Buy Online at

Orna Ross's novels are available to buy online.

Click on the book images below to buy:

"Hello There,

One of the great pleasures of my work is talking to other readers and writers.

Below are the answers to some of the questions – about writing and other things - that readers tend to ask when I meet them at readings or other events.

If you’ve a question you’d like answered, or would like to make a comment on Lovers' Hollow or A Dance in Time or any aspect of writing or F-R-E-E-writing, submit it here and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thank you for visiting and I look forward to hearing from you.  Till then, happy reading and writing!"

Orna                                                                                                Orna Ross

                                                                FAQs

Is your writing autobiographical?
Every novelist gets asked this and it is very difficult to answer.  Certainly - despite what some readers seem to think when a story is narrated in the first person - I can say unequivocally (and with some relief!) that neither Jo Devereux (Lovers Hollow) nor Izzy Mulcahy (A Dance in Time) is me.  But yes, I share some experiences with them -- brought up in small villages in rural Ireland, went to boarding school, lived in London for a while...  Most significantly I suppose, my great-uncle was shot in the Irish Civil War, in an incident very like that described in in Lovers' Hollow -- though the reasons attributed in the book are entirely imagined. 

While my experience of birth family, marriage, children, death and so on differs from my characters', something of me is in them -- and vice versa.

Why do you use a pen-name?
There are a number of reasons why I write under a pen-name.  Firstly, people outside Ireland find ‘Áine’ an impossible name to pronounce (it's "awn-ya", folks, not "ay-neh") and my publishers agreed that a name that was easier for people to remember was a good idea.

Why Orna Ross?
I knew I wanted a pseudonym, something easy to read and remember.  But what?  I spent ages trying to think of the right one.  Then, one day as I shouting up the stairs, calling my two children down to eat - ‘Orna!  Ross!  Dinner’s ready!’ - I realised: the perfect name had delivered itself to me. 

Where Do Your Ideas Come From?
Sometimes it’s something I know I want to go into a book – and I’ll go to great lengths to get it just the way I envisage it.   For example, I knew I wanted Jo to live in San Francisco in order to connect her to the liberation movements there, so I had to visit SF to research how the place felt (that was tough!).  For A Dance in Time, I had to read every single word written by WB Yeats, Ezra Pound, Francis Stuart, Maud Gonne and Iseult Gonne and most everything written about them -- between them, those guys generated a lot of words).

Sometimes it arises out of other work I am doing – Nora’s experience in Enniscorthy Lunatic Asylum (Lovers' Hollow) was based on a case study I came across in research I did for an MA thesis.

More often, the ideas arise, as if from nowhere, when I’m lying in bed, telling myself I should get up, or when I’m jogging or walking, or in the bath....  And I engage in two daily practices that keep them coming: FREE-Writing and meditation.   

I never have a shortage of ideas -- my challenge is to manage my time so that I can get them written up.

What Are You Working On Now?

A family narrative set during the New York City Draft Riots of 1863, a kaleidoscopic set of stories that explore money and war, sex and gender, family and race.  Again, the historical story is told through a more contemporary lens (though the 20th century lens is also a historical moment at some distance from now).  

The idea for this novel sparked during an evening course I took in American History while living in Knutsford, England.  The story itself was shocking -- of how a black man called Abraham Franklin was hung by an Irish mob, one of numerous atrocities against the black community by the Irish during the riot.  After Franklin was cut down, sixteen-year-old Patrick Butler dragged his corpse down the street by the testicles.  All to cheers from the onlooking crowd of Irish men, women and children.

As powerful as this story itself was the feelings circulating in the classroom. The teacher and the, largely English, students were all uncomfortable about my presence in the room -- as if the fact that I was born in Ireland in some way associated me with the actions of those people, in that distant place and time. 

The novel tells the story of two families, one Irish, the other black, and plays out the myriad connections between them during this troubled time.  There is also a front story in a more contemporary setting -- 1970s New York City -- where the flamboyant and dysfunctional McIntyre family are enduring a tragedy. 

A baby is dead. Officialdom labels it a cot death but each member of the family - father, mother, twin sister and brother - knows it wasn’t an accident.  Which one of them did it?  The answer is only revealed to the reader in the last paragraphs – and it is strangely connected to the atrocities that happened during that long-ago riot.

The working title of this story is Three Days in New York.

Like to ask a diffferent question?

Email me on: info@ornaross.com.