I “met” Kevin on Authonomy.com, a site where writers support or compete with each other. (Sometimes both.) Kevin has a big personality behind that tiny avatar. He pulls no punches and takes no nonsense. He has the kind of blunt, unapologetic style that makes him a great writer and, I figured, a great interview. So I made him agree to sit down with me (virtually, I assume we were both sitting) and talk about the release of his new book, A Fistful of Salt, and his thoughts about the publishing industry.

Where are you from? Are the characters in your novel from the same place and does it factor into the story? Is place important?

I’m originally from Dublin, but I got away from there fifteen or more years ago when people started to go nuts on the Economic boom in the Noughties and my home town became inhabited by yuppy space aliens. Now I live in a rural cottage in the North West of Ireland. When I wrote the book I imagined Sligo Town, a small regional town and it’s environs, as being the setting. People who read the start might just recognise the initial descriptions, but I specifically didn’t want to get too parochial in the telling and exclude other people from being able to relate to it. But the characters are Townies through and through. Sligo was always a traditionally hard hit town, overlooked in many ways for a long time and the people have a humble yet proud resilience about them that I absolutely love. I drew from my own experiences driving taxis around here at night. The accents and the dryness of the humour, it was critical for me to include this in the story to give them an identity that I could paint in conversation and attitude. Most of the action takes place in France and I visited every location in the book and documented it in thousands of photos so as to ensure my executions of place are spot on. So you have these hard-necked Irish Townies against a backdrop of cosmopolitan France and the contrast was so much fun to write. People and place, definitely two of the most important facets of my story.

Okay, so tell me about your book. What is it about? What kind of audience is it for? Why should people read it?

Well they should read it because its an excellent story, why else? I specifically wanted to write a book with broad appeal across age and gender. I wanted the book to be the kind of thing you can read then pass to your husband and he can tell his mates down at the pub and they can tell their wives and mothers etc. It’s literally for anyone who just likes a good yarn about regular people getting themselves into a whole heap of trouble in a very short time. It’s a love story between an introverted cabbie and his childhood crush, who happens to be off the rails. But as they rapidly get themselves into hot water with some very evil villains their humanity inevitably begins to prevail over their societal roles and they become first friends and then lovers. It’s ultimately a story about human frailty and the fight played out in all out hearts between good an evil and how we sometimes fail but sometimes we succeed. It’s a feel good story with a lot of bad stuff in it. Pretty much the same as life.

I suppose It has taken me two years to get this far with it. I wrote it thinking if it was good enough surely someone will publish it. I structured it with the commercial market in mind, word count, chapter size and appeal so I thought I was writing a book that publishers would want. But I was naive about the state of play in the commercial market. So many “rules” for what the market wants. So after sending it to over twenty literary agents with no success I learned that I needed to take this book to the market myself with my own rules in mind. My main rule is that good writing makes good reading. I intend to see that one through regardless of what the experts preach.