Novel Fair Blog & an all time exclusive...

The Irish writers centre have launched a Novel Fair Blog, which gives this years entrants a great opportunity to ask their own questions about the event or check out FAQ . The deadline is the 17th of October but they've already received the first entry, good luck to the early bird whoever you are! The blog also has information about last years winners and their novels, including mine, which posts an (all time world wide exclusive!) extract from my novel The Herbalist...

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The Herbalist

An Indian man appears in the market square, sets up a stall and declares himself a herbalist. The people of the town flock to the exotic visitor, who seems to have a cure for everything that ails them. But the visitor also helps get rid of some of the town’s more sordid little secrets and as the summer progresses life becomes complicated and dangerous for the herbalist and his devotees. A rich multi-layered story of life in 1930s Ireland told through the eyes of four women, each of whose lives is changed irrevocably by the herbalist.


Extract

"He just appeared one morning and set up shop in the market square. It was drizzling. Everything was either a shade of brown or a shade of grey. He was the lightest thing there, the one they called the black doctor. He wore a pale suit, a straw hat and waved his arms like a conductor. The men spat about dark crafts and foreign notions but the women loved him. Oh, the rubs, potions, tinctures and lotions he had, unguents even. They sold like hotcakes, like they were going out of style. I snuck into town the first chance I got, to see him with my own eyes…"

Niamh Boyce was awarded the Hennessy XO New Irish Writer of the Year 2012 for her poem Kitty. She has been shortlisted for the Francis McManus Short Story competition 2011, the Hennessy Literary Awards 2010, the Molly Keane Award 2010 and the WOW Award 2010. Her fiction and poetry have been published in literary magazines such as The Moth Magazine, Crannog, ROPES, Southword, Boyne Berries 7, The WOW Anthology 2010 and the The Yellow Room.

Her novel ‘The Herbalist’ will be published by Penguin in 2013.

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