The Monthly interviews author Angeline King – Part 3 – What happens now?

Where to now?

I applied for an arts council grant last year to write a new novel, and I have been successful, so I’ll be working on this throughout 2025.

I have set myself the challenge of writing another diary novel, this time with alternating historical chapters. It will open in 2001 in Holland and then move back and forth between the 2000s and 1680s. As always, language history will be a consideration in this novel.

The 1600s Dutch Republic is fascinating. The likes of the Scots Presbyterians and French Huguenots were persecuted in their own countries for their religious choices and they found refuge in Holland and relayed their story through advances in publishing. So, publishing will be a theme of that novel.

I worked in publishing in the Netherlands from 2001 to 2004 and saw the industry up close. It was a time of enormous change. As one of the leading self-published authors in Ireland, I am interested in the question of why we publish, why many of our classic writers were so compelled to see their work in print that they made it happen themselves. I always say that the most important page in Virginia Woolf’s work is the page with her publishing details.

The “year out”, if you’re wondering, became ten years of a tug of war between writing, full-time work and freelance work. I’m still here, scribbling and turning cereal boxes into books.