or cellar, no, a place in the open air, the very centre of the square, perhaps, where tumbling debris may not reach. But now, through the swirling darkness, the skeleton of the Palace of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, this place which has passed judgement up on the final days of so many heretics, is lit up in glimmering spangles of yellow and orange.”

“The flood has not reached the Rossio. But that is a small mercy, perhaps no mercy at all, for all four sides are engulfed in flames. Leaping high in the air, they are devouring every morsel of floorboards, beams, window frames, every scrap of dry material integral to the construction of the edifices, grand and humble, every bench, table, carpet, curtain, tapestry, wall hanging, melting every glass or metal object, sacred or commonplace, silver plate, coins, golden altarpieces, artisans’ tools, grills and gates, chalices, kitchen utensils.”

“Impossible to believe that life had continued after the earth swallowed up so much of the city in just a few minutes, at the very time when the faithful were attending mass …The night is dark, light is needed, fire gives light and the memory of the terrible destruction inflicted by the fames must yield to the continuation of life.”

Language (and conversation) itself, of course, also plays a key role in the narrative:

“Rumour, gossip, the smallest detail, the slightest misunderstanding, had a way of infiltrating minds and tainting judgement, as the smallest drop of ink colours an entire pitcher of water.”

Did you enjoy writing the period detail?

LMcS: I really did. Just as I mentioned my desire to immerse myself psychologically in the perspective of the different characters, I found it fascinating to also inhabit the physical world, as far as I was able to with the information at my disposal. It is exciting to see how places and objects and the natural world, perceived through the eyes of the characters, can generate entire lines of thinking and insights. I also loved the process of gathering period detail – it felt like time travel through diaries, maps, architecture, streets. But the real pleasure was when the detail became atmosphere. A kind of emotional landscape.

That said, what I enjoyed most was what those details allowed me to say about the characters and about the society. Period detail became a way of showing how the physical world shapes human fate, especially in a disaster narrative. So yes, I enjoyed it, because it served the novel’s deeper questions.

SG: I’ve been to Lisbon multiple times though I can’t say I know the city well. I thought the Lisbon evoked in Aftershock is at once familiar and strange (not withstanding the period differences) and is, for this reader anyhow, the main character of the novel. The built environment and the key role it plays in how lives are lived, who survives a natural disaster and who doesn’t, who re-builds the city and for whom it is designed. Can you talk about the role of the city-as-character?

LMcS: Lisbon in Aftershock is absolutely a character for me. I wanted the city to have a kind of double presence: familiar enough that readers can recognize its rhythms, yet strange because the disaster reshaped the same streets, structures and spaces we think we know.

By showing Lisbon before, during, and after the shock, I wanted readers to feel the city exerting pressure on the characters just as much as the earthquake does. Its architecture, its beauty, and its fragility all shape the plot. The characters move through Lisbon, but Lisbon also moves through them. The city’s destruction and reconstruction becomes a moral and political arena, which is why it takes on such a vivid, almost human presence in the novel.

SG: Aftershock puts me in mind of the work of Hilary Mantel; the research is vast but seamlessly contained within character motivation and setting. You provide an extensive bibliography in the Acknowledgement section. Could you talk about your approach to the research needed for this novel? And for readers looking for writing historical fiction advice see this excellent article over on writing.ie.

LMcS: I started off with just one book – This Gulf of Fire by Mark Molesky  – then got another one about the earthquake, and several more. I soon began to notice the emergence of the character who would become my protagonist, the hero – or anti-hero – and at that point, I pivoted and began reading biographies of the future Marquis of Pombal, and also of the key people in his life. There is a vast amount of literature about the earthquake, and I was fortunate to be able to read some primary sources – actual eye-witness accounts of the disaster, some of them original manuscripts. It was a process of starting with a wide, fairly scattergun approach until I found my subject, and then focusing my attention on my subject, and on ancillary topics that illuminated it. I really enjoyed it! The trouble with research is that if you enjoy it too much, you can find yourself down the rabbit hole and the book might never get written! So at some point, you have to call a halt. Thankfully, I did. Eventually.

