Author opens up for Tubridy

Patricia Gibney said an interview on RTÉ radio last week left her feeling “drained” and in need of a “break” from the media circus.

The successful Mullingar author opened up to Ryan Tubridy up about the loss of her husband Aidan to cancer, and how writing got her through the difficult times – and there was an outpouring of similar stories, as listeners contacted RTÉ to say how Patricia’s openness resonated with their own experiences of loss.

With the her sixth book, The Final Betrayal, out on digital format on April 18, and the fourth in her detective series, No Safe Place, having its release on paperback in July, Patricia has little hope of taking a break anytime soon.

“It’s been non-stop since the first book came out two years ago but I’d hate not to be doing it,” said Patricia. “I’m back to that stage again where I’m trying to find a balance in my life,” she told the Westmeath Examiner.

With the arrival of her fourth grandchild two weeks ago, Patricia wants to spend more time with her family. “Lola Rose is sister to Shay, who is two next week and then there’s Daisy, who’s two and half, and Caitlin, who is nine months.”

She says that the response to her interview with Tubridy took her by surprise. “Afterwards I got all these messages and there’s still people contacting me. I’m just as surprised by the response as anyone.

“I was just answering the questions, relating my own story, which is as vivid as the day it happened. So, yes, I was stunned.

“When you’re being interviewed you kind of forget that it’s live on air, only afterwards do you say... ‘oh my God’.”

Admitting that she finds TV and radio “nerve wracking”, Patricia says the path the interview went down came as a curveball.

“Normally a researcher will go through the questions with you, so you have an idea what it’s going to be about. I was sure it was going to be about the latest book, The Lost Child, which came out on paperback in January.

“He drew me back 10 years, right back into it. I was relating things that were traumatic,” she said.

With hindsight, Patricia describes her experience in the months following her Aidan’s death as post traumatic stress. “When it’s happening, you’re in the bubble of everything going on, you have to do certain things, but now you ask yourself how you got through it, or how did Aidan get through it. But in the time you’re going minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day.”

Patricia says the interview brought all those difficult memories to the surface again. “I know cancer touches every second family so I’m not unique or my family isn’t unique. I think there was such a reaction because people could relate to my story, to the normality of what it was, even though it was such an abnormal time.

“A lot of people contacted me to say that’s how they felt, or they’re glad they’re not going mad themselves. Because you do sort of go through a madness – I hate using that word nowadays – but I did things I see now were irrational.”

She talks of getting a builder in to reconfigure her home, or taking her family on holiday directly following the month’s mind Mass. “I knocked down a wall here, I put in a door there and now I look at it and I think what the hell was I thinking of!

“I insisted that me and the kids go on holiday – I felt like we had to get away. So I was at the Mass that morning and that evening we were in Lanzarote, and when I got there I was thinking what am I doing here!

“I’m still in shock at myself for being that open in the interview, I took myself by surprise, but I would hope that by being honest and open about what we went through, people can relate. People are going through stuff every day.

“I am totally open and honest and as I always say, if you tell the truth, you can’t go wrong. So anything I say, I can stand over. There’s a need for a certain amount of privacy as well, because I have three children, I have four grandchildren, so you don’t want to open them up to anything negative.”

However Patricia knows what she signed up for.

“I think if you write a book and you put it out there, you’re immediately opening yourself up to the public, it’s part and parcel of it.

“It’s an adjustment because I’m not trained in it, but you’re thrown into the limelight and you go with it.”

Currently proofreading book six in the Lottie Parker series, Patricia has already signed a contract for two more books, but wants to try her hand at a psychological thriller next.

“I suppose I need to be driven, I need to have something to do. It is hard work but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

“I enjoy starting a new book, I love getting the first draft. And then you have six rounds of edits and by the time I’m finished with that I hate the bloody book,” she laughs.

“You have to remember the reader is only reading it for the first time.

“I think I’m learning with every book I write. My first book, if I was to pick it up now, I would edit the life out of it.

“But it is what it is and it’s out there, it’s been translated for 13 different territories and it led me to where I am now, and I’m so grateful for that.”