A quick browse through The Wall Street Journal’s list of best selling books for the week ending July 9 will find the name Patricia Gibney nestled between John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell for sales of fiction e-books.
The first-time author and mother-of-three from Mullingar turned to writing after the death of her husband, Aidan, in 2009. Her crime novels have sold more than 500,000 copies, making her one of the biggest success stories in publishing this year.
“After the death of my husband, I was working in the local authority and I just had to get out of it,” Gibney, 55, told The Times. “I had always loved writing and wrote a novel about 25 years ago that’s still in the bottom of the drawer, but this time, I took it seriously and started doing courses at the Irish Writer’s Centre.”
Her first published novel, The Missing Ones, captured the attention of London agency Bookouture, who wanted to release it for download on Kindle. “The Missing Ones came out in March 2015, it went up on pre-order, and during the first month of sales it had 100,000 downloads” she said.
“Bookouture were immediately interested to know if I had anything else, and luckily I had started writing book two which is called The Stolen Ones.”
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Bookouture, which markets itself as a “digital publisher of brilliant fiction” have now signed Gibney up for two more novels to conclude her series.
“When I heard it was digital publishing, I didn’t know much about it. I thought it sounds good and is a worldwide audience and we should just go for it. There’s a possibility that there could be a paperback version of the books down the line, but at the moment, there are 500,000 sales of my books online, maybe that’s my audience.”
Mrs Gibney’s novels are set in the midlands of Ireland and feature Lottie Parker, who works as a detective. The Missing Ones is described by Amazon as “an absolutely gripping thriller with a jaw-dropping twist” and has hit the number one slot in three categories in the US charts. “It’s dark, my writing, and I’m not sure it’s for everybody,” Gibney said.
“The lead character of Lottie seems to have really captured the attention of a lot of readers and people write to me and talk about her as if she is a real person. I suppose she is an alter-ego of sorts. She’s a dynamic, feisty character but she has loads of baggage and I wanted to write in the crime genre because that’s what I read.”
With such an impressive launch into the world of fiction, Gibney has envisaged seeing her lead character as part of a television series.
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“There has been some talk of that and I would love to see Lottie Parker in a TV series,” she said. “It could be way down the line, and at this stage, anything is a blessing.” Indeed, after the sudden passing of her husband, the author had to reinvent herself.
“Aidan was only 49 and got cancer and died within three months,” Gibney said, “It was absolute upheaval and heartache and sometimes you have to really fight to come out the other side. I really felt like I couldn’t cope, but I started writing. I’m a firm believer in signs, and there have been many signs that have helped me along the way.
“I know there’s some other force helping me through this, others might not believe that, but I do.”