We will end this chat, Liz, with some short questions:

  1. Lisbon or Porto? Lisbon – I’ve never been to Porto! But I definitely want to visit.
  2. Last city outside of Ireland visited? Glasgow – back visiting old friends.
  3. Best historical novel you’ve recently read? I’ve been re-reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy – hoping that something of her colossal craft might rub off! I’ve just finished Bring Up the Bodies, about to start on The Mirror and the Light.  
  4. What character in Aftershock most surprised you? Dona Eleanor, the Marquis’ wife. I thought she would challenge him more as his methods became more brutal. She didn’t.
  5. What are you writing now? I am working on some short stories and I am at the rough notes stage of my next historical novel.

With thanks to Turas Press for the advance copy of Aftershock which can be purchased here.

Photograph of writer Liz McSkeane, courtesy of Liz McSkeane.
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Writers Chat 82 Part 1: Liz McSkeane on “Aftershock ” (Turas Press: Dublin, 2025)

Liz, you are very welcome back to my Writers Chat series. This time we’re discussing your debut novel Aftershock (Turas Press, 2025), which Lisa Harding has described as “relevant and shocking.” I had so many questions for you that I have divided this Chat into two parts so that we might cover most of the areas I was interested in exploring. Writers Chat: Part 1 covers the background to writing the novel, the structure, as well as dipping into the themes of personal/ political and gender/ marriage.

Cover image of the novel “Aftershock” showing darkened ruins of old buildings against pink and orange skies.

SG: Like all good historical novels, Aftershock not only brings us right to the heart of love, power, and ambition in 18th – century Lisbon, it also speaks to our times about the brutality of power. Can you tell us about how you came to write about All Soul’s Day, November 1st, 1755 a day when both an earthquake and a tsunami almost destroys Lisbon and threatens to shatter the beliefs of the city’s inhabitants; what was the genesis of your interest?

LMcS: Thank you, Shauna. I came to this subject by way of a radio interview I heard with a historian called Mark Molesky, about his book  This Gulf of Fire. It was about the 1755 earthquake that destroyed Lisbon and was so fascinated that I sat down to listen. I already had an interest in Portugal – I studied Hispanic Studies at university, which included Portuguese – and had spent some time in Lisbon as a student, so I was keen to find out more about the subject. When I started reading about the earthquake, I became fascinated by the politics of the time, in the lead-up to and in the wake of the disaster – and especially in the character of the man who would become the Marquis of Pombal. He both rescued and enslaved the country, and I found this an irresistible paradox to unravel.

SG: And this paradox snakes throughout the novel.

“At last, the earth is still.” What a great opening sentence that immediately grabs the reader. The sense that stillness can be vast runs through the novel – in relation to the land, the city, and, in our protagonist Dom Sebastião:

“For this man’s stillness deceives. It is a stillness that absorbs everything, understands everything, forgets nothing.”

Was this always the opening sentence of Aftershock?

LMcS: I am glad you find it so arresting! That is what we want, isn’t it! But in fact, that was not always the opening sentence. I had originally planned to start the novel with a dramatic event that occurred a few weeks after the earthquake and in fact wrote what I thought would be the opening chapter around that. But as with so many things in writing, things change. As I had the title from a very early stage, the opening you mention soon superseded my original idea. In a way, it was the title that gave me my opening sentence – which, as you mentioned, plunges us into the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, seen through the eyes of the person who would become the main focus of the novel. I think that quite often, the beginning of a piece – be it a novel, story or poem – sometimes emerges through a process of discovery, in a sense, reveals itself. I do find myself rewriting beginnings – almost as though the start of the story reveals itself.

