Bibliothèque des Refusés

I write fiction in a number of modes, though rarely the unambiguously realist. Rather than describing my work in terms of 'genre' or 'literary' modes, I would say that some of my work adopts a conventional approach to plot and character, while other novels and stories are more concerned with ideas and the aesthetic and experimental aspects of writing. The latter sort of work creates ambiguity or ambivalence; and where there is ambivalence, there are questions (deeply realist questions) about how reality is constituted and prioritised.

Writing as R. S. Maxwell

As a devotee of detective stories, I could not resist the challenge of entering this crowded field myself, under a practically impenetrable pseudonym. Set in contemporary Ireland, though in a part of it that borders with rather less everyday realms, the Quill and Thornapple series sits in the comfortable seats at the cosy end of the mystery/fantasy-fiction spectrum.

The Hibernia Altera universe and the Muinbeo Chronicles and Flux Avellana series

I do not write children's or YA fiction specifically, but a number of my books are accessible to younger as well as adult readers.  These works are set in an alternative world centred loosely on Ireland and playing with mythological motifs from Irish and other traditions. This world contains both lands (e.g. Muinbeo) which are definitely over the border and whose inhabitants are as likely to be non-human as human, and a heavily re-imagined version of 'our' world (the Outlands). The boundaries between the two are somewhat porous. Books may be loosely connected by their setting, rather than linked by sequence or recurring characters (e.g. And the Wildness, which begins the Flux Avellana series, belongs to the wider Hibernia Altera universe and is set in the Outland, while Good Red Herring is set in Muinbeo and is followed by its sequel, A Wild Goose Hunt, within the Muinbeo Chronicles series).