I'm a native of County Derry, Northern Ireland. After graduating in Fine Arts from the Belfast College of Art, and gaining a postgraduate diploma in English, I exhibited work in several countries.
I travelled extensively for a number of years, teaching English and Art. In 2003, I began writing, and my memoir, My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress, was published in Ireland in 2004.
In 2006, I co-authored The Dark Sacrament, a book on true cases of exorcism. The American edition appeared in 2007.
My first novel, The Misremembered Man, was published in March 2008, and is now in paperback.
My latest non-fiction project, Ireland's Haunted Women, true-life ghost stories, was published in October 2010 by Poolbeg Press, Dublin.
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My first work of fiction, The Misremembered Man, is a tragi-comedy. It was published in the United States in March 2008 by the Toby Press.
I'm working on a sequel, set in the same fictional district of Northern Ireland, and featuring a number of characters from the first novel.

It's 1974, and James Kevin Barry Michael McCloone, farmer, is looking for a wife.
When his amiable neighbour Rose suggests a Lonely Hearts column in the local newspaper, Jamie considers that a woman might well be the answer to all his problems.
The result is a meeting of absolute opposites. On the one hand there's farmer Jamie with his cavalier attitude to personal hygiene. On the other: schoolteacher and rector's daughter, Lydia Devine, for whom the married state represents sacrifice, a conviction fostered by her domineering mother.
The novel charts this ill-starred "romance" and reflects on how the nature of two radically different childhoods has shaped the adulthood of the protagonists.
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I suppose I reversed the usual order of things by first publishing a memoir of a miserable Irish childhood with a happy ending. This was My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress, which appeared in 2004.
Next, I collaborated with my spouse, David Kiely, to write The Dark Sacrament, an examination of the exorcism phenomenon in Ireland. It was published in Ireland in 2006. The American and international edition was published by HarperOne, San Francisco, in October 2007.
My book of true-life ghost stories, Ireland's Haunted Women, was published in October 2010 by Poolbeg Press, Dublin.

I grew up with eight siblings on a farm in County Derry. It was a difficult childhood, chiefly because of my father's uncaring instincts, coupled with repression by the Catholic Church.
Only in later years, when I gained my independence, did I escape this repression. I found my "salvation" in painting and language, and in a way they led me back to spiritual matters, and those things which matter most.
When I was eleven, our family home was the focus of a haunting, which lasted many weeks. An exorcism was performed, a ritual that left an indelible mark on my psyche. It was this more than anything else that inspired me to embark on The Dark Sacrament.
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Gill and MacMillan, Dublin, published the Irish version of The Dark Sacrament in 2006, which I co-authored with David M. Kiely.

We conducted countless interviews with victims, families, witnesses, and clergy who assisted in performing multiple rites of exorcism. Many of the accounts are very recent and, in some cases, ongoing.
This version contains cases not covered in the later American edition, and includes the bizarre tale of a godfearing Presbyterian who was visited almost nightly by a succubus, a female demon that attempts sexual intercourse with the victim. 
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In The Dark Sacrament, my co-author David M. Kiely and I faithfully recount ten contemporary cases of demon possession, haunted houses, and exorcism, and profile the work of two living, active exorcists: Canon William Lendrum, a Protestant, and Father Ignatius McCarthy, a Roman Catholic.
We conducted countless interviews with victims, families, witnesses, and clergy who assisted in performing multiple rites of exorcism. Many of the accounts are very recent and, in some cases, ongoing.
Exorcists Canon Lendrum and Father Ignatius reveal their fears, failings, and victories as they reflect on their forty years of service battling the Devil and his minions. 
Download an excerpt // Buy the book

In Ireland's Haunted Women I present entirely new cases of real-life hauntings and other paranormal activity.
All too often such collections of Irish ghost stories feature oft-told tales. Not this one. Women from various parts of Ireland recount their experiences for the first time.
There are spectres, revenants, poltergeists and more.
The women I spoke to in the course of my research are from all walks of life. They are young and old, single and in relationships. They share an unsettling reality: each has been visited by non-physical entities.  
Download an excerpt // Buy the book

Following my graduation in Fine Arts at the Belfast College of Art, I mounted various exhibitions of my paintings, in Northern Ireland, Italy, Turkey and Mexico.
I paint in three styles: Traditional, including landscapes and still lifes; Abstract, using bold colours and forms; and what I call Abstract Realistic, where I combine the first two.
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Traditional Abstract Abstract Realistic