Claire M. Keogh

Claire Keogh is a native of Ireland and lives in Dublin. She is retired from employment and is passionate about writing and reading both fiction and non-fiction. She also enjoys film, theatre, movies and radio. "I’ve wanted to write a book for as long as I can remember. As a child, in the pre-Harry Potter days, I read adult books with lots of pages like Jeffrey Archer and Maeve Binchy and longed to write like them. Unfortunately, life got in the way and for one reason or other my ambitions were shelved. However, I never forgot my dream, but just earning a living and paying the bills meant there was never enough time for writing. Years later, I enrolled on a writers course after I saw an advertisement that piqued my interest, and I found the course materials and the tutor to be second to none. I had a period of illness, which led to a long period of absence from work, and I found the coursework therapeutic. I thought to myself, maybe this is my time to follow my dream. Six months after I started the course, I heard about a writing competition that takes place on the American holiday, Labour Day weekend every year, which involves writing a complete novel in just three days. I didn’t have much time to prepare but I was determined to enter. My husband was out of the house that weekend on a short break so it was a perfect opportunity. The result of my work, in the end, didn’t win the competition, but I liked it well enough to edit and revise it later and think about publishing it myself. In fact, it sat on my hard drive for nearly a year, before I dared think about what to do next with it. At sixteen thousand words, it was short, but I had read a lot about self-publishing on social media, and I was determined not to let that stop me. My Amazon account dates back many years, so I am something of an expert in buying books online and other random but hard-to-find items on the website. It was a natural fit to publish there. Firstly, I decided to use the pseudonym Chris Ambrose and published it on Kindle and in paperback in August of 2017, but later republished it using my own name. I have since published four other books including a poetry collection, monologues and two non-fiction titles. I hope to publish my debut full-length novel very soon."