SG: Aftershock is filled with ambitious characters who strive for what they want within a tightly structured society and clear political rules around church, state, and subjects. I found the conflict between individual desire and ambition (both personal and political – power) and the greater immediate good, to be in sharp focus in the exceptionally well-developed complex character Dom Sebastião. How did you hold the personal and the political within the writing and research?

LMcS: The tension between the private and public selves you mention in many ways is at the heart of the novel and one of the themes which drew me in. I find it both fascinating and shocking how far public events, national policies, can be influenced by the private ambitions and preferences and relationship of the actors. I am sure we can think of many contemporary examples of this. I suppose I should not be surprised, as the leaders who influence or seem to direct historical events are human beings, just like us, with all the foibles and insecurities we all share.

In relation to Aftershock, as I was researching the political events of the time, I became aware of the extent to which the impact of the personal relationships and aspirations of the individual actors were intertwined with what would become historical events. It therefore seemed to make sense to try to inhabit the perspectives of the different actors, to understand why they did what they did. Hence the multiple points of view which carry the narrative.

When I was researching the subject, I found I started with the public events – the earthquake, the measures that were put in place to support the survivors, the part played by other countries (this was one of the first disasters that attracted an international relief response) – and from there, found my way into the lives of the various actors. Their ambitions, as you point out, were often both personal and political. In a way, that made the intertwining of the personal and political both logical and necessary.

SG: Aftershock has an interesting four-part structure that both keeps us with the character-narrator and within the time. I liked your use of chapter titles – “Unwelcome News and a Request Rebuffed” – that hint at what’s in the chapter and, combined with an indication of the date, time, and place, serve to keep the reader knowing where they are in this vast detailed narrative whilst also reminding us of 18th-century letters. Was this a structure you began with or did it emerge as you wrote?

LMcS: To some extent, the structure emerged as I wrote. I had originally envisaged a three-act structure, and at a fairly late stage realised that the action and the characters needed more room to breathe. This resulted in some rearranging and expansion. So the four-act structure was a development of my original plan. 

SG: Again, such a skill in being able to grow original plans as the text develops! One of the themes running through Aftershock is that of the role of gender and marriage in high society – the often-conflicting views of church and state and how they hold power over women. Power, it seems, is not only inherited but also given; Dom Sebastião has the ear of the king (“the king’s favourite. His most trusted advisor”). The king is romantically entwined with the powerful Távora family and Father Malagrida believes he “answers to a higher authority than the king” and therefore can influence the king to stop at least this extra-marital relationship.

Early in the novel we have glimpses of the internal lives of Dom Sebastião’s Austrian wife, Eleanor; Princess Maria (in line to be queen) resents the conversations about finding her a match and Dom Sebastião’s influence over the family. She is aware that for her to be queen her father will have to die and only then will Dom Sebastião “face a bitter reckoning.” After the disasters, Queen Mariana Vitória realises that “Even at this terrible time, her husband’s thoughts are elsewhere.”

Aftershock makes it clear that the women – even those in powerful positions – are seen as useful to obtaining influence and keeping power. Can you comment on this?

LMcS:  Yes, this was one of the themes that was of great interest to me. All the women in the novel – Dom Sebastião’s wife, the queen, her daughter, the marchioness of Távora, the young lover of the king – have a very significant influence on his life, for good or ill. And they all have – up to a point – significant agency in their own lives. But only up to a point, for they are all – at least, this is my interpretation – either used, or discarded (or worse) in the service of his ambition. For example, Dom Sebastião’s access to the high aristocracy was due almost entirely to his two very advantageous marriages: his first wife, who died, was a Portuguese noblewoman and his second wife, Dona Eleanor Von Daun came from one of the noblest families in Europe. So those were women with influence who contributed enormously to his ascendency. On the other hand, there is the Marchioness of Távora – a very imposing matriarch from one of the most powerful dynasties in Portugal, who disdained and mistrusted Dom Sebastião – and greatly underestimated him. For which she paid the ultimate price.

