Patricia signs new deal as Brexit delays latest book

Brexit delays have hit the delivery to this country of the eagerly-awaited seventh novel by Mullingar crime writer Patricia Gibney.

‘Broken Souls’ was meant to have arrived in shops on Thursday, but the delivery got held up along the way. The books are coming from England, from publishers Hachette UK.

Patricia hasn’t been officially informed that it’s a Brexit issue, but given the delays for so many firms trying to send goods into Ireland, it’s a fair assumption.

“I was told it’s only for three or four days, so I’m hopeful it will arrive this week,” she says.

“I think there are so many other things going on in the world and in the country at the moment that this is small.

“When you take lockdown and so many people sick, it’s probably not annoying me as much as it would in normal times – and I know they will get here.”

While ‘Broken Souls’ is the seventh book in the Lottie Parker series, fans keeping up with the books electronically have for some considerable length of time already had access not just to this particular work, but also to the eighth in the series, Buried Angels, – and indeed the ninth book, ‘Silent Voices’ is due out in e-book and audio format on February 5.

New Deal

There is more good news for fans of Patricia’s writing because the author has signed a contract with her publishers to write three further books. The announcement was made just last Tuesday.

“It’s for just one book a year. I already have two books left to go in the current contract, so I have to write one this year and one next, and with the new contract, that’s the next five years covered.”

It has been a phenomenal few years for former county council official Patricia: it was only in 2017 that the first of her Lottie Parker books was published, and the new contract safeguards the feisty ‘Ragmullin’ detective up top at least book 14.

“I was doing two books a year but I found that I was getting burnt out, and I needed to take a break,” Patricia told the Westmeath Examiner.

“I wanted to travel and do all those sort of things – but of course now [due to Covid-19] I can’t do those things.”

Because she can’t at the moment do those thing she had hoped and planned to do, Patricia has been writing a lot through the lockdown:

“It’s the only thing keeping me sane at the moment, trying to do a bit of writing,” she said.

As the deal was announced, associate publisher Lydia Vassar-Smith described Patricia as a commercial writer of the highest calibre, and described her as “dynamic and astonishing”.

“In her Detective Lottie Parker series, Patricia Gibney has created an unforgettable detective who readers are devoted to, and who they follow from book to book,” she stated.

Patricia’s books have total sales of more than one million.