Interview with Victoria Costello, a Historical Irish Fiction Writer. Orchid Child is an enchanted family saga that charts the hardships and losses borne by three generations of an Irish-American family but with a twist.
Do you have critique partners or beta readers? Yes, I relied on a writing group formed out of the Fishtrap Writers Conference.
What book are you reading now? Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. The Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate, MD.
How did you start your writing career? In junior high school writing, transcendental poetry. I continued in high school (in the 70s) getting into trouble as a founder and writer on the student underground newspaper. Post college I worked as a journalist, then a memoirist, and now a novelist.
In your book, what is your favorite chapter?
Three-quarters in when Teague meets some of his ancestors in an otherworldly place.
Please share your favorite excerpt from your book.
In that otherworldly place, Teague asks his great-great-grandfather, Paddy, a question.
“How can something I say or do right help all these dead people from a hundred years ago?”
Paddy twists his mouth like a pretzel. “Good question. Let’s say you re-enter your body with the intention of telling the story of what happened to you today in whatever medium you choose. You can be sure that one of your ancestors is seeing and feeling that story in his own time as a powerful premonition.”
“No shit?” In a weird way, Paddy makes sense. Until Teague follows his thoughts a few steps further and gets waylaid again. “But what good does it do him, I mean, he’s back there and I’m here?”
“Imagine this ancestor and his family are suffering through the Great Hunger. Or the poor fellow is facing a firing squad. Only one thing helps a man’s soul, whatever his fortune might be, and that’s hope. If not for his own lot in life, then for his children or grandchildren. Hope is one of the threads connecting you and your ancestors through time. You can’t see it. But it’s there, occupying every cell of your body.”
“You mean like it’s in my DNA?”
Paddy smiles like he’s got a secret. “That’s one word for it.”
Please share your favorite quote from your book. When Ellen the matriarch says… “The dead want what they want. Even an ocean away there was no denying them.”
What is the hardest part of writing your books? Figuring out the whole structure, beginning, middle and end.
Did you have an author who inspired you to become a writer? Marilynne Robinson inspired me to write fiction.
What is your favorite part of the writing process? When I get lost in the writing and forget where I am or what day it is.
Describe your latest book in 4 words. An enchanted family saga.
Tell us about your next release. A celebrity astrologer has a crisis of confidence after she ‘misses’ the global pandemic.
Orchid Child
Orchid Child is an enchanted family saga that charts the hardships and losses borne by three generations of an Irish American family but with a twist, brought about by the youngest family member, its orchid child, Teague, a voice-hearing teenager who halts the chain of suffering that came before him by tapping his neurodiversity and the ancient wisdom of his Celtic ancestors.
To depict such a reversal of fortune over a single century takes equal parts history, neuroscience, and Celtic folklore. The science part of the story is embodied by the character of Kate, Teague’s aunt and legal guardian, whose rising star in neuroscience has crashed in the wake of a sex scandal. To salvage her career, Kate goes to West Ireland to conduct an epigenetic study of one rural county’s historically high rate of mental illness, bringing her nephew along.
But Kate’s study meets stiff resistance from the townspeople who want nothing to do with this painful part of their history, while Teague is given a warm welcome by the local Druid fellowship, who identify the boy’s strange perceptions as the gift of second sight. This sets up a conflict with Kate who views her nephew’s differences as a medical problem to be solved. It also brings the family story full circle as Kate learns she’s come to the place her grandparents fled eighty years earlier, accused of betraying the Republican cause in the 1920 Irish Rebellion. It soon becomes clear to Kate that not only is she in the awkward position of studying her own genes, but she’s stumbled on the first of a series of dark secrets in her family’s past. Buy Now on Amazon
Book Genre: Adult general fiction, Sci-fi/fantasy, women’s fiction
Appropriate age for readers: 16 and up
Orchid Child book trailer on YouTube
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family saga, Ireland, Irish American, Neurodiversity, Celtic, folklore, metaphysical, paganism, Druid, psychology, neuroscience, female scientist, intergenerational trauma