But in some cases, this is a matter of interpretation.  One interesting source I came across was a novel about Dona Teresa de Távora, who was the lover of the king, which adulterous affair was thought by some to have been the catalyst for much of the tragedy that followed. This novel, by a contemporary Portuguese writer, presents Dona Teresa as a kind of proto-feminist, who was in charge of her own destiny and making bold choices. I saw her rather as a rather naïve woman who found herself swept along by events she could not control. Which shows how similar sources can produce very different interpretations!

SG: Oh that’s very interesting. You’re so right about interpretation and similar sources. Thanks for your generosity in answering these first set of questions, Liz. I look forward to Writers Chat: Part 2 which focuses on the language of the novel, the parallels of Dom Sebastião and Father Malagrida and Lisbon-as-character and we conclude with some light quick answer questions.

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Writers Chat 81: Mary O’Donnell on “Walking Ghosts” (Mercier Press, 2025)

Mary, you are very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re here to discuss your short story collection Walking Ghosts, a collection which has been described by William Wall as “fascinating, and utterly compelling”.

Cover image of “Walking Ghosts” by Mary O’Donnell showing a collage of images including tarot cards, trees, a woman’s neck and hair, the sea, and silhouettes of a couple.

SG: I love the title, the fact that the ghosts are walking and how this connects to the importance of time in the collection. Many of these stories were published in journals and magazines nationally and internationally prior to their inclusion in this collection. Can you talk about how you compiled the collection – the order of and the naming of the 17 stories, and perhaps stories you might have left out?

MOD: Hi Shauna, great to be part of Writers Chat! The question of how a story collection comes together depends on the writer. For me, the stories are usually set down quite slowly, and I notice that in three of my short story collections there has been a ten year gap between each one. This is probably because I’m also a poet and novelist, which means I have other projects underway, or I’m thinking about them. When a short story seems urgent to me, I’ll set it down and get an early draft underway, before ‘parking’ it for a while in order to let the basic thrust of it to settle. Then, later, I’ll return and scrutinise what I’ve written and see if that’s true to what I intended. Anything can happen at that point.

SG: That sounds like good advice, Mary, thank you! Now the opening story “Cocoa L’Orange”, gives us a poignant yet humorous picture of a relationship whose troubles are revealed during lockdown.

Sasha, “considers reading to be a positive thing. Jake has never bothered with fiction, preferring non-fiction and biographies”

This sets the scene for an examination of identity, meaning, usefulness, and productivity in society and between people. How did this story come to you? During lockdown or afterwards?

MOD: It came to me in the final year of lockdown. I was very struck by how awful it may have been for some people, and how isolation enhanced difference or even great difference for some people, while others paddled along and were able to get through. In the case of Jake and Sasha, I imagine them actually getting through this together despite frictions, but the point is that his sense of masculinity has been undermined by the collapse of his business, to the point where he is emotional frozen. The only outlet that approaches a thaw is contained in the moments when he and his equally failed male neighbour gaze across the gap between their houses, from window to window, in a silent acknowledgement of some kind. I think if I were Jake I’d probably poison Sasha—the story is told from his point of view, not hers—because she is pragmatic and a little unsympathetic to his plight.

SG: Yes! Your use of silence was so powerful in that story. In many of the stories you bring us into the inner world of the protagonist allowing us to experience their world view. I thought this came through wonderfully in the moving “Edna” with the pitch perfect pace and tone which made me feel I was with Edna both in thought and in movement. Edna has “thoughts like a slow tide” as she moves slowly through a Dublin where she feels she is still not a “fully fledged” city person. She dispenses hugs and fivers to alleviate the deep well of missing her daughter who is pregnant and abroad and tries to make sense of people through snatches of conversation. In contrast, Roberta in “Like Queens not Criminals” moves through London, a city she is not familiar with, and tells herself as much as us that

“I do know something about beauty, how it lies in wait at the dark heart of our lives.”

Similar to “Edna”, “Like Queens not Criminals” is an exploration of loss and identity and finding solace in ordinary places. Both stories also serve as quiet critiques of how Ireland views the marginalised and bodily autonomy. Did these themes emerge through the characterisation or did you have them in the back of your mind as you wrote? 

MOD: That’s a really interesting comparison Shauna, one I hadn’t thought of. The theme of how we move through space interests me, and in ‘Edna’ I did want to place an older woman out in the city, someone whose sense of autonomy is quite strong, and who believes in helping others in unconventional ways. She is not a do-gooder trying to feed her ego, but nor is she quite prepared for what happens when she unintentionally breaks the body space of someone who is vulnerable. There is a beauty to both cities for each protagonist. In ‘Like Queens not Criminals’, Roberta is in London in the early 1990s for the purpose of having an abortion, so she views the city through highly self-aware eyes on the days she is there. She has abandoned her own country to do this. She has made a decision to do what she believes is best, just as Edna some twenty years later decides to do what she believes best but in her home city.

SG: There is much humour in this collection, too. “The Space between Louis and Me” had me laughing out loud; “The Stolen Man” had me smiling with recognition; “The Creators” had me nodding in agreement. Humour is, to use Dickenson’s phrase, a slant approach to more serious themes or topics that are explored in these stories yet there is a lightness of touch here too that makes me wonder if it came from the actual writing. Did you have fun writing these three stories in particular?

MOD: I find it difficult to keep my own sense of humour—sometimes ironic, sometimes satirical, and yet other times downright mocking—out of the narrative. This is probably because I’m an unreconstructed free thinker who is never more happy than when she discovers conventional boats being rocked. I do enjoy it when my characters take situations into their own sometimes inept or intolerant hands, because their intentions are good behind it all!

SG: I love that “inept or intolerant hands”! Finally, if there is an overarching theme to this collection it is how identity is fluid and formed and re-formed with and by those we meet – both intended and chance encounters – and where we are in the world we are – travel for all its reasons. I’m thinking here of “Luck” and “Peace, Love and Pushpanna” and the power of conversation. Can you comment on this?

MOD: We are constantly being pushed, nudged and prodded by our experience and by our encounters with others. In ‘Peace, Love & Pushpanna’ I took a newly married young woman in the late 1970s and her rather pedantic husband and situated them on a break with relatives in London. The cultural encounter—without giving anything away—is what is going to change her and (it is my hope if this were ‘real’) make her leave him. I hate boring people, or people who are boring to me, and I just had to suggest that there are better, happier ways for this fun young woman to live! In ‘Luck’, the central character, a tarot-card reader is himself extremely lucky on the day—a complete chancer, a man of weak character with betrayal in his background, he has somehow managed to turn his own fortunes around and has landed on his feet!

We will end this chat, Mary, with some short questions:

  1. Bus or train?  Train!
  2. Coffee or tea?  Coffee.
  3. Quiet or noise when you’re writing? Quiet-ish with people sounds from outside is best. Ideally, a library, but the last time that happened I was on holiday in Mallorca and the hotel had a small library with a balcony overlooking the reception area, so I was away from everything, yet part of a slight buzz of activity, and I was revising by hand the story ‘Edna’!
  4. Your favourite story that didn’t make it into Walking Ghosts? ‘Native’, a story which will be the title story of the Spanish translation of a different collection of stories, due out in January 2026. In ‘Nómadas’, as they’ve called it, a commercial watercolour artist and her daughter become drawn, even fascinated by a family of Travellers on the road they live on.
  5. What are you reading now? ‘Big Kiss, Bye-Bye’ by Claire-Louise Bennett (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Mary O’Donnell reading from “Walking Ghosts” in Hodges Figgis, Dublin (Photograph used with kind permission from Mary O’Donnell)

Thank you, Mary, for participating in my Writers Chat Series and for your thoughtful answers to my probing questions! Walking Ghosts can be purchased directly from Mercier Press or from your local independent bookshop.